NEWS OF THE WEEK ACS M E E T I N G
NEWS
ARSENIC LINK TO ANCIENT MIGRATION Metal poisoning may have driven out early Native Americans TAINTED WATER Montezuma Well is an open-faced pool of water fed from a deep aquifer.
W
HY THE SINAGUA PEOPLE
suddenly left Arizona's \erde Wley around 1450 may have a chemical explanation. Richard D. Foustjr., a chemistry professor at Northern Arizona University thinks that arsenic-laden water in the Montezuma^Well, near the valley could have helped lead to the departure. A graduate student in Foust's lab, Jeevanthie Senanayake, presented results supporting this hypothesis at
the American Chemical Society national meeting, held last week in San Diego. The Sinagua people, who are the likely ancestors of the Hopi, lived in the'Verde Wley from 700 to 1450; why they left is still a matter of debate among historians, according to Senanayake. Historians know that the Sinagua left 20 years after irrigation from the Montezuma Well peaked. Because Montezuma "Well water contains high levels of arsenic, exceeding 100 ppb, Foust suspects arsenic poisoning is behind the migration. The Nation-
AWARDS
HHMI SELECTS NEW INVESTIGATORS Many chemists are in new crop of researchers to receive funding HHMI CHEMISTS From top left to bottom right: Hsieh-Wilson, Kern, Liu, Mrksich, Quake, Zhuang
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C&EN
/ MARCH
H
OWARD HUGHES MEDICAL
Institute, Chevy Chase, Md., has announced the selection of 43 scientists as new H H M I investigators. Of those selected, nearly halfare involved in chemistry and biochemistry—as broadly defined. "We more than doubled our number of chemists," H H M I President Thomas
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R. Cech says. "If you include some of the other scientists who are not trained as biologists, I figure we tripled nonbiological scientist investigators.,, Cech sees the results as a sign of the times. "The interface between physical science and biomedicine is a very vibrant area where there is a huge impact factor, so universities and medical schools were wise to think of more than just biology faculty when they were asked for nominations." H H M I will invest more than $300 million in additional support for these new investigators over the next seven years. Each scien-
al Academy of Sciences recommends a safe drinking water standard of 5 ppb for arsenic. To get a sense of how the high levels of arsenic in the water may have affected the Sinagua, Senanayake analyzed rabbit and turtle bones dated to the mid-1400s found in a cave a short distance from the well. Turtles and rabbits were part of the Sinagua diet. Arsenic levels as high as 229 mg per kg were found in the turtle bones, compared with 2.0 mgper kg in bones from turtles not exposed to unusually high levels of arsenic. Senanayake reasons that significant elevation ofarsenic levels would likely also be found in the bones of the ancient Sinagua. Foust and Senanayake suggest that the Sinagua may have taken the symptoms of arsenic poisoning—black foot disease and goiter, which might have been manifest among the people—as a religious sign to leave the area.— LOUISA DALT0N
tist will receive support ofabout $1 million per year. New investigators in chemistry-related disciplines areJames Bardwell, U of Michigan; David Bartel, MIT; Bonnie L. Bassler, Princeton U; Albert Bendelac, U of Chicago; Ronald Breaker, Yale U; Zhijian Chen, U of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Joseph DeRisi, UCSF; Taekjip Ha, U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Gregory J. Harmon, Cold Spring H a r b o r Laboratory; Oliver Hobert, Columbia U; Linda C. Hsieh-Wilson, Caltech; D o r o t h e e Kern, Brandeis U; David R. Liu, Harvard U; Karolin Luger, Colorado State U; Milan Mrksich, U of Chicago;Joseph P. Noel, Salk Institute for Biological Studies; Stephen R. Quake, Stanford U; Brenda A. Schulman, St.Jude Children's Research Hospital; Kevan Shokat, UCSF; Thomas Tuschl, Rockefeller U; Yi Zhang, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Xiaowei Zhuang, HarvardU.-LINDA RABER HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
