Frost Forms Mars Gullies of Albatrosses Searching for Studying Cheese Rinds Could Squid Over an Open Ocean

Selections from the RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS scientific literature

MICROBIOLOGY Heat extremes over land will probably become more A cheesy tool for frequent even if the global- the laboratory warming hiatus persists, the authors conclude.

Cheese rinds could help Geophys. Res. Lett. http://doi. ARIZONA NASA/JPL/UNIV. to reveal how microbial org/tr3 (2014) communities form and species interact. PALAEONTOLOGY Microbial communities affect ecosystems and human Foraging patterns health, but are difficult to study found in fossils in the lab. To find microbial systems that can be easily Researchers have discovered manipulated, Rachel Dutton the first fossil evidence of and her colleagues at Harvard a type of search behaviour University in Cambridge, displayed by some modern Massachusetts, studied rind animals when looking for food. samples from more than Animals that hunt sparse 100 types of cheese, including prey over large areas often Brie and Camembert. move in patterns known as They found that many Lévy walks — characterized of the bacterial and fungal by numerous small steps species that grow on ageing interspersed with rare long cheese are easily cultured. jumps to optimize foraging. The team used sequencing A team led by David Sims to identify key interactions at the Marine Biological between bacteria and fungi Association in Plymouth, and to track the development UK, discovered the pattern of the microbial community in 50-million-year-old on a cheese as it aged. PLANETARY SCIENCE fossilized tracks made by an Moreover, the researchers extinct sea urchin, Scolicia. Its could reconstruct many of movements resembled those these interactions in vitro. Frost forms Mars gullies of albatrosses searching for Studying cheese rinds could squid over an open ocean. provide insight into other Gullies on Mars were probably not created by liquid water The sea urchins may microbial communities, such but by the seasonal freezing and thawing of carbon dioxide, have evolved this foraging as those found on skin, the according to an analysis of high-resolution images. strategy after global resource authors say. Many scientists have argued that flowing water — a collapses made their Cell 158, 422–433 (2014) prerequisite for life — carved the gullies (pictured) that are food supplies sparse, the widespread across Mars. Colin Dundas of the US Geological researchers say. CLIMATE CHANGE Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, and his team studied 98 gully Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA sites in Mars’s northern hemisphere and 258 in the southern http://doi.org/trs (2014) Hotter summers half, using data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. despite hiatus Looking at the same areas each year, the researchers saw BIOTECHNOLOGY the gullies growing and changing shape at the same time as Rising greenhouse-gas levels carbon dioxide frost appeared and disappeared. Liquid water Gene edits boost have been making summers is not required in this process, the authors say. wheat defences in the Northern Hemisphere Icarus http://doi.org/trx (2014) hotter, even though global Researchers have used warming has been slowing in advanced gene-editing recent years. activity with those that do not. Northern Hemisphere since techniques to generate Youichi Kamae of the They found that a the late twentieth century. In disease-resistant wheat. National Institute for rise in greenhouse-gas the middle latitudes, however, Genetically altering Triticum Environmental Studies in concentrations in the about half of the increase aestivum wheat is difficult to Tsukuba, Japan, and his atmosphere has been the in hot summers can be do, in part because the plant colleagues compared the dominant cause of the attributed to natural climate has six sets of chromosomes results of climate models that increasing frequency of variability over the Pacific instead of the two sets found include the effects of human unusually hot summers in the and Atlantic oceans. in humans. So Caixia Gao and

Jin-Long Qiu of the Chinese species and that both birds Academy of Sciences in Beijing share an ancestor with the and their colleagues used dodo (Raphus cucullatus). Popular articles on social media two gene-editing approaches This ancestor was probably SOCIAL SELECTION — TALEN enzymes and the a semi-terrestrial bird that CRISPR–Cas9 system — to island-hopped from southeast Spotlight falls on top 1% in science disable a gene called MLO in Asia or India across the oceans, all of the plants’ chromosomes. eventually evolving into the An analysis led by John Ioannidis, a health-policy researcher at This made the plants resistant dodo and other pigeon species Stanford University, found that less than 1% of all researchers to fungal diseases called that live on remote islands. managed to publish every year from 1996 to 2011, but that powdery mildew. Knocking BMC Evol. Biol. 14, 136 (2014) those elite few were authors on more than 41% of all papers out all versions of the gene in the same period. Many noted the similarity between this yielded the greatest resistance. MICROBIOLOGY and claims that the top 1% of US earners hold an inordinate For the many crops that share of the country’s wealth. “Occupy!” tweeted Karen James, have multiple genome Injuries invite a geneticist at MDI Biological Laboratory in Maine, alluding copies, such techniques can ulcer microbe to the Occupy Wall Street movement that calls for economic lead to improvements that equality. Chris Cramer, a chemist at the University of Minnesota are not possible through A microbe that can lead to the in Minneapolis, tweeted that it was “an interesting example of conventional breeding, the formation of stomach ulcers the top 1% CONTRIBUTING 41% (instead of owning?).” authors suggest. and cancer quickly finds its PLoS ONE 9, e101698 (2014) Nature Biotechnol. http://dx.doi. way to tiny injuries in the org/10.1038/nbt.2969 (2014) stomach lining and colonizes them, slowing healing. Based on data from altmetric.com. NATURE.COM ZOOLOGY Marshall Montrose at the Altmetric is supported by Macmillan For more on University of Cincinnati AScienceltmetric and Education, which owns popular papers: Mystery bird is in Ohio and his colleagues Nature Publishing Group. go.nature.com/f1c2bn dodo relative exposed mice with stomach injuries to Helicobacter pylori A dead pigeon specimen that and found that the damaged radio telescope in Puerto has lain for years in a UK sites had larger colonies of the Rico. The Parkes telescope in museum has been confirmed microbe than healthy areas. New South Wales, Australia, by DNA analysis as a new Bacterial strains that had previously picked up species — and as a relative of had been engineered to be similar pulses — matching in

IVAN ALARCÓN-DURAN IVAN the dodo. immobile or to be insensitive brightness and duration — but Tim Heupink of Griffith to their environment were a lack of comparable findings University in Brisbane, less able to infect wounds from other instruments at Australia, and his colleagues than were normal strains. the time led astronomers to extracted and sequenced very Moreover, the authors found speculate that the signals were short DNA fragments from that the bacterium takes only a caused by instrument error the only remaining specimen few minutes to navigate from or by radio interference from University of Mexico in Sonora of the spotted green pigeon elsewhere in the stomach to human sources. discovered gomphothere (Caloenas maculata; artist’s damaged areas to slow repair. Possible origins of the bones (jawbone pictured)

BULL. LIVERPOOL impression pictured). After They suggest that even pulses include evaporating intermingled with stone spear being described in 1783, it microscopic injuries in the black holes, mergers of points from 13,400 years ago. ended up in a museum in stomach that occur through neutron stars or flares from These stone tools were made Liverpool, UK, but nothing eating and other normal magnetically active stars, say by some of the earliest people else was known about it. activities are vulnerable to the authors. to inhabit North America, BY JOSEPH SMIT/ BY Some researchers had infection. Astrophys. J. 790, 101–109 (2014) a group known as the Clovis claimed that the specimen PLoS Pathogens 10, e1004275 people. Archaeologists knew was merely a Nicobar pigeon (2014) ARCHAEOLOGY that Clovis hunters pursued 1898/NATL MUSEUMS LIVERPOOL 1898/NATL (Caloenas nicobarica), but mammoths and mastodons, the authors determined that ASTROPHYSICS Clovis people were but this discovery adds SPOTTED GREEN PIGEON SPOTTED MUSEUMS C. maculata is a separate hunters in Mexico gomphotheres to their diet. Radio burst from The finding simultaneously beyond the Galaxy Elephant-like animals extends the period during called gomphotheres which these animals were alive A telescope has detected a (Cuvieronius sp.), thought and makes the Mexican site one mysterious millisecond burst to have gone extinct long of the oldest and southernmost of radio waves that seems to before humans arrived in the Clovis sites known. be coming from outside the Americas, might have stuck Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA Milky Way. around long enough to be http://doi.org/tr4 (2014) Laura Spitler at the Max hunted by prehistoric people. Planck Institute for Radio At a site called El Fin del NATURE.COM Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, Mundo in Sonora, Mexico, a For the latest research published by and her colleagues found team led by Guadalupe Sanchez Nature visit: the burst using the Arecibo of the National Autonomous www.nature.com/latestresearch