One good cosmic measure Léo Girardi Science 345, 1001 (2014); DOI: 10.1126/science.1258425

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rabbits cluster into biologically functional categories. The categories showing the most significant enrichment of differentiated variants were related to nervous system development. Additionally, the differentiated variants preferentially occurred in genes that, when disrupted in mice, give rise to defects in the nervous system. These results suggest that selection during domestication may have affected genes relating to specific behaviors, perhaps those allowing the animals to better interact with humans. The study of Carneiro et al. adds to the growing literature suggesting the importance of polygenic adaptation as an evolutionary process (see the figure) (11, 12). In addition to there being many putatively selected variants, rabbits show other patterns often associated with the polygenic model. For example, at least some of the selection occurred on genetic variation that already existed in the population, rather than on new mutations. Second, many of the putatively selected variants are not carried by all of the domesticated rabbits. These findings do not rule out the occurrence of classic selective sweeps, in which the selected allele becomes fixed in the population. Indeed, Carneiro et al. also found evidence of such sweeps. Rather, the results suggest that both mechanisms are likely occurring. It is tempting to compare the genomic properties of selection during domestication in rabbits to that in other species, such as dogs, pigs, horses, and chickens. However, such a comparison is fraught with complications at the present time. The genomic studies in the different taxa use very different designs and statistical methods. A proper comparison of the key attributes of selection during domestication awaits systematic genome resequencing across the multiple taxa, combined with application of the same statistical methods to the data. Such comparative population genomic analyses promise to reveal general insights into the domestication process and how rapid evolution under strong selection operates across genomes. ■ REFERENCES

1. M. Carneiro et al., Science 345, 1074 (2014). 2. C.-J. Rubin et al., Nature 464, 587 (2010). 3. C.-J. Rubin et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, 19529 (2012). 4. B. M. vonHoldt et al., Nature 464, 898 (2010). 5. M. Carneiro et al., Mol. Biol. Evol. 28, 1801 (2011). 6. G. Larson et al., Science 307, 1618 (2005). 7. A. H. Freedman et al., PLOS Genet. 10, e1004016 (2014). 8. V. Warmuth et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, 8202 (2012). 9. P. C. Sabeti et al., Science 312, 1614 (2006). 10. R. Nielsen et al., Genome Res. 15, 1566 (2005). 11. J. K. Pritchard, J. K. Pickrell, G. Coop, Curr. Biol. 20, R208 (2010). 12. P. W. Messer, D. A. Petrov, Trends Ecol. Evol. 28, 659 (2013). 10.1126/science.1258775

Taking a measure. A view of the Taurus constellation, including two stellar clusters whose distances were provided by the Hipparcos satellite. The Pleiades (top right) and the Hyades (bottom center, slightly to the right of the bright red star Aldebaran). Only the Pleiades distance has been controversial, raising the possibility that hydrogen-burning stars in the Hyades and Pleiades could be intrinsically very different in their fundamental properties.

ASTRONOMY

One good cosmic measure Radio-wave interferometry provides an accurate measurement of cosmic distances By Léo Girardi

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s Earth orbits around the Sun, nearby stars are seen to move against the background of more distant stars and galaxies. The angular amplitude of this motion is called parallax and provides a direct, trigonometric measurement of the stellar distances as compared to the size of Earth’s orbit. A great achievement of the European Space Agency’s satellite Hipparcos (1) was the measurement of parallaxes of over 100,000 stars simultaneously, making it widely recognized as having provided accurate distances to thousands of normal stars and to a few star clusters. Since the first release of the Hipparcos results in 1997, however, it was noted that the distance obtained for the Pleiades star cluster was abnormal (see the figure). Its hydrogen-burning stars, when compared with stars of similar effective temperature in other well-measured clusters like the Hyades, appeared to be systematically too faint, were the Hipparcos-derived distances adopted. The effect implied either that the Hipparcos distances were too short or that Pleiades hydrogen-burning stars had some very peculiar property, such as an extremely high fraction of helium in their interiors (2). On page 1029 of this issue, Melis et al. (3) present new observations of stars in the Pleiades cluster, demonstrating that the Hipparcos-derived distances were indeed off

SCIENCE sciencemag.org

by 10%. Their radio-wave interferometry approach thus demonstrates a precise and accurate method to determine stellar distances. For the Pleiades cluster, Melis et al. point decisively to a distance of 136 parsecs, which is essentially the same distance expected by the stellar physicists under the assumption that hydrogen-burning stars share the same intrinsic properties, independently of the clusters where they are born. Melis et al. applied a completely independent technique, using very large baseline interferometry at radio wavelengths to measure the angles between five Pleiades stars and a background quasar. Even if skepticism about the Hipparcos distance to the Pleiades has somewhat prevailed among the stellar-modeling community, now it should be more widely apparent that the problem is not in understanding what weird stellar physics could be going on in the Pleiades hydrogen-burning stars. The problem is understanding what went wrong with the Hipparcos measurements. Hipparcos used a simple, if revolutionary, approach whereby the entire sky was continuously scanned over 3 years. Using two slits separated by 58°, there were multiple measurements for each star of its position with respect to those of widely separated stars; their best-fit positions, angular velocities, and parallaxes could be derived by performing a global optimization of the astrometric solution. However, a careful examination of 29 AUGUST 2014 • VOL 345 ISSUE 6200

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the Hipparcos raw data by van Leeuwen (4) led to identification and correction of many artifacts and systematics in the derivation of parallaxes, but, surprisingly, the apparently too-short distance to the Pleiades did not change. Even more surprisingly, evidence of two other clusters with “anomalous” hydrogen-burning stars was found. Hipparcos has contributed decisively to a more solid distance scale to normal and nearby stars, but it was still not enough to establish a solid scale for extragalactic studies; for instance, it did not provide accurate

“… understanding what went wrong between Hipparcos and the Pleiades will be crucial.” parallaxes to Cepheids, the stellar pulsators that constitute the basic tool to measure distances to galaxies up to several megaparsecs away. This was among the strong scientific cases made for the recently launched satellite Gaia (5). In Gaia, the concept of global astrometric solutions pioneered in Hipparcos will be brought to extreme limits, with a huge forward leap in terms of targeted accuracy and number of observed stars. The astronomy community holds great expectations for Gaia, if not for drawing a detailed map of our sector of the Milky Way galaxy, at least for providing robust distances to an appreciable number of Cepheids. But the case of the Pleiades indicates that, under circumstances we still do not understand, the method of global astrometric solutions to be used by Gaia might fail. In addition, it is as yet unclear whether similar errors could be randomly affecting field stars, far away in space from the Pleiades. It has been suspected that the failure is the manifestation of widespread spatially correlated errors in Hipparcos (6), but this suspicion has not been translated into a solid quantitative explanation or correction to the previously derived parallaxes (4). It is also striking that, considering the impressive effort being put in the simulation of the Gaia astrometry (7), no simulations seem to have predicted or explained the Hipparcos output for the Pleiades. It may well be that Gaia data itself will reveal the solution to the Hipparcos puzzle in a couple of years, either telling us clearly where these putative correlated errors are or Istituto Nazionale di Astrofsica (INAF), Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova I-35122, Italy. E-mail: leo. [email protected]

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favoring the solution that apparently accommodates all distance measurements: namely, that the Pleiades have an elongated spatial distribution, with the bright stars observed by Hipparcos being much closer than its faint stars (8). Indeed, the faint stars are those now being measured at larger distances and correspond to the hydrogen-burning stars that are usually compared to stars in the Hyades and other clusters. This kind of solution, however, sounds very unlikely and still requires some unidentified physics taking place in the brightest Pleiades stars. At the very least, we have to agree with Melis et al. that targeted observations using independent methods are necessary for a cross check of the parallaxes provided by the global astrometric solutions, which hardly give the average astronomer a chance for a detailed check of the methods and results. Unfortunately, high-resolution radio observations such as those used by Melis et al. represent a substantial observational effort, involving a network of 13 radio telescopes distributed around the globe and covering a time span of 1.5 years. Such efforts are too demanding to be considered as a systematic check of Gaia parallaxes. Moreover, they can only be applied to cool stars or to those rare compact stellar objects that emit in radio wavelengths. At optical wavelengths, hope of improving parallax measurements comes from a scanning technique being developed by the Space Telescope Science Institute team to measure distances to individual Cepheids (9), but its promise is limited by the constraints on the Hubble Space Telescope observing time. It is not even guaranteed that Hubble will keep working long enough for an appreciable number of parallaxes to be determined. Because systematic checks of Gaia distances will not be possible, understanding what went wrong between Hipparcos and the Pleiades will be crucial. Bringing closure to the issue would increase our confidence in the results of Gaia enormously and hopefully would prevent a new “Pleiades controversy” from happening a few years from now. ■ REFERENCES

1. The Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues (ESA Publications Division, 1997 Series, Noordwijk, Netherlands, ESA SP Series, vol. no.: 1200, 1997). 2. M. H. Pinsonneault et al., Astrophys. J. 504, 170 (1998). 3. C. Melis et al., Science 345, 1029 (2014). 4. F. van Leeuwen, Hipparcos, the New Reduction of the Raw Data, Astrophysics and Space Science Library, Vol. 350 (Springer, Berlin, 2007) 5. M. A. C. Perryman et al., Astron. Astrophys. 369, 339 (2001). 6. V. K. Narayanan, A. Gould, Astrophys. J. 523, 328 (1999). 7. L. Lindegren et al., Astron. Astrophys. 538, A78 (2012). 8. D. Stello, P. E. Nissen, Astron. Astrophys. 374, 105 (2001). 9. A. G. Riess, S. Casertano, J. Anderson, J. MacKenty, A. V. Filippenko, Astrophys. J. 785, 161 (2014).

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CELL BIOLOGY

Many modes of motility Cells use a piston-driven mechanism, among others, to migrate By Douglas W. DeSimone and A. Rick Horwitz

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irected cell migration in multicellular organisms is essential to fundamental processes including embryogenesis, defense from infection, and tissue repair and regeneration. It is also key in cancer progression as metastatic cells disseminate throughout the body. Much research has focused on cells migrating on two-dimensional (2D) extracellular matrices (ECMs) because such experimental systems are easily accessible and observable. However, recent studies of cell motility in 3D environments are challenging the ubiquity and generality of 2D-based models. On page 1062 of this issue, Petrie et al. (1) propose that in a constrained 3D space, a cell can use its nucleus as a piston to polarize internal pressure and create protrusions that facilitate movement. Studies of cell motility on 2D ECMs have produced a detailed outline of some basic migration mechanisms, including the formation of lamellipodia arising from actin nucleation and polymerization at the cell front, adhesion-mediated traction, actomyosin contractility, and integrated signals orchestrated by adhesion and Rho guanosine triphosphatases (2). Recent studies of migration in situ have revealed other potential migration modes, depending on the cell type and the physical environments through which the cells migrate (3–5). The mechanisms that drive and control these alternative modes can vary dramatically and appear to repurpose elements of a canonical migration machinery. To elucidate these new mechanisms, attention has turned to experimental conditions that more closely resemble the 3D environments encountered in vivo. From this, many cellular responses have emerged reflecting the ECM molecular composition, the density and orientation of fibrillar elements (e.g., collagen), and the bulk and local stiffness (6). For example, incorporating cells into engineered 3D ECMs or decellularized, cell-derived matrix can promote nonlamellipodial migration. Such modes include blebbing and the formation sciencemag.org SCIENCE

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Astronomy. One good cosmic measure.

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