Candidate landing sites and possible traverses at the South Pole of the Moon for the LUVMI-X rover

Lunar volatiles, such as water, are considered to be a crucial resource for In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) in using the Moon as an enabling platform for future space exploration. As water is most likely to be found in the form of ice at the lunar poles (temperature of stability in vacuum: 110K), multiple missions target the South Pole cold traps. With challenging conditions (rough topography, low illumination, low temperatures, and limited Earth visibility; and references within), the South Pole comprises numerous PSR (Permanently Shadowed Regions) which are cold enough to capture and retain volatiles such as water ice (annual average temperatures of 40K). Funded by the EU program Horizon 2020, Space Applications Services coordinates the LUVMI-X (LUnar Volatiles Mobile Instrument) project, where the company develops a robotic platform and international partners develop a dedicated payload suite, aimed at sampling and analyzing lunar volatiles in these polar regions. LUVMI-X is a commercial rover with modular interfaces to facilitate the integration of payloads from the community. The goal of this paper is to find suitable landing sites and study areas for this rover, that are both scientifically interesting and technically reachable

Tissue-specific DNA methylation loss during ageing and carcinogenesis is linked to chromosome structure, replication timing and cell division rates

DNA methylation is an epigenetic mechanism known to affect gene expression and aberrant DNA methylation patterns have been described in cancer. However, only a small fraction of differential methylation events target genes with a defined role in cancer, raising the question of how aberrant DNA methylation contributes to carcinogenesis. As recently a link has been suggested between methylation patterns arising in ageing and those arising in cancer, we asked which aberrations are unique to cancer and which are the product of normal ageing processes. We therefore compared the methylation patterns between ageing and cancer in multiple tissues. We observed that hypermethylation preferentially occurs in regulatory elements, while hypomethylation is associated with structural features of the chromatin. Specifically, we observed consistent hypomethylation of late-replicating, lamina-associated domains. The extent of hypomethylation was stronger in cancer, but in both ageing and cancer it was proportional to the replication timing of the region and the cell division rate of the tissue. Moreover, cancer patients who displayed more hypomethylation in late-replicating, lamina-associated domains had higher expression of cell division genes. These findings suggest that different cell division rates contribute to tissue- and cancer type-specific DNA methylation profiles.German Research Foundation [SCHA 1933/1-1]; European Union Seventh Framework Programme [FP7/2007-2013] under grant agreements [HEALTH-F4-2011-278568 (PRIMES)]; Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MEIC) [BFU2015-63571-P] and to the EMBL partnership; the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF/FEDER); Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa and the support of the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. Funding for open access charge: Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MEIC) [BFU2015-63571-P]