Primitive agriculture in a social amoeba

Agriculture has been a large part of the ecological success of humans. A handful of animals, notably the fungus-growing ants, termites and ambrosia beetles, have advanced agriculture that involves dispersal and seeding of food propagules, cultivation of the crop and sustainable harvesting. More primitive examples, which could be called husbandry because they involve fewer adaptations, include marine snails farming intertidal fungi and damselfish farming algae. Recent work has shown that microorganisms are surprisingly like animals in having sophisticated behaviours such as cooperation, communication and recognition, as well as many kinds of symbiosis. Here we show that the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum has a primitive farming symbiosis that includes dispersal and prudent harvesting of the crop. About one-third of wild-collected clones engage in husbandry of bacteria. Instead of consuming all bacteria in their patch, they stop feeding early and incorporate bacteria into their fruiting bodies. They then carry bacteria during spore dispersal and can seed a new food crop, which is a major advantage if edible bacteria are lacking at the new site. However, if they arrive at sites already containing appropriate bacteria, the costs of early feeding cessation are not compensated for, which may account for the dichotomous nature of this farming symbiosis. The striking convergent evolution between bacterial husbandry in social amoebas and fungus farming in social insects makes sense because multigenerational benefits of farming go to already established kin groups.     

Tumour hypoxia promotes tolerance and angiogenesis via CCL28 and T(reg) cells

Although immune mechanisms can suppress tumour growth, tumours establish potent, overlapping mechanisms that mediate immune evasion. Emerging evidence suggests a link between angiogenesis and the tolerance of tumours to immune mechanisms. Hypoxia, a condition that is known to drive angiogenesis in tumours, results in the release of damage-associated pattern molecules, which can trigger the rejection of tumours by the immune system. Thus, the counter-activation of tolerance mechanisms at the site of tumour hypoxia would be a crucial condition for maintaining the immunological escape of tumours. However, a direct link between tumour hypoxia and tolerance through the recruitment of regulatory cells has not been established. We proposed that tumour hypoxia induces the expression of chemotactic factors that promote tolerance. Here we show that tumour hypoxia promotes the recruitment of regulatory T (T(reg)) cells through induction of expression of the chemokine CC-chemokine ligand 28 (CCL28), which, in turn, promotes tumour tolerance and angiogenesis. Thus, peripheral immune tolerance and angiogenesis programs are closely connected and cooperate to sustain tumour growth.     

Acute vision in the giant Cambrian predator Anomalocaris and the origin of compound eyes

Until recently, intricate details of the optical design of non-biomineralized arthropod eyes remained elusive in Cambrian Burgess-Shale-type deposits, despite exceptional preservation of soft-part anatomy in such Konservat-Lagerst?tten. The structure and development of ommatidia in arthropod compound eyes support a single origin some time before the latest common ancestor of crown-group arthropods, but the appearance of compound eyes in the arthropod stem group has been poorly constrained in the absence of adequate fossils. Here we report 2-3-cm paired eyes from the early Cambrian (approximately 515 million years old) Emu Bay Shale of South Australia, assigned to the Cambrian apex predator Anomalocaris. Their preserved visual surfaces are composed of at least 16,000 hexagonally packed ommatidial lenses (in a single eye), rivalling the most acute compound eyes in modern arthropods. The specimens show two distinct taphonomic modes, preserved as iron oxide (after pyrite) and calcium phosphate, demonstrating that disparate styles of early diagenetic mineralization can replicate the same type of extracellular tissue (that is, cuticle) within a single Burgess-Shale-type deposit. These fossils also provide compelling evidence for the arthropod affinities of anomalocaridids, push the origin of compound eyes deeper down the arthropod stem lineage, and indicate that the compound eye evolved before such features as a hardened exoskeleton. The inferred acuity of the anomalocaridid eye is consistent with other evidence that these animals were highly mobile visual predators in the water column. The existence of large, macrophagous nektonic predators possessing sharp vision--such as Anomalocaris--within the early Cambrian ecosystem probably helped to accelerate the escalatory 'arms race' that began over half a billion years ago.     

Low-Mach-number turbulence in interstellar gas revealed by radio polarization gradients

The interstellar medium of the Milky Way is multiphase, magnetized and turbulent. Turbulence in the interstellar medium produces a global cascade of random gas motions, spanning scales ranging from 100 parsecs to 1,000 kilometres (ref. 4). Fundamental parameters of interstellar turbulence such as the sonic Mach number (the speed of sound) have been difficult to determine, because observations have lacked the sensitivity and resolution to image the small-scale structure associated with turbulent motion. Observations of linear polarization and Faraday rotation in radio emission from the Milky Way have identified unusual polarized structures that often have no counterparts in the total radiation intensity or at other wavelengths, and whose physical significance has been unclear. Here we report that the gradient of the Stokes vector (Q, U), where Q and U are parameters describing the polarization state of radiation, provides an image of magnetized turbulence in diffuse, ionized gas, manifested as a complex filamentary web of discontinuities in gas density and magnetic field. Through comparison with simulations, we demonstrate that turbulence in the warm, ionized medium has a relatively low sonic Mach number, M(s)???2. The development of statistical tools for the analysis of polarization gradients will allow accurate determinations of the Mach number, Reynolds number and magnetic field strength in interstellar turbulence over a wide range of conditions.     

Sensitivity to antitubulin chemotherapeutics is regulated by MCL1 and FBW7

Microtubules have pivotal roles in fundamental cellular processes and are targets of antitubulin chemotherapeutics. Microtubule-targeted agents such as Taxol and vincristine are prescribed widely for various malignancies, including ovarian and breast adenocarcinomas, non-small-cell lung cancer, leukaemias and lymphomas. These agents arrest cells in mitosis and subsequently induce cell death through poorly defined mechanisms. The strategies that resistant tumour cells use to evade death induced by antitubulin agents are also unclear. Here we show that the pro-survival protein MCL1 (ref. 3) is a crucial regulator of apoptosis triggered by antitubulin chemotherapeutics. During mitotic arrest, MCL1 protein levels decline markedly, through a post-translational mechanism, potentiating cell death. Phosphorylation of MCL1 directs its interaction with the tumour-suppressor protein FBW7, which is the substrate-binding component of a ubiquitin ligase complex. The polyubiquitylation of MCL1 then targets it for proteasomal degradation. The degradation of MCL1 was blocked in patient-derived tumour cells that lacked FBW7 or had loss-of-function mutations in FBW7, conferring resistance to antitubulin agents and promoting chemotherapeutic-induced polyploidy. Additionally, primary tumour samples were enriched for FBW7 inactivation and elevated MCL1 levels, underscoring the prominent roles of these proteins in oncogenesis. Our findings suggest that profiling the FBW7 and MCL1 status of tumours, in terms of protein levels, messenger RNA levels and genetic status, could be useful to predict the response of patients to antitubulin chemotherapeutics.     

Reconstructed changes in Arctic sea ice over the past 1,450 years

Arctic sea ice extent is now more than two million square kilometres less than it was in the late twentieth century, with important consequences for the climate, the ocean and traditional lifestyles in the Arctic. Although observations show a more or less continuous decline for the past four or five decades, there are few long-term records with which to assess natural sea ice variability. Until now, the question of whether or not current trends are potentially anomalous has therefore remained unanswerable. Here we use a network of high-resolution terrestrial proxies from the circum-Arctic region to reconstruct past extents of summer sea ice, and show that-although extensive uncertainties remain, especially before the sixteenth century-both the duration and magnitude of the current decline in sea ice seem to be unprecedented for the past 1,450 years. Enhanced advection of warm Atlantic water to the Arctic seems to be the main factor driving the decline of sea ice extent on multidecadal timescales, and may result from nonlinear feedbacks between sea ice and the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. These results reinforce the assertion that sea ice is an active component of Arctic climate variability and that the recent decrease in summer Arctic sea ice is consistent with anthropogenically forced warming.     

Two ten-billion-solar-mass black holes at the centres of giant elliptical galaxies

Observational work conducted over the past few decades indicates that all massive galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres. Although the luminosities and brightness fluctuations of quasars in the early Universe suggest that some were powered by black holes with masses greater than 10 billion solar masses, the remnants of these objects have not been found in the nearby Universe. The giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 hosts the hitherto most massive known black hole, which has a mass of 6.3 billion solar masses. Here we report that NGC 3842, the brightest galaxy in a cluster at a distance from Earth of 98 megaparsecs, has a central black hole with a mass of 9.7 billion solar masses, and that a black hole of comparable or greater mass is present in NGC 4889, the brightest galaxy in the Coma cluster (at a distance of 103 megaparsecs). These two black holes are significantly more massive than predicted by linearly extrapolating the widely used correlations between black-hole mass and the stellar velocity dispersion or bulge luminosity of the host galaxy. Although these correlations remain useful for predicting black-hole masses in less massive elliptical galaxies, our measurements suggest that different evolutionary processes influence the growth of the largest galaxies and their black holes.     

Overcoming lability of extremely long alkane carbon-carbon bonds through dispersion forces

Steric effects in chemistry are a consequence of the space required to accommodate the atoms and groups within a molecule, and are often thought to be dominated by repulsive forces arising from overlapping electron densities (Pauli repulsion). An appreciation of attractive interactions such as van der Waals forces (which include London dispersion forces) is necessary to understand chemical bonding and reactivity fully. This is evident from, for example, the strongly debated origin of the higher stability of branched alkanes relative to linear alkanes and the possibility of constructing hydrocarbons with extraordinarily long C-C single bonds through steric crowding. Although empirical bond distance/bond strength relationships have been established for C-C bonds (longer C-C bonds have smaller bond dissociation energies), these have no present theoretical basis. Nevertheless, these empirical considerations are fundamental to structural and energetic evaluations in chemistry, as summarized by Pauling as early as 1960 and confirmed more recently. Here we report the preparation of hydrocarbons with extremely long C-C bonds (up to 1.704??), the longest such bonds observed so far in alkanes. The prepared compounds are unexpectedly stable--noticeable decomposition occurs only above 200?°C. We prepared the alkanes by coupling nanometre-sized, diamond-like, highly rigid structures known as diamondoids. The extraordinary stability of the coupling products is due to overall attractive dispersion interactions between the intramolecular H???H contact surfaces, as is evident from density functional theory computations with and without inclusion of dispersion corrections.     

Hedgehog/Wnt feedback supports regenerative proliferation of epithelial stem cells in bladder

Epithelial integrity in metazoan organs is maintained through the regulated proliferation and differentiation of organ-specific stem and progenitor cells. Although the epithelia of organs such as the intestine regenerate constantly and thus remain continuously proliferative, other organs, such as the mammalian urinary bladder, shift from near-quiescence to a highly proliferative state in response to epithelial injury. The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying this injury-induced mode of regenerative response are poorly defined. Here we show in mice that the proliferative response to bacterial infection or chemical injury within the bladder is regulated by signal feedback between basal cells of the urothelium and the stromal cells that underlie them. We demonstrate that these basal cells include stem cells capable of regenerating all cell types within the urothelium, and are marked by expression of the secreted protein signal Sonic hedgehog (Shh). On injury, Shh expression in these basal cells increases and elicits increased stromal expression of Wnt protein signals, which in turn stimulate the proliferation of both urothelial and stromal cells. The heightened activity of this signal feedback circuit and the associated increase in cell proliferation appear to be required for restoration of urothelial function and, in the case of bacterial injury, may help clear and prevent further spread of infection. Our findings provide a conceptual framework for injury-induced epithelial regeneration in endodermal organs, and may provide a basis for understanding the roles of signalling pathways in cancer growth and metastasis.