including several drug candidates and a dipstick test for schistosomiasis. Scientists have no incentive to commercialize results,
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.
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.
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,
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,
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,
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.
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.
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.
and poses cancer risks. Tuna quotas Fisheries regulators are showing little mercy to the Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus),
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
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.
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,
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,
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.
We have more ambitious objectives in terms of getting full flu resistance before we would propose to put these chickens into true production,
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.
What's more, flu viruses mutate quickly and are famous for evading vaccines. If made commercially available,
which includes genetic sequences that match up with an enzyme that influenza viruses use for replication and packaging.
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.
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.
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,
A new infectious disease emerges every four months, and 75%of them originate in animals, according to ILRI figures.
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
such as contagious bovine pleuropneumonia a respiratory disease with high death rates can be controlled in Western countries by quarantine
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,
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.
Biodiversity's ills not all down to climate change: Nature Newsclimate change is affecting the world in many ways.
I argue more complex than climate science humans are doing much more harm to wild species than just adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
The commission met in part to discuss last year's revelations that US government researchers secretly gave syphilis to hundreds of Guatemalan prison inmates in the 1940s (see Nature 467,645;
All had been disclosed publicly, unlike the syphilis experiments, but did not draw the condemnation at the time that they would today.
aims to create plants that can withstand strains of the evolving stem-rust pathogen Ug99.
Coming up 3 6 march The American Association for Cancer Research hosts a conference in Vancouver,
and cancer. go. nature. com/5lwqim 7 11 march Preliminary analysis of dust picked up from a distant asteroid last year by the Hayabusa spacecraft will be among highlights of the 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science
near Houston, Texas. go. nature. com/eugq9g 9 13 march The 10th International Conference on Alzheimer's
& Parkinson's diseases will take place in Barcelona, Spain, and focus on new possibilities for treating the conditions. go. nature. com/jcgygu Â
Virus sharing In the event of a future flu pandemic, member states of the World health organization (WHO) will send samples of flu virus to laboratories and drug makers around the world,
in return for greater access to any vaccines created. The deal announced by THE WHO on 17 april,
Grants aim to fight malnutrition: Nature Newsnearly US$20 million in new grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be spent on getting nutritionally enhanced rice and cassava to market and decreasing malnourishment in Asia and Africa.
focusing on regions important for freshwater resources and where pollution has had a negative impact on health such as villages with high rates of cancer or endemic diseases.
The team then plugged those concentrations into a piece of software called ERICA (Environmental Risk from Ionising Contaminants) to calculate the radiation dose that various groups of wildlife would have received.
the harm would probably have been much more severe, especially for plants. Radiation effects on egg hatching and the survival of newborn mammals still need to be surveyed
Nature Newspolicy Business Events Research People Trend watch Coming up Policy Smallpox stocks The World health organization (WHO) has failed to decide
when to destroy the world's last two remaining stocks of the virus that causes smallpox.
HIV scandal The last plaintiff suing Japan's government and five biomedical companies over HIV infection caused by tainted blood products settled last week for ¥28 million (US$340, 000) in damages.
Since 1989, nearly 1, 400 patients 墉 mostly haemophiliacs 墉 have sued after being infected in the 1980s by blood coagulants that were treated not to kill viruses.
In 1996 Naoto Kan, then health minister and now prime minister of Japan, admitted partial government responsibility in the scandal (see Nature 379,663;
devoted to understanding the biological pathology behind psychiatric disorders is held in Prague. go. nature. com/uxjkz1 Â
Cornman, a geneticist for the Bee Research Laboratory of the US Department of agriculture (USDA) in Beltsville, Maryland, is trying to characterize the various pathogens that plague the honeybee (Apis mellifera), arguably the world's most important insect.
Then we can start looking at the interactions of pathogens and see if they're more virulent than any by themselves.
A syndrome dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) has been causing the insects to die off in large numbers,
In some insects, double stranded-rna RNA, a hallmark of viral infection, can provoke a specific antiviral immune response.
Research Cholera in Haiti The cholera epidemic currently raging through Haiti was introduced inadvertently to the country through faecal contamination of river water,
(which matches cholera strains circulating in Nepal). The outbreak 墉 the first in Haiti in nearly a century 墉 had killed by Mid-april almost 4,
900 people and made 286,000 ill. Gravity probe B NASA announced on 4 may that its Gravity Probe B mission 墉 conceived
whether to destroy smallpox stocks. go. nature. com/th3feu 16 19 may Eighteen Nobel laureates are participating in a symposium on global sustainability in Stockholm. go. nature. com/f7mow7 Â
Researchers from the United kingdom studied the direct transmission of foot-and-mouth disease from one cow to another in a unique experimental setup that might also find applications in the study of other pathogens.
Foot-and-mouth is a highly infectious disease that can have a huge impact on farmers'livelihoods.
Now a paper published in Science1 suggests that the aggressive approach taken in 2001 to control infection may not be necessary.
while monitoring a complex set of data such as blood samples, temperature and lesions on the animals.
the first study in a target host of an actual viral disease where we've looked at transmission parameters by carrying out one-to-one infections rather than looking at proxies,
during an epidemic, culling on farms that are at risk of infection could be unnecessary.
Careful monitoring for signs of infection could be used instead. In the 2001 outbreak, some 700,000 cattle were culled to fight the disease,
says co-author Mark Woolhouse, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Only a small fraction of these actually had the virus,
It puts greater emphasis on really trying to speed up diagnoses of infection on farms. However, improving the speed of diagnosis could prove logistically difficult in practice.
if to other infectious diseases such as influenza. The difference in foot-and-mouth disease infectiousness predicted previously and that found through the experimental study shows a need for better evidence
when forming policy on the control of acute diseases, he says. The pioneering experiment has been welcomed by many researchers in the field,
but Keeling points out that these one-to-one infection studies are not an easy undertaking:
Nature Newspolicy Funding Events Research Trend watch Coming up Policy Pathogen dangers A US panel has named the most dangerous pathogens with potential for misuse.
The pathogens include bacteria and viruses that cause smallpox, the plague, anthrax, Ebola and foot-and-mouth disease.
Bacterial infections often originate from contaminated food, but it is now about six weeks since the start of this outbreak and the trail is going cold.
Pathogenic E coli are passed typically to humans from ruminant animals (cows or sheep) via faecal contamination in the food chain or through consumption of raw milk or meat products.
which is responsible for the severe diarrhoea and kidney damage in patients whose E coli infections develop into haemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS).
The genes for the Shiga toxin are not actually bacterial genes, but phage genes being expressed by infected bacteria.
which is why antibiotics are used not usually to treat E coli infections (see'Europe's E coli outbreak:
The potential for the creation of new pathogens via phage release is absolutely a factor in the broader environmental danger of overuse of antibiotics.
a Japanese medical doctor who identified the bacterium during an outbreak of dysentery in Japan in 1897.
EAEC strains are associated not typically with zoonotic infections, and EAEC and Shiga toxin is a very unusual combination,
Nature Newsthe bacterium responsible for the current outbreak of enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) infections in Germany is a strain that has never before been isolated in humans.
means that the infection could prove unusually difficult to bring under control. Scientists in Germany are feverishly analysing the genome sequence of the bacterium,
Patients with E coli infections are treated not typically with antibiotics anyway, because the bacteria are thought to respond to the medication by increasing production of the Shiga toxin,
which can lead to the life-threatening complication haemolytic-uremic syndrome. But antibiotic resistance might have helped the bacteria to survive
Tellurium oxides were used as antimicrobial agents against diseases such as leprosy and tuberculosis before the development of antibiotics.
EHEC infections usually occur in children and affect boys and girls equally. Initial theories suggested that young adult women are the people most likely to purchase,
But he suspects that the strain might have biological characteristics that make adults more susceptible to the infection.
Eae-negative E coli have been associated specifically with adult infections before although it is still unclear why this particular protein is more effective in adult guts than in those of children.
a decades-old law intended to safeguard against plant pathogens from overseas. Previous types of GM plants are covered
because they they were made using plant pathogens. The bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens which can cause tumours on plants shuttled foreign genes into plant genomes.
Developers then used genetic control elements derived from pathogenic plant viruses such as the cauliflower mosaic virus to switch on the genes.
measuring contamination levels and assessing the long-term threat. Their first results, to appear in the Japanese journal Radioisotopes in August,
with combined levels of caesium-134 and caesium-137 ranging from thousands to about 1 Â million Bq kg-1. But leaves that unfolded afterwards were largely free of contamination.
Without data on the true depth of soil contamination, local schools are using large machines to scoop up the top 50 Â centimetres of soil probably much more than is necessary
of which has potential for use in fighting devastating diseases such as the potato cyst nematode and the potato blight pathogen Phytophthora infestans, famous for causing The irish potato famine of the 1840s.
Nature Newskey weapons in the fight against malaria, pyrethroid insecticides, are losing their edge. Over the past decade, billions of dollars have been spent on distributing long-lasting pyrethroid-treated bed nets and on indoor spraying.
where most malaria deaths occur, these efforts have reduced greatly the disease's toll. But they have created also intense selection pressure for mosquitoes to develop resistance.
and also of resistance in new places, says Jo Lines, an entomological epidemiologist and head of vector control at the Global Malaria Programme of the World health organization (WHO) in Geneva,
Pyrethroids are the mainstay of malaria control because they are safe, cheap, effective and long-lasting.
says Robert Newman, director of the Global Malaria Programme. The international community has been slow to respond to the threat despite warnings
'But Lines says that the malaria-control community felt too many lives were at stake to let the threat of resistance stand in the way of massively scaling up the bed-net and spraying campaigns.
Teasing out the impact of resistance on the success of malaria-control interventions is difficult
Malaria-control programmes often lack insect-resistance monitoring, and detection of all forms of resistance is not easy.
Ultimately, entirely new classes of insecticides particularly those that can be applied to bed nets are needed to alleviate the dependence of malaria-control efforts on pyrethroids.
Research targeting mosquito control is compared grossly underfunded with that on malaria drugs and vaccines she adds,
West africans at risk from bat epidemics: Nature Newsserious viruses carried by bats pose a considerable risk to people in West Africa,
including Ebola haemorrhagic fever and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), an outbreak of which killed more than 900 people in 2002-03.
and his colleagues fear that the next big epidemic could come from henipaviruses, which can cause fatal encephalitis or respiratory disease in humans.
There is no vaccination to protect against Hendra virus or Nipah virus, the two established species of henipavirus.
Spread of infection from bats to humans is an increasing problem in Asia and Africa
their protected status. Zoonotic spill over only occurs where you have contact, says Peter Hudson, a wildlife epidemiologist at Pennsylvania State university in State College.
and may misdiagnose it as cerebral malaria. Cunningham says it's too early to say for sure how many people are infected with the viruses in Ghana.
an infectious-disease ecologist at Princeton university in New jersey who commends the project's focus. To control the increasing occurrence of diseases making the jump from animals to humans,
including poverty and child malnutrition, can drive these processes. They also need to learn how best to track desertification using satellite data.
But M. giganteus is a headache in the lab. Its genome has few markers to help would-be breeders keep track of desirable genes,
or prevent illness are under increasing pressure to substantiate the claims about their products. The pressure was increased earlier this year
Just 8%of patients taking alemtuzumab experienced a worsening in disability according to standard measures, in comparison with 11%taking Rebif.
The patients recruited in this trial showed very little worsening of disability, he says. Ludwig Kappos, chair of neurology at the University Hospital of Basel in Switzerland, who has been involved in several MS drug trials,
says he is disappointed that there was no significant effect on disability progression. This is in contrast to
The drug brings an increased risk of autoimmune diseases. In the trial, 18.1%of people taking alemtuzumab experienced thyroid-related autoimmune responses,
and 0. 8%developed the potentially life-threatening condition immune thrombocytopenia. But, says Coles, these findings mirror those from earlier trials,
The drug is approved already in many countries as a treatment for some forms of leukaemia and lymphoma, under the name Campath.
whereas some other GM CROPS produce unfamiliar proteins that could in theory cause an allergic reaction when eaten, the GM pinto bean produces only small snippets of RNA,
had to pull the blockbuster arthritis drug from the market in 2004, after five years of sales.
In 2007 it agreed to pay $4. 85 billion to settle nearly 27,000 lawsuits that claimed the medicine had caused heart attacks and strokes.
Anti-HIV gel fails An antiretroviral gel that seemed able to prevent sexual transmission of HIV to uninfected women has failed in a follow-up study.
The Microbicide Trials Network said on 25 november that it would drop the use of vaginal tenofovir gel from the VOICE study involving 5, 029 HIV-negative women in South africa,
Zimbabwe and Uganda after a routine data review found that it was no better than placebo at preventing HIV.
2010), the gel had cut the incidence of HIV by up to 54%.%Trials of tenofovir tablets in the VOICE study have failed also (see Nature 478,10-11;
In its Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 20111, the World health organization provides statistics from multiple countries showing that packet warnings,
The chief executive of the nongovernmental cancer-control organization Cancer Council Australia, Ian Olver, says that the fact that the tobacco industry is opposed vehemently to the legislation is a good indication that the industry's market research has shown also that plain packaging will reduce its customer base.
and a 2009 report3 by the Western Australian Cancer Council estimated that tobacco use cost Australia more than $31 billion in 2004-05.
Foremost among these is Avandia (rosiglitazone), a once-dominant diabetes drug, sales of which were banned in Europe
and restricted in the United states last year after concerns that it increased risks of heart attack and stroke.
treatments for melanoma and lung cancer that were approved along with diagnostic tests to identify the patients that they are most likely to help.
Trend Watch Efforts to eradicate polio are bearing fruit in India, one of four countries (with Nigeria,
other countries in which polio still persists have had already more cases than this time last year (see chart.
Preventing HIV Pharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences wants to sell anti-HIV drugs to healthy people,
and Drug Administration to sell its two-in-one antiretroviral medication Truvada (emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) to people not infected with HIV.
its products include biological drugs for rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia. SOURCE: GTM RES.//SEIAUS solar-energy installations spiked during the third quarter of 2011,
9 15 december 2011gene-therapy boost A gene therapy treatment for patients with the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia B has scored its first unequivocal success,
) Haemophilia B is caused by mutations in the gene that codes for the factor IX protein;
Targeting cancer Efforts to create cancer therapies tailored to a patient's genetic make-up were boosted by promising clinical-trial results reported on 7 december (J. Baselga et al.
) The trial was conducted on women with advanced forms of breast cancer that involved mutations in the HER2 gene,
which drives about 20%of breast-cancer cases. Those given the experimental monoclonal antibody pertuzumab and the widely used drug trastuzumab (Herceptin), together with chemotherapy, gained an extra 6-month lull in disease progression compared with women receiving only chemotherapy and trastuzumab.
mineral-rich water once pulsed through fractures in the volcanic rock. Gypsum deposits can form in water that is much less acidic than required by the water-altered sulphate minerals previously discovered on Mars meaning that the site could have been more habitable than others explored by the rover.
Without an effective plan,"the country may sleepwalk into disaster. The study was mandated by the 2008 Climate Change Act,
owing to heat-related illness. But the most pressing risks laid out by the study concern water,
Caution urged for mutant flu workwhy would scientists deliberately create a form of the H5n1 avian influenza virus that is probably highly transmissible in humans?
whether the public-health benefits of the work outweigh the risks of a potential pandemic if the virus escaped from the lab. For the scientists who have created the mutated strains of the H5n1 virus,
Surveillance of flu viruses could, they argue, allow health organizations to monitor birds and other animals for the mutations that would provide an early warning of a pandemic
and enable authorities to act quickly to contain the virus. That claim is meeting with scepticism,
More than a dozen flu experts contacted By nature say they believe that the work opens up important vistas in basic research,
and that it sends a valuable warning about the potential for the virus to spark a human pandemic.
But they caution that virus surveillance systems are ill-equipped to detect such mutations arising in flu viruses.
who heads the University of Minnesota s Center for Infectious disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis,
which are a good proxy for how flu behaves in other mammals, including humans. All five mutations have been spotted individually although not together in wild viruses.
provided that a mechanism is established to disseminate the data to flu researchers and public-health officials on a need-to-know basis. The US government,
39 flu researchers declared a 60-day pause in the creation of lab mutant strains of the H5n1 avian flu virus. The hiatus,
Scientists contacted By nature say that basic research on such mutated strains may eventually yield insight relevant to developing pandemic countermeasures such as drugs and vaccines.
says Ilaria Capua, an animal-flu expert at the Experimental Animal health Care Institute of Venice in Legnaro, Italy."
and so give the virus fewer opportunities to evolve into a human pathogen, she says. Other scientists add that it should force governments to rethink existing vaccine technologies,
which are only capable of supplying vaccine six months after a pandemic starts, and of producing enough vaccine for a small fraction of the world population.
"In order to even consider the possibility of reducing the animal reservoir of an emerging pandemic virus,
or years after they are collected hardly the swift turnaround of a pandemic alert system.""Could we pick up a mutation in real time
and stop a pandemic? asks Capua.""Not with the surveillance we have now. Source: Genbankmoreover, if H5n1 surveillance in poultry is poor,
H5n1 infections in pigs are uncommon and cause only mild illness, creating little economic incentive to monitor them4.
Genbank contains partial sequences from just 24 pig H5n1 isolates. Yet pigs are a likely source of a human pandemic H5n1 virus
because they are susceptible to both human and avian viruses, creating opportunities for genetic reassortment in co-infected animals.
But even if a candidate pandemic H5n1 virus was detected in poultry, culling flocks to eliminate it would be no mean feat.
H5n1 is far from being the only flu virus that poses a pandemic threat. But he believes that more extensive genetic surveillance could eventually pay off."
which the mutant flu research could provide immediate public-health benefits, Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases, replies:"
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