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Summaries of newsworthy papers from Nature. Vol.440 No.7080 Dated 2 March 2006

WWW.NATURE.COM/NATURE This press release is copyright Nature. VOL.440 NO.7080 DATED 2 MARCH 2006 This press release contains: * Summaries of newsworthy papers: * Archaeology: Dawn of Peru's golden age of maize * Planetary science: Why Titan is such a gas * Earth science: Somewhere beneath Yellowstone, the beast stirs ... * Disease: Nipping foot and mouth in the bud * Evolution: Sex begets sex * Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo * Geographical listing of authors Editorial contacts: While the best contacts for stories will always be the authors themselves, in some cases the Nature editor who handled the paper will be available for comment if an author is unobtainable. Editors are contactable via Ruth Francis on +44 20 7843 4562. Feel free to get in touch with Nature's press contacts in London, Washington and Tokyo (as listed at the end of this release) with any general editorial inquiry. Warning: This document, and the Nature 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 advanced copies of Nature's content may be guilty of insider trading under the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The Nature journals press site is at <http://press.nature.com> * PDFs for the Articles, Letters, Progress articles, Review articles, Insights and Brief Communications in this issue will be available on the Nature journals press site from 1400 London time / 0900 US Eastern time on the Friday before publication. * PDFs of News & Views, News Features, Correspondence and Commentaries will be available from 1400 London time / 0900 US Eastern time on the Monday before publication PICTURES: While we are happy for images from Nature to be reproduced for the purposes of contemporaneous news reporting, you must also seek permission from the copyright holder (if named) or author of the research paper in question (if not). 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 <mailto:press@nature.com>, citing the specific example. PLEASE CITE NATURE AND OUR WEBSITE www.nature.com/nature AS THE SOURCE OF THE FOLLOWING ITEMS. IF PUBLISHING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A HYPERLINK TO http://www.nature.com/nature [1] Archaeology: Dawn of Peru's golden age of maize (pp 76-79) Despite the importance of the Andes as a cradle of civilization for cultures up to and including the Incas, little is known about one of the cornerstones of their development - the adoption of agriculture. But now, archaeologists excavating a 4,000-year-old Peruvian house have found the earliest evidence of the growing and processing of maize. Linda Perry and colleagues found microscopic remains of three crop plants - maize, potato and arrowroot - in an ancient dwelling uncovered at Waynuna, high on the slopes of the Cerro Aycano peak above Peru's Cotahuasi Valley. As they report in this week's Nature, they found tiny granules of starch and other plant remains both on the floor of the hut, which dates to between 3,600 and 4,000 years old, and on stone tools found inside. The discovery pushes back the earliest known use of maize as a foodstuff in this region by at least 1,000 years, the authors write. What's more, because arrowroot probably could not be grown in high-altitude regions such as Waynuna, it was probably brought there from farther afield, perhaps therefore representing the early use of agricultural goods as a bartering commodity. CONTACT Linda Perry (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA) Tel: +1 301 238 1023; E-mail: perryli@si.edu [2] Planetary science: Why Titan is such a gas (pp 61-64) Titan's methane supply may be locked away in a kind of methane-rich ice, according to research in this week's Nature. Gabriel Tobie and colleagues suggest that the ice, called a clathrate hydrate, forms a crust above an ocean of liquid water mixed with ammonia. Saturn's moon Titan was revealed last year to have spectacular landscapes apparently carved by liquids and has an atmosphere rich in methane. The Cassini mission also showed that there is not after all a lot of liquid methane now on the moon's surface, and so it isn't clear where the atmospheric gas comes from. As it is broken down by light-induced chemical reactions over a timescale of tens of millions of years, it can't just be a remnant of the atmosphere present when Titan itself was formed, but must be replenished quite regularly. The team say that parts of the clathrate crust might be warmed from time to time by volcanic activity on the moon, causing it to release its methane into the atmosphere. These outbursts could produce temporary flows of liquid methane on the surface, accounting for the river-like features seen on Titan's surface. If they are right, say the researchers, then future missions to Titan should be able to detect the existence of their putative subsurface ocean of a liquid water-ammonia mixture. CONTACT Gabriel Tobie (University Of Nantes, Nantes, France) Tel: +33 1 5112 5467; E-mail: gabriel.tobie@univ-nantes.fr [4] Earth science: Somewhere beneath Yellowstone, the beast stirs ... (pp 72-75) Unusual deformations around the rim of an enormous volcano were created by the flow of molten basalt beneath, scientists report in this week's Nature. Yellowstone National Park in the western United States is home to one of the largest volcanoes on Earth, which formed through a giant eruption about 640,000 years ago, ejecting around 1,000 cubic kilometres of material in the process. Charles Wicks and colleagues have used radar data from the European Space Agency's ERS-2 satellite to identify an unusual feature in the caldera of the volcano. They saw that since 1995, part of the northern rim of the caldera has lifted up, while the caldera floor has subsided. The scientists suggest that the change was caused by the movement of molten basalt in Yellowstone's volcanic system, and could be related to an increase in geothermal activity in the area. CONTACT Charles Wicks (US Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA, USA) Tel: +1 650 329 4874; E-mail: cwicks@usgs.gov [5] Disease: Nipping foot and mouth in the bud (pp 83-86) What's the best way of using a vaccine to contain a foot and mouth disease (FMD) epidemic given logistical constraints and a limited supply? Ignore the order in which infections are reported and instead vaccinate those farms closest to any previously reported cases, according to new research published in Nature. Matt Keeling and colleagues used data collected during the UK's 2001 FMD outbreak to construct an epidemiological model to work out the most efficient way of deploying vaccine stocks to restrict an outbreak by 'ring' vaccination. They conclude reactive vaccination is a powerful tool for combating FMD, and potentially other locally transmitted pathogens, when combined with efficient culling and animal movement restrictions. A strategy that prioritised vaccination on the basis of the shortest distance to any reported infection worked best over traditional fixed-radius policies. This negates the need to determine an optimal ring size. Vaccination was not deployed during the 2001 FMD epidemic. The 2004 FMD contingency plan from the UK Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs considers reactive vaccination to be the preferred means of control but does not suggest a specific design for such programmes. CONTACT Matt Keeling (University of Warwick, Coventry, UK) Tel: +44 24 7652 4618; E-mail: m.j.keeling@warwick.ac.uk [6] Evolution: Sex begets sex (pp 87-90) The question of why sexual reproduction evolved has long taxed biologists. In this week's Nature, researchers propose that sexual reproduction actually selects for conditions that favour its own maintenance - a case of evolution forging its own path. One possible advantage of sex is that it may help rid the genome of harmful mutations. When, as a result of sexual reproduction, organisms shuffle their genes, harmful mutations can be brought together in the same genome, making them more susceptible to the cleansing action of natural selection. But for this to work, mutations must be more harmful when combined in the same genome than when separated - a phenomenon known as 'negative epistasis'. Ricardo Azevedo and colleagues use a computer model to show that recombination between genetic networks could favour the evolution of very robust genomes. It seems that the evolution of negative epistasis is a by-product of this process, further reinforcing the genetic benefits of sexual recombination. This would help to explain why sexual reproduction is so common in species despite its inherent costs, such as that of searching for mates. CONTACT Ricardo Azevedo (University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA) Tel: +1 713 743 4149; E-mail: razevedo@uh.edu ALSO IN THIS ISSUE... [8] Introns and the origin of nucleus-cytosol compartmentalization (pp 41-45) [9] Optimal isotope labelling for NMR protein structure determinations (pp 52-57) [10] A magnetically collimated jet from an evolved star (pp 58-60) [11] Hidden magnetism and quantum criticality in the heavy fermion superconductor CeRhIn5 (pp 65-68) [12] Mitoferrin is essential for erythroid iron assimilation (pp 96-100) [13] How guanylate-binding proteins achieve assemblystimulated processive cleavage of GTP to GMP (pp 101-104) ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION ***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 1 March at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern time (which is also when the embargo lifts) as part of our AOP (ahead of print) programme. Although we have included it on this release to avoid multiple mailings it will not appear in print on 2 March, but at a later date.*** [14] A genome-wide Drosophila RNAi screen identifies DYRK-family kinases as regulators of NFAT (DOI:10.1038/nature04631) GEOGRAPHICAL LISTING OF AUTHORS... The following list of places refers to the whereabouts of authors on the papers numbered in this release. For example, London: 4 - this means that on paper number four, there will be at least one author affiliated to an institute or company in London. 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 Townsville: 7 CANADA Burnaby: 12 FRANCE Gif-sur-Yvette: 13 Nantes: 2 GERMANY Bochum: 13 Cologne: 13 Dortmund: 13 Dusseldorf: 8 INDONESIA Cibinong: 3 Bandung: 3 ITALY Rome: 2 JAPAN Hachioji: 9 Kagoshima: 10 Yokohama: 9 PANAMA Balboa: 1 PERU Arequipa: 1 Moquegua: 1 SPAIN Malta: 12 SWITZERLAND Zurich: 12 UK Cambridge: 5 Coventry: 5 Edinburgh: 5 Macclesfield: 10 Roslin: 5 USA Arizona Tucson: 2 California La Jolla: 3 Menlo Park: 4 Pasadena: 3 San Diego: 12 District of Columbia Washington DC: 1 Illinois Urbana: 11 Maine Orono: 1 Maryland Bethesda: 5, 8 Massachusetts Beverly: 14 Boston: 12, 14 Cambridge: 14 New Mexico Los Alamos: 11 New York Buffalo: 12 Ithaca: 1 Troy: 3 New York: 13 North Carolina Chapel Hill: 6 Ohio Columbus: 12 Pennsylvania Philadelphia: 12 University Park: 5 Texas Houston: 6 Utah Salt Lake City: 12 Washington Seattle: 14 Vancouver: 4 PRESS CONTACTS... For North America and Canada Katie McGoldrick, Nature Washington Tel: +1 202 737 2355; E-mail: k.mcgoldrick@naturedc.com For Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan Rinoko Asami, Nature Tokyo Tel: +81 3 3267 8751; E-mail: r.asami@naturejpn.com For the UK/Europe/other countries not listed above Ruth Francis, Nature London Tel: +44 20 7843 4562; E-mail r.francis@nature.com Zoe Corbyn, Nature London Tel: +44 20 7843 4658; E-mail: z.corbyn@nature.com About Nature Publishing Group Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, dedicated to serving the academic, professional scientific and medical communities. NPG's flagship title, Nature, is the world's most highly-cited weekly multidisciplinary journal and was first published in 1869. 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