Vol 437|1 September 2005 AUTHORS

Abstractions MAKING THE PAPER

FIRST AUTHOR Sally McBrearty and The paper on page 88 is a Nina Jablonski landmark for Ze ‘Ginger’ Cheng: she has never How a trip to Kenya put the modern before been a ‘first author’ chimpanzee on the map. in Nature. A computer Examining a fossilized molar in Nairobi last programmer and

October, Nina Jablonski was thinking just one SCI. ACAD. LIN/CALIF. D. (LEFT); HILL A. database administrator at the University thing: “This is no monkey.” It should have of Washington’s Department of Genome been. After all, Jablonski, an anthropologist at Sciences, Cheng spent most of the past year the California Academy of Sciences, was in the furiously writing computer code. The fruit of Kenyan capital to study a collection of monkey her labour is an analysis of DNA duplication differences between human and chimp. fossils unearthed at the Kapthurin Formation Sally McBrearty (left) and Nina Jablonski. Cheng was looking for duplications of in the East African Rift Valley. DNA that appear in both genomes, as well But the size and shape of the tooth were of the body and less likely to be crushed or as those that are unique to either species. wrong. “My first thought was, ‘Oh my gosh, this decay. “I’m hoping to go back and spend more She was also seeking duplications with a is a gibbon’,” Jablonski says. “Then I realized, time looking for the rest of this creature,” says different number of copies in humans and no, it was almost certainly a chimp.” Further McBrearty. chimps. Such duplications are thought to be searching among the monkey fossils turned up The discovery of the chimp teeth was a a force for evolutionary change in genomes a second anomaly; this time, an incisor. major surprise, Jablonski says. No fossils of and are sometimes related to human The collection had been amassed by Sally modern apes had ever been found in Africa — diseases. Naturecaught up with Cheng to McBrearty, an anthropologist at the University and to cap it all, the remains came from the find out more about her work. of Connecticut, and her team “I’m going back Rift Valley. Today, chimps are who were in Kenya looking for found only in western and central How massive was this project? stone tools and fossils. Jablonski’s to monkeys — but Africa; the Rift Valley was seen as It was big. I worked eight or nine hours a day on musings echoed McBrearty’s sus- I certainly won’t a geographical barrier to the this for a year. I helped analyse around 100 picions. “I believed it was an ape,” ignore any chimps species, preventing its spread far- gigabytes of data. For one table, I looked at 700 McBrearty recalls. The result was ther east. But the teeth, which are files. The project has been the dominant thing that cross my trail.” the paper co-authored by the pair — Nina Jablonski about 500,000 years old, put in my life for a year. It has beenmy life for a year. on page 105 of this issue. chimps in a part of the continent Jablonski compared the fossils with teeth of where they weren’t known to exist. And, more What sort of challenges did you face? modern chimps at the National Museums of importantly, they put the chimps side-by-side We had a very heated lab meeting about the critical thresholds to detect recent duplications Kenya. The molar, with its distinctive crown with a hominid. using data from two different species. features, was a perfect match. “I sent off a very Although she is aware of implications for excited e-mail to Sally,” Jablonski says. “She was evolution and anthropology, Jablonski sees Why was this a challenge for you? thrilled because she had suspected that the some irony in the discovery of the teeth. She My background is in cell biology and teeth did not belong to a monkey.” has been working on monkey fossils for 30 molecular biology. Genomics research is McBrearty immediately sent her team back years, and has made many finds that charac- very different. I had to read some papers to into the field. By March, the researchers had terize that group’s evolution, but few people learn the concepts and to get used to what found more chimp teeth, bringing the total to outside her speciality “gave a hoot or a holler” everybody was talking about. four, three of which are described in this issue. about such work. The chimp teeth attracted “This is the first unequivocal example of a much more attention because of the close evo- What did the other members of the group do? modern chimpanzee in the fossil record — no lutionary link between the apes and humans. Evan Eichler came up with all the analysis for question,” Jablonski says. Jablonski has now returned to her primary the paper and set out the way we should McBrearty’s team has yet to uncover any research interest. “I’m happily going back to approach the topic. Eray Tuzun performed other chimp remains. Teeth are often the only monkeys,” she says. “But I certainly won’t the analysis for duplication in the chimp fossils left, as they are harder than other parts ignore any chimps that cross my trail.” ■ genome assembly. Xinwei She did the gene- expression analysis of duplicate genes using data from our collaborator, Svante Pääbo. QUANTIFIED GERMANY Any critical points? A numerical perspective on Natureauthors. There was one day when I was very ill, but I 537submissions to Naturehave come had to finish what I was working on. I like my Several authors in Germany present research in Naturethis from Germany since 1 January 2005 job, but it involves pressures. If you don’t week. Andreas Richter and his team, working in Bremen and (total global submissions8,987) conquer those pressures, you don’t Hamburg, use satellite data to measure levels of nitrogen accomplish anything. dioxide in the lower atmosphere and report a worrying 269authors published in Natureso far increase in nitrogen oxide emissions over industrial areas of this year were working in Germany (total How did you deal with the stress? China (see page 129). number of published authors3,725) I jog to shed the pressure. When I get Thomas Blankenstein and Gerald Willimsky, at the Charité mentally exhausted, I want to be physically in Berlin, use mice to look at cancer immunology and show 22authors working in Germany have exhausted to relax. how sometimes certain types of tumour can evade an had more than one paper published in immune response (see page 141). Naturesince 1 January 2005. How do you feel about the paper now? And Svante Pääbo, based in Leipzig, is a member of the I was not very clear of the big picture at team reporting results of a genome-wide comparison of 8authors working in Germany are the beginning. But when I look back, it is DNA similarities between humans and chimpanzees presenting original research in Nature so beautiful. ■ (see page 88). this week.

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