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NEWS ... ... GLOBAL NEWS ... ELECTRIC FIELDS HELP TADPOLE Newswire of 27 February. his former graduate student Jesse TAILS TO REGENERATE The universities said they successfully Lawrence, now at the University of Newswire of 27 February. The universities said they successfully encoded "E = mc’ 1905!"—Einstein's theory of relativity and the year he enunciated it—onto the common soil bacterium, Bacillius subtilis. While the technology would most likely first be used to track medication, it could also be used to store text and images for many millennia, thwarting the longevity issues associated with today's disc and tape storage systems which only store data for up to 100 years in most cas The artificial DNA that carries the data to be preserved makes multiple copies of the DNA and inserts the original as well as identical copies into the bacterial genome sequence. The multiple copies work as back-up files to counteract natural degradation of the preserved data, according to the newswire. Bacteria have particularly compact DNA, which is passed down from generation to generation. The information stored in that DNA can also be passed on for long-term preservation of large data files, the scientists said. (Source: Computerworld, 27 February 2007, http://tinyurl.com/3cy9tz) his former graduate student Jesse Lawrence, now at the University of California, San Diego, will be detailed in a monograph to be published by the American Geophysical Union. The researchers estimate that up to 0.1 per cent of the rock sinking down into the Earth's mantle in that part of the world is water, which works out to about an Arctic Ocean's worth of water. Wysession has dubbed the new underground feature the "Beijing anomaly" because seismic wave attenuation was found to be highest beneath the Chinese capital city. (Source: LiveScience, 28 February 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2dva2e) Taereres can regenerate their tails thanks to a technique that alters the electrical properties of their cells, according to a new study. The build-up of electrical charge at the site of amputation helps guide tissue regeneration, suggest researchers Dr Michael Levin and colleagues at The Forsyth Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. They speculate that doctors might one day be able to regenerate tissue in patients—such as those who have suffered spinal cord injury—by altering the flow of positively charged molecules out of cells. Scientists have known for some time that applied electrical fields can influence tissue growth. But exactly how the body itself produces similar electrical fields to promote tissue regeneration remained a mystery. "The influence of electric fields on development has been noted for well over a century; however, the phenomenon has remained unexplored on a mechanistic level and is largely treated as voodoo science by mainstream developmental biologists," says Professor Cliff Tabin of the Harvard Medical School's Department of Genetics. "This study is extremely interesting in starting to bring the topic into the realm of modern biology." Dr Levin speculates that researchers might one day use gene therapy to help people regenerate lost fingers or heal injured spinal cords. He notes that humans do have some potential to re-grow lost tissue. We have the ability, for example, to regenerate fingertips until around the age of eight. (Source: New Scientist, 28 February 2007, http:/www.NewScientist.com; Development e-Press, 28 February 2007, doi: 10.1242/ dey.0281, http://dev.biologists.org/pap. shtml) SCIENTISTS PROBE MISSING OCEANIC CRUST rt Chris MacLeod, from Cardiff University, says the Earth's crust appears to be missing across an area of several thousand square kilometres. The hole in the crust is midway between the Cape Verde Islands and the Caribbean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Dr MacLeod said the hole in the Earth's crust is not unique, but is recognised as one of the most significant. He said it was an "open wound on the surface of the Earth", where the oceanic crust, usually 6-7 km thick, is simply not there. Dr MacLeod said the research could lead to a "new way of understanding" the process of plate tectonics. He will test theories he developed after visiting the area in 2001— including the possibility that the missing crust was caused by a HUGE "OCEAN" DISCOVERED INSIDE EARTH'S MANTLE cientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean. The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington State University in St Louis, Missouri, and LONG-TERM DATA STORAGE ON BACTERIAL DNA Jen scientists have developed a new technology that uses bacterial DNA as a medium for storing data in the long term, even for thousands of years. Keio University Institute for Advanced Biosciences and Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus announced the development of the technology, which creates artificial DNA that carries up to more than 100 bits of data within the genome sequence, according to the JCN 1o°7 2003 APRIL — MAY 2007 NEXUS 7 www.nexusmagazine.com