Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
In the fight against tumours, comprehensive cancer institutes are deploying a wide range of different strategies in an attempt to encourage the sharing of ideas and materials among researchers, says Steve Bunk.
Science, with its inherent uncertainties, can be hard to put across to the public. But blaming 'sloppy' journalism is too easy. If researchers are to make their points effectively, they should learn more about how the media work.
After decades of disappointment, and the investment of billions of dollars, is the 'war on cancer' about to gain real momentum? Alison Abbott sends a dispatch from the front line.
Protein folding is vital to living organisms because it adds functional flesh to the bare bones of genes. But errors in this process generate misfolded structures that can be lethal.
The X-ray spectrum of an afterglow from a γ-ray burst reveals a smoking gun. It links the γ-rays to the expanding fireball that occurs after a supernova explosion.
'Transdifferentiation' is a poorly understood process invoked to explain how tissue-specific adult stem cells can generate cells of other tissues. New results challenge its existence.
Two centuries ago, bison and elk were more common to the east of North America's Rocky Mountains than to the west. A look into why this was so may hold lessons for modern conservation biologists.
A possible solution to the need to expand fibre-optic capacities presents itself in the form of a new way of amplifying the information-carrying light transmissions. But turning principle into practice will require more work.
In mammals, mother and father make an equal genetic, but an unequal 'epigenetic', contribution to offspring. Studies of humans and mice with no maternal epigenetic contribution reveal more about this asymmetry.
In vertebrates, the face is formed in part by neural crest cells. It has been assumed that the developmental fate of these cells is inbuilt. New work, however, reveals a role for instructive signals from nearby cells.
DREADCO engineers have been given the task of inventing 'Photofabric' — a flexible photoelectric cell that could be made into flags, sails, balloon fabric and so on, providing a universal power source.
