California in clean-fuel drive: Nature Newsthe state of California has adopted regulations to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from transportation fuels,
With your background of clinical research on malaria and other tropical diseases, what do you think you will bring to the job?
and have a major impact in reducing poverty and diseases that kill people, and improving nutrition, we have to have a much stronger research base.
so fundamental research into diseases of poverty is extremely important, but is not our particular area of interest.
because we recognize that for most diseases in Africa and Asia, for example malaria, every case could be cured with existing drugs,
yet most people don't get them. There's a researchable question in why 70%of the people who need the drugs for malaria don't get them.
What does governance research involve? It's a massive area, but to take an example,
How does a clinical malaria researcher oversee social-policy research? I think one of the reasons that DFID asked me to do this job is that
but could also pose an infection risk. Researchers have used also the genome sequence to assemble a collection of more than 37,000 locations in the genome that contain frequent single-base changes in DNA sequence2.
estimates Van tassel. The new sequence also shows that the human genome is more similar to the genome of cattle than to mice suggesting that, for some diseases,
In the past, work on cattle led to the development of the smallpox vaccine and in vitro fertilization techniques.
and collide, the crust fractures and these clathrates release gases, which carry up ice particles with them to form the icy plumes.
Patchy pig monitoring may hide flu threat: Nature Newspublic-health experts are warning that a lack of surveillance may be allowing the 2009 pandemic H1n1 flu virus to go undetected in pigs.
This raises the risk that the virus could circulate freely between humans and pigs, making it more likely to reassort into a deadlier strain,
Their main concern tends to be that any reports of the pandemic virus in pigs might provoke overreactions such as the mass culling of pigs that took place in Egypt
Within minutes of the World health organization (WHO) announcement on 11 june that swine flu had become a pandemic, Bernard Vallat, director-general of an intergovernmental trade body,
But some experts say that is an artefact of patchy to nonexistent flu surveillance in pigs.
2009), Gavin Smith, a flu geneticist at the University of Hong kong, and his colleagues concluded that the lack of systematic swine surveillance allowed for the undetected persistence and evolution of this potentially pandemic strain for many years.
The virus originated from a mixture of swine flu strains, and pigs are an obvious part of the epidemiology of the new virus,
says Smith. Yet the number of swine-flu sequences in the international Genbank database is about a tenth of that for avian flu viruses.
Circulation of the virus between pigs and humans is definitely a possibility he adds. The pandemic virus has so far been found in pigs from just one farm, in Alberta, Canada,
where it spread throughout the herd. But noone has been able to pin down how the herd became infected.
Past pandemic viruses have gone also on to become endemic in pig populations. It's absolutely surprising that a virus this contagious in both humans and swine
and a member of the organization's flu task force. It is highly likely that more pigs are infected in more places.
Absence of evidence of the pandemic virus in pig populations is not evidence of absence,
concedes Steve Edwards, chairman of the OIE-FAO Network of Expertise on Animal Influenza (OFFLU),
which coordinates work done by animal-flu surveillance labs worldwide, and former chief executive of the Veterinary Laboratories Agency.
Whereas flu surveillance has improved over the past six years in poultry and wild birds, pigs have been below the radar,
says Ilaria Capua, an animal-flu expert at the Experimental Animal health Care Institute of Venice in Legnaro, Italy.
The avian H5n1 flu virus leads to serious disease in poultry and causes huge economic losses,
flu viruses, although common, tend to cause only mild disease, so there is no obligation to report cases of swine flu,
much less take samples for genetic and antigenic analysis. The OIE has asked, however its member states to voluntarily report any occurrences of the 2009 pandemic virus in pigs.
Surveillance for swine flu is not something that has been high on the agenda of government services,
says Edwards. It is seen as a farming-industry problem. Most flu surveillance in pigs is passive,
relying on farmers or vets sending material to government labs. Active targeted surveillance with diagnostic tests is rarer,
as it is more expensive. OFFLU has called on labs worldwide to share what information they have on swine flu,
and to sequence any samples they have obtained recently. So far, however, the response has been limited, says Edwards. A meeting between experts from OFFLU
and THE WHO on 21 may the conclusions of which were made public last week recommended scaling up flu surveillance efforts in pigs,
The European Surveillance Network for Influenza in Pigs, which was created in 2001, comprises nine European labs and one in Hong kong.
Network members hope that with the pandemic highlighting the need for better pig surveillance new funding will be forthcoming.
-and public-health communities underestimated the potential for pigs to generate a pandemic virus . Although pigs can be infected with many subtypes of flu,
the three most common endemic strains are H1n1, H1n2 and H3n2. Most expected that any new pandemic would involve the introduction of a viral subtype not previously seen in humans,
such as the avian H5 subtype, explains Capua. The consensus was that a pandemic could not be caused by H1,
H2 or H3 because the current human population would have antibodies against them, she says.
The emergence of the reassorted H1n1 pandemic virus which current research indicates noone has any immunity to, apart, perhaps,
In the presentation, the results of which are in press at the journal PLOS Pathogens, Capua showed that serum samples from people vaccinated against seasonal flu strains showed little or no cross reactivity against H1,
H2 and H3 bird viruses, meaning that they would have no immunity. This shows that the world needs a comprehensive surveillance system of all influenza subtypes
and their evolution across many animal species, says Capua: We should be looking at the bigger picture.
and plant breeders who are searching for crops that can withstand the effects of climate change or emerging diseases.
resistant to a variety of insects and diseases and able to withstand the vagaries of climate change,
Pandemic flu viruses brew for years before going global: Nature Newsfamily trees for pandemic influenza have revealed that components of deadly flu viruses probably lurk in humans
and other animals for years before they emerge as a worldwide threat to human health.
The work suggests that a more thorough characterization of circulating flu viruses could provide clues to an emerging pandemic before it hits.
According to results published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, two genes from the 1918 influenza virus,
would have been present in human and swine flu viruses at least 6 years earlier. During the intervening years
swine and human flu viruses would have swapped genes with avian viruses, ultimately giving rise to the dangerous assortment of genes carried by the 1918 virus. This work suggests that the generation of pandemic strains
and the adaptation to humans could be involved much more than was thought previously, says Raul Rabadan, a biomedical informatician at Columbia University college of Physicians and Surgeons in New york,
is key to identifying possible pandemic strains and their future evolution. Yi Guan of the University of Hong kong, Robert Webster of St jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee,
swine and human flu viruses and created family trees based on DNA sequence information. By estimating the amount of time it would take to accumulate the differences in DNA sequences found in human and swine viruses,
the researchers determined that a precursor to at least one 1918 flu gene was present in mammals before 1911.
The results run counter to previous hypotheses that the human 1918 flu strain had evolved directly from a bird flu virus2.
and then swapped genes with mammalian flu viruses before becoming a pandemic. Meanwhile, elements of the 1957 pandemic flu virus also thought to be a mosaic of human
and avian flu genes were introduced probably into human populations two to six years before the pandemic, the researchers found.
These analyses were completed before the current pandemic swine flu strain made its mark, but the researchers argue that their results have implications for future pandemics.
Results from 1918 and 1957 pandemic flu suggest that public-health authorities should track the sequences of all influenza virus genes in emerging strains
the authors argue, rather than focusing largely on the gene that encodes the haemagglutinin'protein,
which is critical for vaccine production, as is the current practice. Nevertheless, reliance upon patchy data from historical flu viruses has its limitations.
Michael Worobey, who studies pathogen evolution at the University of Arizona in Tucson, says that his own analyses have suggested also that human
and swine forms of H1n1 shared a common ancestor years before 1918. But he remains unconvinced by the series of genetic swaps proposed by the paper.
Swine flu shares some features with 1918 pandemic: Nature Newsas far as your immune system is concerned, the pandemic H1n1 (swine flu virus currently circling the globe bears an uncanny resemblance to an influenza virus that wreaked havoc nearly a century ago,
researchers have found. For months, it has been apparent that swine flu strikes the young more often than the old an unusual pattern that suggests older patients could have been exposed to similar viruses in the past.
A new study released today By nature suggests that people alive during the infamous 1918 influenza outbreak have the greatest protection against the current swine flu1.
The study also included experiments in a veritable menagerie of animals including mice, miniature pigs, ferrets and macaques.
In all but the pig, the virus yields an infection in the lungs that is more severe than would be expected from an average seasonal flu, according to Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues,
are effective against the new pandemic virus in human cells grown in the lab. These drugs are already being used to treat some infected patients.
which reported that swine flu reproduces more aggressively and produces more severe disease in ferrets than seasonal flu (see Swine flu reaches into the lungs and gut).
Kawaoka's team observed this virulence in mice and macaques as well, but pigs showed no outward signs of disease
even though the virus reproduced capably in the swine respiratory system. This, the authors suggest, could explain why farmers have not reported an outbreak of sick pigs.
Nevertheless, one alarming feature of the macaque results was the development of severe pneumonia that extended throughout the lungs, notes Earl Brown, a virologist at the University of Ottawa.
Pneumonias are localized normally more he says. When you start to hit all areas of the lungs severely,
and found that those born before 1918 were more likely to produce antibodies capable of neutralizing the swine flu virus. That protection is somewhat counterintuitive:
But it is still possible that the immune response elicited by one virus can offer protection against the other (see Old seasonal flu antibodies target swine flu virus). Oddly,
exposure to similar viruses that circulated from the 1920s to 1950s was not enough to elicit these antibodies a result that doesn't mesh with the lower infection rates among those who are over the age of 60
nevertheless offer some protection against infection, Brown says. At present, most swine flu infections are mild, and the severity of the present pandemic does not come close to the 1918 flu,
but experts worry that the new virus could become more virulent over time. Meanwhile, the virulence seen in the animal studies is disquieting,
says Brown. We're trying not to push the panic buttons, but we're trying to be realistic,
Pandemic flu: People infected with the H1n1 swine flu virus who are otherwise healthy should not routinely be given antiviral drugs,
the World health organization (WHO) warned last week. Its recommendations are at odds with current practice in many countries,
Although those with uncomplicated illness should not get oseltamivir or zanamivir (Relenza), THE WHO did recommend giving drugs to those presenting with severe illness,
to children under five and to pregnant women (see http://tiny. cc/WHOH1N1). Renewable energy:
The product's manufacturer, Geron in Menlo Park, California, had hoped to start human testing of its potential treatment for spinal-cord injury this summer (see Nature 457,516;
and from investigations of the product's use for other neurodegenerative diseases. It added that it was working closely with the FDA to review the data.
Eli lilly abandoned development of its osteoporosis drug arzoxifene, after results from an advanced clinical trial suggested it did not offer sufficient benefit over currently available treatments.
Indiana, had hoped arzoxifene would be a successor to its blockbuster osteoporosis treatment raloxifene (Evista), which will lose its patent protections by 2014.
Meanwhile, Amgen, of Thousand Oaks, California, has received more positive news for its new-mode-of-action osteoporosis treatment, denosumab.
He has led also research on allergy and infectious diseases at the National institutes of health. The FDA won powers to regulate tobacco for the first time in its 103-year history under legislation passed by Congress in June (see Nature 459,901;
) Environment Mercury contamination: A quarter of fish sampled from 291 streams across the United states between 1998 and 2005 contained levels of mercury higher than those deemed safe for human consumption,
and fend off fungal infections. Having these genes in more vulnerable rice varieties could save billions of dollars and feed millions more people.
Japan, has found a gene that helps some types of rice fight off fungal infection and successfully isolated it from a linked stretch of DNA responsible for the terrible flavour of the wild varieties.
Rice blast disease destroys around 10-30%of global rice crops enough food to feed about 60 million people each year.
Some rice plants are resistant to the pernicious fungus responsible the disease, but the rice from these plants often has undesirable qualities,
and showed that plants with two rare deletions had around 10 times fewer blast lesions than wild-type rice,
leading to more malnutrition. The report calls for additional investments of at least US$7 billion per year for research, to increase agricultural productivity,
Research HIV vaccine: An experimental HIV vaccine has shown moderate success at preventing infection by the virus. A US$119-million study involving more than 16,000 HIV-negative men
and women from Thailand found that a combination of two older drugs, which had failed to work individually, together reduced the risk of contracting HIV by nearly a third.
It's the largest step forward that's ever occurred in the HIV-vaccine field, says Dan Barouch of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center in Boston, Massachusetts.
Click here for a longer version of this story. Mars delay: The launch of Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission to study Mars
and Regenerative Medicine Congress Asia. http://www. terrapinn. com/2009/stemcellsasia 8-11 october The American Association for Cancer Research holds its'Frontiers in basic cancer research'conference in Boston,
It's really getting to a systems-level understanding of the mountain pine beetle epidemic, says study co-author JÃ rg Bohlmann, a chemical ecologist at the University of British columbia in Vancouver, Canada,
Multi-species genomic interactions have been studied for some human diseases, including malaria, and a few symbiotic ecological relationships such as leaf-cutter ants and their microbial partners,
but the approach has never before been applied on this scale for an outbreaking forest nuisance.
The pathogen has learned to live with these transposable elements, which could be a problem for it
In the arms race between plant and pathogen, potatoes have had long an ally: human plant breeders, who have struggled to develop blight-resistant spuds.
With all this knowledge about how the pathogen attacks the host on the biochemical level,
But researchers say that past landrace contaminations from illegal GM maize planting (see Nature 456,149;
HIV vaccine doubt: Results of the largest-ever HIV-vaccine trial looked less impressive when full details were published formally last week (S. Rerks-Ngarm et al.
N. Engl. J. Med. doi: 10.1056/nejmoa0908492; 2009) than when they were outlined in a press release a month earlier.
In September, the trial was said to show that a vaccine combination reduced the risk of HIV infection by nearly one-third.
The week ahead 29 october â oe1 November Philadelphia hosts the 47th Annual Meeting of the Infectious diseases Society of America. go. nature. com/ykfvnw 29 â oe30 October
Kenya, hosts the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria's fifth Pan-African Malaria Conference. www. mimalaria. org/pamc 2 â oe6 November The United nations Framework
Currently, research on 82 human, plant and animal pathogens (called select agents) is monitored under a 1996 law that requires the same security procedures for all of them.
The company revealed in April that data supporting a prenatal screen for Down's syndrome were mishandled and could not be relied on (see Nature 459,23;
Obama toured a National Cancer Institute lab, where he was treated to video images of healthy and cancer-riddled brains,
and praised the research made possible by the agency's spending of $5 billion out of the $10. 4 billion it got in economic stimulus funds.
They also indicate that manipulating gut bacteria early in life might reduce allergies and other autoimmune diseases, says Denise Kelly, a gut immunologist at the University of Aberdeen, UK and one of the study's authors.
Researchers began with 54 piglets and divided them equally between an outdoor environment, an indoor environment,
and for their ability to limit intestinal pathogens such as Escherichia coli and Salmonella. In contrast, the Firmicutes bacteria made up less than 70%and just more than 50%of the gut flora in indoor and isolated bred pigs respectively.
and how it influences immune function and susceptibility to diseases and allergies, she says. The latest work establishes a strong causal link.
For each case study, the authors calculated the reductions of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYS a measure of potential years of life lost to disease or premature death,
and the megatonnes of carbon dioxide saved. In the household energy and food and agriculture sectors, the proposal with the biggest impact on both climate change and public health was a 10-year programme in India to replace 150 million indoor biomass-burning
due in part to reduced cardiovascular and respiratory disease. Another analysis, led by Sharon Friel at the Australian National University in Canberra,
%Such a change in the UK would save 2, 850 DALYS from heart disease; in S £o Paulo, Brazil, it would save 2, 1804.
citing the potential contamination of native maize: It is very, very unacceptable. See also'Maize genome sequenced'.
The board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the major funding channel for controlling these diseases, last week approved US$2. 4 billion in extra funding over two years.
Pathogen negligence: Canada's government laboratories are doing a poor job of keeping track of some pathogens, according to an audit by the Public health Agency of Canada.
The audit found that the labs'inconsistent tracking systems a mixture of manual and electronic recording might result in a pathogen being lost
or used inappropriately. The audit included the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, which handles samples of H1n1 pandemic flu,
and which earlier this year lost track of 22 vials containing harmless Ebola-virus genetic material.
Tracking systems for the most dangerous pathogens are more rigorous but could still be improved, the audit found.
Brooke Magnanti, now a cancer epidemiologist at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health, UK, reveals that she was the anonymous sex worker and blogger Belle de Jour.
beagles (because the dog is the best choice for human disease modelling; and the first transgenic dog (a beagle, known as Ruby Puppy,
which are used already as a model for cardiovascular and other disorders, will become more widely used through cloning and transgenics.
For some diseases dogs provide the best animal model for the human disease. But the use of cloned dogs
He is collaborating with both the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases to study chronic granulomatous disease, a rare genetic white blood cell disorder,
and the University of South carolina to study Alzheimer's disease. Brain science Institute behavioural geneticist Shigeyoshi Itohara is excited most about
what the clones could reveal about the function of the brain. With the differences between species in disposition and cognition, dogs are tremendously valuable to basic genetic studies of higher brain order.
but in 1898, drought, pestilence and hunting left the Tsavo region of Kenya barren of the lions'favourite meals.
Apart from the environmental pressures on the lions, the dominant maneater also had severe wounds in his mouth and jaw,
Nature News Liberia's caterpillar plague Panic struck Liberia in early 2009, after a plague of caterpillars struck villages around the country, munching trees
The reason both were unrelated suffering from, unexplained diseases. Aurelius had had upwards of 18 kidney stones in about as many years
and Massagee was baffled by an extraordinary and painful build up of muscles in her body that left her weighed down and fatigued.
The two were enrolled in the NIH's new Undiagnosed Disease Program a collaborative project designed to identify previously undiscovered diseases
and characterize them at a molecular level (see'Last Chance Clinic').'Massagee, whose symptoms hinted at a novel condition involving genes that control muscle formation,
She received treatment for AL amyloidosis, a build up of protein in the walls of her blood vessels, on 19 june,
So far, one new disease with a genetic underpinning has been discovered in a family with blood-vessel calcification below the waist.
works with mouse models of muscular dystrophy at Ohio State university in Columbus. She declined an interview request.
Movetis has European approval to market a constipation drug, prucalopride (Resolor). Market watch Amazonian nations will be the early winners in any market for forest carbon credits,
Tuberculosis funds: Tuberculosis research has seen funding jump in each of the past few years, but the rate of increase is dropping off.
So says a report released on 3 december by the Treatment Action Group, an AIDS research and policy think tank based in New york. Tuberculosis funding increased by 8%last year to US$510 million,
compared with annual increases of 13%in 2007 and 17%in 2006. The balance of funding is also shifting, from government agencies to philanthropic organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Cattle disease faces total wipeout: Nature Newswhat does it take to wipe a scourge off the face of the Earth?
and eradicate the last few stubborn pockets of disease whether the problem is in people or cattle.
World health bodies say that within 18 months they will celebrate the eradication of rinderpest, the world's most devastating cattle disease.
It would become only the second disease that humans have wiped from the globe after smallpox,
says Chris Oura, head of the Non-Vesicular Disease Reference Laboratory Group at the Institute for Animal health in Pirbright,
Rinderpest tops the list of killer animal diseases, says Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer for the Food and Agricultural organization of the United nations (FAO) in Rome.
Just as smallpox ripped through human populations for centuries, so too has reduced rinderpest drastically animal populations.
Also known as cattle plague, rinderpest can lead to famine when people lose the beasts they need to plough their fields.
It first spread from Asia to Europe in the herds of invading tribes, causing outbreaks in the Roman empire in 376-386,
The world's first veterinary science school was established in France in 1762 to train specialists to deal with rinderpest.
The disease, which can kill 80-90%of infected cattle within ten days, is caused by a morbillivirus a group of viruses that also includes measles.
Clinical signs include fever, discharges from the eyes and nose, diarrhoea and dehydration. In the 1980s, outbreaks in Nigeria cost around US$2 billion.
But that decade also saw a breakthrough in controlling the disease: a vaccine containing the attenuated virus that was heat-stable
and could be stored and transported over long distances. In 1994, a global effort to eradicate rinderpest was launched,
headed by the FAO and the World organisation for Animal health (OIE), based in Paris. It incorporated several earlier,
The last known outbreak was in Kenya in 2001, with the last remaining pockets of the disease in Pakistan, Sudan and the Somali Ecosystem (parts of Somalia,
By the 1970s, smallpox, too, was found only in the war-torn Horn of Africa, where the last case was isolated in Somalia in 1977.
Although the rinderpest vaccine can provide lifelong protection, it also poses a challenge. Because it contains the live virus
Lubroth says he is confident that the world is already free of the disease but that the FAO and the OIE expect to make an official declaration that it has been eradicated in 18 months.
Even after the disease is declared extinct in the wild, it will live on in the lab. Over the next year and a half,
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