We describe a surprising long-range periodicity that underlies a substantial fraction of C. elegans genomic sequence. Extended segments (up to several hundred nucleotides) of the C. elegans genome show a strong bias toward occurrence of AA/TT dinucleotides along one face of the helix while little or no such constraint is evident on the opposite helical face. Segments with this characteristic periodicity are highly overrepresented in intron sequences and are associated with a large fraction of genes with known germline expression in C. elegans. In addition to altering the path and flexibility of DNA in vitro, sequences of this character have been shown by others to constrain DNA::nucleosome interactions, potentially producing a structure that could resist the assembly of highly ordered (phased) nucleosome arrays that have been proposed as a precursor to heterochromatin. We propose a number of ways that the periodic occurrence of A(n)/T-n clusters could reflect evolution and function of genes that express in the germ cell lineage of C. elegans.

The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) investigation of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) addresses the chemical and isotopic composition of the atmosphere and volatiles extracted from solid samples. The SAM investigation is designed to contribute substantially to the mission goal of quantitatively assessing the habitability of Mars as an essential step in the search for past or present life on Mars. SAM is a 40 kg instrument suite located in the interior of MSL's Curiosity rover. The SAM instruments are a quadrupole mass spectrometer, a tunable laser spectrometer, and a 6-column gas chromatograph all coupled through solid and gas processing systems to provide complementary information on the same samples. The SAM suite is able to measure a suite of light isotopes and to analyze volatiles directly from the atmosphere or thermally released from solid samples. In addition to measurements of simple inorganic compounds and noble gases SAM will conduct a sensitive search for organic compounds with either thermal or chemical extraction from sieved samples delivered by the sample processing system on the Curiosity rover's robotic arm.