13 of the Most Amazing Things Discovered in Space This Year

In April, astronomers discovered the first Earth-size planet within a star’s habitable zone, the region where liquid water can exist. This artist’s concept shows the planet, dubbed Kepler-186f, which is 1.1 times the size of Earth. The ultimate goal is to find another planet just like Earth, and this one—although more like a cousin than a twin—is close. NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

In April, astronomers discovered the first Earth-size planet within a star’s habitable zone, the region where liquid water can exist. This artist’s concept shows the planet, dubbed Kepler-186f, which is 1.1 times the size of Earth. The ultimate goal is to find another planet just like Earth, and this one—although more like a cousin than a twin—is close.

NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

In June, astronomers revealed that this newly discovered star is a white dwarf so cold (for a star---it’s still almost 3,000 degrees) that its carbon atoms have crystallized into a diamond and it hardly shines at all. It also orbits a pulsar (on the left in the illustration), a spinning star as dense as an atomic nucleus. B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

In June, astronomers revealed that this newly discovered star is a white dwarf so cold (for a star---it’s still almost 3,000 degrees) that its carbon atoms have crystallized into a diamond and it hardly shines at all. It also orbits a pulsar (on the left in the illustration), a spinning star as dense as an atomic nucleus.

B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

This illustration depicts MY Camelopardalis, a system of two young stars orbiting each other so closely that they’re touching. They will eventually merge into a single star 60 times heavier than the sun. Astronomers think that most extremely massive stars form in this fashion. The finding, published in December, could be the first known example of such a scenario. Javier Lorenzo (Universidad de Alicante)

This illustration depicts MY Camelopardalis, a system of two young stars orbiting each other so closely that they’re touching. They will eventually merge into a single star 60 times heavier than the sun. Astronomers think that most extremely massive stars form in this fashion. The finding, published in December, could be the first known example of such a scenario.

Javier Lorenzo (Universidad de Alicante)

This illustration shows comet Siding Spring zipping by Mars in October. The comet ventured within 87,000 miles of Mars, the closest anyone has ever seen a comet get to a planet without crashing. The comet’s trail of debris fell onto the Martian atmosphere, generating a meteor shower. The meteors created ions in the atmosphere, which were detected by several spacecraft in orbit around the red planet. NASA/JPL

This illustration shows comet Siding Spring zipping by Mars in October. The comet ventured within 87,000 miles of Mars, the closest anyone has ever seen a comet get to a planet without crashing. The comet’s trail of debris fell onto the Martian atmosphere, generating a meteor shower. The meteors created ions in the atmosphere, which were detected by several spacecraft in orbit around the red planet.

NASA/JPL

Over the summer, astronomers were eager to watch a mysterious glob of gas called G2 get gobbled up by the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. But then the glob, the orange object in this illustration, escaped digestion. To explain its surprising survival, astronomers have proposed that it’s actually a star. Others disagree, and still say it’s gas. ESO

Over the summer, astronomers were eager to watch a mysterious glob of gas called G2 get gobbled up by the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. But then the glob, the orange object in this illustration, escaped digestion. To explain its surprising survival, astronomers have proposed that it’s actually a star. Others disagree, and still say it’s gas.

ESO

Rings aren’t just for planets like Saturn anymore. In March, astronomers announced that an asteroid-like object called a centaur has a ring system, seen in this artist’s concept. The 154-mile-wide object, named Chariklo, orbits between Saturn and Uranus. Its rings are dense and full of water ice, making them relatively bright, like a miniature version of Saturn’s. ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger

Rings aren’t just for planets like Saturn anymore. In March, astronomers announced that an asteroid-like object called a centaur has a ring system, seen in this artist’s concept. The 154-mile-wide object, named Chariklo, orbits between Saturn and Uranus. Its rings are dense and full of water ice, making them relatively bright, like a miniature version of Saturn’s.

ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger

Almost all big galaxies are believed to have a supermassive black hole at the center, as in this galaxy, NGC 1275. But this summer, astronomers described another galaxy that seemed to have three black holes. Further observations have cast some doubt on the triplet, however, suggesting two of the black holes are just one. NASA, ESA, NRAO and L. Frattare (STScI)

Almost all big galaxies are believed to have a supermassive black hole at the center, as in this galaxy, NGC 1275. But this summer, astronomers described another galaxy that seemed to have three black holes. Further observations have cast some doubt on the triplet, however, suggesting two of the black holes are just one.

NASA, ESA, NRAO and L. Frattare (STScI)

In January, the Herschel space observatory discovered watery plumes spewing from Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. Seen in this artist’s concept, Ceres is big and round, making it a dwarf planet like Pluto. Scientists think jets of water vapor sprout when Ceres nears the sun---perhaps due to sublimation of surface ice. Ceres is thought to be rock, covered in ice so thick it would account for more fresh water than there is on Earth. ESA/ATG medialab

In January, the Herschel space observatory discovered watery plumes spewing from Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. Seen in this artist’s concept, Ceres is big and round, making it a dwarf planet like Pluto. Scientists think jets of water vapor sprout when Ceres nears the sun---perhaps due to sublimation of surface ice. Ceres is thought to be rock, covered in ice so thick it would account for more fresh water than there is on Earth.

ESA/ATG medialab

In March, astronomers announced they found what’s likely a dwarf planet with the most distant orbit known, ranging between 7 billion miles and 42 billion miles from the sun. The object’s official name is 2012 VP113, but it has been dubbed “VP” or “Biden,” in honor of the vice president. The only other object with a similar known orbit is Sedna, discovered more than 10 years ago. Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science

In March, astronomers announced they found what’s likely a dwarf planet with the most distant orbit known, ranging between 7 billion miles and 42 billion miles from the sun. The object’s official name is 2012 VP113, but it has been dubbed “VP” or “Biden,” in honor of the vice president. The only other object with a similar known orbit is Sedna, discovered more than 10 years ago.

Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science

The ALMA telescope in Chile snapped this baby picture of a planetary system. A star forms from a collapsing cloud of gas and dust, which flattens as it spins. Dust particles eventually stick together to form planets, which can carve out rings and gaps in the disk. This image, released in November, is the most detailed yet of an infant system, revealing the structure that previously had only been depicted in artist concept drawings. ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

The ALMA telescope in Chile snapped this baby picture of a planetary system. A star forms from a collapsing cloud of gas and dust, which flattens as it spins. Dust particles eventually stick together to form planets, which can carve out rings and gaps in the disk. This image, released in November, is the most detailed yet of an infant system, revealing the structure that previously had only been depicted in artist concept drawings.

ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

For the first time, astronomers saw an asteroid in the midst of falling apart into as many as 10 pieces. The Hubble space telescope captured these images of the asteroid P/2013 R3 as it crumbled away over the course of several months from October 2013 to January 2014. The four largest pieces are up to one-eighth of a mile wide. NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)

This series of images shows the asteroid P/2013 R3 breaking apart, as viewed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in 2013. This is the first time that such a body has been seen to undergo this kind of break-up. The Hubble observations showed that there are ten distinct objects, each with comet-like dust tails, embedded within the asteroid's dusty envelope. The four largest rocky fragments are up to 200 metres in radius, about twice the length of a football pitch. The date increases from left to right, with frames from 29 October 2013, 15 November 2013, 13 December 2013, and 14 January 2014 respectively, showing how the clumps of debris material move around. The 14 January 2014 frame was not included in the science paper and is additional data.

NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)

In September, scientists announced they found a black hole that appears too big for its galaxy, an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy called M60-UCD1. The black hole, depicted in this artist’s concept, weighs 21 million times the mass of the sun, more than five times the black hole in the Milky Way. But its host galaxy is a mere one-six-hundredth of the Milky Way’s diameter. NASA, ESA, STScI-PRC14-41a

In September, scientists announced they found a black hole that appears too big for its galaxy, an ultra-compact dwarf galaxy called M60-UCD1. The black hole, depicted in this artist’s concept, weighs 21 million times the mass of the sun, more than five times the black hole in the Milky Way. But its host galaxy is a mere one-six-hundredth of the Milky Way’s diameter.

NASA, ESA, STScI-PRC14-41a

And, of course, there’s comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The discoveries are just beginning, but scientists are expecting a lot of exciting finds from the Philae lander and the Rosetta spacecraft now following the comet toward the sun. So stay tuned in 2015. ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

And, of course, there’s comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The discoveries are just beginning, but scientists are expecting a lot of exciting finds from the Philae lander and the Rosetta spacecraft now following the comet toward the sun. So stay tuned in 2015.

ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

How Laws Restricting Tech Actually Expose Us to Greater Harm

Matt Dorfman

We live in a world made of computers. Your car is a computer that drives down the freeway at 60 mph with you strapped inside. If you live or work in a modern building, computers regulate its temperature and respiration. And we're not just putting our bodies inside computers—we're also putting computers inside our bodies. I recently exchanged words in an airport lounge with a late arrival who wanted to use the sole electrical plug, which I had beat him to, fair and square. “I need to charge my laptop,” I said. “I need to charge my leg,” he said, rolling up his pants to show me his robotic prosthesis. I surrendered the plug.

You and I and everyone who grew up with earbuds? There's a day in our future when we'll have hearing aids, and chances are they won't be retro-hipster beige transistorized analog devices: They'll be computers in our heads.

And that's why the current regulatory paradigm for computers, inherited from the 16-year-old stupidity that is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, needs to change. As things stand, the law requires that computing devices be designed to sometimes disobey their owners, so that their owners won't do something undesirable. To make this work, we also have to criminalize anything that might help owners change their computers to let the machines do that supposedly undesirable thing.

This approach to controlling digital devices was annoying back in, say, 1995, when we got the DVD player that prevented us from skipping ads or playing an out-of-region disc. But it will be intolerable and deadly dangerous when our 3-D printers, self-driving cars, smart houses, and even parts of our bodies are designed with the same restrictions. Because those restrictions would change the fundamental nature of computers. Speaking in my capacity as a dystopian science fiction writer: This scares the hell out of me.

IF WE ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE TOTAL CONTROL OVER OUR OWN COMPUTERS, WE MAY ENTER A SCI-FI WORLD OF UNPARALLELED LEISURE AND EXCITEMENT.

The general-purpose computer is one of the crowning achievements of industrial society. Prior to its invention, electronic calculating engines were each hardwired to do just one thing, like calculate ballistics tables. John von Neumann's “von Neumann architecture” and Alan Turing's “Turing-complete computer” provided the theoretical basis for building a calculating engine that could run any program that could be expressed in symbolic language. That breakthrough still ripples through society, revolutionizing every corner of our world. When everything is made of computers, an improvement in computers makes everything better.

But there's a terrible corollary to that virtuous cycle: Any law or regulation that undermines computers' utility or security also ripples through all the systems that have been colonized by the general-purpose computer. And therein lies the potential for untold trouble and mischief.

Because while we've spent the past 70 years perfecting the art of building computers that can run every single program, we have no idea how to build a computer that can run every program except the one that infringes copyright or prints out guns or lets a software-based radio be used to confound air-traffic control signals or cranks up the air-conditioning even when the power company sends a peak-load message to it.

The closest approximation we have for “a computer that runs all the programs except the one you don't like” is “a computer that is infected with spyware out of the box.” By spyware I mean operating-system features that monitor the computer owner's commands and cancel them if they're on a blacklist. Think, for example, of image scanners that can detect if you're trying to scan currency and refuse to further process the image. As much as we want to prevent counterfeiting, imposing codes and commands that you can't overrule is a recipe for disaster.

Why? Because for such a system to work, remote parties must have more privileges on it than the owner. And such a security model must hide its operation from the computer's normal processes. When you ask your computer to do something reasonable, you expect it to say, “Yes, master” (or possibly “Are you sure?”), not “I CAN'T LET YOU DO THAT, DAVE.”

If the “I CAN'T LET YOU DO THAT, DAVE” message is being generated by a program on your desktop labeled HAL9000.exe, you will certainly drag that program into the trash. If your computer's list of running programs shows HAL9000.exe lurking in the background like an immigration agent prowling an arrivals hall, looking for sneaky cell phone users to shout at, you will terminate that process with a satisfied click.

If your com- puter decides it can’t let you do some- thing, you’ll certainly want to drag that HAL9000 .exe file to the trash. Matt Dorfman

So the only way to sustain HAL9000.exe and its brethren—the programs that today keep you from installing non-App Store apps on your iPhone and tomorrow will try to stop you from printing gun.stl on your 3-D printer—is to design the computer to hide them from you. And that creates vulnerabilities that make your computer susceptible to malicious hacking. Consider what happened in 2005, when Sony BMG started selling CDs laden with the notorious Sony rootkit, software designed to covertly prevent people from copying music files. Once you put one of Sony BMG's discs into your computer's CD drive, it would change your OS so that files beginning with $sys$ were invisible to the system. The CD then installed spyware that watched for attempts to rip any music CD and silently blocked them. Of course, virus writers quickly understood that millions of PCs were now blind to any file that began with $sys$ and changed the names of their viruses accordingly, putting legions of computers at risk.

Code always has flaws, and those flaws are easy for bad guys to find. But if your computer has deliberately been designed with a blind spot, the bad guys will use it to evade detection by you and your antivirus software. That's why a 3-D printer with anti-gun-printing code isn't a 3-D printer that won't print guns—the bad guys will quickly find a way around that. It's a 3-D printer that is vulnerable to hacking by malware creeps who can use your printer's “security” against you: from bricking your printer to screwing up your prints to introducing subtle structural flaws to simply hijacking the operating system and using it to stage attacks on your whole network.

This business of designing computers to deliberately weasel and lie isn't the worst thing about the war on the general-purpose computer and the effort to bodge together a “Turing-almost-complete” architecture that can run every program except for one that distresses a government, police force, corporation, or spy agency.

No, the worst part is that, like the lady who had to swallow the bird to catch the spider that she'd swallowed to catch the fly, any technical system that stops you from being the master of your computer must be accompanied by laws that criminalize information about its weaknesses. In the age of Google, it simply won't do to have “uninstall HAL9000.exe” return a list of videos explaining how to jailbreak your gadgets, just as videos that explain how to jailbreak your iPhone today could technically be illegal; making and posting them could potentially put their producers (and the sites that host them) at risk of prosecution.

This amounts to a criminal sanction for telling people about vulnerabilities in their own computers. And because today your computer lives in your pocket and has a camera and a microphone and knows all the places you go; and because tomorrow that speeding car/computer probably won't even sport a handbrake, let alone a steering wheel—the need to know about any mode that could be exploited by malicious hackers will only get more urgent. There can be no “lawful interception” capacity for a self-driving car, allowing police to order it to pull over, that wouldn't also let a carjacker compromise your car and drive it to a convenient place to rob, rape, and/or kill you.

If those million-eyed, fast-moving, deep-seated computers are designed to obey their owners; if the policy regulating those computers encourages disclosure of flaws, even if they can be exploited by spies, criminals, and cops; if we're allowed to know how they're configured and permitted to reconfigure them without being overridden by a distant party—then we may enter a science fictional world of unparalleled leisure and excitement.

But if the world's governments continue to insist that wiretapping capacity must be built into every computer; if the state of California continues to insist that cell phones have kill switches allowing remote instructions to be executed on your phone that you can't countermand or even know about; if the entertainment industry continues to insist that the general-purpose computer must be neutered so you can't use it to watch TV the wrong way; if the World Wide Web Consortium continues to infect the core standards of the web itself to allow remote control over your computer against your wishes—then we are in deep, deep trouble.

The Internet isn't just the world's most perfect video-on-demand service. It's not simply a better way to get pornography. It's not merely a tool for planning terrorist attacks. Those are only use cases for the net; what the net is, is the nervous system of the 21st century. It's time we started acting like it.

The Best WIRED Stories of 2014

WIRED

Say what you want about it, nobody can call 2014 a boring year. Airliners up and disappeared, terrifying diseases surfaced. Gamers gated, and, like, everybody got hacked. If you hung around these parts, you got the stories that mattered. If you didn’t—or if you just want to revisit a riveting 12 months—here are WIRED’s 2014 faves: as selected by our editors and your clicks.

True intelligence? It’s all in the hands. A gallery for anyone who wants to look official while making a very specific, long-winded point.

7 Hand Gestures That Make You Look Like a Real Intellectual

Chris McKinlay was single and getting nowhere with his online dating matches. So, he put his Ph.D. in mathematics to good use.

How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love

Everything you ever wanted to know about black holes, but didn’t have the scientific context or knowledge to know you wanted to ask.

A Brief History of Mind-Bending Ideas About Black Holes

Clubs. Rods. Slingshots. The weapons used in this year’s Ukrainian Revolution were like something out of the Middle Ages.

Photos: The Brutal DIY Weapons of the Ukrainian Revolution

JI YEO

One of the most haunting things we’ve published this year, a startlingly intimate look at the recovery process following plastic surgery.

Unsettling Images of Patients in Hiding After Plastic Surgery (NSFW)

While the world was transfixed by the case of MH370’s disappearance, we had a pilot weigh in on the most logical scenario.

A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet

Reimagining the things in our lives as utterly without function really makes you appreciate how well they’re designed.

15 Hilariously Bad Designs for Everyday Objects

Computers can beat humans at chess, poker, and Jeopardy. However, there’s still one game—invented in China 2,500 years ago—that we are still the best at.

The Mystery of Go, the Ancient Game That Computers Still Can’t Win

Game|Life editor Chris Kohler took on a game so scary it convinced him of VR’s potential for gaming.

The Oculus Rift Game That’s So Real It Nearly Destroyed Me

An account from the road with the two founders of Dark Wallet, and their pursuit of truly untraceable money.

Waiting for Dark

Scientifically speaking, paper is arguably still the most advanced reading medium.

Why the Smart Reading Device of the Future May Be … Paper

Slack is taking over the workplace, but its success is the least interesting thing about it.

The Most Fascinating Profile You’ll Ever Read About a Guy and His Boring Startup

The gender gap in tech is a widely acknowledged problem. Issie Lapowsky talked to females in the industry to find how bad it really is.

This Is What Tech’s Ugly Gender Problem Really Looks Like

Mat Honan takes the Facebook algorithms to their endpoints, with chaotic results.

I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days. Here’s What It Did to Me

AMY LOMBARD/WIRED

Chris Kooluris spent six months and $32,000 recreating an ’80s arcade in his apartment. Emily Dreyfuss chronicled his pursuit of an obsession from beginning to end.

Arcadia, A Love Story

Today, there are a lot of places you can learn to code. If you want to become an elite programmer, though, you need feedback. That’s where exorcism.io comes in.

Out in the Open: The Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

Two guys walk into a casino and win tens of thousands of dollars. Repeat, repeat, repeat. How they did it, and what went wrong.

Finding a Video Poker Bug Made These Guys Rich—Then Vegas Made Them Pay

It’s no secret that America is nowhere near the top in global education. If we continue to ignore that, we’ll be left behind in the increasingly near future.

American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn’t Exist

You will never see the worst the Internet has to offer. We sent Adrian Chen to the Philippines to uncover the hidden world of content moderation, and find out how bad it really gets.

The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed

In making Interstellar, Christopher Nolan and Kip Thorne had to find a way to visualize scientific theories. When they did, the results may have pushed astrophysics one step further.

How Building a Black Hole for Interstellar Led to an Amazing Scientific Discovery

SENIOR AIRMAN GREG L. DAVIS

The A-10 Thunderbolt II, nicknamed the Warthog, is going to fight ISIS. We took a look at what it’s made of.

America’s Toughest, Ugliest Warplane Is Going Back Into Battle

Back in September, Maryn McKenna looked at the numbers behind the Ebola outbreak’s worst case scenario.

The Mathematics of Ebola Trigger Stark Warnings: Act Now or Regret It

What do ice cream scoops, batteries, strollers, and helmets have in common? Nothing, except that we love how these particular ones were designed.

21 Awesomely Well-Designed Products We’re Dying to Own

For our December issue, Christopher Nolan teamed up with comic book artist Sean Gordon Murphy to pen a dark prequel to Interstellar.

Revealed: The Lost Chapter of Interstellar

As #Gamergate hit its peak, we had Laura Hudson weigh in on why, exactly, it was a futile tantrum that would never last.

Gamergate Goons Can Scream All They Want, But They Can’t Stop Progress

It bends, sure, but the iPhone 6 Plus is the best phone Apple has released in years, and the one that almost got Mat Honan to abandon Android.

WIRED Reviews the Apple iPhone 6 Plus

courtesy Vertu

Why a phone that costs about 50 times more than average is way, way better than yours.

What It’s Like to Use a $10K Phone With a Real-Life Personal Assistant

Mat Honan explores the explosion of startup money and innovation in the wake of marijuana legalization.

High Tech: How Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Are Rushing To Cash In On Cannabis

Gideon Lewis-Kraus goes deep on a startup flailing in a crowded marketplace in search of what it takes to hit it big in the tech industry right now.

One Startup’s Struggle to Survive the Silicon Valley Gold Rush

How KK Barrett, Spike Jonze’s production designer, created a vision for the near future that will likely define it as well.

Why Her Will Dominate UI Design Even More Than Minority Report

The story of the Sony hack has reached fever pitch, but we’re still without definitive evidence that North Korea is responsible, despite U.S. intelligence officials’ statements. Kim Zetter does what she does best and unravels the gray area surrounding the hack.

The Evidence That North Korea Hacked Sony Is Flimsy

All the Gear You Need to Make Your Flight Actually Bearable

Feel free to roam about the cabin. Or just pack this stuff, stay put, and let the hours fly by. Peden + Munk

KINDLE VOYAGE | $199

Six hours to Berlin? Just enough time to devour the new Neil Gaiman. Amazon's latest ereader has a sharper display, improved touch controls, and a better battery.

COCOON AIR-CORE DOWN TRAVEL PILLOW | $50

This porta-pillow combines soft down stuffing with an air bladder for neck-easing support. Packed, it's the size of an apple, but it fully inflates with just three breaths.

OXO WIPES DISPENSER | $8

This slim plastic case holds 25 sheets of instant refreshment. The pop top is designed for one-handed use—no need to put down your cocktail.

HYDRO FLASK | $28

Airports now offer hydration kiosks that dispense filtered water. Take advantage with this 21-ounce bottle. The vacuum-insulated shell keeps H20 cold for hours.

MAHABIS SLIPPERS | $77

Protect your piggies from chills as well as filthy microbes. These fuzzy felt slip-ons have removable plastic bottoms: Snap on the grippy soles for bathroom visits.

Bacteria could be rich source for making terpenes

If you've ever enjoyed the scent of a pine forest or sniffed a freshly cut basil leaf, then you're familiar with terpenes. The compounds are responsible for the essential oils of plants and the resins of trees. Since the discovery of terpenes more than 150 years ago, scientists have isolated some 50,000 different terpene compounds derived from plants and fungi. Bacteria and other microorganisms are known to make terpenes too, but they've received much less study.

New research at Brown University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that the genetic capacity of bacteria to make terpenes is widespread. Using a specialized technique to sift through genomic databases for a variety of bacteria, the researchers found 262 gene sequences that likely code for terpene synthases -- enzymes that catalyze the production terpenes. The researchers then used several of those enzymes to isolate 13 previously unidentified bacterial terpenes.

The findings suggest that bacteria "represent a fertile source for discovery of new natural products," the researchers write.

David Cane, a professor of chemistry at Brown and one of the authors on the new paper, began working about 15 years ago to understand how bacteria make terpenes.

"At that time, the first genomic sequences of certain classes of bacteria were just beginning to come out," he said. "We had this idea that maybe you could find the enzymes responsible for making terpenes by looking at the sequences of the genes that were being discovered."

To do that, Cane searched through the genome data gathered for a group of bacteria called Streptomyces, looking for sequences similar those known to produce terpene synthases in plants and fungi. Eventually, he found that Streptomyces did indeed have genes encoding terpene synthases and that those enzymes could be used to make terpenes.

The verified bacterial sequences found by Cane and others enabled researchers to refine subsequent searches for additional terpene synthase genes. "Instead of using plant sequences or fungal sequences as your search query, we can now use bacterial sequences, which should yield a greater degree of similarity," he said. "So now we're fishing in the right waters with the right kind of bait, and you can find more matches."

This latest paper made use of the third generation of iterative searches and a powerful search technique developed by Haruo Ikeda of Kitasato University in Japan. Previous work had identified 140 probable sequences for terpene synthases. This latest work expanded that to 262.

The next step was to verify that these sequences did indeed code for enzymes capable of making terpenes. Testing all 262 wasn't practical, so the team chose a few they thought might give them the best chance of finding terpene compounds that hadn't previously been identified. They looked for sequences that didn't seem to fit clearly into previously known categories of terpenes.

After they had selected a few, the team made use of a genetically engineered Streptomyces bacterium as a bio-refinery to generate the terpene products.

"What Professor Ikeda did, in collaboration with us, is develop a variant of a very well-studied Streptomyces system," Cane said. "He eliminated the genes that were responsible for making most of its native products, but he left behind all of the capacity to provide the starting materials and handle the accumulation of products."

By taking some of the gene sequences they found and splicing them into their test organism, the researchers could let the organisms generate the product using the instructions from the newly introduced gene. Using this method, they were able to make 13 previously unknown terpenes, their structures verified by mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

"It's a big step forward in the area in that it provides a paradigm for how one could go about discovering many new substances," Cane said. "It's a good example of how one can use sequence analysis to identify genes of interest and then apply molecular genetic and microbiological techniques to produce the chemical substances of interest."

The work also suggests that there may be many new terpene products as yet undiscovered hiding in the genomes of bacteria.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Brown University . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.