[Editors] MIT Research Digest, January 2008

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www

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MIT Research Digest, January 2008
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For Immediate Release
MONDAY, JAN. 7, 2008
Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office -- Phone: 617-258-5402 -- Email: thomson at mit.edu

A monthly tip-sheet for journalists of recent research advances
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Latest research news: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/research.html
RSS -- research feed: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/mitresearch-rss.xml


IN THIS ISSUE: Sculpting with Light * Toward Correcting Autism
Oil Repellent * Autism and the Brain * Cell Sorter
Moon Mission * Engineered Blood Vessels * Interracial Friendship
Earth to Aliens * Mars Enigma * Heads or Tails?
Surprises from Space * Sickle-Cell Anemia * Bacterial Surprise


SCULPTING WITH LIGHT
MIT engineers have used ultraviolet light to sculpt three-dimensional microparticles that could have many applications in medical diagnostics and tissue engineering. For example, they could be designed to act as probes to detect certain molecules, such as DNA, or to release drugs or nutrients. The new technique offers unprecedented control over the size, shape and texture of the particles. It also allows researchers to design particles with specific chemical properties, such as porosity (a measure of the void space in a material that can affect how fast different molecules can diffuse through the particles). "With this method, you can rationally design particles, and precisely place chemical properties," said Patrick Doyle, associate professor of chemical engineering. Doyle is one of the authors of a paper on the work that appeared in a Dec. issue of the journal Angewandte Chemie, published by the German Chemical Society. This research was funded by the U.S. Army Research Office through the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/microfluidics-1204.html

TOWARD CORRECTING AUTISM
Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have corrected key symptoms of mental retardation and autism in mice. The work, reported in the Dec. 20 issue of Neuron, also indicates that a certain class of drugs could have the same effect. These drugs are not yet approved by the FDA, but will soon be entering into human clinical trials. Fragile X syndrome (FXS), affecting 100,000 Americans, is the most common inherited cause of mental retardation and autism. The MIT researchers corrected FXS in mice modeling the disease. "These findings have major therapeutic implications for fragile X syndrome and autism," said study lead author Mark Bear, director of the Picower Institute and a professor of neuroscience at MIT. The findings support the theory that many of FXS's psychiatric and neurological symptoms--learning disabilities, autistic behavior, childhood epilepsy--stem from too much activation of one of the brain's chief network managers. This work is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health; the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the National Fragile X Foundation; FRAXA, a Fragile X research foundation; and the Simons Foundation.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/fragilex-1219.html

OIL REPELLENT
MIT engineers have designed a class of material structures that can repel oils, a novel discovery that could have applications in aviation, space travel and hazardous waste cleanup. Such materials could be used to help protect parts of airplanes or rockets that are vulnerable to damage from being soaked in fuel, like rubber gaskets and o-rings. "These are vulnerable points in many aerospace applications," said Professor Robert Cohen of the Department of Chemical Engineering and an author of a paper on the work that appeared in a Dec. issue of Science. "It would be nice if you could spill gasoline on a fabric or a gasket or other surface and find that instead of spreading, it just rolled off," Cohen said. Creating a strongly oil-repelling, or "oleophobic" material, has been challenging for scientists, and there are no natural examples of such a material. "Nature has developed a lot of methods for waterproofing, but not so much oil-proofing," said Professor Gareth McKinley of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, another member of the research team. "The conventional wisdom was that it couldn't be done on a large scale without very special lithographic processes." The work was funded by the Air Force.
PHOTOS, VIDEO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/surfaces-1206.html

AUTISM AND THE BRAIN
A missing brain protein may be one of the culprits behind autism and other brain disorders, researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory report in a Dec. issue of Neuron. The protein helps synapses develop. Synapses--through which neurons communicate with one another--underlie our ability to learn and remember. Now Li-Huei Tsai, a professor of neuroscience at MIT, has uncovered an enzyme that is key to that protein's activity. This work is supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/autism-1205.html

CELL SORTER
Separating out particular kinds of cells from a sample could become faster, cheaper and easier thanks to a new system developed by MIT researchers that involves levitating the cells with light. The system, which can sort up to 10,000 cells on a conventional glass microscope slide, could enable a variety of biological research projects that might not have been feasible before, its inventors say. It could also find applications in clinical testing and diagnosis, genetic screening and cloning research, all of which require the selection of cells with particular characteristics for further testing. Joel Voldman, an associate professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a colleague developed the new system, which is featured as the cover story in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Analytical Chemistry. The research was funded by the NIH, the Singapore-MIT Alliance, and an ASEE National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship.
PHOTO, GRAPHIC AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/cell-sorting-1211.html

MOON MISSION
MIT will lead a $375-million mission to map the moon's interior and reconstruct its thermal history, NASA has announced. The Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission will be led by MIT professor Maria Zuber and will be launched in 2011. It will put two separate satellites into orbit around the moon to precisely map variations in the moon's gravitational pull. These changes will reveal differences in density of the moon's crust and mantle, and can be used to answer fundamental questions about the moon's internal structure and its history of collisions with asteroids. The detailed information about lunar gravity will also significantly facilitate any future manned or unmanned missions to land on the moon. Such data will be used to program the descent to the surface to avoid a crash landing and will also help target desirable landing sites. Moreover, the mission's novel technology could eventually be used to explore other interesting worlds such as Mars.
IMAGE AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/moon-1214.html

ENGINEERED BLOOD VESSELS
MIT scientists have found a way to induce cells to form parallel tube-like structures that could one day serve as tiny engineered blood vessels. The researchers found that they can control the cells' development by growing them on a surface with nano-scale patterning. A paper on the work was posted in a recent online issue of Advanced Materials. Engineered blood vessels could one day be transplanted into tissues such as the kidneys, liver, heart or any other organs that require large amounts of vascular tissue, which moves nutrients, gases and waste to and from cells. "We are very excited about this work," said Robert Langer, MIT Institute Professor and an author of the paper. "It provides a new way to create nano-based systems with what we hope will provide a novel way to someday engineer tissues in the human body." The research was funded by the NIH, Draper Laboratory and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/vascular-1217.html

INTERRACIAL FRIENDSHIP
People who are involved in community organizations and activities and who socialize with their co-workers are much more likely to have friends of another race than those who do not, according to a landmark MIT study of interracial friendship in America. The study, conducted by Xavier de Souza Briggs, associate professor of sociology and urban planning at MIT, highlights both the importance of social class and the waning influence of neighborhoods in fostering interracial ties in America. Regardless of their race, people of higher incomes and those with more education were more likely to have more friends overall and to be civic "joiners"--people who get involved in community organizations and activities. These two factors, in turn, made it more likely that their social circles include people of other racial backgrounds, the study found. Briggs' study, which appears in the December issue of City & Community, the urban research journal of the American Sociological Association, comes as researchers and advocates alike see widening racial, ethnic and economic fault lines in American society.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/friendship-1228.html

EARTH TO ALIENS
As astronomers become more adept at searching for, and finding, planets orbiting other stars, it's natural to wonder if anybody is looking back. Now, a team of astronomers that includes a professor from MIT has figured out just what those alien eyes might see using technologies being developed by Earth's astronomers. According to their analysis, among other things E.T. could probably tell that our planet's surface is divided between oceans and continents, and learn a little bit about the dynamics of our weather systems. "Maybe somebody's looking at us right now, finding out what our rotation rate is - that is, the length of our day," says Sara Seager, associate professor of physics and planetary sciences at MIT. Seager and colleagues at the Instituto Astrofisica del Canarias, in Spain, and the University of Florida, have done a detailed analysis of what astronomers here and on other worlds could learn about a planet from very distant observations, using telescopes much more powerful than those currently available to Earth's astronomers. Their study, recently published online in the Astrophysical Journal, will appear in the journal's print edition in April.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/earth-et-1220.html

MARS ENIGMA
Planetary scientists have puzzled for years over an apparent contradiction on Mars. Abundant evidence points to an early warm, wet climate on the red planet, but there's no sign of the widespread carbonate rocks, such as limestone, that should have formed in such a climate. Now, a detailed analysis in the Dec. 21 issue of Science by MIT's Maria T. Zuber and colleagues from Harvard University provides a possible answer to the mystery. In addition to being warmed by a greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as on Earth, the early Mars may have had the greenhouse gas sulfur dioxide in its atmosphere. That would have interfered with the formation of carbonates, explaining their absence today. It would also explain the discovery by the twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, of sulfur-rich minerals that apparently formed in bodies of water in that early Martian environment. And it may provide clues about the Earth's history as well. The challenge was to interpret the planet's history based on the data gathered by the Mars rovers from just tiny fractions of the surface, says Zuber, who is head of MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and a professor of geophysics. The work was funded by NASA, a Radcliffe fellowship, the George Merck Fund, and a Harvard graduate fellowship.
IMAGE AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/mars-1227.html

HEADS OR TAILS?
When cut, a planarian flatworm can regenerate a new head, new tail or even entire new organisms from a tiny fragment of its body--a phenomenon that has puzzled researchers for more than 100 years. Now, scientists in the lab of Peter Reddien, a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and an MIT assistant professor of biology, have discovered a gene required for proper decisions about head-versus-tail polarity in regenerating flatworms. Their results, published in a Dec. issue of Science online, could help explain how regenerating animals "know" what missing tissues to make. "Evolution has selected for mechanisms that allow organisms to accomplish incredible feats of regeneration," and planaria offer a dramatic example, Reddien said. "By developing this model system to explore the molecular underpinnings of regeneration, we now have a better understanding of Š the process."
IMAGE AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/regeneration-1211.html

SURPRISES FROM SPACE
The Voyager 2 spacecraft's Plasma Science instrument, developed at MIT in the 1970s, has turned up surprising revelations about the boundary zone that marks the edge of the sun's influence in space. The unexpected findings emerged late last year as the spacecraft traversed the termination shockwave formed when the flow of particles constantly streaming out from the sun--the solar wind--slams into the surrounding thin gas that fills the space between stars. The first surprise is that there is an unexpectedly strong magnetic field in that surrounding interstellar region, generated by currents in the incredibly tenuous gas. This magnetic field is squashing the bubble of outflowing gas from the sun, distorting it from the uniform spherical shape space physicists had expected to find. A second surprise also emerged from Voyager 2's passage through the solar system's outer edge: Just outside that boundary the temperature, although hotter than inside, was ten times cooler than expected. Theorists had to scramble to come up with an explanation for the unanticipated chilling effect. "It's a different kind of shockwave than we've seen anywhere else," says John Richardson, principal investigator for the Plasma Physics instrument and a principal research scientist at MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Science. NASA has sponsored the work.
ANIMATIONS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/voyager-1210.html

SICKLE-CELL ANEMIA
MIT researchers have successfully treated mice with sickle-cell anemia in a process that begins by directly reprogramming the mice's own cells to an embryonic-stem-cell-like state, without the use of eggs. This is the first proof-of-principle of therapeutic application in mice of directly reprogrammed induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells, which recently have been derived in mice as well as humans. "This demonstrates that IPS cells have the same potential for therapy as embryonic stem cells, without the ethical and practical issues raised in creating embryonic stem cells," said MIT biology professor Rudolf Jaenisch, a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. The research, reported in Dec. in Science online, was carried out in Jaenisch's laboratory. The IPS cells were derived using modifications of the approach originally discovered in 2006 at Kyoto University. This work was funded in part the NIH.
ILLUSTRATION AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/sickle-cell-1207.html

BACTERIAL SURPRISE
A team of MIT researchers and others has discovered that bacteria employ a type of DNA modification never before seen in nature. The researchers, led by Peter Dedon, professor of biological engineering, and Zixin Deng at Shanghai Jiaotong University in China, published their results in Nature Chemical Biology. For several decades, researchers have known that it is possible to modify synthetic oligonucleotides (short strands of DNA) by adding sulfur to the sugar-phosphate DNA backbone. Researchers often use such modifications in the laboratory to make DNA resistant to nucleases (enzymes that snip DNA in certain locations) as a step toward gene and antisense therapies of human diseases. Dedon said he and his co-workers were surprised to discover that a group of bacterial genes, known as the dnd gene cluster, gives bacteria the ability to employ the same modification on their own. "It turns out that nature has been using [these] modifications of DNA all along, and we just didn't know about it," he said. The work was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Cancer Institute, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the National Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Education of China and the Shanghai Municipal Council of Science and Technology.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/dna-modification-1203.html

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