Carnegie Science · the Saguaro cactus, a prickly giant so emblematic of cowboy movies. ... We...

CarnegieScienceThe Newsletter of the Carnegie Institution

S U M M E R 2 0 1 5

EMBRYOLOGY � GEOPHYSICAL LABORATORY � GLOBAL ECOLOGY � THE OBSERVATORIES �

PLANT BIOLOGY � TERRESTRIAL MAGNETISM � CASE: CARNEGIE ACADEMY FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

Deep into Deserts 2

Carnegie Launches 10 New Airborne Laboratory 10

Food-Delivery Process 10 Inside Seeds Revealed 13

On the Inside

CarnegieScience_Summer2015_Layout 1 6/24/15 7:44 AM

CarnegieScience

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

The Carnegie scientists who came to Tucson had a central goal of understanding how desert plants manage in seemingly impossibleconditions. Tucson provided an ideal environment because the Sono-ran Desert has stunningly rich biota in spite of its extreme heat anddesiccation. As documented in Patricia Craig’s centennial history ofCarnegie Plant Biology, an early Tucson scientist—William Cannon—wrote “even the most hardened liar among the natives will not defendthis summer climate.” About 30 centimeters (12 inches) of waterlands on Tucson in an average year, though a single storm last January delivered more than 13 centimeters (5 inches)…and dramaticfloods. The most familiar and dramatic plant of the Tucson desert isthe Saguaro cactus, a prickly giant so emblematic of cowboy movies.The cactus has the scientific name Carnegiea gigantea in honor ofnone other than our founder, Andrew Carnegie. Perhaps he wasviewed as prickly.

In 1903 the Carnegie Institution established

a Desert Laboratory to explore the proper-

ties of desert plants. From that humble

stone building in Tucson, Arizona, eventu-

ally emerged our spectacular Department

of Plant Biology on the Stanford University

campus and, by descent, our Department

of Global Ecology at the same site.

Deepinto

Deserts


Matthew Scott, President

Carnegie Science | Summer 2015 3

To cope with desert life, Tucson people have done an exceptional jobof responsible gardening, planting native plants that are perfectlyhappy in baking hot gravel. Carnegie’s present day plant and ecologylaboratories lie in what, at first glance, looks like a completely differ-ent environment. Lush gardens of Palo Alto incorporate many plantsthat are far from drought-tolerant, including moisture-loving red-woods. Yet the Stanford area receives scarcely more water than Tucson, about 35 centimeters (14 inches) each year. That blooming ofthe Bay Area desert, fed by a pipeline from Yosemite National Park,has been severely challenged by years of intense drought that affectmuch of the American West. The Sierra Nevada mountains have beendeprived of their normal snowpack for years, with the lowest level ofsnowpack on record this past spring. The snowpack serves as a waterstorage system, slowly releasing melt water during the summertimedrought. Similar water storage occurs in most mountain ranges of theworld and dwindling glaciers, even among the world’s highest peaks,are causing changes in what farmers can produce, and when.

Fieldwork by Carnegie scientists has beena constant source of discovery for under-standing how plants survive extreme heatand desiccation. In the 1960s Olle Björkman arrived atCarnegie from Sweden and, exploring a climate that could hardly havebeen more unlike his home, began work in Death Valley in 1968. Heand colleagues found a plant called Arizona honeysweet (Tidestromiasuffruticosa v. oblongifolia) that was beautifully adapted to heat. In apaper published in Science in 1972, he reported that Tidestromia per-formed photosynthesis best in 120°F heat conditions that kill mostplants. We still do not know how Tidestromia works its miracle. TheBjörkman group also showed that certain desert shrubs changed thecomposition of their membranes as the springtime temperature roseso that they would remain stable at Death Valley's summertime tem-perature extremes. Investigating plants that have such abilities mayreveal ways to transfer certain of those abilities to crop plants to in-crease their resilience.

The start of World War II reduced endowment income for Carnegie, a drought of another sort, and the Desert Laboratory in Tucson wasclosed. However seeds had spread and by 1929 Carnegie had estab-lished a Division of Plant Biology on the campus of Stanford Univer-sity. To this day, the original laboratory and office building remainsoccupied by the Department of Plant Biology. The original lease fromStanford required that Carnegie scientists shoot all the squirrels onthe property. This has not been enforced, and the property now has an ample population of squirrels, and jackrabbits.

Carnegie Plant Biology department scientists continue to be at theforefront of learning the molecular, cellular, and developmentalmechanisms that underlie the wonders of plant physiology, develop-ment, and evolution that shape our geologic, climatic, and humanworld. After years of the current drought in the American West, understanding the basis of plant resilience in arid conditions may extend growing seasons, allow survival of crops through short periods of highly extreme weather, and provide ideas about how to protect plants from drought vulnerability.

Most plants obtain water and other resources from a normally hiddennetwork that can extend deep underground: their roots. Carnegie’sJosé Dinneny (https://dpb.carnegiescience.edu/labs/dinneny-lab) investigates root growth, behavior, and sensing. How do roots findtheir way to water and nutrients? How do they respond to salinity ortoxins? He and his coworkers have made spectacular progress in developing new methods to watch living roots behave. They find thatroot branching and growth patterns respond to signals with exquisiteprecision, sensing even slight differences in moisture over distancesas small as 100 microns.

What happens below ground is half thestory.Water travels up through plants and is released through leaf pores called stomata. These have two “guard” cells that swell or shrink in response to conditions to open or close stomata. Howmuch water is retained or released by a desert plant will affect howmuch must be found in the first place. Thus stomata have elaboratesystems of opening and closing that allow CO2 to enter the plant forphotosynthesis while controlling water loss. Carnegie’s Kathy Bartonstudies the genes that control growth and patterning of plant stemcells, the cells that give rise to all the specialized cells of the plant including leaf structures like stomata. She and her colleagues haveidentified genes that control whether stem cells stay active duringdrought stress. Changing the threshold at which plant stem cellsenter a dormant state in response to dry conditions may allow plants to remain productive in periods of moderate drought.

The growth and patterning of plants, as well as their daily physiologi-cal and biochemical functioning states, are controlled by elaboratesignaling networks. Hormones are signals that can work locally orglobally to tell cells what to do. The molecular biology of responses to signals is a major area of study in multiple Carnegie labs, such asthose of Zhiyong Wang (https://dpb.carnegiescience.edu/labs/wang-lab) and Seung (Sue) Rhee (https://dpb.carnegiescience.edu/labs/rhee-lab). This work requires multidisciplinary approaches includ-ing genetics, biochemistry, and computational science. Knowing howto manipulate such control networks will be key to exploiting newunderstanding of how plants cope with stress including dehydration.Dinneny comments, “A future challenge is to broaden this under-standing, to place it in an ecological, evolutionary and physiologicalcontext to ultimately understand the adaptive mechanisms plantsuse to grow in a desert, be it the cactus of Arizona or the almond tree of the central valley.” We at Carnegie see every prospect for substantial advances in, first, understanding how plants can and docope with stress and, second, using that information to create moreresilient crop plants and improved agricultural methods.

Let’s drink (water) to that!


he trustees met at the administration buildingMay 7th and 8th. The Employee Affairs, Finance,and Nominating and Governance Committeesmet on the 7th, followed by a full board session.

The full board met again on the 8th. The trustees electedtwo new board members, Marshall Wais, president of thesteel company of Marwais International LLC, based inLuxembourg; and former Carnegie president, energy expert, and attorney, Richard Meserve. Both full sessionsof the board featured scientific talks by researchers fromeach of the departments.

T

Joe Berry of Global Ecologydescribed his team’s new approach for measuring photosynthetic activity on a global scale by using satel-lite technology. The newtechnique will improve the monitoring of agriculturalproductivity and can be applied to natural ecosystems.

Lara Wagner of TerrestrialMagnetism, talked about her team’s new approach to seismic imaging in Peru,Chile, and Colombia to un-derstand what is happeningto the water that is cycledinto the deep Earth.

Embryology’s Joe Gallhas been using the giantchromosomes in amphibianeggs for decades to studymyriad problems. He talkedabout using super-resolution microscopy for this work, a recent advancement that is two to three times betterthan the previous generationof instrumentation.

Martin Jonikas of Plant Biology takes the unusual approach of combining plantscience with his engineeringbackground to learn how to enhance photosyntheticorganisms to improve cropyields.

TRUSTEESMEET MAY 2015

New Techniques Push CarnegieScienceUnlike many researchenterprises, Carnegie researchers have a longtradition of building their own instrumentsand developing novel techniques to explorequestions that cannot beadvanced without tech-nical improvements. Although not every re-searcher is involved ininstrument develop-ment, technology is atthe heart of the discov-ery process. That themewas hit upon time andagain during the scien-tific talks at the May2015 trustees’ meetings,as the descriptions atright reveal.

Observatories’ Rebecca Bernstein discussed her 15-yearproject developing new toolsto study galaxy formation andevolution. She discussed thechallenge of studying thechemistry in galaxies otherthan our own Milky Way. Far-ther galaxies have been toofar for measurements until thedevelopment of tools like theMIKE spectrograph, an instru-ment project that she led.

Yingwei Fei of the Geophysical Laboratory,talked about how new instru-mentation has advanced hisarea of research—visualizingplanetary core formation inthe lab. A recently installed focused ion beam and high-resolution field emission scan-ning electron microscopycrossbeam, has helped makehuge strides in this area with3-D visualization.


MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, andRanging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercuryand the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun.The MESSENGER spacecraft was launched on August 3, 2004, and enteredorbit about Mercury on March 18, 2011 (UTC), to begin its primary mission–a yearlong study of its target planet. MESSENGER’s first extended missionbegan on March 18, 2012, and ended one year later. MESSENGER had asecond extended mission, which ended in April 2015. Sean C. Solomon, theDirector of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, led the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins University AppliedPhysics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft andmanages this Discovery-class mission for NASA.

after an artist, composer, or writer who was famous for more than50 years and has been dead for more than three years. TurloughO’Carolan (Carolan) was an Irish composer during the late 1600sand early 1700s. Enheduanna, an Akkadian princess who lived inthe Sumerian city of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia (today’s Iraqand Kuwait), is regarded by many scholars as possibly the earliestknown author and poet. Yousuf Karsh was an Armenian/Canadianand one of the greatest portrait photographers of the twentieth cen-tury. Umm Kulthum was an Egyptian singer, songwriter, and filmactress of the 1920s to the 1970s. Diego Rivera was a prominentMexican painter and muralist from the 1920s to the 1950s.

The winners come from many different countries. Carolan wassuggested by Fergal Donnelly (Belgium); Joseph Brusseau(USA); and Deane Morrison (USA). Enheduanna was submit-ted by Gagan Toor (India). Karsh was submitted by ElizabethFreeman Rosenzweig (USA). Kulthum was suggested by MoloukBa-Isa (Saudi Arabia); Riana Rakotoarimanana (Switzerland);Yehya Hassouna (USA); David Suttles (USA); Thorayya SaidGiovannelli (USA); and Matt Giovannelli (USA). Rivera wassuggested by Ricardo Martinez (Mexico); Rebecca Hare (USA);Arturo Gutierrez (Mexico); and José Martinez (USA).

Edmonds remarked, “The IAU working group that chose thenames was very happy with the submissions. In all we had 3,600contest entries, a resounding success for the excitement thatthe MESSENGER mission to Mercury has generated.” �

he little engine that could makes history! The tinyMESSENGER Mission to Mercury spacecraft waslaunched on August 3, 2004, and entered orbitabout the innermost planet on March 18, 2011, fora yearlong study of the planet. MESSENGERended its mission April 30, 2015, over three yearslonger than planned and far surpassing goals.

The plan was to take 2,500 images of the planet, but the littleworkhorse returned more than 250,000.

Carnegie’s Larry Nittler is the mission’s deputy principal in-vestigator, while former director of Terrestrial Magnetism SeanSolomon has been leading the project as principal investigatorfor about two decades.

The MESSENGER Education and Public Outreach (EPO)Team, coordinated through Carnegie and led by Julie Edmonds,organized a crater-naming competition to celebrate the mission’sachievements. The results were announced to coincide with thecraft’s impact into the planet, ending the mission.

The competition to name five impact craters on Mercury wasannounced in 2014. The International Astronomical Union(IAU)—the governing body of planetary and satellite nomen-clature since 1919—made the selections from a semifinal submission of 17 artists’ names. The newly selected crater namesare Carolan, Enheduanna, Karsh, Kulthum, and Rivera.

Under IAU rules, all new craters on Mercury must be named

T

YOUSUFKARSH

Renowned 20thcentury Armenian-Canadian portraitphotographer

UMMKULTHUMEgyptian singer,songwriter, andactress from the 20th century

DIEGORIVERA

Prominent Mexicanpainter and

muralist of the 20th century

ENHEDUANNAInfluential authorand poet from

ancient Mesopotamia

TURLOUGHCAROLAN

Inspirational Irishmusician andcomposer in the 17th century

MESSENGER COMPETITION RESULTS: 5 New Crater Names on Mercury!

BYE-BYE MESSENGER:

Mercury Crater-Naming Contest

Celebrates Finale

5


he 2000-2003 droughtin the AmericanSouthwest triggered awidespread die-off offorests around the re-

gion. It affected about 17 per-cent of aspen forests in Col-orado, as well as parts of thewestern United States andCanada. A Carnegie-led team ofscientists developed a new mod-eling tool to explain how andwhere trembling aspen forestsdied as a result of this drought.To make an accurate model, theteam focused on the physiologyof how drought kills trees, basedon damage to an individualtree’s ability to transport waterunder these stressed conditions.

The team included Carnegie’sWilliam Anderegg (now atPrinceton University), Joseph

Berry, and Christopher Field.Their work addressed a long-standing disagreement over howclimate change caused by theemission of greenhouse gaseswill affect forest ecosystems. Onone hand, rising concentrationsof carbon dioxide can benefittrees and help them use watermore efficiently. On the otherhand, rising temperatures andresulting droughts from climatechange can cause many foresttrees to die off. Most currentmodels cannot predict when orwhere forests might die fromtemperature and drought stress.The new model fills this gap byaccurately simulating the wide-spread aspen mortality causedby the 2000-2003 drought. Itpredicts widespread die-offscould occur by the 2050s.

They found that droughtscause damage to the vascularsystem that transports waterthroughout a tree. The thresholdfor a lethal amount of vasculardamage was not previouslyknown in any tree species. Butusing data from forests in south-west Colorado, they were able toidentify a threshold over whichdrought conditions start to de-grade an aspen’s water-trans-porting vascular system. Theyincorporated this informationinto a model designed to predictdrought-induced forest mortal-ity. They tested the modelagainst regional forest mortalityobservations from scientific for-est plots, aerial surveys done bythe U.S. Forest Service, andsatellite measurements.

When this model was then

An NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, theNOAA Climate and Global Change PostdoctoralFellowship program, the Department of Energy Office ofScience Graduate Fellowship Program, the Ministry ofScience and Technology of Taiwan, National TaiwanUniversity, the NSF MacroSystems Biology Program, andthe Carnegie Institution for Science funded this work.

applied to the future, they foundthat in a world of continuinghigh greenhouse gas emissions,the threshold for widespreaddrought-induced vascular dam-age would be crossed and initi-ate widespread tree deaths onaverage across climate modelprojections in the 2050s. Cru-cially, lower greenhouse gasemissions scenarios did not always lead to widespread treemortality. �–––Nature Geoscience publishedthe work in March.

ARE ASPENSDRYING UP?

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6

Trembling aspens are atrisk of significant die-offsfrom an on-going drought.


A team of Carnegie scientists found “beautifully pre-served” 15 million-year-old thin protein sheets in fossilshells from southern Maryland. They say these are someof the oldest and best-preserved examples of a proteinever observed in a fossil shell.

The team—John Nance, John Armstrong, George Cody,Marilyn Fogel, and Robert Hazen—collected samples fromCalvert Cliffs, along the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay, apopular fossil collecting area. They found fossilized shells of a snail-like mollusk called Ecphora that lived in the mid-Miocene era, between 8 and 18 million years ago.

Ecphora is known for its unusual reddish-brown shellcolor, making it one of the most distinctive North Ameri-can mollusks of its era. This coloration is preserved in

fossilized remains, unlike the fossilized shells of many other fossilized mollusks fromthe Calvert Cliffs region, which have turned chalky white over the millions of yearssince they housed living creatures.Shells are made from crystalline compounds of calcium carbonate interleaved with an

organic matrix of proteins and sugars. These proteins are called shell-binding proteins byscientists because they help hold the components of the shell together. They also containpigments, such as those responsible for the reddish-brown appearance of the Ecphorashell. These pigments can bind to proteins to form a pigment-protein complex.The fact that the coloration of fossilized Ecphora shells is so well preserved suggested

to the research team that shell proteins bound to these pigments in a complex mightalso be preserved. They were amazed to find that the shells, once dissolved in diluteacid, released intact thin sheets of shell proteins more than a centimeter across. Chemi-cal analysis including spectroscopy and electron microscopy of these sheets revealedthat they are indeed shell proteins that were preserved for up to 15 million years. Remarkably, the proteins share characteristics with modern mollusk shell proteins.

They both produce thin, flexible sheets of residue that’s the same color as the originalshell after being dissolved in acid. Of the 11 amino acids found in the resulting residue,aspartate and glutamate are prominent, which is typical of modern shell proteins. Fur-ther study of these proteins could be used for genetic analysis to trace the evolution ofmollusks through the ages, as well as potentially to learn about the ecology of theChesapeake Bay during the era in which Ecphora thrived. �–––The inaugural issue of Geochemical Perspectives Letters published their findings.

This composite picture has aphoto of an Ecphora shell (top),a magnified cross-section of theshell showing the colored outerlayers (bottom), and a vial withfloating protein sheets—15million-year-old intact organics!Image provided courtesy John Nance

This photograph of the Calvert Cliffs,along the shoreline of the ChesapeakeBay in Maryland, is where the sampleswere collected. Bob Hazen is shownlooking for fossils.

15MOLLUSK PROTEINMILLION-YEAR-OLDFound:

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uasars—supermassive blackholes found at the center of dis-tant massive galaxies—are themost-luminous beacons in thesky. These central supermassiveblack holes actively accrete thesurrounding materials and re-lease a huge amount of theirgravitational energy. An interna-

tional team of astronomers includingCarnegie’s Yuri Beletsky has discovered thebrightest quasar ever found in the early uni-verse, powered by the most massive blackhole observed for an object from that time.

The quasar was found at a redshift of z = 6.30. Redshift is a measurement of howmuch the wavelength of light emitted fromit that reaches us on Earth is stretched bythe expansion of the universe. As such, red-

shift can be used to calculate the quasar’sage and distance from our planet. A higherredshift means longer distance and hencefarther back in time.

At a distance of 12.8 billion light yearsfrom Earth, this quasar was formed only

900 million years after the Big Bang. NamedSDSS J0100+2802, this quasar will help sci-entists understand how quasars evolved inthe earliest days of the universe. There areonly 40 known quasars that have a redshiftof higher than 6, a point that marks the be-ginning of the early universe.

With a luminosity of 420 trillion that ofour own Sun’s, this new quasar is seven timesbrighter than the most distant quasar known(which is 13 billion years away). It harbors ablack hole with a mass of 12 billion solarmasses, proving it to be the most luminousquasar with the most massive black holeamong all the known high-redshift quasars.

The quasar is a unique laboratory to studythe way that a quasar’s black hole and hostgalaxy co-evolve. The team’s findings indi-cate that in the early universe, quasar blackholes probably grew faster than their hostgalaxies, although more research is needed to confirm this idea. �–––Nature published their work in February.

The National Natural Science Foundation of China, the StrategicPriority Research Program “The Emergence of CosmologicalStructures” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National KeyBasic Research Program of China, and the NSF funded this work.

The above image is an artist’srendering of a very distant, very ancient quasar.Image courtesy M. Kornmesser, European Southern Observatory

QThis new quasar is seven times brighter than the most distant quasar known.

SUPER-BRIGHT

QUASAR

Yuri Beletsky

8


A plant’s rootsgrow and spreadinto the soil, takingup necessary water and min-erals. The tip of a plant’s rootis a place of active cell divi-sion, followed by cell elonga-tion as the roots expand intonew depths of the soil.Achieving an optimal rootgrowth rate is critical forplant survival under droughtconditions, as well as for maximizing resource allocation to the impor-tant plant parts such as the fruits and seeds. This is why root-expansionmechanisms are of great interest to scientists and to those interested inimproving agricultural yields, such as by increasing the efficiency of water uptake, which could help during a drought. On a cellular level, as the tips of a plant’s roots expand downward,

they must coordinate two different, but related, balancing acts. Thefirst is between proliferation and strategic inactivation of the stemcells that make up the root’s tip; strategic inactivation, called quies-cence, helps maintain the stem cell niche under stress conditions. The second is between continued stem cell proliferation and the differentiation of these stem cells into elongated, mature cells. Newwork from Carnegie’s Juthamas Chaiwanon and Zhiyong Wang reports the mechanisms that control the balance between these aspects, which together determine the rate of root growth.

One of the major driving factors of root tip growth is the class ofsteroid hormones called brassinosteroids. These hormones are foundthroughout the plant kingdom and regulate many aspects of growthand development, as well as resistance from external stresses. In manyparts of a plant’s physiology, brassinosteroids function cooperativelywith another plant hormone called auxin. The two hormones coordi-nate several developmental processes, including the differentiation of a plant’s water-transporting vascular system, the elongation of agerminating seeding, and many shoot organs. Chaiwanon and Wangfound that the brassinosteroids act on a concentration gradient toregulate root growth patterns. Surprisingly, Chaiwanon and Wang’s results show that in root tip

growth brassinosteroids and auxin work antagonistically, as opposedto their usual synergy. The two hormones were distributed in oppo-site concentration gradients and had opposite effects on root cellelongation. The balance between their actions regulated a root’sgrowth rate. The team identified over two thousand genes that areregulated by both brassinosteroid and auxin, and about 70 percent of these co-regulated genes responded to brassinosteroids and auxinin opposite directions demonstrating their antagonistic relationship in roots. �–––Current Biology published the work in April.

Hormones Root Growth

The National Institutes ofHealth supported this study.

This image shows roots of an eastern gamagrass plant.Image courtesy Keith Weller, Agricultural Research Magazine, courtesy USDA Agricultural Research Service

The balances between stem cell quiescence, cell division, and cell elongation are crucial for thecontinuous growth of plant roots. These balances are maintained by two opposite gradients of antagonistic hormones, auxin and brassinosteroid. Image courtesy Zhiyong Wang

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Zhiyong Wang

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Carnegie Launches

NewAirborneLaboratory

Carnegie launched the Carnegie Airborne

Observatory-3 (CAO-3) on May 1, 2015, at

an event at the Hiller Aviation Museum in

San Carlos, California. The new observatory

is the most scientifically advanced aircraft-

based mapping and data analytics system in

civil aviation today. “The future of ecosys-

tem research takes off,” remarked principal

investigator Greg Asner of Carnegie’s

Department of Global Ecology.

Above: The newly upgraded Carnegie Airborne Observatory-3was on display at the May 1, 2015, launch event.

Below: Principal investigator Greg Asner addressesthe crowd at the Carnegie Airborne Observatory-3(CAO-3) launch event at the Hiller museum. Images courtesy Robin Kempster

Guests study the carbonmap of Panama producedfrom data obtained by anearlier version of the CAO. Image courtesy Robin Kempster

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he third generation aircraft hasbeen completely overhauledfrom previous models, boastinga multitude of cutting-edge im-

provements to its onboard laboratory. Until2014, the CAO was leased. Now, CAO-3 isowned and operated by Carnegie to increasethe flexibility over operational decisions. Thenew laboratory is now 40% lighter, and fea-tures a radically updated sensor packagewith expanded computing, data collection,and image processing capabilities. Additionalimprovements include advancements to itssatellite and ground communications andupgrades to the engine and avionics. Theplane also features a state-of-the-art “guestinvestigator” port, allowing new technologiesto be flown in concert with the current CAOimaging spectrometer and dual-laser scan-ning system.For Asner, these enhancements are

nothing less than game changing. “Im-provements to the new plane and instru-mentation mean that more flights can bemade and more scientists can take advan-tage of them.” The new plane, with its newlook, will be able to fly farther than everbefore and operate over higher-altitude regions. It will reach twice the number ofecosystems a day, in regions never accesseduntil now. CAO’s ability to gather globaldata is expected to make a huge impact on climate change research. Additionally,the data gathered from these flights willexpand on other research topics includinganimal habitats, carbon stock quantifica-tion, rain forest biodiversity, and land-usechanges and degradation. These future expectations for the CAO

are firmly rooted in its past achievements.Previous generations made remarkablecontributions to conservation, sustainableresource use, and environmental policyaround the world. It facilitated pioneeringresearch of tropical forest health, and evenexceeded its original mission by detectingillegal gold mining in the Amazon, captur-ing surprising lion behavior in African savannas, and uncovering archeologicalsites in Hawaii.“We have an exciting wish list of new

projects including the world’s first 3-D animal mapping and new photosynthesismaps across huge areas using a new Solar-Induced Fluorescence (SIF) imaging sensor at the guest port,” said Asner.

Asner’s team also plans to map highly diverse forests throughout the world, in-cluding the mountains of the EcuadoreanAndes and the “Heart of Borneo” inMalaysia-Indonesia. By monitoring the vertical tree line movement for montaneforests, the team hopes to answer long-standing questions about how climatechange-driven fluctuations in temperatureand precipitation will impact forest growthpatterns. This critically important issue cannow be addressed with this retrofit.Lastly, CAO data produces stunning,

full-color, 3-D imagery, provided free tothousands of organizations in science, art,education—even music and fashion. Thepossibilities are endless. �

Viewing the PastThis high-resolution LiDAR imageshows the surface terrain along theTambopata River in the PeruvianAmazon. The ancient meanders andoxbows are shown in blue, extendingout from the current location of theriver in black as it flows between thehigher terrace regions in pink.Images courtesy Greg Asner

Animal BehaviorMale lions are not as dependent onfemales for hunting as thought. The3-D CAO vegetation mapping wascombined with GPS data on lionhunting behavior (white lines). Theteam found that male lions tend tohunt in dense areas, while femalestend to hunt in more open savannas.

TCarnegie Science | Summer 2015 11

Current, core CAO Sponsors are Avatar Alliance Foundation,John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The AndrewMellon Foundation, Mary Anne Nyburg Baker and G. LeonardBaker Jr., and William R. Hearst III.


This new model of theMoon’s core agrees withmineral physics data andlunar seismic observations.Image courtesy Yingwei Fei

The French National Research Agency, NASA, and theProgramme National de Planétologie program of CentreNational d’Études Spatiales—Institut National desSciences de l’Univers supported this work.

he cores of terrestrial planets and satellite bod-ies, including our own Moon, all contain largequantities of iron. As a result, understanding thephysical properties of iron at high temperatures,and under extreme pressures, is crucial to study-ing planetary interiors and interpreting the ob-

served seismic data. The Moon is the only other terrestrial bodybesides Earth on which multiple seismic observations have beenmade—during the Apollo missions. Work from a team includingCarnegie’s Yingwei Fei provided new measurements of iron atlunar core conditions that help us to build a direct composi-tional and velocity model of the Moon’s core in conjunctionwith limited lunar seismic data.

The terrestrial planets all share a similar layered nature: a central metallic core composed mostlyof iron, a silicate mantle, and then athin, chemically differentiated crust.However differences in planetarymasses mean that each planet will have different pressure and tempera-ture conditions in their cores.

In the Earth’s core, iron is stablewith a closely packed hexagon struc-ture called hcp iron (for hexagonalclose-packed) under extreme pressure.As a result, most studies have focusedon physical properties of hcp iron.However, the stable iron in the coresof smaller planets and satellites, such

as Mars, Mercury, and the Moon, has a cubic structure calledface-centered cubic, or fcc, instead of the hexagonal form foundin Earth’s core. Lack of accurate sound velocity data for fcc ironprevents a reliable compositional and velocity model of theMoon’s core.

The team took measurements of the sound velocity throughfcc iron under high pressures and temperatures, as well as of itsdensity. Their measurements ranged from no atmospheric pressure to about 188,000 times normal atmospheric pressure (0 to 19 gigapascals) and temperatures ranging from 80 to about1600°F (300 to 1150 K). The data can be directly used to modelthe velocity and density profile of the Moon’s core and to com-pare with lunar seismic observations.

The new velocity model of the Moon’s core shows significantlyhigher compressional and shear soundvelocities than previous estimates for thesolid inner core. The team’s results alsoprovide estimates of the inner core andouter core sizes that are consistent withthe observed seismic travel times fromthe Apollo missions. �–––Proceedings of the National Academy ofSciences published the research in March.

Improving Models ofTHE MOON’S CORE

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Yingwei Fei


Inside every seed is the embryo of a plant, along with—in mostcases—food to power the initial growth of the young seedling. A seed consists mainlyof carbohydrates, which have to be transported from the leaf to the seed’s outer coatfrom the parent plant and then accessed by the embryo. If not enough food is deliv-ered then the seeds won’t have the energy to grow at germination. But very little is understood about this delivery process.New work from a team led by Carnegie’s Wolf Frommer identifies biochemical

pathways necessary for stocking the seed’s food supplies. These findings could be tar-geted when engineering crops for higher yields. The research identifies three membersof the SWEET family of sugar-transport proteins that are used to deliver the sugarsproduced in the plant’s leaves to the embryonic plant inside a seed.Frommer’s lab has done extensive work on SWEET proteins, which have an array of

functions in plants, including nectar secretion. SWEET transporters are also vulnera-ble to takeover by pathogens that hijack the plant’s food and energy supplies.The research team—including Carnegie’s Li-Qing Chen, Winnie Lin, Xiao-Qing Qu,

Davide Sosso, and Alejandra Loñdono—found that SWEETs 11, 12, and 15 use multi-ple pathways to funnel sucrose toward the developing plant embryos. Specially createdmutants that eliminate these three SWEET transporters show wrinkled seeds similar tothose Gregor Mendel used to track down the basic rules of genetics. Embryonic devel-opment is clearly retarded in these mutants because they are unable to move sugarsfrom the seed’s coat to the embryo inside. �–––The Plant Cell published the work in March.

Food-Delivery Process Inside Carnegie Science | Summer 2015 13

The Department of Energy and the CarnegieInstitution of Canada funded this work.

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COL SWEET11;12;15

Revealed

This is a seedling of the model plantArabidopsis, a cousin of mustard.

Wolf Frommer

This figure is a comparison of normal seedsand seeds lacking SWEETS 11, 12, and 15,which are wrinkled (similar to those GregorMendel used to track down the basic rules ofgenetics). Embryonic development is clearlyretarded in these mutants because they areunable to move sugars from the seed’s coatto the embryo inside.Image courtesy Wolf Frommer


Carnegie-based searchof nearby galaxies fortheir oldest stars hasuncovered two stars inthe Sculptor dwarfgalaxy that were bornshortly after the galaxy

formed, approximately 13 billion years ago.The unusual chemical content of the starsmay have originated in a single supernovaexplosion from the first generation of Sculp-tor stars.

The Sculptor dwarf is a small galaxy thatorbits around our own Milky Way. BecauseSculptor’s stars are all located the same dis-tance away from us, their ages can be deter-mined by studying the pattern of their col-ors and their brightness. This technique tells

astronomers that Sculptor, like many dwarfgalaxies, stopped evolving long ago. Whilethe Milky Way has been forming starsthroughout the universe’s 14-billion-yearexistence, Sculptor’s youngest stars are 7billion years old. Dwarf galaxies thus pro-vide scientists an opportunity to see whatgalaxies looked like in the early epochs ofthe universe.

In all galaxies, stars are born out of col-lapsing clouds of dust and gas. Only a fewmillion years after they begin burning, themost massive of these stars explode in ti-tanic blasts called supernovae. These explo-sions seed the surrounding gas with the ele-ments that were manufactured by the starsduring their lifetimes. Those elements arethen incorporated into the formation of the

next generation of stars. Generally thisprocess is cyclical, with each generation ofstars contributing more elements to the rawmaterial from which the next set of stars willbe formed.

Astronomers hoping to learn about thefirst stages of galaxy formation after the BigBang can use the chemical composition ofstars to help them unravel the histories ofour own and nearby galaxies. Elementsheavier than hydrogen, helium, and lithiumcan only be produced by stars. The morestars a galaxy forms, the more enriched inheavy elements it becomes.

The team—which included Carnegie’sJosh Simon, Ian Thompson, and StephenShectman, as well as former Carnegie post-doc Josh Adams—studied five stars in Sculp-tor, measuring the abundance of 15 elementsin each one. The two most primitive starshave less than half as much magnesium andcalcium as would be expected and just 10percent as much silicon as similar stars inother galaxies. The only way to explain theshortage of magnesium, calcium, and siliconin these stars is if their heavy elements weremade by fewer than four supernovae.

The astronomers concluded that thesetwo primitive stars were probably formedfrom a gas cloud that had been seededwith heavy elements made by just one pre-viously exploded star. This parent star isthought to be one of the very first starsever formed in Sculptor. �–––The Astrophysical Journal published thefindings in March.

Carnegie Science | Summer 201514

The Sculptor dwarf galaxy, as composed from data from the Digitized Sky Survey 2.Image courtesy ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2

A First-GenerationSupernova?

A Josh Simon

The National Science Foundation supported this work in part.Researchers made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographicservices and data gathered by the 6.5-meter Magellan telescopes atCarnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert.


Research from Carnegie’s Rebecca R. Hernandez (now at UC-Berkeley), Madison K.Hoffacker, and ChristopherField found that the amount of energy that could be gener-ated from solar equipment con-structed on and around existinginfrastructure in Californiawould exceed the state’s demand by up to five times.Just over eight percent of all

of the terrestrial surfaces in California have been developedby humans—from cities andbuildings to park spaces. Resi-dential and commercial rooftopspresent plenty of opportunityfor power generation throughsmall- and utility-scale solar

power installations. Other compatible opportunities areavailable in open urban spaces,such as parks.Likewise, there is opportu-

nity for additional solar con-struction in undeveloped sitesthat are not ecologically sensi-tive or federally protected, such as degraded lands.The study included two

kinds of solar technologies:photovoltaics, which use semi-conductors and are similar tothe solar panels found in con-sumer electronics, and concen-trating solar power, which usesenormous curved mirrors tofocus the Sun’s rays. A mix ofboth options would be possi-ble, as best suits each particulararea of installation, whether itis on a rooftop, in a park, ondegraded lands, or anywhereelse deemed compatible or potentially compatible.Overall they found that

California has about 6.7 millionacres (27, 286 square kilome-ters) of land that is compatiblefor photovoltaic solar construc-tion and about 1.6 million acres(6,274 square kilometers) com-patible for concentrating solarpower. There is also an addi-tional 13.8 million acres

SOLARCould Meet California

Energy Demand Five Times Over

The McGee Research Grant of the Stanford’sSchool of Earth Sciences, the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy, the Jean LangenheimResearch Fellowship of Graduate Women inScience Society, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’sWilliam Randolph Hearst Endowed ScholarshipFund, and the Vice Provost Office of GraduateEducation’s Diversifying Academia RecruitingExcellence Program supported this work.

Rebecca R. Hernandez wasa postdoctoral researcherat Global Ecology and isnow at UC-Berkeley.Image courtesy Rebecca R. Hernandez

(55,733 square kilometers) thatis potentially compatible forphotovoltaic solar energy devel-opment with minimal environ-mental impact and 6.7 millionacres (27,215 square kilometers)also potentially compatible forconcentrating solar power development.The team found that small-

and utility-scale solar powercould generate up to 15,000 terawatt-hours of energy peryear using photovoltaic technol-ogy and 6,000 terawatt-hours ofenergy per year using concen-trating solar power technology.Their work shows it is possi-

ble to substantially increase thefraction of California’s energyneeds met by solar without converting natural habitat andcausing adverse environmentalimpact and without moving solar installations to locationsremote from the consumers. �–––Nature Climate Change pub-lished their findings in March.

In the face of global climate change, increasing the use of re-newable energy resources is one of the most urgent challengesfacing the world. Further development of one resource, solarenergy, is complicated by the need to find space for solarpower-generating equipment without significantly alteringthe surrounding environment.

This image shows the PuertollanoPhotovoltaic Park in Puertollano,Spain, a 47.6 MW installation in theMediterranean biodiversity hot spot.Image courtesy Rebecca R. Hernandez

Carnegie Science | Summer 2015 15


Joseph A. Berry, staff scientist atCarnegie’s Department of GlobalEcology, was elected to the NationalAcademy of Sciences (NAS), one of84 new members and 21 foreign asso-ciates. Election to the NAS is one ofthe highest honors given to scientists.

Berry has been a staff scientist at Carnegie since 1972. Overthe years he has pioneered laboratory and field techniquesfor understanding the exchange of carbon dioxide and waterbetween plants and the atmosphere. His models and meth-ods are widely used for understanding local, regional, andglobal matter and energy fluxes, with important applicationsto crop yields, water resources, and climate change. “Joe Berry has been a driving force in establishing the

field of global ecology,” remarked Chris Field, founding director of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology. “Hiswork has been foundational for the field. Joe has made ma-jor, fundamental discoveries in biochemistry, plant biology,global ecology, and climate science.” Berry’s seminal papers include studies on modeling pho-

tosynthesis and water loss and a method for inferring water-use efficiency based on the composition of a leaf. Recently,most of his work has been at the global scale, where he isdeveloping techniques for measuring photosynthesis inforests using satellite data.“Joe’s science links so many fields, and in each of them

he has innovated. He is a quintessential Carnegie scientist,original and inspiring. I’ve tremendously enjoyed learningfrom him. He also played a key role in the founding of ourDepartment of Global Ecology a little over a decade ago,” remarked Carnegie president Matthew Scott. “The accom-plishments of Joe and others in that department have had a very substantial impact.”Berry received his B.S. in Chemistry from UC-Davis

in 1963 and his masters in soil science from UC-Davis in 1966. He earned a Ph.D. in botany from the University of British Columbia in 1970.

Eric Rod of the Geophysical Laboratory and Oscar Duhalde of the Observatories are the 2014 recipients of Carnegie’s Service to ScienceAward. The award recognizes outstanding and/or unique contributions to science by employees who work in administration, support, and tech-nical positions at Carnegie. They received their honors at this year’sCarnegie Evening on May 6.

2014 Service to Science Awarded toEric Rod and Oscar Duhalde

Eric Rod could not attend theevent as he was in the final stages ofclasses for his engineering degree. He is the only technician at the HighPressure Collaborative Access Team(HPCAT), a facility for Carnegie’shigh-pressure research located at theAdvanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory. HPCAToperates four simultaneously opera-tional beamlines consisting of nine x-ray optics and experimental stations.

Eric is responsible for installing allmajor equipment, monitoring protec-tion equipment systems, and makingadaptive parts for every individual experiment. Over 500 users each yearcome from all over the globe to use thefacility. Eric works closely with eachscientist to meet their needs in devel-oping tailor-made adaptive parts.Eric quickly and expertly constructs

conceptual designs in 3-D with variousoptions.

Oscar Duhalde has been amember of the Observatory’s technicalstaff in Chile since 1980 when he firstassisted visiting astronomers as a skilledtelescope operator for the 1-meterSwope telescope. He later became a me-chanical specialist, playing key roles incommissioning new instruments andupgrades for the Swope and the 2.5-meter du Pont telescopes.When a telescope or instrument re-

quires mechanical repairs or modifica-

tions, Oscar quickly carries out thework as precisely and efficiently as pos-sible. Instrument builders in Pasadenaoften request his skills for final com-missioning work at the telescopes.The highlight of Oscar’s career oc-

curred on February 23, 1987, with thediscovery of the first naked-eye super-nova since the invention of the tele-scope. The astronomers tell the storyabout the usual banter taking place atLas Campanas, and Oscar’s suddencomment, “Oh yes, by the way, there isa bright star in the Magellanic Cloud.”Jaws dropped. This discovery led to awealth of research, and it sparked re-newed interest in supernovae that led,eventually, to the discovery of dark energy and the 2011 Nobel Prize. �

Oscar Duhalde and his wife Esther Saezattended a reception in the library beforethe Carnegie Evening award ceremony.

Carnegie’s Joe Berry Elected to NationalAcademy of Sciences

16

Recognition&Awards


Carnegie’s David Ehrhardt has beenawarded an honorary fellowship ofthe Royal Microscopical Society. Itwas announced during the society’sBotanical Microscopy 2015 meetingat Exeter University.

Potential fellows must be nomi-nated and recommended by five ormore current fellows, of whichthere are never more than 65 atany given time. The proposed hon-oree is then put before the soci-ety’s council, which approves or re-jects the nomination.“Looking at the list of the other

honorary fellows, I am surprisedand honored to be considered partof this eminent group of scien-tists,” Ehrhardt said when helearned of the award.Ehrhardt’s work features appli-

cation of advanced microscopy andimage analysis to visualize andquantify molecular activities in liveplant cells, revealing mechanismsof subcellular choreography insideplant tissues. His methods allowhim and his team to explore cell-signaling and cell-organizationevents as they take place.Incorporated by a royal charter

in the United Kingdom, the societyis “dedicated to advancing science,developing careers, and supportingwider understanding of scienceand microscopy.” It has been se-lecting honorary fellows since1840. It also publishes The Journalof Microscopy.

The newest member of the staff at the Carnegie De-partment of Embryology, junior investigator ZhaoZhang, received the prestigious Larry Sandler Me-morial Award at the 56th Annual Drosophila ResearchConference of the Genetics Society of America inChicago in March. The annual award is given for thebest research that led to a Ph.D. using Drosophila, thegenetically tractable fruit fly that is employed in awide range of biological and medical research.

John Mulchaey has been appointed the new Crawford H. Greenewalt Director of the Carnegie Observatories. He is the eleventh director of the historic department, which was founded in 1904. He follows in the footstepsof such astronomical giants as George Ellery Hale and Horace Babcock.Mulchaey was appointed acting director in 2014.

“We could not be more pleased,” re-marked Carnegie president MatthewScott. “John has been with Carnegiefor 20 years and has been intricatelyinvolved in all the research and tele-scope development during histenure. In addition to his outstandingscientific accomplishments, he hasproven to be a terrific leader, effec-tive and highly popular with our as-tronomers. He has run our postdoc-toral fellowship program beautifully.His scientific expertise, his judge-ment about how to foster scientificeducation and projects, and his lead-ership experience will be crucial forlaunching Carnegie into the next eraof astronomical research. He hasbeen heavily involved in planning theGiant Magellan Telescope, which willbe built on our land in Chile, and will

continue to be a key coordinator forGMT research as it comes on line inthe next decade.”Mulchaey investigates groups

and clusters of galaxies, ellipticalgalaxies, dark matter—the invisiblematerial that makes up most of theuniverse—active galaxies, andblack holes. As a graduate student, Mulchaey

led the team that discovered thatsome galaxy groups are bright X-ray sources. This work suggestedthat galaxy groups are dominatedby elusive dark matter that doesnot emit light but has a stronggravitational pull.Mulchaey works extensively with

space-based, X-ray telescopes, andthe extraordinary optical Magellantelescopes at Carnegie’s Las Cam-

Image courtesy Tim Neighbors

panas Observatory in the Atacamadesert of Chile. X-ray images aloneare not sufficient to uncover the na-ture of galaxy groups. Follow-up ob-servations with large-aperture opti-cal telescopes, such as theMagellans, are necessary to deter-mine galaxy type and distance.Mulchaey received his B.S. in as-

trophysics from UC-Berkeley and hisPh.D. from the University of Mary-land. He was a graduate student fel-low at the Space Telescope ScienceInstitute in Baltimore and a postdoc-toral fellow at the Carnegie Observa-tories in Pasadena, before joiningthe Carnegie staff.

Zhang, who joined Carnegie in November 2014, studies howelements with the ability to “jump” around the genome,called transposons, are controlled in egg, sperm, and othersomatic tissues to understand how transposons contributeto genomic instability and to mutations that lead to inher-ited disease and cancer. He particularly focuses on transpo-son control and its consequences in gonads compared toother tissues; he has discovered novel connections to howgene transcripts are processed in the nucleus. To accom-plish this work, Zhang frequently develops new tools andtechniques, a characteristic of many outstanding Carnegieresearchers.Embryology director Allan Spradling remarked, “We con-

gratulate Zhao on this exceptional honor. He is exactly thesort of original, unconventional, and self-motivated re-searcher that Carnegie seeks to support. We look forwardto his many accomplishments that lie ahead.”Zhang received a B.S. in biotechnology from Shandong

Agricultural University in Tai’an, China, and an M.S. in cellbiology at Beijing Normal University. He was awarded aPh.D. in November 2013 from the University of Massachu-setts Medical School in interdisciplinary studies.

Carnegie Science | Summer 2015 17David EhrhardtNamed RoyalMicroscopicalSociety HonoraryFellow

Carnegie’s Zhao Zhang Receives 2015 LarrySandler Memorial Award

John Mulchaey Appointed Director of the Carnegie Observatories

Zhao Zhang received theplaque for the GeneticsSociety of America’s 2015Larry Sandler MemorialAward for the best researchthat led to a Ph.D. using thefruit fly Drosophila. Image courtesy Zhao Zhang

Image courtesy Robin Kempster


The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, theCarnegie Institution for Science, and the JaneCoffin Child Research Fund supported this work.

The image right is an ovarian follicle.The cytoskeleton is stained red, the DNAblue. The green shows the activation ofSREBP, which controls the activation ofgenes that induce accumulation of lipidsin immature oocytes, immature eggs.

The image below is from a Germaria, a type of fly. The fusome organelle andfollicle cells are stained green, thecytoskeleton red, and the DNA blue. Images courtesy Matthew Sieber

utrition and metabolism are closely linked withreproductive health. Several reproductive dis-orders including polycystic ovary syndrome,amenorrhea, and ovarian cancer have beenlinked to malnutrition, diabetes, and obesity.

Furthermore, fasting in numerous species can result in decreasedfertility, because the development of immature egg cells, calledoocytes, is arrested.

Understanding how nutrients accumulate in immature oocyteswill provide valuable insights into the link between metabolic dis-ease and reproductive dysfunction. New work from Carnegie’s Allan Spradling and Matthew Sieber focused on the accumulationof triglyceride and a certain kind of steroid called sterols duringoocyte development. They were able to identify an insect steroidhormone that is crucial to both lipid metabolism and egg production in fruit flies.

Recent studies in flies, mice, livestock, and humans have shownthat lipids accumulate dramatically during the development ofimmature oocytes. These lipids appear to be required for healthyegg development and for early embryonic growth. But little wasknown about the mechanisms controlling this lipid accumulationin any species.

Spradling and Sieber discovered that the insect steroid hormoneecdysone stimulates a protein called SREBP, which controls the activation of genes that induce accumulation of lipids in immatureoocytes. The lipids are important stored nutrients for the matura-tion of the oocytes and their development after fertilization. TheSREBP control system has been shared by many species during evolution and controls lipid metabolism in humans as well.

They found that ecdysone also promotes a female-specific accumulation of high levels of stored fat and sugars throughoutthe body that is required for normal fertility.

Overall ecdysone acts to regulate systemic metabolism of the female fruit fly to support egg cell production. Without this female increase in stored body fat and sugar, oocyte developmentis slowed significantly and fewer eggs are produced. �–––Current Biology published their findings in March.

Egg Development and Fat Accumulation

N

18


Eggs are special, in part, because they arethe only cell that can accomplish “reverseaging,” Spradling explained. “The mother’scells get older and older, but she can stillproduce a young animal again.” And this isbecause of the ability of her eggs to reversethe aging clock. He said this phenomenonis likely similar to the way a cell phonestarts to “act up” and needs to be rebootedbefore it can function again. Egg cellsprobably contain some kind of “reboot”programming that keeps them able to accomplish this age reversal. The otherspecial thing about egg cells, Spradlingsaid, is that they’re able to develop. Spermcells are not required, they just contributea set of genes, he added. Spradling explained how research from

his lab and others is demonstrating that egg-development processes really are not thatdifferent in insects and mammals. In fruitflies, immature egg cells always form in 16-cell groups known as germline cysts. The first cell in the cyst becomes the oocyte,the immature egg cell, others become nutri-tion-supplying nurse cells. At first glance,

Carnegie Evening: Spradling’s “Fountainof Youth” Eggs

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PresidentMatthew P. Scott———Director, Department of EmbryologyAllan C. Spradling———Acting Director, Geophysical LaboratoryGeorge Cody———Director, Department of Global EcologyChristopher Field———Director, The ObservatoriesCrawford H. Greenewalt ChairJohn Mulchaey———Director, Department of Plant BiologyWolf Frommer———Director, Department of Terrestrial MagnetismRichard Carlson———Chief Operating OfficerTimothy Doyle———Chief Information OfficerGotthard Sághi-Szabó———Director, External AffairsSusanne Garvey———EditorTina McDowell———Science Writer Natasha Metzler

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the mammalian ovary appears quite differ-ent, but recent findings from Lei Lei inSpradling's lab have shown that mousegerm cells develop in cysts. Furthermore, information is emerging that a major fruitfly steroid plays a similar role to the one estrogen does in mammals. Spradling saidthese similarities go back to a common ancestor between insects and mammals. In introducing Spradling, Carnegie presi-

dent Matthew Scott noted that it is rare todo something “truly creative” in science, butthat Spradling had done so with his idea ofusing so-called “jumping genes,” or trans-posons, to insert genetic material into a fruitfly's DNA. Spradling discussed how he iscurrently applying his research techniquesto trying to find the developmental pro-gramming in an egg cell. Spradling concluded his talk with a rous-

ing call for “visionary leadership” in science,and for Carnegie and other institutions tocontinue pursuing broad-based biologicalresearch programs. “This will be the bestthing we can do for patients, for our country,and for science,” he said. �

Allan Spradling was this year’s Carnegie Evening speaker.

Eggs are the fountain of youth, Embryology director AllanSpradling said during his talk, “Insights From Eggs” at theMay Carnegie Evening celebration with trustees, scientists,support staff, and guests.


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In early May for the first time, astronomersfrom the University of Arizona and Carnegie’sYuri Beletsky at Las Campanas Observatoryused the Clay Magellan telescope with MagellanAdaptive Optics (MagAO) to look at the skythrough an eyepiece of 6.5-m mirror. Adaptiveoptics corrects for the blurring effects of the at-mosphere. This has never been done before onany large telescope. They watched as a correctedimage of Alpha Centauri emerged. Beletsky documented the moment with his camera. �

A ClearerLook at

Laird Close is the Magellan Adaptive Opticsprincipal investigator. He is observing AlphaCentauri as the adaptive optics system correctsthe image on the 6.5-meter Clay telescope. The inset shows the corrected image. Image courtesy Yuri Beletsky

Alpha Centauri

4”


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