'Marsquake' Hunter Begins to Probe Planet's Innards
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NEWS IN FOCUS claimed experiments for an article in MIT In an interview with the Associated Press, online condemning He’s claims. “Directly Technology Review. “The data I reviewed are He said the goal of the work was not to prevent jumping into human experiments can only consistent with the fact that the editing has, in transmission from the parents, but to offer be described as crazy,” the statement reads. fact, taken place,” says Urnov, who is based at couples affected by HIV a chance to have a The scientists call on Chinese authorities to the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences in child that might be protected from a similar release the findings of any investigation to the Seattle, Washington. But he adds that the only fate. But years of research is needed to show public. way to tell whether the children’s genomes have that meddling with the genome of an embryo “This is a huge blow to the international been edited is to independently test their DNA. is not going to cause harm, says Joyce Harper, reputation and the development of Chinese Urnov takes issue with the decision to edit who studies women’s and reproductive health science, especially in the field of biomedical an embryo’s genome to prevent HIV infection. at University College London. Legislation and research,” the statement says. “It is extremely He is also using genome-editing tools to target public discussion should also occur before unfair to the large majority of diligent and con- the CCR5 gene, but his studies are in people genome editing is scientious scientists in China who are pursuing with HIV, not embryos. He says that there are used in embryos “This is a huge research and innovation while strictly adher- “safe and effective ways” to use genetics to pro- destined for implan- blow to the ing to ethical limits.” tect people from HIV that do not involve edit- tation. international Nature tried to contact He but did not ing an embryo’s genes. Southern Univer- reputation and receive a response before its deadline. In his Paula Cannon, who studies HIV at the Uni- sity of Science and the development video, He says he supports the use of genome versity of Southern California in Los Angeles, Technology said of Chinese editing in embryos only in cases that relate to also questions He’s decision to target that gene in a statement on science.” disease. “I understand my work will be contro- in embryos. She says that some strains of HIV 26 November that versial, but I believe families need this technol- don’t even use this protein to enter cells, they it was unaware of He’s experiments, that the ogy and I am willing to take the criticism for use another protein called CXCR4. Even people work was not performed at the university and them,” he says. who are naturally CCR5-negative are not com- that He has been on leave since February. The News of the experiment came a day before pletely resistant to HIV, Cannon adds, because university says its researchers must abide by researchers in the field gathered in Hong Kong they could be infected by a CXCR4 strain. national laws and regulations, and respect for a major international meeting on genome She also says it makes no sense that He international academic ethics and academic editing, running from 27 to 29 November. recruited families with an HIV-positive father, standards. It will set up an independent com- Even before the news of He’s work emerged, as was the case with the twins, because there mittee to investigate the matter. many in the field thought it was inevitable that is no real risk of transmission to the children. Making gene-edited babies goes against regu- someone would use genome-editing tools to “This experiment exposes healthy normal lations released by China’s health and science make changes to human embryos for implan- children to risks of gene editing for no real ministries in 2003, but it is not clear whether tation into women, and had been pushing for necessary benefit,” says Julian Savulescu, direc- there are penalties for those who break the rules. an international consensus on how genome tor of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical More than 100 Chinese biomedical research- editing to modify eggs, sperm or embryos Ethics at the University of Oxford, UK. ers posted a strongly worded statement should proceed. ■ PLANETARY SCIENCE ‘Marsquake’ hunter begins to probe planet’s innards Joint US-French-German mission will monitor seismic activity on Mars. BY ALEXANDRA WITZE (JPL) in Pasadena, California. On Monday, which needs a safe, geologically stable place to just before 11:53 a.m. local time, the space- do its work. arthlings are about to hear Mars’s heart- craft entered the Martian atmosphere at nearly The first photo that InSight sent from the beat. 20,000 kilometres per hour. surface of Mars showed a flat, relatively rock- On 26 November, NASA’s InSight As it neared Mars’s surface, the spacecraft free landscape stretching to the horizon, with Emission touched down near the Martian demonstrated a new way to communicate with the foreground speckled with dust from the equator and embarked on the first mission its controllers on Earth, 146 million kilometres landing. dedicated to listening for seismic energy away. Two ‘cubesats’, each the size of a briefcase, “It’s happy. The lander is not complain- rippling through the red planet. relayed information from InSight to Earth in ing,” said Rob Manning, chief engineer at JPL, Any ‘marsquakes’ InSight detects could yield close to real time. The experiment suggests that shortly after InSight touched down. clues about the planet’s mysterious interior, miniature satellites like these could allow faster including how it is separated into a core, man- communication with probes in deep space. LISTENING IN tle and crust. Whatever scientists learn about InSight landed at Elysium Planitia, a broad, Mission scientists will use the lander’s cam- Mars’s innards could help to illuminate how flat region just north of the Martian equator. It era to scout the ground for the smoothest and our own planet evolved billions of years ago. is one of the most boring places on the planet, most level area to deploy its French-built seis- InSight had been cruising through space says Bruce Banerdt, a planetary scientist at JPL mometer (see ‘Ear to the ground’). InSight’s since its launch in May, tracked by mission and the US$994-million mission’s principal robotic arm will pluck the instrument off its control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory investigator. That’s an advantage for InSight, back and place it on the ground, then put a 608 | NATURE | VOL 563 | 29 NOVEMBER 2018©2018 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. ©2018 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. IN FOCUS NEWS result of jostling by the wind or other sources. EAR TO THE GROUND On the third day after landing, project sci- NASA’s Mars InSight lander will gather data on seismic activity to help scientists better understand the red entists will switch on an instrument to track planet’s mysterious interior. changes in the magnetic field, which will help NASA/JPL-CALTECH The 1.8-metre robotic arm will Two solar panels will supply them to identify sources of noise that aren’t place a seismometer and heat power to the lander and its quakes, says Catherine Johnson, a geophysi- probe onto Mars’s surface. instruments. cist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. InSight won’t deploy its German-built heat- flow probe until January. Over the course of several weeks, the instrument will drill five metres into the Martian surface, deeper than The lander’s anything achieved before. Scientists will track seismometer will listen changes in temperature as small as a few hun- for tremors known as dredths of a degree. That will tell them how marsquakes. much heat is leaving Mars, and how many A heat probe will dig down 5 metres to measure heat-producing radioactive elements are temperature change over packed inside it. depth and time. InSight is meant to work for a little more than one Martian year, equivalent to almost two Earth years. It should measure 50–100 dome-shaped wind shield over it. The whole its sensitivity allows it to detect movement as marsquakes during that period, says Banerdt. process is expected to take several days. small as the width of an atom. The big chal- The longer it survives, the more it will be able The seismometer includes three ground- lenge will be determining which movements to detect — and the more researchers will be motion sensors nested inside a vacuum, and are caused by marsquakes and which are the able to deduce about Mars’s internal structure. ■ PUBLISHING The age of AI peer reviews Automated software can help review papers, but the decision-making stays with humans. BY DOUGLAS HEAVEN phrases in what they have actually written,” he concepts. He says that this kind of tool will be says, “instead of just taking what they’ve come useful beyond peer review, for tasks such as ost researchers have good reason up with five minutes before submission.” writing grant applications or literature reviews. to grumble about peer review: it is UNSILO identifies which of these key phrases Many platforms, including ScholarOne, time-consuming and error-prone, are most likely to be claims or findings, giving already have automatic plagiarism checkers. Mand the workload is unevenly spread, with editors an at-a-glance summary of the results.