but from the scientific community's responses to them much as deaths from virulent flu come not from the virus but from the immune system's violent overreaction.
is engaging in classic black sheep syndrome: members of a group may be annoyed by public criticism from outsiders,
it is susceptible to disease and its yields are not the best. In plantations, people are using a hybrid between this Criollo variety
The paper also highlights genes potentially involved in disease resistance. These may eventually allow breeders to improve the quality and yields of the cocoa varieties.
Breeding disease-resistant varieties is one of the major goals of our group's breeding team.
potentially making it a good candidate for further study in the lab. This could open the way to studies on flavour and disease resistance in the cultivated strawberry Fragaria x ananassa,
Nature News Hungary's toxic sludge The early start of winter has halted the cleanup of the toxic red sludge that escaped on 4 october from the reservoir of a Hungarian alumina factory,
Hungarian emergency agencies, assisted by environmental chemists from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, are confident that there will be no lasting damage to human health
and the local environment Independent measurements taken in November by the international environmental organization Greenpeace confirm that tap water
and air are free from toxic pollution. But the survey did find excessive arsenic content in local wells
science writer Simon Singh won a crucial round in his libel fight with The british Chiropractic Association (see'Science writer's victory hailed by UK libel reformers').
A health institute for explorers Whatever you say about Matt Lewin, he's certainly not boring.
When he's not working in the emergency room of a university hospital, the doctor is travelling the world assisting scientists both in the field
and when they contract life-threatening diseases (see'Profile: The field medic'.'His lifelong dream has been to create an institute where scientists preparing for far-flung expeditions can talk to doctors.
After Nature's story, Lewin's institute has got off the ground a year ahead of schedule.
Based at the California Academy of Sciences in San fransisco, its work will serve three constituencies:
expeditions wanting medics or consultation; help for scientists getting ill while in the field or on returning;
and the training of doctors who want to be expedition medics. Even before the institute started operation in November,
Lewin is now the medic for a massive eight-week expedition in the Philippines. He also examined a scientist just home from years in Myanmar who was told that he had lung cancer.
Lewin informed the man's doctor about a rare but harmless Asian worm that imitates lung cancer by triggering an immune reaction that produces tumour-like growths.
Sure enough, on closer inspection, the scientist has now been found to be cancer-free. It's one of the most valuable things
I have done as a doctor, Lewin says. It really made a difference for somebody.
African elephants are two distinct species: Nature Newsafrican forest-dwelling elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) are a separate species from those living in the African savanna (Loxodonta africana),
researchers have shown. Scientists have debated long whether African elephants belong to the same or different species. They look very different,
with the savanna elephant weighing around 7 tonnes roughly double the weight of the forest elephant.
African innovation Africa is struggling to turn local discoveries into drugs and other health-care inventions
according to papers produced by the Mclaughlin-Rotman Center for Global Health in Toronto, Canada. The reports, published by Biomed Central on 13 december,
including several drug candidates and a dipstick test for schistosomiasis. Scientists have no incentive to commercialize results,
Policy NIH access A key panel of advisers to the US National institutes of health (NIH) voted last week to open the Clinical Center 墉 the agency's huge research hospital in Bethesda, Maryland
500 patient studies are in progress at any given time (see Nature 466,172; 2010). ) The same board voted to establish a translational-medicine centre at the NIH (see page 877 for more.
European patent Countries in the European union (EU) have broken through a decade-long impasse over establishing a low-cost single European patent system.
Anthrax report The US National Academy of Sciences has delayed releasing a long-awaited report on the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, after a request by the Federal bureau of investigation (FBI.
Nobel chemist dies John Fenn (pictured who shared the 2002 Nobel prize in Chemistry, died on 10 december aged 93.
US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & johnson issued a long-awaited public offer to buy Crucell, a biotechnology firm headquartered in Leiden, The netherlands.
which specializes in vaccines and antibody therapies. Crucell's board of directors unanimously supports the deal, and shareholders will vote on the matter on 8 february.
TB diagnosis The World health organization (WHO) said on 8 december that a test that can rapidly diagnose tuberculosis (TB) was a'major milestone'for disease control.
It's also possible that sleep deprivation could exacerbate colony collapse disorder, he adds, referring to recent alarming declines in bee populations worldwide,
Evolution of potato blight pathogen traced: Nature Newsresearchers have traced the key genetic changes that enabled the plant pathogen responsible for the 1845 Irish potato famine (Phytophthora infestans) to jump from wild plant hosts to cultivated potatoes.
These genetic clues could aid the development of fungicides and disease-resistant varieties of potato that the pathogen will find much more difficult to adapt to and overcome.
We looked at how this pathogen evolved and found which genes we should focus on to tackle it,
says study author Sophien Kamoun, a plant pathologist and head of the Sainsbury Laboratory, a not-for-profit plant science company in Norwich,
UK. The blight an oomycete, or funguslike microorganism, that destroys both the tuber and its leaves continues to be a major problem for farmers.
Epidemics are currently raging in the United kingdom and United states, and the oomycete annually destroys more than US$6 billion worth of crops worldwide.
The researchers identified the key genes by comparing the genetic make-up of the potato blight pathogen and several of its sister species. To do so,
They discovered that the pathogens shared many'housekeeping'genes, including that for spore generation, but that they also had made numerous regions up of non-coding repeated DNA sequences.
and the variation between the sister species suggests that these regions are involved in the evolution and adaption of the pathogen to new hosts.
will make it more difficult for the pathogen to evolve resistance to the controls. The genetically conserved part of the genome could be the potato blight pathogen's Achilles heel,
adds Kamoun. The study's findings are bolstered by similar discoveries reported in a second paper in Science2,
a molecular plant pathologist at Imperial College London, UK, and his team found that B. graminis genes responsible for infection
and pathogenicity are located also in areas of the genome that are enriched with non-coding DNA repeats.
and enable the pathogens to run faster in an arms race. As a result of climate change and the loss of habitats from where important crops originated,
Developing a better grip on the molecular make-up and evolution of plant pathogens, current control methods can be targeted better slowing the chances that they evolve resistance,
Nature Newspolicy Events People Business Research Trend watch Coming up Policy New NIH institute? The US National institutes of health (NIH) may create a centre devoted to translational medicine,
aiming to speed basic biomedical discoveries to therapy. As Nature went to press, a board of advisers to NIH director Francis Collins was set to vote on a proposal to create an institute to house The cures Acceleration Network,
a drug-development programme of up to US$500 million authorized in this year's health-care reform law.
It would also be home to the Clinical and Translational Science Awards, worth $458 million in 2010.
See go. nature. com/sg21hh for more. Food safety Sweeping food safety legislation was passed by the US Senate on 30 november
but hit an unexpected roadblock. The bill comes after repeated outbreaks of food-borne illness,
and gives the Food and Drug Administration broad new food-policing powers. The agency would also have to identify the most significant contaminants
and issue science-based guidance on how to fight them. But because the bill is argued to raise taxes,
congressional rules require a revote in the Senate, which Republicans say they will not permit until other political goals are achieved.
immunologist Silvia Bulfone-Paus, and her husband, dermatologist Ralf Paus, who now hold joint positions at the University of Manchester, UK,
and at the University of L Â beck in Germany. Bulfone-Paus bears substantial responsibility for the postdocs'scientific misconduct, the committee charged.
Bob Klein (pictured), chairman of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San francisco (see Nature 468
Business Pharma chiefs After four years as chief executive of New york-based drug company Pfizer, Jeffrey Kindler announced his retirement on 6 december.
He is to be replaced by Ian Read, the firm's global head of pharmaceuticals. The move was a surprise.
Pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. of Whitehouse Station, New jersey, made a more expected announcement on 30 november,
Red wine drug Drug company Glaxosmithkline (GSK) has halted all development of a proprietary formulation of resveratrol a chemical found in red wine
was being tested by GSK and its subsidiary, Sirtris in Cambridge, Massachusetts, against several conditions, including multiple myeloma.
But GSK, of London, has scuttled development of SRT501, it confirmed to the patient website Myeloma Beacon last week.
Instead, the company is focusing on other chemicals thought to activate the same biological pathway as resveratrol.
See go. nature. com/osc3vz for more. Nuclear agreement As part of a series of commercial deals with France announced on 6 december,
Trend watch Growth of the global AIDS epidemic seems to have stabilized, said the UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) on 23 november (see chart).
Numbers of new HIV infections have dropped, thanks in part to increased condom use and availability.
But there are still two new infections for every person starting treatment, said UNAIDS, and funds for prevention are inadequate and poorly allocated.
US$15. 9 billion was available for AIDS response in 2009, $10 billion short of 2010 needs,
and international funding is declining. Coming up 11-15 december The chemical and physical signals that influence pluripotency in stem cells are among many topics discussed at the American Society for Cell biology's 50th annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
for any contamination of their neighbours'non-GM fields. The Federal Constitutional Court said on 24 november that the 2004 (amended in 2008) legislation,
Patient protection US President Barack Obama has asked his bioethics commission to review the recent discovery that US government-funded scientists intentionally infected subjects with syphilis in a study in Guatemala in the 1940s (see Nature 467,645;
adequately protect those taking part in federally funded scientific research from harm. UK immigration UK government quotas on immigration,
Q-fever delay A report has found that the Dutch government took too long to respond to an outbreak of Q fever,
and made almost 4, 000 ill in The netherlands. The disease caused by the bacterium Coxiella burnetii,
can trigger abortions in goats and sheep and cause flu-like symptoms and sometimes pneumonia in humans.
The seven-man panel, whose evaluation was released last week, found that the health and agriculture ministries coordinated their efforts poorly before they ordered a cull of more than 50,000 dairy goats in 2009,
which seems to have quashed the disease. Nations pledge to double tiger numbers Thirteen countries that are home to the world's last wild tigers have pledged to try to double the animal's numbers to about 7
000, and to significantly expand its habitat by 2022 (the next Chinese year of the tiger.
and bottles, may affect development and immune responses, and poses cancer risks. Tuna quotas Fisheries regulators are showing little mercy to the Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus),
which is in danger of being wiped out by commercial fishing. On 27 november at a meeting in Paris, members of the Madrid-based International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas,
Business Orphan drugs European spending on research and development (R&d) of'orphan'drugs for rare diseases jumped from ¢ 158 million (US$207 million) in 2000 to nearly ¢Â
500 million in 2008 墉 doubling from 1%to 2. 2%of total European pharmaceutical R&d spending,
In that same period, global R&d spending on orphan drugs grew from ¢ 305 million to ¢ 1. 9 billion
Dividing Europe into five regions, they tallied for each region how this climate regime would affect today's economy in five areas agriculture, human health, coastal flooding, river flooding and tourism.
Nature Newspolicy Research People Business Trend watch Coming up Number crunch Policy Haiti's cholera fight Health officials have outlined plans for a proposed cholera vaccination
NIH conflict clash The US National institutes of health (NIH) should issue regulations governing conflicts of interest for the institutions at which its grantees work
a report by the inspector general of the Department of health and human services urges. The NIH is revamping rules that address the reporting of potential conflicts by individual investigators
but it doesn't have analogous rules for universities and medical centres, even though these are required by law, the 10 january report notes.
The agency says it is carefully considering comments it has received on institutional conflicts as it finalizes changes to the rules for individuals.
French drug reform France's health minister Xavier Bertrand last week pledged to reform the country's drug-regulation system in the wake of a damning official report into why the weight-loss drug Mediator
The french state body that approves drugs for marketing, banned the drug only in 2009, even though questions were raised about its impact on heart disease more than a decade ago,
a delay that the report says may have contributed to some 500 premature deaths. The AFSSAPS will now investigate 76 other products,
Bertrand says. NASA waste NASA could end up spending US$575 million on a space programme that has already been cancelled,
and would jeopardize the health of local communities. US mountaintop mines, such as the one on Kayford Mountain (pictured), are largely found in the Appalachians.
Of this, some $60 million should be used to boost research activities including developing classes of antimalarials to replace the artemisinins, currently the most potent antimalaria drugs.
Published last week, THE WHO's plan for containing resistance to the drugs also calls for increased monitoring,
as only 31 of the 75 countries that should be routinely testing the drugs'efficacy did so in 2010.
People King Faisal prize Chemists George Whitesides, of Harvard university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Richard Zare, of Stanford university in California, have been announced as winners of this year's King Faisal International Prize for Science.
and Kyoto University, Japan, took the prize for medicine for their work on stem cells. Winners receive a medal and share US$200, 000 in each category.
Arrivals include Nobel laureate Timothy Hunt (pictured), a biologist at the London Research Institute of Cancer Research UK.
Trend watch Even without the more expensive treatments for cancer that are to be adopted soon,
the cost of caring for those with the disease will rapidly increase in the coming years.
A team from the US National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, modelled predicted changes to US population, cancer incidence and survival rates for the initial,
final and continuing care stages of the disease and found that spending could rise by more than 20%by 2020.
2011 墉 takes place at the UN headquarters in New york. go. nature. com/potx5i Number crunch 18%The number of health advocacy groups receiving funding from Eli lilly in the first
J. Public health Â
Transgenic chickens curb bird flu transmission: Nature Newsresearchers have made genetically modified chickens that can't infect other birds with bird flu.
The H5n1 strain of influenza which raged through Southeast asia a decade ago and has killed hundreds of people to date remains a problem in some developing countries,
where it is endemic. The birds carry a genetic tweak that diverts an enzyme crucial for transmitting the H5n1 strain.
Although they die of the disease within days, the molecular decoy somehow impedes the virus from infecting others.
The findings are published today in Science1. The researchers say that although large-scale distribution of the genetically modified (GM) birds will one day be feasible,
their study is meant only to show proof-of-concept of the technique. We have more ambitious objectives in terms of getting full flu resistance before we would propose to put these chickens into true production,
says Laurence Tiley, a molecular virologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and lead investigator for the study.
It would be a bit like combination drug therapy for HIV, he says. Other experts point out that
even if the GM chickens carried full resistance to influenza, there are political and economic hurdles to their widespread commercial use not least the public's aversion to GM food.
but some public health experts worry that eventually it will adapt to do so. In developed countries
few health regulations and long-held cultural practices involving birds. In the developing world, we cannot follow the slaughter strategy used in the developed world,
says Arnold Monto, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public health in Ann arbor.
Instead, developing countries try to control H5n1 by vaccinating birds. This doesn't prevent them from silently acquiring mild forms of the disease and
if not monitored well, transmitting it to healthy birds. What's more, flu viruses mutate quickly
and are famous for evading vaccines. If made commercially available, the GM birds wouldn't have these issues.
They carry a genetic'cassette'dubbed a short-hairpin RNA, which includes genetic sequences that match up with an enzyme that influenza viruses use for replication and packaging.
These sequences can bind with the enzyme, somehow stopping it from working with the virus. The enzyme could mutate to evade this decoy,
Most of the birds that received the primary infection died, but didn't pass on the flu to any of their uninfected cagemates.
The researchers found that the amount of virus present in the infected GM birds was not significantly different from that in non-transgenic controls.
but for using similar cassettes to create resistance to other common poultry diseases. Tiley's study was funded partially by Cobb-Vantress, a major international chicken-breeding company.
says Karel Schat, a virologist and immunologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New york. Schat is paid a consultant for another company that is also funding research on using transgenes for disease resistance.
Scientists are excited. But it may well be that people at the higher level of the companies are trying to be a little bit more careful.
One stresses economic growth but gives low priority to the environment, whereas the other emphasizes feeding the world while preserving ecosystems.
Business watch In 2011 and 2012, the drug industry will face the worst effects of its'patent cliff'
as several major drugs face competition from generics. The world's best-selling drug 墉 Pfizer's cholesterol-lowering medication Lipitor (atorvastatin) 墉 may face competition from generics maker Ranbaxy of Gurgaon, India.
Other blockbusters due to come off patent include Sanofi-aventis's anti-clotting drug Plavix (clopidogrel) and Eli lilly's schizophrenia drug Zyprexa (olanzapine.
Research Plant catalogue A working list of known land plant species 墉 a key tool for conservation efforts 墉 was released at the end of 2010 (see www. theplantlist. org.
Vaccine initiative Kenya became the fifth country to roll out a new pneumococcal vaccine this week,
under a plan to help developing countries adopt new vaccines as speedily as the developed world.
Pharmaceutical companies usually have little incentive to research and produce affordable vaccines for poor nations. But the initiative
led by the GAVI Alliance, breaks this impasse by guaranteeing firms a market for their products,
and cuts vaccine prices further using public subsidies. If more money can be raised, more than 40 developing countries are expected to roll out the vaccine by 2015.
See go. nature. com/hmkyod for more. Grants glitch Computer glitches forced Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council to shut down its online system for accepting funding applications last week.
The council's chief executive, Warwick Anderson, said that deadlines for some research grants would be extended to April.
For 520 days, the Mars500 mission is cooping up six men in three small rooms at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow,
Animal diseases Livestock plagues are on the rise globally owing to increasingly intensive farming practices and the world's growing taste for meat and other animal products.
and Asia, lag dangerously behind in controlling these diseases, says John Mcdermott, deputy director-general for research at the ILRI.
People Stolen secrets A former research chemist at the chemical giant Dow was last week found guilty of stealing trade secrets,
Trend watch Funding for work on neglected diseases totalled US$3. 26 billion in 2009 墉 an 8%rise in real terms over 2008, according to the third annual'G-Finder'investment survey by Policy Cures
a health-policy analysis firm based in London and in Sydney, Australia. Funding for basic research jumped by 21%;
%.And funding for organizations that manage private public partnerships to develop drugs dropped by 8. 6,
Livestock plagues are spreading: Nature Newslivestock plagues are on the rise globally, owing to increasingly intensive farming practices and the world's growing taste for meat and other animal products.
The warning comes from scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, Kenya,
who argue that different approaches are needed to curb these diseases. A new infectious disease emerges every four months,
and 75%of them originate in animals, according to ILRI figures. They can have severe socioeconomic, health and environmental impacts:
some of the most damaging diseases are Rift valley fever (Phlebovirus), which can sometimes cause a haemorrhagic fever,
and Bluetongue disease (Orbivirus). Whereas rich nations are controlling livestock diseases effectively, developing countries, including many in Africa
and Asia, lag dangerously behind, says John Mcdermott, deputy director general for research at the ILRI.
This gap could imperil food security in the developing world, where up to 40%of household income can depend on livestock,
Mcdermott and his ILRI colleague Delia Grace warn today at a conference in New delhi (Leveraging agriculture for improving nutrition and health).
Over the past 10 years, the number of emerging diseases has increased, agrees Alejandro Thiermann, who is in charge of setting international standards for animal health at the World organisation for Animal health based in Paris, France.
Understanding the links between human and animal diseases will be critical in controlling the spread of diseases,
he adds. Mcdermott points out that methods need to be tailored to the circumstances in developing countries to control the spread of livestock diseases.
For example, some diseases, such as contagious bovine pleuropneumonia a respiratory disease with high death rates can be controlled in Western countries by quarantine
and slaughtering affected animals. But these methods are not always effective for herds in Africa
where animal movements are not as easily controlled. In these cases, vaccines should be developed, Mcdermott says.
Agricultural research has focused traditionally on increasing production, he says, too little is known about the risks associated with intensification.
Clinical research The US National institutes of health (NIH) has launched an elite programme to create a new breed of physician scientists.
The scheme will support three medically trained scholars to conduct clinical research on the NIH's campus in Bethesda, Maryland, for 5 7 years at a cost of around US$1 million a year each.
000 funding for another 5 6 years at the NIH or elsewhere. The scheme will eventually support 20 30 researchers.
The head of the group, immunologist Silvia Bulfone-Paus says that two former postdocs manipulated images without her knowledge.
Medical detectives An effort to find the causes of mystery illnesses has declared its first success. Researchers at the Undiagnosed Diseases Program at the National institutes of health in Bethesda,
Business Obesity drug upset US regulators have rejected another obesity drug, despite an earlier recommendation from advisers to conditionally approve it.
On 1 february, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told Orexigen Therapeutics of La jolla, California, that concerns about the possible cardiovascular risks of the drug Contrave (naltrexone/bupropion) outweighed its weight-loss benefit.
It asked for further clinical trials. Orexigen's share price fell by 72%following the news. Last year,
the FDA rejected two other obesity drugs and asked for a third to be pulled off the Market research cutback Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer on 1 february announced cuts to its research budget
and the closure of its research centre in Sandwich, UK. Most of the 2, 400 staff there are scientists.
ALS prize American neurologist Seward Rutkove has won a US$1-million prize for creating a noninvasive tool that tracks the progress of the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS.
The biomarker developed by Rutkove, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center in Boston, Massachusetts, detects diseased muscle tissue by sending electrical currents through the body.
to spur breakthroughs in treating the disease. Trend watch Obesity rates worldwide almost doubled between 1980 and 2008,
an analysis of health-examination surveys has found (M m. Finucane et al. Lancet doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736 (10) 62037-5;
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