It Took Earth Ten Million Years to Recover from Greatest Mass Extinction

ScienceDaily (May 27, 2012) It took some 10 million years for Earth to recover from the greatest mass extinction of all time, latest research has revealed.
Life was nearly wiped out 250 million years ago, with only 10 per cent of plants and animals surviving. It is currently much debated how life recovered from this cataclysm, whether quickly or slowly. Recent evidence for a rapid bounce-back is evaluated in a new review article by Dr ZhongQiang Chen, from the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, and Professor Michael Benton from the University of Bristol. They find that recovery from the crisis lasted some 10 million years, as explained May 27 in Nature Geoscience. There were apparently two reasons for the delay, the sheer intensity of the crisis, and continuing grim conditions on Earth after the first wave of extinction. The end-Permian crisis, by far the most dramatic biological crisis to affect life on Earth, was triggered by a number of physical environmental shocks -- global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification and ocean anoxia. These were enough to kill off 90 per cent of living things on land and in the sea. Dr Chen said: "It is hard to imagine how so much of life could have been killed, but there is no doubt from some of the fantastic rock sections in China and elsewhere round the world that this was the biggest crisis ever faced by life." Current research shows that the grim conditions continued in bursts for some five to six million years after the initial crisis, with repeated carbon and oxygen crises, warming and other ill effects. Some groups of animals on the sea and land did recover quickly and began to rebuild their ecosystems, but they suffered further setbacks. Life had not really recovered in these early phases because permanent ecosystems were not established. Professor Benton, Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Bristol, said: "Life seemed to be getting back to normal when another crisis hit and set it back again. The carbon crises were repeated many times, and then finally conditions became normal again after five million years or so." Finally, after the environmental crises ceased to be so severe, more complex ecosystems emerged. In the sea, new groups, such as ancestral crabs and lobsters, as well as the first marine reptiles, came on the scene, and they formed the basis of future modern-style ecosystems. Professor Benton added: "We often see mass extinctions as entirely negative but in this most devastating case, life did recover, after many millions of years, and new groups emerged. The event had re-set evolution. However, the causes of the killing -- global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification -- sound eerily familiar to us today. Perhaps we can learn something from these ancient events."

It's in the Genes: Research Pinpoints How Plants Know When to Flower
ScienceDaily (May 26, 2012) Scientists believe they've pinpointed the last crucial piece of the 80-year-old puzzle of how plants "know" when to flower.
Determining the proper time to flower, important if a plant is to reproduce successfully, involves a sequence of molecular events, a plant's circadian clock and sunlight. Understanding how flowering works in the simple plant used in this study -- Arabidopsis -should lead to a better understanding of how the same genes work in more complex plants grown as crops such as rice, wheat and barley, according to Takato Imaizumi, a University of Washington assistant professor of biology and corresponding author of a paper in the May 25 issue of the journal Science. "If we can regulate the timing of flowering, we might be able to increase crop yield by accelerating or delaying this. Knowing the mechanism gives us the tools to manipulate this," Imaizumi said. Along with food crops, the work might also lead to higher yields of plants grown for biofuels. At specific times of year, flowering plants produce a protein known as FLOWERING LOCUS T in their leaves that induces flowering. Once this protein is made, it travels from the leaves to the shoot apex, a part of the plant where cells are undifferentiated, meaning they can either become leaves or flowers. At the shoot apex, this protein starts the molecular changes that send cells on the path to becoming flowers. Changes in day length tell many organisms that the seasons are changing. It has long been known that plants use an internal time-keeping mechanism known as the circadian clock to measure changes in day length. Circadian clocks synchronize biological processes during 24hour periods in people, animals, insects, plants and other organisms. Imaizumi and the paper's co-authors investigated what's called the FKF1 protein, which they suspected was a key player in the mechanism by which plants recognize seasonal change and know when to flower. FKF1 protein is a photoreceptor, meaning it is activated by sunlight. "The FKF1 photoreceptor protein we've been working on is expressed in the late afternoon every day, and is very tightly regulated by the plant's circadian clock," Imaizumi said. "When this protein is expressed during days that are short, this protein cannot be activated, as there is no daylight in the late afternoon. When this protein is expressed during a longer day, this photoreceptor makes use of the light and activates the flowering mechanisms involving FLOWERING LOCUS T. The circadian clock regulates the timing of the specific photoreceptor for flowering. That is how plants sense differences in day length." This system keeps plants from flowering when it's a poor time to reproduce, such as the dead of winter when days are short and nights are long. The new findings come from work with the plant Arabidopsis, a small plant in the mustard family that's often used in genetic research. They validate predictions from a mathematical

model of the mechanism that causes Arabidopsis to flower that was developed by Andrew Millar, a University of Edinburgh professor of biology and co-author of the paper. "Our mathematical model helped us to understand the operating principles of the plants' daylength sensor," Millar said. "Those principles will hold true in other plants, like rice, where the crop's day-length response is one of the factors that limits where farmers can obtain good harvests. It's that same day-length response that needs controlled lighting for laying chickens and fish farms, so it's just as important to understand this response in animals. "The proteins involved in animals are not yet so well understood as they are in plants but we expect the same principles that we've learned from these studies to apply." First author on the paper is Young Hun Song, a postdoctoral researcher in Imaizumi's UW lab. The other co-authors are Benjamin To, who was a UW undergraduate student when this work was being conducted, and Robert Smith, a University of Edinburgh graduate student. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and the United Kingdom's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

New Type of Male Contraceptive? Key Gene Essential for Sperm Development Discovered
ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) A new type of male contraceptive could be created thanks to the discovery of a key gene essential for sperm development.
The finding could lead to alternatives to the conventional male contraceptives that rely on disrupting the production of hormones, such as testosterone. These treatments can cause side-effects such as irritability, mood swings and acne. Research, led by the University of Edinburgh, has shown how a gene -- Katnal1 -- is critical to enable sperm to mature in the testes. If scientists can regulate the Katnal1 gene in the testes, they could prevent sperm from maturing completely, making them ineffective without changing hormone levels. The research, which is published in the journal PLoS Genetics, could also help in finding treatments for cases of male infertility when malfunction of the Katnal1 gene hampers sperm development. Dr Lee Smith, Reader in Genetic Endocrinology at the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Reproductive Health, said: "If we can find a way to target this gene in the testes, we could potentially develop a non-hormonal contraceptive. "The important thing is that the effects of such a drug would be reversible because Katnal1 only affects sperm cells in the later stages of development, so it would not hinder the early stages of sperm production and the overall ability to produce sperm. "Although other research is being carried out into non-hormonal male contraceptives, identification of a gene that controls sperm production in the way Katnal1 does is a unique and significant step forward in our understanding of testis biology." Scientists found that male mice that were modified so they did not have the Katnal1 gene were infertile. Further investigation showed that this was because the gene was needed to allow the sperm to develop and mature. The researchers showed that Katnal1 was needed to regulate the scaffolding structures known as microtubules, which form part of the cells that support and provide nutrients to developing sperm. Breaking down and rebuilding these microtubules enables the sperm cells to move within the testes as they mature. Katnal1 acts as the essential controller of this process.

Asteroid Nudged by Sunlight: Most Precise Measurement of Yarkovsky Effect

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) Scientists on NASA's asteroid sample return mission, Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), have measured the orbit of their destination asteroid, 1999 RQ36, with such accuracy they were able to directly measure the drift resulting from a subtle but important force called the Yarkovsky effect -the slight push created when the asteroid absorbs sunlight and re-emits that energy as heat. "The new orbit for the half-kilometer (one-third mile) diameter 1999 RQ36 is the most precise asteroid orbit ever obtained," said OSIRIS-REx team member Steven Chesley of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. He presented the findings May 19 at the Asteroids, Comets and Meteors 2012 meeting in Niigata, Japan. Observations that Michael Nolan at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico made in September 2011, along with Arecibo and Goldstone radar observations made in 1999 and 2005, when 1999 RQ36 passed much closer to Earth, show that the asteroid has deviated from its gravityruled orbit by roughly 100 miles, or 160 kilometers, in the last 12 years, a deviation caused by the Yarkovsky effect. The Yarkovsky effect is named for the nineteenth-century Russian engineer who first proposed the idea that a small rocky space object would, over long periods of time, be noticeably nudged in its orbit by the slight push created when it absorbs sunlight and then reemits that energy as heat. "The Yarkovsky force on 1999 RQ36 at its peak, when the asteroid is nearest the sun, is only about a half ounce -- about the weight of three grapes on Earth. Meanwhile, the mass of the asteroid is estimated to be about 68 million tons. You need extremely precise measurements over a fairly long time span to see something so slight acting on something so huge." Nolan and his team measured the distance between the Arecibo Observatory and 1999 RQ36 to an accuracy of 300 meters, or about a fifth of a mile, when the asteroid was 30 million kilometers, or 20 million miles, from Earth. "That's like measuring the distance between New York City and Los Angeles to an accuracy of two inches, and fine enough that we have to take the size of the asteroid and of Arecibo Observatory into account when making the measurements," Nolan said. Chesley and his colleagues used the new Arecibo measurements to calculate a series of 1999 RQ36 approaches closer to Earth than 7.5 million kilometers (4.6 million miles) from the years 1654 to 2135. There turned out to be 11 such encounters. By combining the radar results from Arecibo Observatory with infrared results from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the scientists also learned that asteroid 1999 RQ36 is very light -- it has around the same density as water, Chesley reported. "This study is an important step in better understanding the Yarkovsky effect -- a subtle force that contributes to the orbital evolution of new Near-Earth Objects," said Dante Lauretta, the

mission's principal investigator and professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona. Lauretta added that "this information is critical for assessing the likelihood of an impact from our target asteroid and provides important constraints on its mass and density, allowing us to substantially improve our mission design." The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is to launch in 2016, reach asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36 in 2019, examine it up close during a 505-day rendezvous, then return at least 60 grams (~1.9 ounces) of it to Earth in 2023. "In addition to the exciting Yarkovsky results, the low density shows that 1999 RQ36 is probably a loose aggregate of rocks--a so called rubble pile," said Jason Dworkin, the mission's project scientist and Chief of Astrochemistry at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This makes it an ideal target for OSIRIS-REx to collect loose surface material."

'Personality Genes' May Help Account for Longevity

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) "It's in their genes" is a common refrain from scientists when asked about factors that allow centenarians to reach age 100 and beyond. Up until now, research has focused on genetic variations that offer a physiological advantage such as high levels of HDL ("good") cholesterol. But researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology of Yeshiva University have found that personality traits like being outgoing, optimistic, easygoing, and enjoying laughter as well as staying engaged in activities may also be part of the longevity genes mix.
The findings, published online May 21 in the journal Aging, come from Einstein's Longevity Genes Project, which includes over 500 Ashkenazi Jews over the age of 95, and 700 of their offspring. Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews were selected because they are genetically homogeneous, making it easier to spot genetic differences within the study population. Previous studies have indicated that personality arises from underlying genetic mechanisms that may directly affect health. The present study of 243 of the centenarians (average age 97.6 years, 75 percent women) was aimed at detecting genetically-based personality characteristics by developing a brief measure (the Personality Outlook Profile Scale, or POPS) of personality in centenarians. "When I started working with centenarians, I thought we'd find that they survived so long in part because they were mean and ornery," said Nir Barzilai, M.D., the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair of Aging Research, director of Einstein's Institute for Aging Research and co-corresponding author of the study. "But when we assessed the personalities of these 243 centenarians, we found qualities that clearly reflect a positive attitude towards life. Most were outgoing, optimistic and easygoing. They considered laughter an important part of life and had a large social network. They expressed emotions openly rather than bottling them up." In addition, the centenarians had lower scores for displaying neurotic personality and higher scores for being conscientious compared with a representative sample of the U.S. population. "Some evidence indicates that personality can change between the ages of 70 and 100, so we don't know whether our centenarians have maintained their personality traits across their entire lifespans," continued Dr. Barzilai. "Nevertheless, our findings suggest that centenarians share particular personality traits and that genetically-based aspects of personality may play an important role in achieving both good health and exceptional longevity." The study is titled "Positive attitude towards life and emotional expression as personality phenotypes for centenarians." The POPS was developed by lead author Kaori Kato, Psy.D., now at Weill Cornell Medical College, who validated it through comparisons with two previously established measures of personality traits. Other authors of the study were Richard Zweig, Ph.D., assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Einstein and director of the Older Adult Program at Ferkauf, and Gil Atzmon, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine and of genetics at Einstein.

Thousands of Invisibility Cloaks Trap a Rainbow

ScienceDaily (May 25, 2012) Many people anticipating the creation of an invisibility cloak might be surprised to learn that a group of American researchers has created 25,000 individual cloaks.
But before you rush to buy one from your local shop, the cloaks are just 30 micrometres in diameter and are laid out together on a 25 millimetre gold sheet. This array of invisibility cloaks is the first of its kind and has been created by researchers from Towson University and University of Maryland who present their study on May 25, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics. Although the well-reported intention to make everyday objects disappear with a Harry Potter-style cloak is beyond this array of cloaks, they could be used to slow down, or even stop, light, creating what is known as a "trapped rainbow." The trapped rainbow could be utilised in tiny biosensors to identify biological materials based on the amount of light they absorb and then subsequently emit, which is known as fluorescence spectroscopy. Slowed-down light has a stronger interaction with molecules than light travelling at normal speeds, so it enables a more detailed analysis. Lead author of the study, Dr Vera Smolyaninova, said: "The benefit of a biochip array is that you have a large number of small sensors, meaning you can perform many tests at once. For example, you could test for multiple genetic conditions in a person's DNA in just one go. "In our array, light is stopped at the boundary of each of the cloaks, meaning we observe the trapped rainbow at the edge of each cloak. This means we could do 'spectroscopy on-a-chip' and examine fluorescence at thousands of points all in one go." The 25 000 invisibility cloaks are uniformly laid out on a gold sheet, with each having a microlens that bends light around itself, effectively hiding an area in its middle. As the light squeezes through the gaps between each of the cloaks, the different components of light, or colours, are made to stop at ever narrower points, creating the rainbow. To construct the array of invisibility cloaks, a commercially available microlens array, containing all of the individual microlenses, was coated with a gold film. This was then placed, gold-side down, onto a glass slide which had also been coated with gold, creating a double layer. A laser beam was directed into the array to test performance of the cloaks at different angles.

The researchers believe that this type of array could also be used to test the performance of individual invisibility cloaks, especially in instances where they may be positioned close together. In this study, for example, the cloaks worked very well when light was shone along the rows; however, when it was shown at different angles, imperfections were clearly visible.

Organic Carbon from Mars, but Not Biological

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) Molecules containing large chains of carbon and hydrogen--the building blocks of all life on Earth--have been the targets of missions to Mars from Viking to the present day. While these molecules have previously been found in meteorites from Mars, scientists have disagreed about how this organic carbon was formed and whether or not it came from Mars.
A new paper led by Carnegie's Andrew Steele provides strong evidence that this carbon did originate on Mars, although it is not biological. These findings give researchers insight into the chemical processes taking place on Mars and will help aid future quests for evidence of ancient or modern Martian life. The work is published May 24 in Science Express. There has been little agreement among scientists about the origin of the large carbon macromolecules detected in Martian meteorites. Theories about their origin include contamination from Earth or other meteorites, the results of chemical reactions on Mars, or that they are the remnants of ancient Martian biological life. Steele's team examined samples from 11 Martian meteorites whose ages span about 4.2 billion years of Martian history. They detected large carbon compounds in 10 of them. The molecules were found inside of grains of crystallized minerals. Using an array of sophisticated research techniques, the team was able to show that at least some of the macromolecules of carbon were indigenous to the meteorites themselves and not contamination from Earth. Next the team looked at the carbon molecules in relation to other minerals in the meteorites to see what kinds of chemical processing these samples endured before arriving on Earth. The crystalline grains encasing the carbon compounds provided a window into how the carbon molecules were created. Their findings indicate that the carbon was created during volcanism on Mars and show that Mars has been doing organic chemistry for most of its history. "These findings show that the storage of reduced carbon molecules on Mars occurred throughout the planet's history and might have been similar to processes that occurred on the ancient Earth," Steele said. "Understanding the genesis of these non-biological, carboncontaining macromolecules on Mars is crucial for developing future missions to detect evidence of life on our neighboring planet." In a separate paper published by American Mineralogist, available online, Steele and his team studied a meteorite called Allan Hills 84001 that was reported to contain relicts of ancient biological life on Mars. The paper demonstrated that these supposed remnants could have been created by chemical reactions involving the graphite form of carbon, rather than biological processes. Both of these papers reveal a pool of reduced carbon on Mars and will help scientist involved in future Mars missions distinguish these non-biologically formed molecules from potential life.

Device May Inject a Variety of Drugs Without Using Needles

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) MIT researchers have engineered a device that delivers a tiny, highpressure jet of medicine through the skin without the use of a hypodermic needle. The device can be programmed to deliver a range of doses to various depths -- an improvement over similar jet-injection systems that are now commercially available.
The researchers say that among other benefits, the technology may help reduce the potential for needle-stick injuries; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that hospital-based health care workers accidentally prick themselves with needles 385,000 times each year. A needleless device may also help improve compliance among patients who might otherwise avoid the discomfort of regularly injecting themselves with drugs such as insulin. "If you are afraid of needles and have to frequently self-inject, compliance can be an issue," says Catherine Hogan, a research scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering and a member of the research team. "We think this kind of technology gets around some of the phobias that people may have about needles." The team reports on the development of this technology in the journal Medical Engineering & Physics. Pushing past the needle In the past few decades, scientists have developed various alternatives to hypodermic needles. For example, nicotine patches slowly release drugs through the skin. But these patches can only release drug molecules small enough to pass through the skin's pores, limiting the type of medicine that can be delivered. With the delivery of larger protein-based drugs on the rise, researchers have been developing new technologies capable of delivering them -- including jet injectors, which produce a highvelocity jet of drugs that penetrate the skin. While there are several jet-based devices on the market today, Hogan notes that there are drawbacks to these commercially available devices. The mechanisms they use, particularly in spring-loaded designs, are essentially "bang or nothing," releasing a coil that ejects the same amount of drug to the same depth every time. Breaching the skin Now the MIT team, led by Ian Hunter, the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has engineered a jet-injection system that delivers a range of doses to variable depths in a highly controlled manner. The design is built around a mechanism called a Lorentz-force actuator -- a small, powerful magnet surrounded by a coil of wire that's attached to a piston inside a drug ampoule. When current is applied, it interacts with the magnetic field to produce a force that pushes the piston forward, ejecting the drug at very high pressure and velocity (almost the speed of sound in air) out through the ampoule's nozzle -- an opening as wide as a mosquito's proboscis.

The speed of the coil and the velocity imparted to the drug can be controlled by the amount of current applied; the MIT team generated pressure profiles that modulate the current. The resulting waveforms generally consist of two distinct phases: an initial high-pressure phase in which the device ejects drug at a high-enough velocity to "breach" the skin and reach the desired depth, then a lower-pressure phase where drug is delivered in a slower stream that can easily be absorbed by the surrounding tissue. Through testing, the group found that various skin types may require different waveforms to deliver adequate volumes of drugs to the desired depth. "If I'm breaching a baby's skin to deliver vaccine, I won't need as much pressure as I would need to breach my skin," Hogan says. "We can tailor the pressure profile to be able to do that, and that's the beauty of this device." Samir Mitragotri, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is developing new ways to deliver drugs, including via jet injection. Mitragotri, who was not involved with the research, sees the group's technology as a promising step beyond jet injection designs currently on the market. "Commercially available jet injectors provide limited control, which limits their applications to certain drugs or patient populations," Mitragotri says. "[This] design provides excellent control over jet parameters, including speed and doses this will enhance the applicability of needleless drug devices." The team is also developing a version of the device for transdermal delivery of drugs ordinarily found in powdered form by programming the device to vibrate, turning powder into a "fluidized" form that can be delivered through the skin much like a liquid. Hunter says that such a powder-delivery vehicle may help solve what's known as the "cold-chain" problem: Vaccines delivered to developing countries need to be refrigerated if they are in liquid form. Often, coolers break down, spoiling whole batches of vaccines. Instead, Hunter says a vaccine that can be administered in powder form requires no cooling, avoiding the cold-chain problem.

Like Curry? New Biological Role Identified for Compound Used in Ancient Medicine
ScienceDaily (May 25, 2012) Oregon State University scientists just identified a new reason why some curry dishes, made with spices humans have used for thousands of years, might be good for you.
New research has discovered that curcumin, a compound found in the cooking spice turmeric, can cause a modest but measurable increase in levels of a protein that's known to be important in the "innate" immune system, helping to prevent infection in humans and other animals. This cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide, or CAMP, is part of what helps our immune system fight off various bacteria, viruses or fungi even though they hadn't been encountered before. Prior to this, it was known that CAMP levels were increased by vitamin D. Discovery of an alternative mechanism to influence or raise CAMP levels is of scientific interest and could open new research avenues in nutrition and pharmacology, scientists said. Turmeric is a flavorful, orange-yellow spice and an important ingredient in many curries, commonly found in Indian, South Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine. It has also been used for 2,500 years as a medicinal compound in the Ayurvedic system of medicine in India -- not to mention being part of some religious and wedding ceremonies. In India, turmeric is treated with reverence. The newest findings were made by researchers in the Linus Pauling Institute at OSU and published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health. "This research points to a new avenue for regulating CAMP gene expression," said Adrian Gombart, an associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics in the Linus Pauling Institute. "It's interesting and somewhat surprising that curcumin can do that, and could provide another tool to develop medical therapies." The impact of curcumin in this role is not nearly as potent as that of vitamin D, Gombart said, but could nonetheless have physiologic value. Curcumin has also been studied for its antiinflammatory and antioxidant properties. "Curcumin, as part of turmeric, is generally consumed in the diet at fairly low levels," Gombart said. "However, it's possible that sustained consumption over time may be healthy and help protect against infection, especially in the stomach and intestinal tract." In this study, Chunxiao Guo, a graduate student, and Gombart looked at the potential of both curcumin and omega-3 fatty acids to increase expression of the CAMP gene. They found no particular value with the omega-3 fatty acids for this purpose, but curcumin did have a clear effect. It caused levels of CAMP to almost triple. There has been intense scientific interest in the vitamin D receptor in recent years because of potential therapeutic benefits in treating infection, cancer, psoriasis and other diseases, the

researchers noted in their report. An alternative way to elicit a related biological response could be significant and merits additional research, they said. The CAMP peptide is the only known antimicrobial peptide of its type in humans, researchers said. It appears to have the ability to kill a broad range of bacteria, including those that cause tuberculosis and protect against the development of sepsis.

Structure of Human Protein Critical for Silencing Genes Solved

ScienceDaily (May 25, 2012) In a study published in the journal Cell on May 24, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) scientists describe the three-dimensional atomic structure of a human protein bound to a piece of RNA that "guides" the protein's ability to silence genes. The protein, Argonaute-2, is a key player in RNA interference (RNAi), a powerful cellular phenomenon that has important roles in diverse biological processes, including an organism's development.
"Detailed knowledge of the structure of human Argonaute-2 and the way it interacts with its RNA guides will greatly improve our understanding of its biological mechanism of action," says CSHL Professor and HHMI Investigator Leemor Joshua-Tor, Ph.D., the study's leader. "Such precise structural information of the human Argonaute bound to an important RNA guide could potentially aid both basic research to understand the function of genes and also advance the development of RNAi as a therapeutic strategy in clinical settings." Upon the activation of a gene within a cell, the gene's DNA is copied into a messenger RNA (mRNA) "transcript." The instructions encoded within this transcript are then used as a blueprint by the cell's protein synthesis machinery to generate a working protein. The gene is "silenced" or prevented from giving rise to the protein, however, when an Argonaute-2 protein that is bound to a small piece of "guide" RNA -- either a short-interfering RNA or a microRNA -- intercepts the mRNA molecule. The guide RNA, whose nucleotide sequence matches that of the target mRNA, acts as a homing device that helps the Argonaute-2 protein zero in on the mRNA target. A few years ago, Joshua-Tor collaborated with CSHL Professor and HHMI Investigator Gregory Hannon, Ph.D., who is also a co-author in this study, to show that Argonaute proteins, which are made up of different domains or parts, act like a pair of molecular scissors that slice up target mRNAs, thus preventing proteins from being made and enforcing the silencing of their genes. The discovery of the Argonautes' "slicer" activity stemmed in part from solving the crystal structure of an Argonaute protein from Pyrococcus furiosus, an archebacterium that thrives in extremely high temperatures. "But we still know nothing about the biological functions or mechanisms of action of archebacterial Argonautes," says Joshua-Tor. "We therefore next focused on solving the structures of Argonautes from higher organisms such as mammals, in which Argonaute functions and target recognition are well documented." Joshua-Tor's team and other research groups subsequently determined the atomic structures of individual parts of Argonaute proteins from higher organisms. While these studies

revealed several important details -- for example, the interaction between two parts of the Argonaute protein, called the PAZ and Mid domains, with the two ends of guide RNAs -Joshua-Tor's goal was to solve the structure of the entire human Argonaute protein in complex with a single human guide RNA. Overcoming a complicated series of technical challenges, her team has achieved this goal by analyzing the structure of a full-length human Argonaute-2 protein bound to a small RNA called miR-20a, which is known to play a role in cancer development. Although Argonautes from higher organisms diverged from their archebacterial cousins more than three billion years ago, the team's analysis shows remarkable similarity between the two structures, especially in the regions that are important for target recognition and slicing activity. "Our structure shows that the guide RNA, which is anchored at both ends by the PAZ and Mid domains, kinks and twists its way through the structure of the entire protein, making several points of contact within each domain and with the linker loops that join them," explains Joshua-Tor. "The guide RNA thus acts like a backbone that rigidly locks together the otherwise flexible Argonaute protein and gives it stability." The researchers speculate that the path threaded through the Argonaute by the guide RNAs could have evolved to maximize mutual stability, in turn making the protein-RNA complexes long-lived. This long life is critical for many biological processes that are mediated by Argonautes. "This is also the kind of information that might help us to design better synthetic guide RNAs for therapeutic use," explains Joshua-Tor. "It will also be useful to researchers who are trying to find more precise ways of blocking Argonaute activity."

First Private Craft Docks with Space Station

High above northwestern Australia, a robotic arm on the International Space Station grabbed onto a cargo capsule floating 10 meters away.

With that penultimate act, the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation of Hawthorne, Calif., or SpaceX, made history as the first private company to send a craft, the Dragon, to the station. The grab which NASA refers to as a grapple occurred at 9:56 a.m. Eastern time on Friday. It looks like weve got us a Dragon by the tail, said Donald R. Pettit, the NASA astronaut on the station who was operating the robotic arm. Andre Kuipers, an European Space Agency astronaut, then took over the robotic arm to pull the Dragon to a docking port on the station, locking it there just after noon. After the hatches are opened on Saturday, the astronauts aboard the station will spend six days unloading the cargo brought up by the Dragon and replacing it with items to take back to Earth. The Dragon is to undock on Thursday and parachute into the Pacific Ocean off California. SpaceX launched the Dragon capsule on top of its Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday. The company and NASA spent several days conducting tests to check the Dragons operations. On Thursday, it flew 1.5 miles beneath the station to test its communication and navigation systems. It passed those tests, then looped around the space station to begin its final approach. By design, the approach was slow, with built-in pauses. As part of the testing process, the crew sent commands to the capsule to stop or temporarily move away, ensuring that Dragon could be safely sent off if something went badly awry.

SpaceX did run into some difficulties with Dragons navigation sensors, one that took thermal images and one that bounced laser pulses, and that delayed the capture by a couple of hours. This is, I think, going to be recognized as a significantly historical step forward in space travel, SpaceXs chief executive, Elon Musk, said during a news conference. Hopefully the first of many to come. Mr. Musks dreams are far grander than delivering cargo to the space station. Although he would like to carry astronauts to the station in a few years, that would still be merely retracing accomplishments that the American and Russian space programs achieved decades ago. Its evolutionary, not revolutionary, Mr. Musk agreed in an interview last month. To accomplish Mr. Musks very long-term goal sending people to Mars, which he regards as essential for ensuring the survival of humanity SpaceX must create new technologies that fundamentally change the current equation of space travel, in which most of the vehicle is thrown away each time. Mr. Musk talks of reusable rockets, but his first attempt to accomplish that recovering the first stage of the Falcon 9 via parachute failed. Twice, in 2010, SpaceX tried this method, but each time the rocket stage disintegrated as it fell. On this flight, SpaceX gave up trying. A new idea is for the engines to fire again after they drop off, and the rocket stages would fly back to land to be refueled. SpaceX plans to begin tests of this vertical takeoff and landing concept, dubbed Grasshopper, this year. Mr. Musk also talks of building a giant rocket powered by next-generation engines using new fuels, bigger than the Falcon Heavy rocket he is hoping to launch within the next two years. Its going to be very big, he said. Very huge. Bigger than the Saturn V that launched NASA astronauts to the moon? Could be, he said with a smile. He said he would provide more details later this year or in 2013. SpaceX has also consistently underestimated the time it would take to accomplish its tasks. In 2006, when NASA selected it to develop the cargo ship, SpaceX said the first trip to the station would take three years; it took six. SpaceX also has a large backlog of commercial satellites it is under contract to launch. This track record may be relevant to Mr. Musks stated goal: he said he thought SpaceX could send people to Mars in 15 years 20 years at most. In that prediction, he said he hoped he was not off by a factor of two. Ill be 80, he said.

Dams Flow Limit Loosened to Feed Grand Canyon

The Interior Department announced a plan on Wednesday to allow periodic increases in the flow of Colorado River water through the Grand Canyon, alleviating the environmental disruption caused by the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona in the 1960s.

The secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, said the plan would allow the rivers managers to release excess water more than twice as much as average flows through and over the hydroelectric dam at will to help propel silt and sediment downstream into the canyon. By mimicking the rivers original dynamics, Interior Department officials said, the flows could help restore the backwater ecosystems in which native fish are most at home. The goal is partly to enhance sandbars that create backwaters for an endangered fish, the humpback chub. The excess sand also nourishes beaches used by wildlife, hikers and rafters. Environmental groups like the Grand Canyon Truststrongly support the high-flow releases, which have been carried out experimentally three times before, most recently in 2008. In a telephone news conference, Mr. Salazar said the releases would be timed for when storms or snowmelt have carried large amounts of silt just downriver from the dam. The first high-flow release under the new protocol will probably come this fall, he added. The triggering conditions are related to the amount of sediment in the system, he said. When heavy rains occur in the Paria River watershed, which drains rocky territory in southwestern Utah, they frequently flush tons of silt into the Colorado, which the Paria meets below the dam.

The flexible flow plan will remain in effect through 2020. While normal flows through the turbines of the Glen Canyon Dam range from 8,000 to 22,500 cubic feet per second, the highflow events could reach 45,000 cubic feet per second and last anywhere from one hour to four days. At the highest flow, there is too much water to go through the hydroelectric turbines, and the excess is funneled over the dam. Anne Castle, assistant interior secretary for water and science, said in the news conference that the delivery of power to the six million customers served by the dam would not be significantly affected. The department also announced plans to change its management of nonnative trout in the river. The agency has been killing nonnative trout, which crowd out the humpback chub, at sites along the Colorado. The practice brought protests from American Indian groups, including the Zuni tribe, for whom these areas are sacred, Interior Department officials said. The new plan, described as experimental, instead envisions live removal of the trout for restocking in other waters, Ms. Castle said. Were trying to understand better the impact of those changes on the nonnative fish that are being removed and on the endangered fish, she said.

Computer Model Pinpoints Prime Materials for Efficient Carbon Capture

ScienceDaily (May 27, 2012) When power plants begin capturing their carbon emissions to reduce greenhouse gases -- and to most in the electric power industry, it's a question of when, not if -- it will be an expensive undertaking.
Current technologies would use about one-third of the energy generated by the plants -- what's called "parasitic energy" -- and, as a result, substantially drive up the price of electricity. But a new computer model developed by University of California, Berkeley, chemists shows that less expensive technologies are on the horizon. They will use new solid materials like zeolites and metal oxide frameworks (MOFs) that more efficiently capture carbon dioxide so that it can be sequestered underground. "The current on-the-shelf process of carbon capture has problems, including environmental ones, if you do it on a large scale," said Berend Smit, Chancellor's Professor in the departments of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of chemistry at UC Berkeley and a faculty senior scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). "Our calculations show that we can reduce the parasitic energy costs of carbon capture by 30 percent with these types of materials, which should encourage the industry and academics to look at them." Smit and his colleagues at UC Berkeley, LBNL, Rice University and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, Calif., who will publish their results online May 27 in advance of publication in the journal Nature Materials, already are integrating their database of materials into power plant design software. "Our database of carbon capture materials is going to be coupled to a model of a full plant design, so if we have a new material, we can immediately see whether this material makes sense for an actual design," Smit said. Guiding new materials research There are potentially millions of materialsthat can capture carbon dioxide, but it's physically and economically impossible for scientists and engineers to synthesize and test them all, Smit said. Now, a researcher can upload the structure of a proposed material to Smit's website, and the new computer model will calculate whether it offers improved performance over the energy consumption figures of today's best technology for removing carbon. "What is unique about this model is that, for the first time, we are able to guide the direction for materials research and say, 'here are the properties we want, even if we don't know what the ultimate material will look like,'" said Abhoyjit Bhown, a co-author of the study and a technical executive at EPRI, which conducts research and development for the electric power industry and the public. "Before, people were trying to figure out what materials they should shoot for, and that question was unanswered until now."

Fossil fuel-burning power plants, in particular coal-burning units, are a major source of the carbon dioxide that is rapidly warming the planet and altering the climate in ways that could impact crops and water supplies, raise sea level and lead to weather extremes. Even with the move toward alternative, sustainable and low-carbon sources of energy, ranging from solar and wind to hydrothermal, coal- and natural gas-burning power plants are being built at an increasing rate around the world. At some point, Smit said, carbon capture will be the only way to reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to stave off the worst consequences of climate change. Although no commercial power plants currently capture carbon dioxide on a large scale, a few small-scale and pilot plants do, using today's best technology: funneling emissions through a bath of nitrogen-based amines, which grab carbon dioxide from the flue gases. The amines are then boiled to release the CO2. Additional energy is required to compress the carbon dioxide so that it can be pumped underground. The energy needed for this process decreases the amount that can go into making electricity. Calculations show that for a coal-fired power plant, that could amount to approximately 30 percent of total energy generated. Solid materials should be inherently more energy-efficient than amine scrubbing, because the CO2 can be driven off at lower temperatures. But materials differ significantly in how tightly they grab CO2 and how easily they release it. The best process will be a balance between the two, Smit said. Smit and his UC Berkeley group worked with Bhown and EPRI scientists to establish the best criteria for a good carbon capture material, focusing on the energy costs of capture, release and compression, and then developed a computer model to calculate this energy consumption for any material. Smit then obtained a database of 4 million zeolite structures compiled by Rice University scientists and ran the structures through his model. Zeolites are porous materials made of silicon dioxide, the same composition as quartz. The team also computed the energy efficiency of 10,000 MOF structures, which are composites of metals like iron with organic compounds that, together, form a porous structure. That structure has been touted as a way to store hydrogen for fuel or to separate gases during petroleum refining. "The surprise was that we found many materials, some already known but others hypothetical, that could be synthesized" and work more energy efficiently than amines, Smit said. The best materials used 30 percent less energy than the amine process, though future materials may work even better. The computer model will work for structures other than zeolites and MOFs, Smit said. Bhown said that the theoretically best material will probably have a parasitic energy cost of about 10 percent, so processes that use 20 percent or less are more attractive. GPUs dramatically speed calculations Key to the team's success was using graphics processing units (GPUs) instead of standard computer central processing units (CPUs), GPUs reduced each structure's calculation, which involves complex quantum chemistry, from 10 days to 2 seconds. Bhown noted that most people believe that some economic incentives or regulatory frameworks are needed to implement carbon capture, and the EPRI's goal is to help the industry identify the best technologies for doing so. A survey that EPRI conducted recently suggested that developing any new technology would take 10-15 years even with adequate funding. "The collaboration between different parts of the Department of Energy illustrates what can be achieved if researchers working on the most fundamental aspects of carbon capture collaborate with their industry counterparts" says Karma Sawyer, DOE program director.

"This study shows how engineering and fundamental science can speed-up the process of discovery and implementation of promising materials ready to test in the field." "The hope is that there is a system set up such that, when someone comes up with a promising material, we can rapidly test it and get it to a readiness level pretty quickly," he said. "We are all excited by this work and look forward to pursuing it further." Other coauthors of the study are graduate students Li-Chiang Lin and Joseph A. Swisher of UC Berkeley; Adam H. Berger of the EPRI; Richard L. Martin, Chris H. Rycroft and Maciej Haranczyk of LBNL's Computational Research Division; post-doctoral fellows Jihan Kim and Kuldeep Jariwala of LBNL's Materials Science Division; and Michael W. Deem of the Departments of Bioengineering and Physics and Astronomy at Rice University. This work has been supported by the Department of Energy through National Energy Technology Laboratory, Advanced Research Projects Agency -- Energy (ARPA-E) and Office of Science, and through EPRI's Office of Technology Innovation. Smit is also director of the Department of Energy-funded Energy Frontier Research Center at UC Berkeley.

Does Death Exist?

Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the I feeling is just a fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesnt just go away at death. One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the many-worlds interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the multiverse). A new scientific theory called biocentrism refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to selfdestruct, the alive feeling the Who am I?- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesnt go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other? Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journalScience showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, its still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection. According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air if you take everything away, whats left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You cant see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together. Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, Now Besso (an old friend) has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like usknow that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a

stubbornly persistent illusion. Immortality doesnt mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether. This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christines husband Ed started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time. Christine had had a hard life. She had finally found a man that she loved very much. My younger sister couldnt make it to her wedding because she had a card game that had been scheduled for several weeks. My mother also couldnt make the wedding due to an important engagement she had at the Elks Club. The wedding was one of the most important days in Christines life. Since no one else from our side of the family showed, Christine asked me to walk her down the aisle to give her away. Soon after the wedding, Christine and Ed were driving to the dream house they had just bought when their car hit a patch of black ice. She was thrown from the car and landed in a banking of snow. Ed, she said I cant feel my leg. She never knew that her liver had been ripped in half and blood was rushing into her peritoneum. After the death of his son, Emerson wrote Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature. Whether its flipping the switch for the Science experiment, or turning the driving wheel ever so slightly this way or that way on black-ice, its the 20-watts of energy that will experience the result. In some cases the car will swerve off the road, but in other cases the car will continue on its way to my sisters dream house. Christine had recently lost 100 pounds, and Ed had bought her a surprise pair of diamond earrings. Its going to be hard to wait, but I know Christine is going to look fabulous in them the next time I see her.

Powerful New Approach to Attack Flu Virus

ScienceDaily (May 27, 2012) An international research team has manufactured a new protein that can combat deadly flu epidemics.
The paper, featured on the cover of the current issue of Nature Biotechnology, demonstrates ways to use manufactured genes as antivirals, which disable key functions of the flu virus, said Tim Whitehead, assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University. "Our most potent design has proven effective on the vulnerable sites on many pandemic influenza viruses, including several H1N1 (Spanish flu, Swine flu) and H5N1 (Avian flu) subtypes," said Whitehead, the paper's co-lead author. "These new therapeutics are urgently needed, so we were especially pleased to see that it neutralizes H1N1 viruses with potency." From its earlier research, the team used computer-aided design to engineer proteins that targeted vulnerable sites on the highly adaptable virus. From there, researchers optimized their designer proteins by comprehensively mapping the mutations that gave the proteins a strong advantage when attacking the viruses' targeted areas. The team improved its proteins through a process called "DNA deep sequencing." This allowed Whitehead and his colleagues to simultaneously sequence millions of variants of their manufactured proteins, identify and keep the beneficial mutations and optimize the proteins' performance. "By taking only the best mutations, we can reprogram our proteins to burrow into viruses at key locations and render them harmless," he said. "Our work demonstrates a new approach to construct therapeutic proteins, which we hope will spur development of new protein drugs by the biopharmaceutical industry." This research also laid the groundwork for future treatments of all flu viruses as well as other diseases such as smallpox, Whitehead added. Whitehead's co-authors included researchers from the University of Washington, the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, Calif.), Naval Health Research Center (San Diego) and the Weizmann Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel). The research was funded by Defense Research Projects Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Super-Sensitive Tests Could Detect Diseases Earlier

ScienceDaily (May 27, 2012) Scientists have developed an ultrasensitive test that should enable them to detect signs of a disease in its earliest stages, in research published May 27in the journalNature Materials.
The scientists, from Imperial College London and the University of Vigo, have created a test to detect particular molecules that indicate the presence of disease, even when these are in very low concentrations. There are already tests available for some diseases that look for such biomarkers using biological sensors or 'biosensors'. However, existing biosensors become less sensitive and predictable at detecting biomarkers when they are in very low concentrations, as occurs when a disease is in its early stages. In the new study, the researchers demonstrated that the new biosensor test can find a biomarker associated with prostate cancer, called Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA). However, the team say that the biosensor can be easily reconfigured to test for other diseases or viruses where the related biomarker is known. Professor Molly Stevens, senior author of the study from the Departments of Materials and Bioengineering at Imperial College London, said: "It is vital to detect diseases at an early stage if we want people to have the best possible outcomes -- diseases are usually easier to treat at this stage, and early diagnosis can give us the chance to halt a disease before symptoms worsen. However, for many diseases, using current technology to look for early signs of disease can be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Our new test can actually find that needle. We only looked at the biomarker for one disease in this study, but we're confident that the test can be adapted to identify many other diseases at an early stage." The team demonstrated the effectiveness of their biosensor by testing PSA biomarker samples in solutions containing a complex mixture of blood derived serum proteins. Monitoring the levels of PSA at ultralow concentrations can be crucial in the early diagnosis of the reoccurrence of prostate cancer, but classic detection approaches are not sensitive enough to carry out this analysis with a high degree of accuracy. The new test could enable more reliable diagnosis, but more research will need to be done to further explore its potential. In their study, the team detected PSA at 0.000000000000000001 grams per millilitre, which is at the limits of current biosensor performance. By comparison, an existing test called an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) test can detect PSA at 0.000000001 grams per millilitre, which is nine orders of magnitude more concentrated. The biosensors used in the new study consist of nanoscopic-sized gold stars floating in a solution containing other blood derived proteins. Attached to the surface of these gold stars are antibodies, which latch onto PSA when they detect it in a sample. A secondary antibody, which has an enzyme called glucose oxidase attached to it, recognises the PSA and creates a distinctive silver crystal coating on the gold stars, which is more apparent when the PSA biomarkers are in low concentrations. This silver coating acts like a signal that PSA is present, and it can be easily detected by scientists using optical microscopes. The next stage of the research will see the team carrying out further clinical testing to assess the efficacy of the biosensor in detecting a range of different biomarkers associated with conditions such as HIV and other infections. They will also explore ways of commercialising their product. This research was funded by the European Research Council and via a Marie Curie fellowship.

Disease That Stunts Infants' Growth Traced to Same Gene That Makes Kids Grow Too Fast
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2012) UCLA geneticists have identified the mutation responsible for IMAGe syndrome, a rare disorder that stunts infants' growth. The twist? The mutation occurs on the same gene that causes Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which makes cells grow too fast, leading to very large children.
Published in the May 27 edition ofNature Genetics, the UCLA findings could lead to new ways of blocking the rapid cell division that allows tumors to grow unchecked. The discovery also offers a new tool for diagnosing children with IMAGe syndrome, which until now has been difficult to accurately identify. The discovery holds special significance for principal investigator Dr. Eric Vilain, a professor of human genetics, pediatrics and urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Nearly 20 years ago, as a medical resident in his native France, Vilain cared for two boys, ages 3 and 6, who were dramatically short for their ages. Though unrelated, both children shared a mysterious malady marked by minimal fetal development, stunted bone growth, sluggish adrenal glands, and undersized organs and genitals. "I never found a reason to explain these patients' unusual set of symptoms," explained Vilain, who is also director of the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics. "I've been searching for the cause of their disease since 1993." When Vilain joined UCLA as a genetics fellow, the two cases continued to intrigue him. His mentor, then UCLA geneticist Dr. Edward McCabe, recalled a similar case from his previous post at Baylor College of Medicine. The two of them obtained blood samples from the three cases and analyzed the patients' DNA for mutations in suspect genes, but uncovered nothing. Vilain and McCabe approached the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, and in 1999 published the first description of the syndrome, which they dubbed IMAGe, an acronym of sorts for the condition's symptoms: intrauterine growth restriction, metaphyseal dysplasia, adrenal hypoplasia and genital anomalies. Over the next decade, about 20 cases were reported around the world. But the cause of IMAGe syndrome remained a mystery. Help arrived unexpectedly last year when Vilain received an email from Argentinian physician Dr. Ignacio Bergada, who had unearthed the 1999 journal article. He told Vilain about a large family he was treating in which eight members suffered the same symptoms described in the study. All of the family members agreed to send their DNA samples to UCLA for study. Vilain realized that he had stumbled across the scientific equivalent of winning the lottery. He assembled a team of UCLA researchers to partner with Bergada and London endocrinologist Dr. John Achermann. "At last we had enough samples to help us zero in on the gene responsible for the syndrome," Vilain said. "Sequencing technology had also advanced in sophistication over the past two decades, allowing us to quickly analyze the entire family's DNA samples." Vilain's team performed a linkage study, which identifies disease-related genetic markers passed down from one generation to another. The results steered Vilain to a huge swath of Chromosome 11. The UCLA Center for Clinical Genomics performed next-generation sequencing, a powerful new technique that enabled the scientists to scour the enormous area in just two weeks and

tease out a slender stretch that held the culprit mutation. The team also uncovered the same mutation in the original three cases described by Vilain in 1999. A word of explanation: Located on 23 pairs of chromosomes, human genes hold the codes for making cellular proteins, the building blocks for our bodies. Most of the human diseases resulting from mutations in a single gene can be blamed on changes in a protein-coding sequence. By scanning the entire exome, or protein-coding factory of the genome, clinical geneticists can interpret every gene variant to track down the mutations that produce a patient's disease and rapidly reach a clear-cut diagnosis. "We discovered a mutation in a tiny sliver of the chromosome that appeared in every family member affected by IMAGe syndrome," said Vilain. "This was a big step forward. Now we can use gene sequencing as a tool to screen for the disease and diagnose children early enough for them to benefit from medical intervention. "We were a little surprised, because the mutation was located on a famous gene recognized for causing Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome," he added. "The two diseases are polar opposites of each other." Children born with Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome -- named for the two doctors who discovered it -- grow very large with big adrenal glands, elongated bones and oversized internal organs. Because their cells grow so fast, children with the disorder typically die of cancer at a young age. The disease affects one in 15,000 births. "Finding opposite functions in the same gene is a rare biological phenomenon" emphasized Vilain. "When the mutation appeared in the slim section we identified, the infant developed IMAGe syndrome. If the mutation fell anywhere else in the gene, the child was born with Beckwith-Wiedemann. That's really quite remarkable." IMAGe syndrome patients also tend to die young due to poor adrenal activity, which physicians treat with hormone-replacement therapy. The findings proved that Vilain and his colleagues had identified the correct mutation, bringing his 20-year odyssey to a successful end. "Our findings leave no doubt that this set of symptoms is a true syndrome and not just a figment of my imagination," said Vilain. "What makes this special for me is finally being able to unravel what caused the lifethreatening disease in the two patients I saw nearly 20 years ago," he added. "As a clinical scientist, the reward for successful research is uncovering new clues that allow us to help patients feel better by improving their medical care." The IMAGe mutation's ability to miniaturize organisms and halt growth could offer intriguing clinical benefits, he noted. "Our next effort will focus on manipulating the mutation's strong influence on growth to shrink tumors in the adrenal glands and other internal organs," explained Vilain. Vilain's coauthors included first author Valerie Arboleda, Hane Lee, Alice Fleming, Abhik Banerjee, Emmanuele Delot, Imilce Rodriguez-Fernandez, Esteban Dell'Angelica, Stanley Nelson and Julian Martinez-Agosto, all of UCLA; Bruno Ferraz-de-Souza of University of San Paulo in Brazil; Bergada of Hospital de Ninos Ricardo Gutierrez, Argentina; and Achermann of University College London Institute of Child Health. The study was funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Wellcome Trust and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grants RO1HD068 and 1F31HD068136).

Garlic Constituent Blocks Biofilm Formation, Could Benefit Cystic Fibrosis Patients and Others
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2012) E Pluribus Unum, the de facto motto of the United States, could just as well apply to biofilm-forming bacteria. Bacterial biofilms are far more resistant than individual bacteria to the armories of antibiotics we have devised to combat them. Now Tim Holm Jakobsen and Michael Givskov of the University of Copenhagen, and their many collaborators have pinpointed a constituent of garlic that attacks a key step in the development of biofilms, in an effort they hope may offer help in particular for patients with cystic fibrosis.
The research is published in the May 2012 issue of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. In earlier work, Givskov and his colleagues showed that "crude extracts of garlic inhibit the expression of a large number of genes that are controlled by bacterial quorum sensing [communication among bacterial cells involved in biofilm development], and that extracts promote a rapid clearing of pulmonary Pseudomonas aeruginosainfection in mice," he says. "These findings encouraged us to identify and assess the efficacy of the pure active compound." That compound turned out to be ajoene, the major constituent of a multitude of sulfurcontaining compounds produced when garlic is crushed, says Jakobsen. The team then showed in P. aeruginosa that ajoene inhibits expression of 11 genes that are controlled by quorum sensing. "These key genes are regarded as crucial for the ability of P. aeruginosa to cause disease," he says. "We also found ajoene to reduce the production of rhamnolipid, a compound that shields the biofilm bacteria from the white blood cells that otherwise would destroy bacteria, and that by combining ajoene with the antibiotic tobramycin, it was possible to kill over 90 percent of bacteria living in a biofilm," says Jakobsen. "Our study is part of a series of comprehensive investigations of natural compounds targeting bacterial quorum sensing systems, and it further strengthens previous proof of concept research we conducted on the potential of compounds which block communication among pathogen cells in contrast to simply killing bacteria, as conventional antibiotics do," says Jakobsen. Such alternative approaches "may postpone or minimize development of antibiotic resistance," he adds. Jakobsen says the garlic project grew out of a major donation from the German Cystic Fibrosis Association. "In CF patients,P. aeruginosa infection leads to bronchieciasis, pulmonary fibrosis, respiratory failure, and death," he says. "Despite intensive antibiotic traatment, CF patients have a life expectancy of about 40 years, and the main cause of death in CF patients remains complications associated with [this infection]." Jakobsen's team and the German CF Association have patented the action of ajoene against biofilms, and are seeking a pharmacutical partner to develop antimicrobial drugs based on ajoene. Jakobsen notes that garlic has been used medicinally "for thousands of years." Garlic not only has antibacterial properties; it has anti-viral, anti-fungal, and anti-protozoal properties as well, and it has beneficial effects on the cardiovascular and immune systems, as well, he says.

New Prostate Cancer Screening Guidelines Face a Tough Sell, Study Suggests
ScienceDaily (May 26, 2012) Recent recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) advising elimination of routine prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening for prostate cancer in healthy men are likely to encounter serious pushback from primary care physicians, according to results of a survey by Johns Hopkins investigators.
In a survey of 125 primary care doctors, the researchers found that while doctors agreed with older recommendations to curtail routine screening in men over age 75 and among those not expected to live 10 or more years, a large number said they faced significant barriers to stopping PSA testing in men who had been receiving it regularly. The most frequently cited reason by 74.4 percent of physicians was, "My patients expect me to continue getting yearly PSA tests," followed by 66 percent of them who said, "It takes more time to explain why I'm not screening than to just continue screening." More than half of those surveyed in the new study believed that, "By not ordering a PSA, it puts me at risk for malpractice." The survey was conducted in November 2011, right after draft recommendations were made to end routine screening of all men, but before last week, when the draft recommendations were officially approved. "It can be very difficult for doctors to break down the belief that all cancer screening tests are invariably good for all people all the time," says Craig E. Pollack, M.D., M.H.S., an assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and leader of the study published online in the journal Cancer. "Everyone agrees that PSA screening isn't as good as we want it to be. If we had a test that was a slam dunk, it would be different. But now we know that for many men, the benefits may be small and the harms significant." Each year, more than 33,000 American men die of prostate cancer, and 20 million get the PSA test to detect the disease early. According to the USPSTF, evidence suggests the potential harms caused by PSA screening of healthy men as a means of identifying prostate cancer outweigh its potential to save lives and that routine annual screening should be eliminated in the healthy. Elevated PSA readings are not necessarily evidence of prostate cancer, and can lead to unnecessary prostate biopsy. In addition, even when biopsies reveal signs of prostate cancer cells, evidence shows that a large proportion will never cause harm, even if left untreated. The disease in older men often progresses slowly so that those who have it frequently die of other causes. Treatments for prostate cancer can include the removal of the prostate, radiation or other therapies, each of which has the potential to cause serious problems like erectile dysfunction, complete impotence, urinary incontinence or bowel damage. And men who choose to "watch and wait" after elevated PSA readings must live with the anxiety of knowing they have an untreated cancer that could start to progress. In the new study, Pollack and his colleagues found that while most physicians said they took age and life expectancy into account when deciding to order PSA screening, many also said they had a hard time estimating life expectancy in their patients and could use a better tool. H. Ballentine Carter, M.D., a professor of urology at Johns Hopkins and the senior investigator on the study, is planning to investigate the potential of individualized prostate cancer screening recommendations. Specifically, he and colleagues plan to create a decision-

making tool that incorporates age, life expectancy, family history and prior PSA results in order to help doctors and their patients make better choices for prostate cancer screening. In another report derived from results of Pollack's and Carter's survey, published in April in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the researchers say nearly half of the providers agreed with the new USPSTF recommendations to eliminate routine screening for healthy men. Still, less than two percent said they would no longer order routine PSA screening in response to the draft recommendations; 21.9 percent said they would be much less likely to do so; 38.6 percent said they would be somewhat less likely to do so; and 37.7 percent said they would not change their screening practices. "Men often expect PSA screening to be part of their annual physical," Pollack says. "To change their minds, we need to address their perceptions about screening, allow time for screening discussions and reduce concerns regarding malpractice litigation." The studies were supported in part by a Maryland Cigarette Restitution Fund Research Grant to Johns Hopkins. Other Johns Hopkins researchers involved with the studies included Elizabeth A. Platz, Sc.D., M.P.H.; Nrupen A. Bhavsar, Ph.D., M.P.H.; Gary Noronha, M.D.; Gene E. Green, M.D.; and Sean Chen, B.A.

Tongue Analysis Software Uses Ancient Chinese Medicine to Warn of Disease

ScienceDaily (May 26, 2012) For 5,000 years, the Chinese have used a system of medicine based on the flow and balance of positive and negative energies in the body. In this system, the appearance of the tongue is one of the measures used to classify the overall physical status of the body, or zheng. Now, University of Missouri researchers have developed computer software that combines the ancient practices and modern medicine by providing an automated system for analyzing images of the tongue.
"Knowing your zheng classification can serve as a pre-screening tool and help with preventive medicine," said Dong Xu, chair of MU's computer science department in the College of Engineering and study co-author. "Our software helps bridge Eastern and Western medicine, since an imbalance in zheng could serve as a warning to go see a doctor. Within a year, our ultimate goal is to create an application for smartphones that will allow anyone to take a photo of their tongue and learn the status of their zheng." The software analyzes images based on the tongue's color and coating to distinguish between tongues showing signs of "hot" or "cold" zheng. Shades of red and yellow are associated with hot zheng, whereas a white coating on the tongue is a sign of cold zheng. "Hot and cold zheng doesn't refer directly to body temperature," said Xu, who is also on the faculty of the Bond Life Sciences Center. "Rather, it refers to a suite of symptoms associated with the state of the body as a whole." For example, a person with cold zheng may feel chills and coolness in the limbs and show a pale flushing of face. Their voice may have a high pitch. Other symptoms of cold sheng are clear urine and loose stool. They also may prefer hot foods and drinks and desire warm environments. In Chinese traditional medicine both hot and cold zheng can be symptoms of gastritis, an inflammation of the stomach lining frequently caused by bacterial infection. For the study, 263 gastritis patients and 48 healthy volunteers had their tongues analyzed. The gastritis patients were classified by whether they showed infection by a certain bacteria, known as Helicobacter pylori, as well as the intensity of their gastritis symptoms. In addition, most of the gastritis patients had been previously classified with either hot or coldzheng. This allowed the researchers to verify the accuracy of the software's analysis. "Our software was able to classify people based on their zhengstatus," said study co-author Ye Duan, associate professor of computer science at MU. "As we continue to work on the software we hope to improve its ability," Duan said. "Eventually everyone will be able to use this tool at home using webcams or smartphone applications. That will allow them to monitor their zheng and get an early warning about possible ailments." The study "Automated Tongue Feature Extraction for ZHENG Classification in Traditional Chinese Medicine" was accepted for publication in the journal Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The study's first author was doctoral student Ratchadaporn Kanawong and the second author was post-doctoral researcher Tayo ObafemiAjayi.

Why More Parasite Diversity is Good News for Frogs

The enemy of my enemy is my friendespecially if Im a frog and my enemies are competing parasites. A recentstudy in PNAS found that frogs populations exposed to a more diverse set of flukes actually had lower rates of infection, with fewer frogs in the group afflicted with tiny hitchhikers. Researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder bred Pacific chorus frogs in a lab and put their tadpoles in different tanks with anywhere from one to six different types of flukes. On average, 40% of the frogs that came into contact with only a single fluke species developed infections, while 34% of frogs exposed to four flukes and 23% of frogs exposed to six flukes were infected (the numbers for two, three flukes followed a roughly similar trend). Additionally, some of the fluke species make frogs sicker than others, and oddly enough, the frogs exposed to a greater variety of flukes had a lower proportion of infections from these dangerous species. Most research on host-parasite interactions has focused one hostone parasite, but as this study shows, its a lot more complicated in the natural world. Preserving biodiversity even biodiversity of creatures, whether flukes or microbes, that were not fond ofmight be an important part of keeping disease down. Why that is isnt exactly clearthe scientists who did this study, for instance, arent sure why frogs were better off with lots of flukes around. But it could be analogous to what happens in humans who have the biodiversity of their gut microbes disturbed by antibiotics. Once healthy, or at least relatively harmless, microbes are wiped out, its easy for dangerous bacteria like C. difficile to take over their real estate and cause life-threatening disease. Something similar seems to happen with viruses: having certain viruses in your body can keep you from getting infected by other, more harmful pathogens. In fighting off infections, thus, it could help to have allies among the enemy.

The secret to good tomato chemistry

Published: Friday, May 25, 2012 - 23:31 in Physics & Chemistry

There is nothing better than a ripe, red, homegrown tomato, and now researchers reporting online on May 24 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have figured out just what it is that makes some of them so awfully good (and your average supermarket tomato so bland). "We now know exactly what we need to do to fix the broken tomato," said Harry Klee of the University of Florida. Tomato flavor depends on sugars, acids, and a host of less well-defined aroma volatiles (so named for the ease with which they vaporize, sending scent molecules into the air). Klee's team set out to define the chemicals that are most important to our fondness for one particular tomato or another. First, they assembled chemical profiles of 278 tomato samples representing152 heirloom varieties, most of which were bred before the ubiquitous commercial tomatoes of today even existed. That effort turned up an unexpectedly large chemical diversity within the heirloom tomatoes -- with variation in some volatile contents of as much as 3,000-fold across cultivars. That diversity presented the researchers with an opportunity to really explore what makes consumers favor one tomato over another. They did a series of taste tests with a consumer panel using a subset of those heirlooms that represented the most chemical diversity. Panelists rated their overall liking of each variety as well as the overall tomato flavor intensity, sweetness, and sourness. Panelists also rated supermarket tomatoes in the same way. A sophisticated statistical analysis of the chemistry and taste test results showed that flavor intensity traces to 12 different compounds and sweetness to another 12, including 8 that were also important for overall flavor. The researchers also found that some flavor volatiles influence the perception of sweetness through our sense of smell. "In other words," Klee says, "there are volatile chemicals unrelated to sugars that make things taste sweeter." That raises the tantalizing possibility that this feature might be played up in tomatoes and other foods to make us experience no-calorie sweetness through our noses instead of our tongues. The analysis also showed that some of the volatiles most abundantly present in tomatoes offer little in terms of our enjoyment of them in comparison to other and much more rare ingredients. "This is the first step to restoring good flavor in commercial tomatoes," Klee says, and that could go a long way. "Consumers care deeply about tomatoes," he says. "Their lack of flavor is a major focus of consumer dissatisfaction with modern agriculture. One could do worse than to be known as the person who helped fix flavor."

We Pump Water from Underground. It Flows to the Ocean. The Oceans Are Getting Deeper.

Its easy to see how overwatering our crops would deplete the groundwater supply and cause land nearby to sink, but could it cause sea level to rise on a global scale? Yes, according to a model published in Nature Geosciences, that attributes 42% of the sea-level rise over the past half century to groundwater use. Ninety percent of readily available freshwater is underground, and water used for drinking or crop irrigation must, of course, be brought above ground. That water then evaporates or flows into rivers, entering the water cycle and eventually the oceans, making them deeper. Sea levels rose by 1.8 millimeters per year in the last half of the century, but calculations of the contribution from melting ice and rising sea temperatures (which causes water to expand) accounted for only 1.1 millimeters of that. This new model found that the remaining sea-level rise could be explained by groundwater depletion. Some more data is needed to prove the link conclusively, but it suggests that the global consequences of groundwater deserve a more serious look.

Gourmet Butterflies Speed North

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) A new study led by scientists in the Department of Biology at the University of York has shown how a butterfly has changed its diet, and consequently has sped northwards in response to climate change.
Their study is published in the latest issue of Science. The researchers found that warmer summers have allowed the Brown Argus butterfly to complete its life cycle by eating wild Geranium plants. Because the Geraniums are widespread in the British countryside, this change in diet has allowed the butterfly to expand its range in Britain at a surprisingly rapid rate. Over the past 20 years, the Brown Argus has spread northwards by around 79 kilometres and has become common in the countryside in much of southern England. Lead author PhD student Rachel Pateman, of the University of York's Department of Biology and the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said: "Many species are shifting their distributions northwards as the climate warms, but this previously scarce species has surprised everyone by moving its range at over twice the average rate." Co-author Chris Thomas, Professor of Conservation Biology at York, said: "Because wild Geraniums are widespread in the landscape, the butterflies can now move from one patch of host plants to next and hence move rapidly through the landscape -- expanding their range generation after generation." Co-author David Roy, from the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said: "The change in diet represents a change to the interactions between species -- in this case between a butterfly and the plants that its caterpillars eat -- caused by climate warming. Changes to the interactions between species are often predicted to alter the rate at which species shift their distribution in response to climate change; and now we have demonstrated this in nature." In the 1980s the butterfly was considered scarce in Britain, with populations undergoing continued decline but it has subsequently undergone a dramatic reversal of fortune. The team put this down to the effect of climate on the ability of the butterfly to use additional food plant species. In the 1980s, the caterpillars were mainly confined to Rockrose plants growing on the chalk hills of southern England, but the use of plant species in the Geranium family has increased as summer temperatures have increased. Wild Geraniums are suitable food plants for the caterpillars in warm years, but not in colder summers. This seems to be because the plants grow in different places, which provide different microclimates. Common Rockrose is found mainly on hot south-facing slopes, where the butterfly can complete its life cycle even in cool summers. This is not the case for the Geraniums and so they only become suitable for the butterfly when summers are warm. Co-author Richard Fox, from the charity Butterfly Conservation, said: "It is important that we understand how and why species are responding to climate change. Such research would not be possible without the thousands of records of butterflies our dedicated volunteers have collected over many decades, which have allowed us to detect these long term changes." Rachel Pateman said: "This study has highlighted that species do not respond to climate change in isolation, and that climate change affects how species interact with one another. In the case of the Brown Argus butterfly, changes in interactions with its food plants have

helped it to respond to climate change very rapidly. However, changes to interactions may hinder other species, potentially putting them at risk of extinction." Co-author Professor Jane Hill, of the Department of Biology at the University of York, said: "There will be winners and losers from climate change. It is important that we begin to understand how the complex interactions between species affect their ability to adapt to climate change so we can identify those that might be at risk and where to focus conservation efforts."

Autopsy of a Eruption: Linking Crystal Growth to Volcano Seismicity

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) A forensic approach that links changes deep below a volcano to signals at the surface is described by scientists from the University of Bristol in a paper published May 24 in Science. The research could ultimately help to predict future volcanic eruptions with greater accuracy.
Using forensic-style chemical analysis, Dr Kate Saunders and colleagues directly linked seismic observations of the deadly 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption to crystal growth within the magma chamber, the large underground pool of liquid rock beneath the volcano. Over 500 million people live close to volcanoes which may erupt with little or no clear warning, causing widespread devastation, disruption to aviation and even global effects on climate. Many of the world's volcanoes are monitored for changes such as increases in seismicity or ground deformation. However, an on-going problem for volcanologists is directly linking observations at the surface to processes occurring underground. Dr Saunders and colleagues studied zoned crystals, which grow concentrically like tree rings within the magma body. Individual zones have subtly different chemical compositions, reflecting the changes in physical conditions within the magma chamber and thus giving an indication of volcanic processes and the timescales over which they occur. Chemical analysis of the crystals revealed evidence of pulses of magma into a growing chamber within the volcano. Peaks in crystal growth were found to correlate with increased seismicity and gas emissions in the months prior to the eruption. Dr Saunders said: "Such a correlation between crystal growth and volcanic seismicity has been long anticipated, but to see such clear evidence of this relationship is remarkable." This forensic approach can be applied to other active volcanoes to shed new light upon the nature and timescale of pre-eruptive activity. This will help scientists to evaluate monitoring signals at restless volcanoes and improve forecasting of future eruptions. The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Categories for Kinship Vary Between Languages

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) Different languages refer to family relationships in different ways. For example, English speakers use two terms -grandmother and grandfather -- to refer to grandparents, while Mandarin Chinese uses four terms. Many possible kinship categories, however, are never observed, which raises the question of why some kinship categories appear in the languages of the world but others do not.
A new study published in Science by Carnegie Mellon University's Charles Kemp and the University of California at Berkeley's Terry Regier shows that kinship categories across languages reflect general principles of communication. The same principles can potentially be applied to other kinds of categories, such as colors and spatial relationships. Ultimately, then, the work may lead to a general theory of how different languages carve the world up into categories. For the study, Kemp and Regier used data previously collected by anthropologists and linguists that specify kinship categories for 566 of the world's languages. Kemp and Regier used a computational analysis to explore why some patterns are found in the data set but others are not. In particular, they tested the idea that the world's kinship systems achieve a trade-off between the two competing principles of simplicity and informativeness. "A kinship system with one word referring to all relatives in a family tree would be very simple but not terribly useful for picking out specific individuals," said Kemp, assistant professor of psychology within CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and lead author of the study. "On the other hand, a system with a different word for each family member is much more complicated but very useful for referring to specific relatives. If you look at the kinship systems in the languages of the world, you can't make them simpler without making them less useful, and you can't make them more useful without making them more complicated. There is a tradeoff between these two explanatory principles." Kemp and Regier found that this trade-off explains why languages use only a handful of the vast number of logically possible kinship categories. "The kinship systems that are used by languages lie along an optimal frontier, where systems achieve a near perfect trade-off between the competing factors of simplicity and usefulness," Kemp said. "English -- with two terms to refer to grandparents -- is more simple than Mandarin Chinese, but arguably a little less useful." "Interestingly, very similar principles explain cross-language variation in color categories and spatial categories, as well as kinship categories," said Regier, associate professor of linguistics and cognitive science at Berkeley, and an author on the earlier work on color and space. "It's rewarding to see similar principles operating across such different domains."

Synchronized Brains: Feeling Strong Emotions Makes People's Brains 'Tick Together'
ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) Experiencing strong emotions synchronizes brain activity across individuals, a research team at Aalto University and Turku PET Centre in Finland has revealed.
Human emotions are highly contagious. Seeing others' emotional expressions such as smiles triggers often the corresponding emotional response in the observer. Such synchronization of emotional states across individuals may support social interaction: When all group members share a common emotional state, their brains and bodies process the environment in a similar fashion. Researchers at Aalto University and Turku PET Centre have now found that feeling strong emotions makes different individuals' brain activity literally synchronous. The results revealed that especially feeling strong unpleasant emotions synchronized brain's emotion processing networks in the frontal and midline regions. On the contrary, experiencing highly arousing events synchronized activity in the networks supporting vision, attention and sense of touch. "Sharing others' emotional states provides the observers a somatosensory and neural framework that facilitates understanding others' intentions and actions and allows to 'tune in' or 'sync' with them. Such automatic tuning facilitates social interaction and group processes," says Adjunct Professor Lauri Nummenmaa from the Aalto University, Finland. "The results have major implications for current neural models of human emotions and group behavior. It also deepens our understanding of mental disorders involving abnormal socioemotional processing," Nummenmaa says. Participants' brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they were viewing short pleasant, neutral and unpleasant movies.

Locating Ground Zero: How the Brain's Emergency Workers Find the Disaster Area
ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) Like emergency workers rushing to a disaster scene, cells called microglia speed to places where the brain has been injured, to contain the damage by 'eating up' any cellular debris and dead or dying neurons. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have now discovered exactly how microglia detect the site of injury, thanks to a relay of molecular signals. Their work, recently published in Developmental Cell, paves the way for new medical approaches to conditions where microglia's ability to locate hazardous cells and material within the brain is compromised.
"Considering that they help keep our brain healthy, we know surprisingly little about microglia," says Francesca Peri, who led the work. "Now, for the first time, we've identified the mechanism that allows microglia to detect brain injury, and how that emergency call is transmitted from neuron to neuron." When an emergency occurs, cries can alert bystanders, who will dial the emergency number. A call will go out over the radio, and ambulances, police or fire engines in the area will respond as needed. In the brain, Peri and colleagues found, injured neurons send out their own distress cry: they release a molecule called glutamate. Neighbouring neurons sense that glutamate and respond by taking up calcium. As glutamate spreads out from the injury site, this creates a wave of calcium swallowing. Along that wave, as neurons take up calcium they release a third molecule, called ATP. When the wave comes within reach, a microglial cell detects that ATP and takes it as a call to action, moving in that direction -- essentially tracing the wave backwards until it reaches the injury. Scientists knew already that microglia can detect ATP, but this molecule doesn't last long outside of cells, so there were doubts about how ATP alone could be a signal that carried far enough to reach microglia located far from the site of injury. The trick, as Peri and colleagues discovered, is the long-lasting glutamate-driven calcium wave that can travel the length of the

brain. Thanks to this wave, the ATP signal is not just emitted by the injured cells, but is repeatedly sent out by the neurons along the way, until it reaches microglia. Dirk Sieger and Christian Moritz in Peri's lab took advantage of the fact that zebrafish have transparent heads, which allow scientists to peer down a microscope straight into the fish's brain. They used a laser to injure a few of the fish's brain cells, and watched fluorescentlylabelled microglia move in on the injury. When they genetically engineered zebrafish to make neurons' calcium levels traceable under the microscope, too, the scientists were able to confirm that when the calcium wave reached microglia, these cells immediately started moving toward the injury. Knowing all the steps in this process, and how they feed into each other, could help to design treatments to improve microglia's detection ability, which go awry in conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.