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Summaries of newsworthy papers: A potential new treatment for osteoporosis; Drivers of deforestation; Reprogramming with minicircles and Western Australian drought unique in 750 years?

NATURE AND THE NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE For papers that will be published online on 07 February 2010 This press release is copyrighted to the Nature journals mentioned below. This press release contains: · Summaries of newsworthy papers: Medicine: A potential new treatment for osteoporosis Geoscience: Drivers of deforestation Genetics: Variants associated with blood cell and metabolic traits Methods: Reprogramming with minicircles Geoscience: Western Australian drought unique in 750 years? · Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo · Geographical listing of authors PDFs of all the papers mentioned on this release can be found in the relevant journal’s section of http://press.nature.com. Press contacts for the Nature journals are listed at the end of this release. Warning: This document, and the Nature journal papers to which it refers, may contain information that is price sensitive (as legally defined, for example, in the UK Criminal Justice Act 1993 Part V) with respect to publicly quoted companies. Anyone dealing in securities using information contained in this document, or in advance copies of a Nature journal’s content, may be guilty of insider trading under the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934. PICTURES: To obtain artwork from any of the journals, you must first obtain permission from the copyright holder (if named) or author of the research paper in question (if not). NOTE: Once a paper is published, the digital object identifier (DOI) number can be used to retrieve the abstract and full text from the journal web site (abstracts are available to everyone, full text is available only to subscribers). To do this, add the DOI to the following URL: http://dx.doi.org/ (For example, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng730). For more information about DOIs and Advance Online Publication, see http://www.nature.com/ng/aop/. HYPE: We take great care not to hype the papers mentioned on our press releases, but are sometimes accused of doing so. If you ever consider that a story has been hyped, please do not hesitate to contact us at press@nature.com, citing the specific example. PLEASE CITE THE SPECIFIC NATURE JOURNAL AND WEBSITE AS THE SOURCE OF THE FOLLOWING ITEMS. IF PUBLISHING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A HYPERLINK TO THE APPROPRIATE JOURNAL’S WEBSITE. [1] Medicine: A potential new treatment for osteoporosis DOI: 10.1038/nm.2098 Blocking the synthesis of serotonin could treat osteoporosis, according to a report published this week in Nature Medicine. Osteoporosis is a disease of low bone mass often caused by excessive loss and poor formation of bones. Serotonin is best known for its role as a brain neurotransmitter, but this molecule is also produced by the gut and inhibits bone formation. Gerard Karsenty and his colleagues tested whether blocking serotonin biosynthesis could treat osteoporosis by increasing bone formation. The researchers developed an inhibitor of tryptophan hydroxylase, a key enzyme in serotonin biosynthesis, and administered it once daily for up to six weeks to mice and rats with osteoporosis. They found that their compound both prevented and treated osteoporosis through an increase in bone formation. The current treatment for osteoporosis, which acts by promoting bone formation, is the daily injection of parathyroid hormone. The results of this study highlight the potential of serotonin-synthesis blockers as a new generation of drugs to fight osteoporosis. Author Contact: Gerard Karsenty (Columbia University, New York City, NY, USA) Tel: +1 212 305 6398; E-mail: gk2172@columbia.edu [2] Geoscience: Drivers of deforestation DOI: 10.1038/ngeo756 Urban development is driving deforestation in the humid tropics, according to a study published online this week in Nature Geoscience. The report suggests that the movement of people from villages to cities was responsible for forest loss in the tropics between 2000 and 2005. Ruth DeFries and colleagues used satellite-based estimates of forest loss to determine the cause of deforestation in 41 countries in the tropics between 2000 and 2005. They show that forest loss was positively correlated with urban population growth and the export of agricultural products. In contrast, rural population growth was not associated with forest lost. The authors suggest that efforts to reduce tropical forest loss should focus on reducing deforestation for industrial-scale export-oriented agricultural production. Author contact: Ruth DeFries (Columbia University, New York City, NY, USA) Tel: +1 212 851 1647; E-mail: rd2402@columbia.edu [3] Genetics: Variants associated with blood cell and metabolic traits DOI: 10.1038/ng.531 Forty-six genetic variants associated with blood cells and metabolic traits are reported in a study published online this week in Nature Genetics. This study identifies genetic loci that regulate blood cell variability and certain metabolites in a Japanese population, which may lead to greater understanding of how these are disturbed in related diseases. The number and volume of blood cells, as well as the levels of many metabolites, are commonly measured in patients to assist with the diagnosis and management of various diseases. Naoyuki Kamatani and colleagues analyzed the genomes of nearly 15,000 Japanese individuals, measuring eight blood cell traits and 12 metabolites. The study reports 46 new genetic variants that are associated with these clinically relevant traits, which include red blood cell count, hemoglobin concentration, platelet count, and lipid profiles. Author contact: Naoyuki Kamatani (RIKEN, Kanagawa, Japan) Tel: +81 45 503 9111; E-mail: kamatani@msb.biglobe.ne.jp [4] Methods: Reprogramming with minicircles DOI 10.1038/nmeth.1426 A simple way to make human induced pluripotent stem cells without permanently modifying the genome is presented in a study published online this week in Nature Methods. Reprogramming human cells to induced pluripotency holds great promise for research in development and disease and eventually for cell-based therapy. However, improved methods to make induced pluripotent stem cells, which ideally do not permanently modify the genome, are needed. Joseph Wu and colleagues now report that simple minicircle vectors delivering the four required reprogramming factors can be used to reprogram two human cell types. Notably, they used minicircle-based delivery to reprogram adult human fat stem cells, which can be relatively easily obtained from humans and could provide a good source for generating patient-specific cell lines. The minicircle DNA is lost from the cells over time and does not integrate into the genome. Author contact: Joseph Wu (Stanford University School of Medicine, CA, USA) Tel: +1 650 736 2246; E-mail: joewu@stanford.edu [5] Geoscience: Western Australian drought unique in 750 years? DOI: 10.1038/ngeo761 The past few decades of serious drought in the southwestern corner of Australia may be highly unusual compared with the past 750 years, suggests a study published online this week in Nature Geoscience. The report reveals a close association between drought in southwestern Australia and high amounts of snowfall at Law Dome, East Antarctica, as a result of a pattern of atmospheric circulation that brings dry, cool air to Australia, while transporting warm, moist air to East Antarctica. Tas van Ommen and colleague compared records of precipitation at Law Dome, Antarctica and in southwestern Australia, and found a strong inverse relationship. Ice-core data from Law Dome show that the recent snowfall anomaly at Law Dome is highly unusual relative to the variability throughout the full 750-year record, and suggest that the same may hold for the Australian drought. The researchers point out that the airflow responsible for both southwest Australian drought and high East Antarctic snowfall is consistent with some projections for circulation changes associated with human-induced climate change. Author contact: Tas van Ommen (Australian Antarctic Division and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, Tasmania, Australia) Tel: +61 3622 62981; E-mail: tas.van.ommen@aad.gov.au ********************************************************* Items from other Nature journals to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo: Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature) [6] Enzyme-inhibitor-like tuning of Ca2+ channel connectivity with calmodulin DOI: 10.1038/nature08766 [7] Organic-walled microfossils in 3.2-billion-year-old shallow-marine siliciclastic deposits DOI: 10.1038/nature08793 [8 Tbx3 improves the germ-line competency of induced pluripotent stem cells DOI: 10.1038/nature08735 NATURE CELL BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/naturecellbiology) [9] TGF-beta type II receptor phosphorylates PTH receptor to integrate bone remodelling signalling DOI: 10.1038/ncb2022 [10] Histone H3 Thr 45 phosphorylation is a replication-associated post-translational modification in S. cerevisiae DOI: 10.1038/ncb2030 NATURE CHEMICAL BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/nchembio) [11] Chemical phylogenetics of histone deacetylases DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.313 [12] Agmatine-conjugated cytidine in a tRNA anticodon is essential for AUA decoding in archaea DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.323 NATURE CHEMISTRY (http://www.nature.com/nchem) [13] Synthesis of a molecular trefoil knot by folding and closing on an octahedral coordination template DOI: 10.1038/nchem.544 [14] Exploring local currents in molecular junctions DOI: 10.1038/nchem.546 [15] Anisotropic oxygen diffusion at low temperature in perovskite-structure iron oxides DOI: 10.1038/nchem.547 [16] Exceptional ammonia uptake by a covalent organic framework DOI: 10.1038/nchem.548 NATURE GENETICS (http://www.nature.com/naturegenetics) [17] Identification of DOK family genes as lung tumor suppressors DOI: 10.1038/ng.527 [18] A basic helix loop helix transcription factor controls cell growth and size in root hairs DOI: 10.1038/ng.529 [19] Variants near TERC are associated with mean telomere length DOI: 10.1038/ng.532 NATURE GEOSCIENCE (http://www.nature.com/ngeo) [20] Mass-independent fractionation of mercury isotopes in Arctic snow driven by sunlight DOI: 10.1038/ngeo758 [21] Carbon sequestration activated by a volcanic CO2 pulse during ocean anoxic event 2 DOI: 10.1038/ngeo757 NATURE IMMUNOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natureimmunology) [22] HVCN1 modulates BCR signal strength via regulation of BCR-dependent generation of reactive oxygen species DOI: 10.1038/ni.1843 [23] Chromogranin A is an autoantigen in type 1 diabetes DOI: 10.1038/ni.1844 NATURE MATERIALS (http://www.nature.com/naturematerials) [24] Transition from strong-yet-brittle to stronger-and-ductile by size reduction of metallic glasses DOI: 10.1038/nmat2622 Nature MEDICINE (http://www.nature.com/naturemedicine) [25] Development of replication-defective lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus vectors for the induction of potent CD8+ T cell immunity DOI: 10.1038/nm.2104 NATURE METHODS (http://www.nature.com/nmeth) [26] MAZe: a tool for mosaic analysis of gene function in zebrafish DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1423 [27] Computational prediction of neural progenitor cell fates DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1424 [28] Silencing neurotransmission with membrane-tethered toxins DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1425 Nature NEUROSCIENCE (http://www.nature.com/natureneuroscience) [29] Bimodal control of stimulated food intake by the endocannabinoid system DOI: 10.1038/nn.2494 [30] Opioids activate brain analgesic circuits through cytochrome P450/Epoxygenase signaling DOI: 10.1038/nn.2497 [31] Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia-1 (DISC1) regulates spines of the glutamate synapse via Rac1 DOI: 10.1038/nn.2487 [32] Diversity and wiring variability of olfactory local interneurons in the Drosophila antennal lobe DOI: 10.1038/nn.2489 NATURE PHOTONICS (http://www.nature.com/nphoton) [33] Aperiodic volume optics DOI:10.1038/nphoton.2009.290 [34] Entanglement distillation from Gaussian input states DOI:10.1038/nphoton.2010.1 [35] Random distributed feedback fibre laser DOI:10.1038/nphoton.2010.4 [36] Coherent mixing of mechanical excitations in nano-optomechanical structures DOI:10.1038/nphoton.2010.5 Nature PHYSICS (http://www.nature.com/naturephysics) [37] Laser oscillation in a strongly coupled single-quantum-dot–nanocavity system DOI: 10.1038/nphys1518 Nature STRUCTURAL & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natstructmolbiol) [38] Systematic identification of fragile sites via genome-wide location analysis of gamma-H2AX DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1754 [39] Intersubunit capture of regulatory segments is a component of cooperative CaMKII activation DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1751 [40] One SNARE complex is sufficient for membrane fusion DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1748 [41] SF2/ASF autoregulation involves multiple layers of post-transcriptional and translational control DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1750 [42] alpha-Helical nascent polypeptide chains visualized within distinct regions of the ribosomal exit tunnel DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1756 ****************************************************************** GEOGRAPHICAL LISTING OF AUTHORS The following list of places refers to the whereabouts of authors on the papers numbered in this release. The listing may be for an author's main affiliation, or for a place where they are working temporarily. Please see the PDF of the paper for full details. AUSTRALIA Tasmania: 5 BELGIUM Liege: 7 BRAZIL Fortaleza: 27 CANADA: London: 26 Montreal: 27, 38 Toronto: 38 Vancouver: 22 Winnipeg: 7 CHINA Beijing: 8 Hangzhou: 18 Shihezi: 9 FRANCE Bordeaux: 29 Marseille: 18 Rennes: 15 GERMANY Berlin: 25, 28, 42 Goettingen: 40 Munich: 25, 42 Ulm: 25 INDIA Bangalore: 1 Lucknow: 1 IRELAND Dublin: 21 ISRAEL Jerusalem: 41 JAPAN Kanazawa: 3 Kyoto: 15 Tokyo: 3, 34, 37 NETHERLANDS Amsterdam: 30 Groningen: 19 RUSSIA Novosibirsk: 35 SINGAPORE Singapore: 8 SPAIN Leioia: 29 Madrid: 35 SWITZERLAND Basel: 28 Bern: 25 Epalinges: 25 Geneva: 25 Lausanne: 25 Zurich: 25 UNITED KINGDOM Birmingham: 22, 35 Cambridge: 19, 22 Glasgow: 31 Hinxton: 19 Lancaster: Leeds: 19 Leicester: 19, 22 London: 19 Macclesfield: 13 Norwich: 18 Oxford: 18, 22 Sheffield: 13 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Alaska Fort Wainwright: 20 California Berkeley: 39 Duarte: 31 La Jolla: 10 Los Angeles: 16 Palo Alto: 39 Pasadena: 24, 36 San Diego: 23 San Francisco: 39 Stanford: 4, 32 Colorado Boulder: 33 Denver: 23 Georgia Athens: 13 Illinois Evanston: 14, 21 Chicago: 22, 31 Iowa Iowa City: 17 Kansas Lawrence: 7 Pittsburg: 23 Maryland Baltimore: 6, 9, 31 Bethesda: 25 Massachusetts Boston: 1, 8, 11, 17, 32, 42 Cambridge: 8 Michigan Ann Arbor: 20 New Jersey Piscataway: 2 Princeton: 31 Rahway: 41 New York Albany: 30 Buffalo: 31 Cold Spring Harbor: 41 New York: 1, 2, 17 Rochester: 30 Stony Brook: 41 Troy: 27, 30 South Dakota Brookings: 2 Texas Austin: 11 Virginia Charlottesville: 10, 30 Washington Seattle: 25 Wisconsin Milwaukee: 27 PRESS CONTACTS… For media inquiries relating to embargo policy for all the Nature Research Journals: Rachel Twinn (Nature London) Tel: +44 20 7843 4658; E-mail: r.twinn@nature.com Neda Afsarmanesh (Nature New York) Tel: +1 212 726 9231; E-mail: n.afsarmanesh@us.nature.com Ruth Francis (Head of Press, Nature, London) Tel: +44 20 7843 4562; E-mail: r.francis@nature.com For media inquiries relating to editorial content/policy for the Nature Research Journals, please contact the journals individually: Nature Biotechnology (New York) Michael Francisco Tel: +1 212 726 9284; E-mail: biotech@us.nature.com Nature Cell Biology (London) Sowmya Swaminathan Tel: +44 20 7843 4656; E-mail: cellbio@nature.com Nature Chemical Biology (Boston) Sarah Daniels Tel: +1 617 475 9241, E-mail: chembio@us.nature.com Nature Chemistry (London) Stuart Cantrill Tel: +44 20 7014 4018; E-mail: s.cantrill@nature.com Nature Genetics (New York) Myles Axton Tel: +1 212 726 9324; E-mail: natgen@us.nature.com Nature Geoscience (London) Heike Langenberg Tel: +44 20 7843 4042; E-mail: h.langenberg@nature.com Nature Immunology (New York) Laurie Dempsey Tel: +1 212 726 9372; E-mail: immunology@us.nature.com Nature Materials (London) Vincent Dusastre Tel: +44 20 7843 4531; E-mail: materials@nature.com Nature Medicine (New York) Juan Carlos Lopez Tel: +1 212 726 9325; E-mail: medicine@us.nature.com Nature Methods (New York) Hugh Ash Tel: +1 212 726 9627; E-mail: methods@us.nature.com Nature Nanotechnology (London) Peter Rodgers Tel: +44 20 7014 4019; Email: p.rodgers@nature.com Nature Neuroscience (New York) Kalyani Narasimhan Tel: +1 212 726 9319; E-mail: neurosci@us.nature.com Nature Photonics (Tokyo) Oliver Graydon Tel: +81 3 3267 8776; E-mail: o.graydon@natureasia.com Nature Physics (London) Alison Wright Tel: +44 20 7843 4555; E-mail: a.wright@nature.com Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (New York) Michelle Montoya Tel: +1 212 726 9326; E-mail: nsmb@us.nature.com About Nature Publishing Group (NPG): Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a publisher of high impact scientific and medical information in print and online. 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