Publisher Health

Teenagers inside a tavern where 21 died one June night recall a mysterious gas and then a crush to escape. Community members blame the tavern owner, and the police for failing to respond.EAST LONDON, South Africa — Before he passed out amid the crush of bodies, Simbongile Mtsweni gasped for air as a gas that felt like fire crept into his nose and lungs. “When I came to,” he said, “I was on the second floor and started vomiting when I realized I was lying next to dead people.”Hundreds of young people, drawn by a notice on Facebook promising a party at the end of the school term with free alcohol and Wi-Fi, had flocked to a small, packed tavern in East London, a city on South Africa’s southern coast.Twenty-one of them, all teenagers, would not survive the night. A mass funeral, with President Cyril Ramaphosa set to speak, is on Wednesday.Witnesses, investigators — the entire nation — are struggling to understand how a night of revelry turned into a lethal stampede, leaving broken and bleeding young people on the floors of Enyobeni Tavern, in East London’s Scenery Park township.“We came for fun, not for dead bodies,” said Lubabalo Dongeni, an 18-year-old high school student, still limping five days after the incident.The authorities have not given an account of why people died or released autopsy results, but the public and authorities have found plenty of targets for blame and anger. The license given to the hastily built tavern with two floors and just one entrance is under scrutiny, the couple who run it are under criminal investigation, and a D.J. who performed there says the community is “baying” for his blood. There has been rampant speculation about the noxious gas that filled the air, who released it, and whether it contributed to the deaths, the deadly panic or both.Six people who had been inside the tavern, as well as others who were outside, said in interviews that the combination of the mysterious gas, the crush of people and an airless room could have caused the tragedy.Township residents are furious at the local police for taking hours to respond to emergency calls. Beyond East London, the episode has raised a national debate about underage drinking and the place of alcohol in South Africa. Some people point to other systemic failures, from the location and construction of the tavern to lax enforcement of liquor license laws in townships.The ground floor of Enyobeni a few days after the disaster. Some survivors recall that a mysterious gas wafted through the place, which led to panic and a stampede to the single door. Joao Silva/The New York TimesThe dead were as young as 14, and most younger than 18. The legal age to enter a bar and drink in South Africa is 18.The teenagers who were there that night are visibly traumatized.Members of a high school boys’ soccer team were in the tavern, but a midfielder and the goalkeeper never made it out. The team’s striker said he now struggles with survivor’s guilt.A 19-year-old blames herself for helping her 17-year-old friend get into the party, where she died. When a group of teens visited the tavern recently to lay white plastic roses at its entrance, they were overcome with emotion.The entrance, a single metal door painted brown, was the focus of chaos that night. The party was supposed to end at midnight on Saturday, June 25, but outside, dozens of people were still trying to get inside, according to videos taken with cellphones. After 12:30 a.m., the tavern went dark, but no one flinched — electricity blackouts are a common occurrence in South Africa.But as the flashing disco lights returned minutes later, a gas wafted through the ground floor, survivors said. Some said it smelled like pepper spray, while others likened it to tear gas.People rushed to get out, while those outside in the cold winter night tried to get in. That’s when bouncers pulled the door shut, the witnesses said, trapping everyone inside.While the dance music, a popular local style called amapiano, thumped on the second floor, people on the ground floor climbed over each other to get out, breaking the only two windows in a room no bigger than 350 square feet.Police forensic teams conducting an investigation at the venue four days after the young people died there.Joao Silva/The New York TimesBrian Mapasa, a rapper who had just finished his set on the second floor, said he could hear gasping all around him. He was making his way downstairs to the exit when the door shut and the crush began. Trapped people pressed so tightly against him, his legs went numb.Two people bit him as they tried to climb over him, he recalled, the half-circle of scabs on his forearms still red six days later. Mr. Mapasa said the gas tingled as it touched his wounds. He felt groggy, sinking to his knees.The music only stopped when screams pierced the pandemonium, survivors recalled. The neon lights, bouncing off the yellow walls with swirling brown murals, illuminated bodies sprawled on the dance floor, and the friends unable to revive them.Some people jumped from the second floor. Only then did the bouncers open the lone door, to carry some of the bodies outside, several survivors said.Nolitha Qhekaza’s bedroom window is a few feet from the tavern’s entrance. When people jumped from the balcony, they landed on her roof. Dead and wounded teenagers were laid on her front lawn, she said. A girl with a broken leg lay on her dining room floor until after 7 a.m.In the early hours of that Sunday morning, Ms. Qhekaza, a 55-year-old grandmother, called the police 10 times between 2:25 a.m. and 3:35 a.m., her call logs show.Women singing religious songs during a wreath laying ceremony near Enyobeni Tavern, which now draws both mourners and protesters. Joao Silva/The New York TimesPolice and ambulances finally began to arrive around 4 a.m., neighbors said. As officers cordoned off the area, parents tried to push past the tape. Some of the unconscious victims were still inside the tavern, splayed on pleather couches or just lying on the dance floor — the dead and injured side by side.Images of the scene circulated on social media. That is how some parents learned not only that their children had gone out that night, but that they had died.“My son was trending,” said Sidwenn Rangile, father of Mbulelo Rangile, the soccer team’s goalkeeper.Unable to find his son at local hospitals, Mr. Rangile sped to the morgue. At first, he didn’t recognize his son’s body among the rows of corpses because the boy’s skin had turned so dark. Another victim, a 17-year-old, was similarly unrecognizable just hours after her death, said her friend, Sinenjongo Phuthumani, who was also at the tavern.Sinenjongo Phuthumani, 19, who escaped Enyobeni Tavern, is devastated that a 17-year-old friend she brought to the party there died in the melee.Joao Silva/The New York TimesEven grieving parents like Mr. Rangile have faced criticism in the heavy news coverage of the disaster.“If the finger is to be pointed, it has to be pointed to all of us,” he said. “But it is unfair to blame us.”The tavern owners, Siyakhangela and Vuyokazi Ndevu, have shouldered much of the public condemnation.The tavern, which shares a wall with several private homes, has long divided this community, where residents used their savings to slowly build their homes. Neighbors had complained about urine stains along their walls and empty bottles strewn outside, parties that went on until 8 a.m. and children vomiting in their gardens.The Ndevus refused to comment.Several neighbors said they met with police and an inspector of the Eastern Cape Liquor Board just three weeks before the disaster. But spokesmen for the liquor board and the police both said they had no record of complaints about the tavern.The tavern’s license was granted in 2012, but the liquor board was unaware that the owner had added a second floor in recent years.Last week, the liquor board filed a criminal case against Vuyokazi Ndevu, in whose name the license was granted, for selling alcohol to minors. Police have not said if they will press charges against her.Sidwenn Rangile with a portrait of his son Mbulelo Rangile, a goalkeeper who went to the party at the tavern with his soccer team. When Mr. Rangile found his son’s body at the morgue, he barely recognized him.Joao Silva/The New York TimesNationally, the conversation has turned to alcohol abuse and unregulated taverns in South Africa, particularly in poor, mostly Black townships. More than half of South Africans do not drink alcohol, but those who do report heavy binge drinking, according to the World Health Organization.In Scenery Park, where drug use is rising, going to a tavern to drink is popular among teens, and is seen as the lesser evil, said soccer coach Ludumo Salman, who started the soccer club for high schoolers.“I hope this is going to be a wake-up call, because this is a reality across South Africa,” said Esethu Sotheni, who runs a nonprofit for young people in East London’s townships.

A shapeshifting robotic microswarm may one day act as a toothbrush, rinse, and dental floss in one. The technology, developed by a multidisciplinary team at the University of Pennsylvania, is poised to offer a new and automated way to perform the mundane but critical daily tasks of brushing and flossing. It’s a system that could be particularly valuable for those who lack the manual dexterity to clean their teeth effectively themselves.
The building blocks of these microrobots are iron oxide nanoparticles that have both catalytic and magnetic activity. Using a magnetic field, researchers could direct their motion and configuration to form either bristle-like structures that sweep away dental plaque from the broad surfaces of teeth, or elongated strings that can slip between teeth like a length of floss. In both instances, a catalytic reaction drives the nanoparticles to produce antimicrobials that kill harmful oral bacteria on site.
Experiments using this system on mock and real human teeth showed that the robotic assemblies can conform to a variety of shapes to nearly eliminate the sticky biofilms that lead to cavities and gum disease. The Penn team shared their findings establishing a proof-of-concept for the robotic system in the journal ACS Nano.
“Routine oral care is cumbersome and can pose challenges for many people, especially those who have hard time cleaning their teeth” says Hyun (Michel) Koo, a professor in the Department of Orthodontics and divisions of Community Oral Health and Pediatric Dentistry in Penn’s School of Dental Medicine and co-corresponding author on the study. “You have to brush your teeth, then floss your teeth, then rinse your mouth; it’s a manual, multi-step process. The big innovation here is that the robotics system can do all three in a single, hands-free, automated way.”
“Nanoparticles can be shaped and controlled with magnetic fields in surprising ways,” says Edward Steager, a senior research investigator in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and co-corresponding author. “We form bristles that can extend, sweep, and even transfer back and forth across a space, much like flossing. The way it works is similar to how a robotic arm might reach out and clean a surface. The system can be programmed to do the nanoparticle assembly and motion control automatically.”
Disrupting oral care technology
“The design of the toothbrush has remained relatively unchanged for millennia,” says Koo.

Ken Muneoka is no stranger to disrupting the field of regeneration; for example, in a 2019 ground-breaking publication in Nature, the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (CVMBS) professor proved for the first time that joint regeneration in mammals was possible.
Now, his team is again challenging other centuries-old beliefs about the fundamental science of the field, this time related to how mammals might regenerate damaged parts of the body.
In humans, the natural ability to regenerate is limited to tissues like the epidermis, the outermost layer of skin, and some organs, such as the liver.
Other species, most notably salamanders, have the ability to regenerate complex structures such as bones, joints, and even entire limbs. As a result, scientists have been studying these species for more than 200 years to try to understand the mechanisms behind limb regeneration in the hopes of someday translating those mechanisms to induce more extensive regeneration in humans.
That research has led to a common belief that the single biggest key for limb regeneration is the presence of nerves.
While that may be true for salamanders and other species, it isn’t the case in mammals, according to two of Muneoka’s recently published studies. The first study, published last year in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, established that mechanical loading (the ability to apply force to or with an affected area) is a requirement for mammals. The second, published earlier this year in Developmental Biology, established that the absence of nerves does not inhibit regeneration.

Researchers have created an inhalable COVID-19 vaccine that is shelf stable at room temperature for up to three months, targets the lungs specifically and effectively, and allows for self-administration via an inhaler. The researchers also found that the delivery mechanism for this vaccine — a lung-derived exosome called LSC-Exo — is more effective at evading the lung’s mucosal lining than the lipid-based nanoparticles currently in use, and can be used effectively with protein-based vaccines.
Ke Cheng, the Randall B. Terry Jr. Distinguished Professor in Regenerative Medicine at NC State and a professor in the NC State/UNC-Chapel Hill Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, along with colleagues from UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University, led the development of the vaccine prototype from proof-of-concept to animal studies.
“There are several challenges associated with vaccine delivery we wanted to address,” Cheng says. “First, taking the vaccine via intramuscular shot is less efficient at getting it into the pulmonary system, and so can limit its efficacy. Inhaled vaccines would increase their benefit against COVID-19.
“Second, mRNA vaccines in their current formulation require cold storage and trained medical personnel to deliver them. A vaccine that is stable at room temperature and that could be self-administered would greatly reduce wait times for patients as well as stress on the medical profession during a pandemic. However, reformulating the delivery mechanism is necessary for it to work through inhalation.”
In order to deliver the vaccine directly to the lungs, the researchers used exosomes (Exo) secreted from lung spheroid cells (LSCs). Exosomes are nanosized vesicles that have recently been recognized as an excellent means of drug delivery.
First, the researchers looked at whether LSC-Exo was able to deliver protein or mRNA “cargos” throughout the lungs. The researchers compared the distribution and retention of LSC-Exo to nanoparticles similar to lipid nanoparticles currently used with mRNA vaccines. In a paper in Extracellular Vesicle, the researchers demonstrated that lung-derived nanoparticles were more effective at delivering mRNA and protein cargo to bronchioles and deep lung tissue than synthetic liposome particles.
Next, the researchers created and tested an inhalable, protein-based, virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine by decorating the exterior of LSC-Exo with a portion of the spike protein — known as the receptor binding domain, or RBD — from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. A paper describing the research is published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
“Vaccines can work through various means,” Cheng says. “For example, mRNA vaccines deliver a script to your cell that instructs it to produce antibodies to the spike protein. This VLP vaccine, on the other hand, introduces a portion of the spike protein to the body, triggering the immune system to produce antibodies to the spike protein.”
In rodent models, the RBD-decorated LSC-Exo vaccine (RBD-Exo) elicited production of antibodies specific to the RBD, and protected the rodents, after two vaccine doses, from infection with live SARS-CoV-2. Additionally, the RBD-Exo vaccine remained stable at room temperature for three months.
The researchers note that while the work is promising, there are still challenges associated with large-scale production and purification of the exosomes. LSCs, the cell type used for generating RBD-Exo, are currently in a Phase I clinical trial by the same researchers for treating patients with degenerative lung diseases.
“An inhalable vaccine will confer both mucosal and systemic immunity, it’s more convenient to store and distribute, and could be self-administered on a large scale,” Cheng says. “So while there are still challenges associated with scaling up production, we believe that this is a promising vaccine worthy of further research and development.”
The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. North Carolina State University has filed a provisional patent on the technologies reported in those publications and the patent right has been exclusively licensed to Xsome Biotech, an NC State startup company co-founded by Cheng.
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Materials provided by North Carolina State University. Original written by Tracey Peake. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

More than eight out of 10 British people who are seeking support for having lost a loved one to COVID-19 reported alarming Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms, new Curtin University-led research has found.
The study, based on data from people seeking help and guidance from the United Kingdom’s National Bereavement Partnership in collaboration with researchers from the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition and Christopher Newport University in the United States of America, also found almost two-thirds of British COVID-19 mourners experienced moderate or severe symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Lead author Professor Lauren Breen, from the Curtin School of Population Health, said the results were alarming given more than six million people had died from COVID-19 across the globe.
“These survey results indicate a concerning ‘shadow pandemic’ in the wake of a COVID-19 death with the vast majority of British mourners reporting alarming rates of psychological distress including constantly feeling on guard or easily startled,” Professor Breen said.
“The mourners who were seeking support from the National Bereavement Partnership also reported concerning symptoms of anxiety and depression, dysfunctional grief including wanting to die in order to be with their loved one, and functional impairment that was affecting their home and family responsibilities.”
According to the UK’s dedicated PTSD charity, PTSD UK, about 20 per cent of all PTSD cases worldwide are linked to the unexpected death of a loved one.

Scientists have taken a promising step towards a new generation of accurate, affordable and portable devices to detect concussion, epilepsy and dementia.
The international research team developed a laser-based diamond sensor that can measure magnetic fields up to 10 times more precisely than standard techniques. Their results are published in Science Advances.
Their innovation could help improve on existing magnetic-field sensing techniques for mapping brain activity to identify disorders. With sufficient funding and collaboration with industry, the team say they could develop a proof-of-concept device using their new sensor within five years.
Concussion in sport has been in the spotlight recently with prominent athletes sharing their stories about the significant ramifications of head injuries sustained during their careers. Meanwhile, about 250,000 Australians live with epilepsy, while nearly 500,000 Australians have some form of dementia.
The research is also relevant to a range of sectors beyond healthcare including mining, where it could lead to improved mineral exploration applications.
The study was led by Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) in Germany — one of the leading organisations for applied research in Europe — working with RMIT University experts in diamond sensing technology Professor Andrew Greentree, Professor Brant Gibson and Dr Marco Capelli.

A study from the National Institutes of Health describes the immune response triggered by COVID-19 infection that damages the brain’s blood vessels and may lead to short- and long-term neurological symptoms. In a study published in Brain, researchers from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) examined brain changes in nine people who died suddenly after contracting the virus.
The scientists found evidence that antibodies — proteins produced by the immune system in response to viruses and other invaders — are involved in an attack on the cells lining the brain’s blood vessels, leading to inflammation and damage. Consistent with an earlier study from the group, SARS-CoV-2 was not detected in the patients’ brains, suggesting the virus was not infecting the brain directly.
Understanding how SARS-CoV-2 can trigger brain damage may help inform development of therapies for COVID-19 patients who have lingering neurological symptoms.
“Patients often develop neurological complications with COVID-19, but the underlying pathophysiological process is not well understood,” said Avindra Nath, M.D., clinical director at NINDS and the senior author of the study. “We had previously shown blood vessel damage and inflammation in patients’ brains at autopsy, but we didn’t understand the cause of the damage. I think in this paper we’ve gained important insight into the cascade of events.”
Dr. Nath and his team found that antibodies produced in response to COVID-19 may mistakenly target cells crucial to the blood-brain barrier. Tightly packed endothelial cells help form the blood-brain barrier, which keeps harmful substances from reaching the brain while allowing necessary substances to pass through. Damage to endothelial cells in blood vessels in the brain can lead to leakage of proteins from the blood. This causes bleeds and clots in some COVID-19 patients and can increase the risk of stroke.
For the first time, researchers observed deposits of immune complexes — molecules formed when antibodies bind antigens (foreign substances) — on the surface of endothelial cells in the brains of COVID-19 patients. Such immune complexes can damage tissue by triggering inflammation.

When the coronavirus causing COVID-19 infects human cells, the cell’s protein-processing machinery makes modifications to the spike protein that render it more flexible and mobile, which could increase its ability to infect other cells and to evade antibodies, a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found.
The researchers created an atomic-level computational model of the spike protein and ran multiple simulations to examine the protein’s dynamics and how the cell’s modifications affected those dynamics. This is the first study to present such a detailed picture of the protein that plays a key role in COVID-19 infection and immunity, the researchers said.
Biochemistry professor Emad Tajkhorshid, postdoctoral researcher Karan Kapoor and graduate student Tianle Chen published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The dynamics of a spike are very important — how much it moves and how flexible it is to search for and bind to receptors on the host cell,” said Tajkhorshid, who also is a member of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. “In order to have a realistic representation, you have to look at the protein at the atomic level. We hope that the results of our simulations can be used for developing new treatments. Instead of using one static structure of the protein to search for drug-binding pockets, we want to reproduce its movements and use all of the relevant shapes it adopts to provide a more complete platform for screening drug candidates instead of just one structure.”
The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is the protein that juts out from the surface of the virus and binds to receptors on the surface of human cells to infect them. It also is the target of antibodies in those who have been vaccinated or recovered from infection.
Many studies have looked at the spike protein and its amino acid sequence, but knowledge of its structure has largely relied on static images, Tajkhorshid said. The atomistic simulations give researchers a glimpse of dynamics that affect how the protein interacts with receptors on cells it seeks to infect and with antibodies that seek to bind to it.

The latest omicron subvariants — including the BA.4 and BA.5 forms causing new surges in infections in the United States — are even better at eluding vaccines and most antibody treatments than previous variants, finds a study by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The study, led by David D. Ho, MD, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Clyde’56 and Helen Wu Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, was published July 5 in Nature.
Subvariants BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5 are rapidly expanding worldwide, with BA.4/5 now making up more than 50% of new COVID cases in the United States. These subvariants are thought to be even more transmissible than prior omicron subvariants, owing to several new mutations in spike proteins.
“The virus is continuing to evolve, as expected, and it is not surprising that these new, more transmissible subvariants are becoming more dominant around the world,” says Ho. “Understanding how currently available vaccines and antibody treatments stand up to the new subvariants is critical to developing strategies to prevent severe disease, hospitalizations, and deaths — if not infection.”
In laboratory experiments, Ho and his team studied the ability of antibodies from individuals who received at least three doses of an mRNA vaccine, or got two shots and were then infected with omicron, to neutralize the new subvariants. (Ho’s team did not look at individuals who had not received a booster shot, because a previous study found that two doses provide little protection against infection by earlier omicron variants.)
The study revealed that while BA.2.12.1 is only modestly more resistant than BA.2 in individuals who were vaccinated and boosted, BA.4/5 was at least four times more resistant than its predecessor.
In addition, the scientists tested the ability of 19 monoclonal antibody treatments to neutralize the variants and found that only one of the available antibody treatments remained highly effective against both BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/5.
“Our study suggests that as these highly transmissible subvariants continue to expand around the globe, they will lead to more breakthrough infections in people who are vaccinated and boosted with currently available mRNA vaccines,” Ho says. Though the current study suggests that the new variants may cause more infections in vaccinated individuals, the vaccines continue to provide good protection against severe disease.
“Efforts in the United States to develop new vaccine boosters aimed at BA.4/5 may improve protection against infection and severe disease,” Ho says. “In the current environment, though, we may need to look toward developing new vaccines and treatments that can anticipate ongoing evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
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Materials provided by Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

An estimated 500 to 1,000 bacterial species reside in each person’s gut, perhaps numbering 100,000 trillion microorganisms. In a new paper, published July 5, 2022 in Cell Reports, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine used mouse models to explore how diet and feeding patterns affect these intestinal microbes — and the health of the hosts, particularly with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
In both mice and men, the ileum is the final stretch of the small intestine, connecting to the cecum, the first part of the large intestine. In the ileum, nutrients are drawn out of liquefied food; in the cecum, which also marks the beginning of the colon, the process of extracting water begins.
Both processes are complex, dynamic and profoundly influenced by factors ranging from the types of foods consumed and when, to the microbial residents of the gut, whose presence and behaviors help dictate digestion, absorption of nutrients, vitamin synthesis and development of the immune system.
“It’s important to realize that the gut microbiome is constantly changing, not only based on what we’re eating, but also based on the time of day,” said senior study author Amir Zarrinpar, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a gastroenterologist at UC San Diego Health.
“Most researchers are getting snapshots of this constantly shifting environment, which makes it hard to understand what is going on in the gut. With this study, we are trying to get multiple snapshots throughout the day, almost like a movie, to better understand how food and the microbiome interact to affect weight gain and diabetes.
“And what we’ve learned is that cyclical changes in the gut microbiome are quite important for health since they help with the circadian clock, and with that the regulation and control of glucose, cholesterol and fatty acids — and overall metabolic health.”
In their latest work, Zarrinpar and colleagues further elucidate the impact and interplay of these factors, particularly in terms of the ileum and its unique functions related to digestion and absorption. Specifically, they looked at how diet-induced obesity (DIO) and time-restricted feeding (TRF) alter ileal microbiome composition and transcriptome (the protein-coding part of an organism’s genome) in mouse models.
The researchers found that in mouse models, DIO and the absence of TRF (mice could eat as much as they wanted whenever they wanted) resulted in disruptions to gut microbiome rhythms and the signaling pathways that help modulate intestinal clocks. In other words, the mice became fat and unhealthy.
“It is interesting that restricting food access with TRF acts not only through restoration of patterns affected under the unhealthy state, but also through new pathways,” said first author Ana Carolina Dantas Machado, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in Zarrinpar’s lab.
“These findings underscore the influence of diet and time restricted feeding patterns in maintaining a healthy gut microbiome, which in turn modulates circadian rhythms that govern metabolic health,” said Zarrinpar. “It’s a very complicated relationship between the microbiome and the host, with the former helping determine the latter’s gastrointestinal functioning and health.”
Their work, said the authors, can inform future studies, in particular investigations of how the gut works or how drugs act upon the gut function depending upon the state of the microbiome at a particular time or time of day.
Co-authors include: Steven D. Brown, Amulya Lingaraju, Vignesh Sivaganesh, Cameron Martino, Peng Zhao, Antonio F.M. Pinto, Max W. Chang, R. Alexander Richter Alan R. Saltiel, Rob Knight and Satchidananda Panda, all at UC San Diego; Amandine Chaix, University of Utah; and Alan Saghatelian, Salk Institute for Biological Studies.