a forest biodiversity researcher at Imperial College London who is involved not in the Earthwatch project.
such as that in Gutianshan National Nature Reserve in Zhejiang Province, China, have confirmed already that plantations can be a haven for biodiversity."
"There are no long-term monitoring studies on biodiversity as well as carbon stocks, and very limited modelling studies on climate-change impacts, he says
which Kraus says may be a biological oddity. However, he also points out that miniature frogs are hard to find in the field,
Variome project A project to log all the genetic variations that cause disease in humans took a step forward last week with the launch of its Chinese arm at a meeting in Beijing.
The Human Variome Project, based in Victoria, Australia, hopes to collect genetic data from laboratories all over the world,
and share it in international databases of genes and diseases. China is taking on about a quarter of the project's estimated 20
000 genes, and will set up a genetics institute in Beijing to coordinate activities and give training in genetic counselling and testing.
See go. nature. com/intbvt for more. Preventing HIV Pharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences wants to sell anti-HIV drugs to healthy people,
to reduce their chances of becoming infected with the virus. On 15 december, the company, based in Foster City,
California, filed an application to the US Food and Drug Administration to sell its two-in-one antiretroviral medication Truvada (emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) to people not infected with HIV.
Amgen shake-up Two top executives at the biotechnology giant Amgen are leaving after more than a decade in charge,
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;
the treatment uses viruses to deliver a healthy version of the gene to patients'liver cells.
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,
Moshe Yaniv, a geneticist at the Pasteur institute, and Jean Rossier, a neurobiologist at ESPCI Paristech.
and Theresa Deisher, who runs AVM Biotechnology in Seattle, Washington. Both work on adult stem cells.
NHGRITREND watch The US National Human genome Research Institute (NHGRI) announced a four-year plan on 6 december that focuses heavily on the use of genome sequences in the clinic.
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?
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,
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.
As such, work on the viruses is unlikely to offer significant, immediate public-health benefits, they say. That tips the balance of risk-benefit assessment in favour of a cautious approach, says Michael Osterholm,
and who is a member of the US National Science Advisory board for Biosecurity (NSABB. In a paper submitted to Science, Ron Fouchier s team at Erasmus Medical center in Rotterdam, The netherlands,
All five mutations have been spotted individually although not together in wild viruses. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues have submitted similar work to Nature,
in order to limit the risk that uncontrolled proliferation of such research might lead to accidental or intentional release of similar mutant viruses.
39 flu researchers declared a 60-day pause in the creation of lab mutant strains of the H5n1 avian flu virus. The hiatus,
and what safety measures should be required of labs that handle the virus. The signatories to the statement,
and international organizations to ramp up their funding of efforts to control outbreaks of the H5n1 virus in poultry,
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,
"In order to even consider the possibility of reducing the animal reservoir of an emerging pandemic virus,
one would need rapid and complete detection of virus in all geographical areas, Osterholm says. Yet surveillance of H5n1 in poultry worldwide is patchy, particularly in poorer countries,
where the virus is prevalent. It is geared also largely towards simply detecting and monitoring outbreaks,
And virus isolates are sequenced often months or years after they are collected hardly the swift turnaround of a pandemic alert system."
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. Fouchier argues that many countries collect more and more-timely,
"Warnings weeks after dangerous viruses have emerged in poultry, or mammals, may be better than no warnings at all.
But even if a candidate pandemic H5n1 virus was detected in poultry, culling flocks to eliminate it would be no mean feat.
it would take at least a decade to stamp out the virus in such countries. The relative ease of making H5n1 transmissible between mammals in the lab should now prompt the world to address these glaring inadequacies in surveillance
and genetic surveillance more comprehensive and timely. But building such systems would require sustained political will, financial resources,
other ways that the virus could become transmissible, he says.""It would be very unfortunate
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."
"The research points us to where we need to go, rather than where we are today,
Biofuel from beneath the wavesbioengineers have devised a way to produce ethanol from seaweed, laying the groundwork for a biofuel that doesn't sacrifice food crops.
Yasuo Yoshikuni and his colleagues at the Bio Architecture Lab in Berkeley, California, engineered the bacterium Escherichia coli
so that it could digest brown seaweed and produce ethanol. Their work is published in Science today1.
However, producing biofuels from sugar cane or maize not only detracts from food supplies, but also takes up huge areas of arable land.
But producing biofuels from seaweed has so far proved difficult for bioengineers. Seaweed produces four kinds of sugars laminarin, mannitol, alginate and cellulose.
Yoshikuni and his team isolated a biochemical pathway that breaks down alginate. They inserted the genes responsible into a strain of E coli,
which could then digest the alginate into simple sugars. The team also engineered the strain
says Yong-Su Jin of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign,
who also studies biofuel production from seaweed. Jin works with red seaweed, which is less abundant in the world s oceans than brown seaweed,
Stephen Mayfield, director of the San diego Center for Algae Biotechnology at the University of California San diego, calls the work"a very sophisticated engineering feat,
but adds"so far this has almost nothing to do with bioenergy production. The main challenge in biofuels is not the ability to degrade complex carbohydrates and turn them into simple sugars,
he explains:""It s the rest of the steps involved in the lifecycle of growing
and transporting the biomass. Scalability remains the big problem: people have farmed seaweed for hundreds of years,
Biofuel production would require billions of tonnes.""We still face a huge technical gap for large-scale cultivation,
biomass stoves, brick kilns and coke ovens. Other measures would reduce the burning of agricultural waste
the better we understand what is happening in the biosphere. Some database searches produce very familiar results.
Scientific and Cultural Organization has designated as a biosphere reserve. See go. nature. com/ubvjvq for more.
Business Cheap genomes The US$1, 000 genome has arrived according to US biotech firm Life Technologies of Carlsbad, California,
the latest version of the Ion Personal Genome Machine that it launched late in 2010 (see Nature 475,278;
2011), would be able to sequence a genome in a day for $1, 000. Hepatitis C hopefuls Pharmaceutical giant Bristol-myers squibb of New york city has become the latest company to spend billions on the promise of hepatitis C treatments.
On 7 january, the firm said that it would pay US$2. 5 billion to acquire Inhibitex,
a biopharmaceutical company based in Alpharetta, Georgia. Inhibitex's main asset is a compound against hepatitis C that is in phase II trials.
Last November, Gilead Sciences in Foster City, California, splashed out $11 billion on biotech firm Pharmasset of Princeton
New jersey, which has three treatments for hepatitis C in clinical trials. See go. nature. com/qjoqfn for more on hepatitis C drugs.
Teva rethink Israeli pharmaceutical firm Teva, the world's largest maker of generic drugs, may shift its focus towards branded medicines after it announced a new chief executive.
Jeremy Levin, former head of strategy and alliances at Bristol-myers squibb in New york city, has a reputation for making external partnerships
NASDAQTREND watch Companies in the gene-sequencing industry such as Illumina of San diego, California are suffering because of slack demand for their machines.
But one of the hardest hit is based Pacific Biosciences in Menlo Park, California, whose share price has fallen more than 82%since its initial public offering in October 2010.
Plans stall for biodefence labfor Katharine Bossart, a trip to the lab can involve a 22-hour flight.
Bossart, a microbiologist at Boston University in Massachusetts, works on treatments and vaccines for the Nipah and Hendra viruses,
Her research requires the highest level of biological security containment BSL-4 but no BSL-4 labs in the United states can accommodate horses,
The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas, is designed to provide BSL-4 containment for large-animal studies
The virus that causes the disease spreads quickly and would have a devastating effect on the US cattle industry
-and-mouth virus is restricted currently to Plum Island. Both the latest assessment and the review of it by the NAS, expected by June,
The site is adjacent to the KSU Biosecurity Research Institute, a BSL-3 facility that studies animal and plant pathogens.
says Stephen Higgs, director of the Biosecurity Research Institute. But critics of the facility welcomed the decision by President Barack Obama s administration not to request further funding for it."
a retired KSU biophysicist who helps to lead a group called No NBAF in Kansas. The group says that a facility that works on highly infectious animal diseases does not belong"in the centre of the food-animal health corridor.
The DHS says that the NBAF is needed to develop countermeasures against bioterrorism a threat that resonates less now than it did immediately after the anthrax attacks on the United states in 2001.
including the Nipah Virus, are not currently found in North america, preparedness matters.""We have the methods
Oil companies say that biofuels are the best way to meet the 6%emission-reduction goal.
The application of such factors would sound a death knell for the European biodiesel industry. According to most scientific studies including one by the International Food Policy Research Institute in WASHINGTON DC used by the European commission to prepare an impact assessment and legislation biodiesel from palm oil,
soya bean and rapeseed causes a similar level of pollution to oil obtained from oil sands
The biodiesel industry contests the"maturity of the science and says that the comparison is absurd A proposal from the European commission is unlikely in the near future.
In a sign of how politically charged the biofuels issue has become, all 27 European commissioners will reportedly be meeting to discuss it,
The oil sands debate has no legal implications on the biofuel issue, and a decision on one has no direct bearing on the other.
BUSINESS Biosimilars rules Drug-makers keen to sell generic forms of branded biological drugs such as enzymes and antibodies were excited to finally see draft guidance on the matter emerge from the US Food and Drug
) The FDA wants firms to prove their molecules'similarity to branded biologics before the generics can be approved
Synbio troubles US synthetic biology firm Amyris which engineers microbes to process plant sugars into useful chemicals saw its share price plunge by 28%on 10 february,
and biofuel firm Cosan in S £o Paulo, Brazil, with whom it has signed joint ventures. ESA, CNES, ARIANESPACE, OPTIQUE VIDEO DU CSG, L. MIRARESEARCH Vega launches Europe's Vega rocket, a low-cost launcher intended to get small scientific satellites into low-Earth orbit,
Denisovan genome The complete genetic sequence of an extinct relative of humans the Denisovan was posted online (see go. nature. com/vvtcfi) on 6 february,
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, mapped every position in the genome an average of 30 times, improving on the 1. 9-fold coverage in their 2010
draft genome (D. Reich et al. Nature 468 1053-1060; 2010). ) A 30,000-50,000-year-old finger bone found in the Denisova Cave, southern Siberia,
in 2008 yielded the genetic material. See go. nature. com/w3evow for more. PEOPLE China science prize Chinese physicist Xie Jialin, who pioneered the building of China's first high-energy linear particle accelerator in 1964,
ISAAATREND WATCH Brazil has continued its rapid rise in planting of commercial genetically modified (GM CROPS. The country,
In total, 29 countries now plant GM CROPS. COMING UP 16-17 february In Geneva Switzerland, the World health organization will gather experts to discuss'urgent questions'about research censorship
See page 289 for more on the flu-virus debate. go. nature. com/pf7bwv20-24 february Marine scientists'responses to the Gulf of mexico oil spill in 2010 are discussed among topics at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Salt lake city, Utah
Biofuels are made from crops that are planted often on former forest or marsh land, and carbon-offset projects can result in the eviction of inhabitants of wooded areas that are bought up in exchange for carbon credits.
agricultural biotech giant Monsanto and retailer Walmart together with producers and environmentalists to negotiate environmental certification standards for products such as soya beans, palm oil,
But a flu virus that emerges anywhere, at any time, can threaten the entire planet.
lack of data, says Ian Brown, head of avian virology and mammalian influenza at the Animal health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency lab in Weybridge, UK.
Timely global surveillance of animal flu viruses is crucial not just for identifying pandemic threats,
but also for detecting outbreaks, monitoring how viruses are evolving, understanding risk factors that enable them to spread
To assess trends in global genetic surveillance, Nature analysed the records of nonidentical sequences from all subtypes of avian
and pig flu deposited in the US National Center for Biotechnology Information s Influenza Virus Sequence Database between 2003 and 2011.
including the Influenza Genome Sequencing Project a major initiative run by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases (NIAID) to boost the sequencing of existing isolates.
The analysis covered all subtypes of flu virus, not just H5n1. That s important, says Malik Peiris, a flu virologist and surveillance expert at the University of Hong kong,
because"H5n1 is not the sole pandemic candidate, and low pathogenic viruses are just as likely, if not more likely,
to become pandemic. The number of avian flu sequences deposited in the database skyrocketed between 2003 and 2010,
The older sequences can inform surveillance by showing how the viruses have evolved, says Peiris, but contemporary data are important"for real-time surveillance,
head of the Molecular genetics of RNA VIRUSES lab at the Pasteur institute in Paris. One reason is that many of the virus samples are sequenced in retrospective research studies.
The Influenza Genome Sequencing Project is also helping by generating vast quantities of sequences it now accounts for half of all avian
The two agencies responsible for monitoring disease outbreaks in animals the Food and agriculture organization (FAO) of the United nations and the World organisation for Animal health (OIE) stipulate that sequences of potentially zoonotic viruses should be deposited in public databases within 3 months
Almost all come from just a handful of countries most countries have little or no genetic surveillance in place.
Surveillance of avian flu viruses is bad, but that of pig viruses is worse. Yet pigs are a serious pandemic risk:
they can be infected co with both human and avian flu strains, which means that they provide ample opportunity for gene swapping and, thereby,
the emergence of pandemic strains such as the 2009 H1n1 pandemic virus. The world is home to some 1 billion domestic pigs, almost half
of which are in China, yet only 7, 679 pig flu sequences were collected between 2003 and 2011.
including one led by virologist Malik Peiris, are compiling one of the world's single largest sources of pig sequences.
The 2009 pandemic H1n1 virus, which is now endemic in pigs, is unusual in that it contains the triple reassortant internal gene (TRIG) cassette,
a highly conserved set of six genes that allows the virus to swap genes with flu viruses from other species much more freely than the seasonal H1n1 that circulated before 2009 (see Pandemic 2009 H1n1 virus gives wings to avian flu).
Seasonal H1n1 reassorted sparingly, but"we are noting lots of reassortment between the pandemic virus and endemic swine viruses, says Peiris.
Another pig virus that has the TRIG cassette, H3n2, infected 12 people in the United states in 2011."
"I think that this is just the tip of the iceberg and such reassortments are surely going on worldwide,
globally changing the swine influenza virus landscape, says Peiris.""This certainly is a source of concern for public health.
The size of a country s poultry population is no predictor of how many samples that country will generate (see Many birds, few samples.
The genetic make-up of one individual a female farmer known as GÃ k4 bears a startling similarity to that of modern-day Mediterraneans.
And the woman's genome provides clues as to how agriculture spread across Europe.""The farmer is most genetically similar to people living in Cyprus
an evolutionary geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden and the lead author of the study,
Scandinavia was clearly home to people of very different genetic backgrounds even 5, 000 years ago,
we would not expect to see a farmer in the north with such genetic affinity to southern populations,
The genetic variation amongst the farmers indicates that there was a complex pattern of settlement, with waves of colonization bringing small and different Neolithic groups into the region."
"Given the genetic evidence from studies of both modern-day and ancient DNA, I am convinced that farmers expanded in many different ways
There is also the tantalizing prospect that as understanding of the genetic basis of behaviour improves,
"In the future we might know a few genes that affect behaviour and we could go back and look into the hunter gatherers
and see what variants of those genes are present, says Mattias Jakobsson, a population geneticist at the University of Uppsala and a co-author of the Science paper."
"But that s not going to happen in the next couple of weeks at least
Organic farming is rarely enoughmaxim. photoshelter. com/Alamystrawberries are among the few crops that grow almost as well on organic farms as in conventional agriculture."
the saola search is at the vanguard of an approach to gauging biodiversity that could prove much more efficient than conventional methods.
"I am almost sure that in ten years all the research on biodiversity will be done with DNA,
says Pierre Taberlet, a geneticist at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, and co-editor of the April issue of Molecular Ecology, which is devoted to the emerging field of studying environmental DNA.
But last year, he received an e-mail from geneticist Thomas Gilbert at the University of Copenhagen,
but not how to apply them to routine biodiversity surveys, points out Mehrdad Hajibabaei, an evolutionary molecular geneticist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
by sequencing just a portion of a gene. But much of the DNA recovered from environmental sources such as soil
The researchers can then check the genetic sequences against databases to learn which plants or animals they come from.
Focusing on DNA from chloroplasts and mitochondria energy-producing structures in cells that have their own genomes the researchers produced 49,000 genetic sequences.
because plant genetic databases are incomplete. The researchers also found DNA from eight genera of vertebrate animals.
Genetic material from the critically endangered Saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) was present in one powder; and boxes marked as bear-bile powder
Nearly half of the medicine samples tested for animal DNA contained genetic material from multiple animals,
Monkey genetics track social statusimagebroker/FLPAGROOMING is one way in which rhesus macaques show deference and curry favour.
Jenny Tung, a geneticist at Duke university in Durham, North carolina, and her colleagues studied 49 captive female rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta).
Tung and her colleagues analysed blood samples from the monkeys for differences in gene expression. Of the 6, 097 genes tested
987 showed significant changes in expression level, associated with rank. The researchers could predict whether an animal was high, middle or low ranking with 80%accuracy, on the basis of gene expression alone.
Increased activity in immune-system genes, particularly those related to inflammation, was twice as common among low-ranking monkeys as would be expected by chance.
An overactive immune system creates"wear and tear on the body, potentially heightening susceptibility to disease, says Tung."
when other animals entered the group showed that their gene expression responded rapidly, and predictably, to match their new status."It suggests a lot of plasticity in our gene expression response to our social environment,
which is an optimistic note, says Tung. It was known already that social status can change which genes get turned on and off in insects and fish,
but this is the first study to look at nonhuman primates, says Tung. Research has shown also the health consequences of low social status on both animals and humans.
"Clearly, changing ranks leads to changes in gene expression and not the other way around, he says. The macaque study suggests potential mechanisms for the Whitehall study's findings,
The link between genes and social status may be more difficult to tease out in humans than in monkeys,
says Dario Maestripieri, a behavioural biologist at the University of Chicago, Illinois. But, he adds,
Tomato genome sequence bears fruitthe genome sequence of one of the world s highest-value salad plants the tomato has been decoded by an international team of scientists,
According to the leaders of the UK arm of the Tomato Genome Consortium, Graham Seymour at the University of Nottingham and Gerard Bishop, formerly of Imperial College London,
says Allen Van Deynze, a molecular geneticist at the Seed Biotechnology Center at the University of California,
With more than 80%of the genome sequenced, and more than 90%of the genes within it identified,
and refinements still taking place, the group hopes to make this a gold-standard reference sequence.
It's one of the better genomes out there says Van Deynze. Giovanni Giuliano, from the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development in Rome,
and a lead researcher on the project, explains that the group started out using traditional tools to sequence the genomes of the domesticated tomato cultivar Heinz 1706 (the one used to make the famous ketchup) and its closest wild relative, Solanum pimpinellifolium.
and switched to the much faster method of whole-genome shotgun sequencing. In this technique, large chunks of DNA are sequenced separately
then assembled into the genome. Giuliano says that one of the most exciting discoveries was that the entire tomato genome was copied in triplicate on two separate occasions.
The earlier event occurred about 130 million years ago, and was identified first in grapes (Vitis vinifera) 2,
"Several of the genes born at that second triplication stayed in the genome for tens of millions of years,
UK,"is to link this genome sequence to traits that are useful and important, especially for food security and human health
North carolina, part of the US Department of agriculture (USDA), who notes that 383 known weed varieties have the genetic defences to survive one or more herbicides."
This has produced a wave of genetically modified crops under review by the USDA which earlier this year made changes to speed up its approval process.
global biology team leader at Dow.""The odds that you re going to have weed a that s resistant to both are very low.
Bioscience 62,75-84; 2012). ) Mortensen expects that increased reliance on two herbicides will favour plants with multiple mutations for resistance to each,
On 17 may, the US Environmental protection agency approved a bioherbicide from Marrone Bio Innovations in Davis, California.
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