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Volume 460 Issue 7253, 16 July 2009

The whole genome sequences of the blood flukes Schistosoma mansoni and Schistosoma japonicum, two of the three major pathogens that cause the neglected tropical disease schistosomiasis, are reported in this issue by the Schistosoma japonicum Genome Sequencing and Functional Analysis Consortium and Matthew Berriman and colleagues. The photomicrograph on the cover, by David Scharf (http://www.scharfphoto.com/), shows a mated pair of S. mansoni flukes at approximately x265, with the slender female emerging from the lower part of the male.

Authors

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Editorial

  • The Moon landing was not the only world-changing event in the summer of '69.

    Editorial
  • The G8 has laid down a marker by promising to restrict the rise of global temperatures.

    Editorial
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Research Highlights

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Journal Club

    • Friedhelm von Blanckenburg
    Journal Club
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News

  • Francis Collins is likely to face funding challenges — and criticism of his Christian evangelism.

    • Meredith Wadman
    News
  • Refusal to declare national emergency restricts pandemic measures.

    • Anna Petherick
    News
  • Is a commitment to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 °C enough?

    • Quirin Schiermeier
    News
  • The Apollo programme inspired thousands of people to pursue careers in science. Today, they still support human spacefaring — but baulk at the price. Richard Monastersky reports on the results of a Nature poll.

    • Richard Monastersky
    News
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News in Brief

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Correction

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News Feature

  • Cellular life is all slopes, arcs and circles — but there is much debate about how these curves are built. Kendall Powell reports.

    • Kendall Powell
    News Feature
  • Africa's Lake Kivu contains vast quantities of gas, which makes it both dangerous and valuable. Anjali Nayar asks whether it is possible to tap the gas without causing a disaster.

    • Anjali Nayar
    News Feature
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Correspondence

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Essay

  • Giovanni Bignami reflects on the people who persuaded him that we must send humans beyond Earth's orbit to inspire public and political support for science.

    • Giovanni Bignami
    Essay
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Books & Arts

  • The cold war saw governments develop international policies to regulate outer space for military and civil uses. Loopholes in those policies must now be closed, writes Roald Sagdeev.

    • Roald Sagdeev
    Books & Arts
  • The soaring imagination of the Italian author abounds in a new compilation of his cosmic fables. Mostly written in the age of the space race, they are heavily informed by science, finds Alan Lightman.

    • Alan Lightman
    Books & Arts
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News & Views

  • The small molecule rapamycin, already approved for clinical use for various human disorders, has been found to significantly increase lifespan in mice. Is this a step towards an anti-ageing drug for people?

    • Matt Kaeberlein
    • Brian K. Kennedy
    News & Views
  • Galactic cosmic rays could influence Earth's cloudiness by creating aerosol particles that prompt cloud formation. That possible effect looks to be smaller than thought, but the story won't end there.

    • Ken Carslaw
    News & Views
  • The family of elliptical galaxies is remarkable for the structural regularity of its members. Inspecting irregularities in this regularity could help in understanding how these galaxies form.

    • Luca Ciotti
    News & Views
  • Models of ecological communities that incorporate mutation and spatial dispersal can yield results that go some way to explaining observations. A further step is to add sexual reproduction to the mix.

    • Jayanth R. Banavar
    • Amos Maritan
    News & Views
  • At times in the past, mobile ocean fronts in the subtropics have exercised an influence on the magnitude of climate change by decoupling temperature from levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

    • Rainer Zahn
    News & Views
  • Microchips that make use of light instead of electrons could outperform their electronic counterparts if light flow can be controlled at will. Photonic crystals are instrumental in achieving such a manoeuvre.

    • Sajeev John
    News & Views
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Review Article

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Article

  • Schistosoma mansoni and Schistosoma japonicum are the pathogenic agents that cause the tropical disease schistosomiasis. Here, and in an accompanying paper, the genomes of these two flatworms are sequenced and analysed. The results provide insights into the molecular architecture and host interactions of the flatworms, as well as avenues for future development of targeted interventions for schistosomiasis.

    • Yan Zhou
    • Huajun Zheng
    • Zhu Chen
    Article Open Access
  • Schistosoma mansoni and Schistosoma japonicum are the pathogenic agents that cause the tropical disease schistosomiasis. Here, and in an accompanying paper, the genomes of these two flatworms are sequenced and analysed. The results provide insights into the molecular architecture and host interactions of the flatworms, as well as avenues for future development of targeted interventions for schistosomiasis.

    • Matthew Berriman
    • Brian J. Haas
    • Najib M. El-Sayed
    Article Open Access
  • Escherichia coli DNA polymerase (pol) V is involved in the mutagenic process of limited DNA synthesis across a DNA lesion, but the molecular composition of mutagenically active pol V and the importance of the RecA nucleoprotein filament RecA* have remained unclear. The biochemical role of RecA* is now defined.

    • Qingfei Jiang
    • Kiyonobu Karata
    • Myron F. Goodman
    Article
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Letter

  • The main asteroid belt contains a surprising diversity of objects, ranging from primitive ice-rock mixtures to igneous rocks. The standard model used to explain this assumes the violent dynamical evolution of the giant-planet orbits. Here, this evolution is shown to lead to the insertion of primitive trans-Neptunian objects into the outer belt, implying that the observed diversity of the asteroid belt is not a direct reflection of the intrinsic compositional variation of the proto-planetary disk, but rather of dynamical evolution.

    • Harold F. Levison
    • William F. Bottke
    • Kleomenis Tsiganis
    Letter
  • Photonic bandgap materials are envisioned to provide the necessary tools for guiding and manipulating photons in optical circuits. So far, basic approaches for photonic control have been based on embedding artificial defects and light emitters inside three-dimensional materials. Here it is demonstrated that three-dimensional photonic crystals possess two-dimensional surface states that can easily be manipulated to control photons, providing an alternative approach.

    • Kenji Ishizaki
    • Susumu Noda
    Letter
  • A photoconductor is a material in which electrical conductivity changes when it is illuminated — invariably increasing in response to impinging light. However, here it is shown that nanoparticle-based materials can be engineered, through the careful choice of the molecules used to stabilize the nanoparticles, to exhibit negative photoconductance: conductivity in these materials decreases in the presence of light.

    • Hideyuki Nakanishi
    • Kyle J. M. Bishop
    • Bartosz A. Grzybowski
    Letter
  • The presence of ice-rafted debris (IRD) in middle Eocene ocean sediments has previously been demonstrated, but it has been unclear whether the source of IRD was land-based glacial ice or sea ice, a distinction with important climate implications. The analysis of a sediment core from the ACEX project now reveals evidence that sea ice was the dominant source for IRD from 47.5 to 45.5 million years ago.

    • Catherine E. Stickley
    • Kristen St John
    • Lance E. Kearns
    Letter
  • Ice cores extracted from the Antarctic ice sheet suggest that glacial conditions and the relationship between temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have been constant over the last 800,000 years, but there is some evidence for a fluctuating severity of glacial periods mediated by previously unidentified mechanisms. Variable migration of the subtropical front is now shown to modulate the severity of glacial periods, partially decoupling global climate from atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

    • Edouard Bard
    • Rosalind E. M. Rickaby
    Letter
  • The question of why biological diversity is spread in characteristic patterns is perhaps the biggest problem in ecology. In recent years, the 'neutral theory' of biodiversity has modelled the distribution of species in a very simple way, without reference to species interactions or history. Sexual reproduction, mutation and dispersal are now introduced to the simulation of populations; the resulting predictions correlate well with real data sets.

    • M. A. M. de Aguiar
    • M. Baranger
    • Y. Bar-Yam
    Letter
  • The study of a population of yellow baboons in Amboseli National Park in Kenya reveals the first reported association and functional characterization linking genetic variation and a complex trait — susceptibility to malaria — in a natural population of nonhuman primates.

    • Jenny Tung
    • Alexander Primus
    • Gregory A. Wray
    Letter
  • Although inhibition of the TOR signalling pathway extends lifespan in invertebrates, it was unknown whether mTOR signalling inhibition has similar effects in mammalian species. Here, feeding mice the drug rapamycin — an inhibitor of the mTOR pathway — late in life is shown to extend lifespan by 9–14%; currently, the only way to extend lifespan in rodents is by severe dietary restriction.

    • David E. Harrison
    • Randy Strong
    • Richard A. Miller
    Letter
  • The fact that dietary restriction increases longevity in diverse species suggests that there is a conserved mechanism for nutrient regulation and prosurvival responses. The E3 ubiquitin ligase WWP-1 and the E2 ubiquitin conjugating enzyme UBC-18 are now shown to be essential for such lifespan extension in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans.

    • Andrea C. Carrano
    • Zheng Liu
    • Tony Hunter
    Letter
  • The condition of phocomelia, a human birth defect in which the long bones are shorter than normal, is mimicked in developing chick limb buds exposed to X-rays. Studies of X-irradiation-induced phocomelia have served as evidence supporting the 'progress zone' model of limb patterning. Here, X-irradiation-induced phocomelia is shown not to be a patterning defect at all; rather, it results from a time-dependent loss of skeletal progenitors.

    • Jenna L. Galloway
    • Irene Delgado
    • Clifford J. Tabin
    Letter
  • TH17 cells comprise a subset of CD4+ T cells that coordinate the inflammatory response in host defence but are pathogenic in autoimmunity. Here, the AP-1 transcription factor BATF is shown to have a critical role in TH17 cell differentiation, with Batf−/− mice displaying a defect in TH17 differentiation and resistance to experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

    • Barbara U. Schraml
    • Kai Hildner
    • Kenneth M. Murphy
    Letter
  • As well as its role in sister chromatid cohesion, cohesin is thought to have a role in the control of gene expression. Here, cohesin is shown to form the topological and mechanistic basis for cell-type-specific long-range chromosomal interactions at the developmentally regulated cytokine locus IFNG.

    • Suzana Hadjur
    • Luke M. Williams
    • Matthias Merkenschlager
    Letter
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Technology Feature

  • Researchers have identified thousands of macromolecular interactions within cells. But, as Nathan Blow finds out, joining them up in networks and figuring out how they work still poses a big challenge.

    • Nathan Blow
    Technology Feature
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Careers Q&A

  • Incoming member of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) in London

    Careers Q&A
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Postdoc Journal

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Career Brief

  • Eminent faculty members from the University of California warn of budget-cut consequences.

    Career Brief
  • New posts at SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory.

    Career Brief
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Careers and Recruitment

  • Indian outsourcing has been hit badly by the global downturn, but signs of growth remain. K. S. Jayaraman investigates.

    • K. S. Jayaraman
    Careers and Recruitment
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Futures

  • Off on the wrong track.

    • James L. Cambias
    Futures
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