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The claim that living plants emit the greenhouse gas methane has shaken up atmospheric scientists. Quirin Schiermeier talks to the experts trying to make sense of the measurements.
The detection of cancer at an early stage in its development can be life-saving. With research efforts under way to find better methods to detect minuscule tumours, Laura Spinney finds out how near some of these cancer 'biomarkers' are to the clinic.
Much of what we know about cancer comes from studying mice, and potential therapies are tested in the animals. But the differences between the species can scupper the best laid plans of researchers and drug companies, reports Carina Dennis.
Is targeting cancer stem cells a way to finish tumours off once and for all — or just the latest in a long line of false dawns? Alison Abbott looks at a debate that's generating both heat and light.
Quantum computers could solve problems insurmountable to conventional computers. The missing ingredient for quantum computing with electron spins is now available — the rotation of a single spin.
Nuclear factors must access specific sites within genomic DNA to function, yet the DNA is bundled up into many nucleosomes. Is the DNA sequence sufficiently informative to predict where each nucleosome will be?
With the right combination of microwave radiation and magnetic field, two-dimensional electron systems conduct electricity with zero resistance. But is this zero really zero, or is it negative resistance in disguise?
These days, galaxies come in very different shapes and sizes. Cutting-edge technologies allow a detailed peek at how things looked in the Universe's early days — 'the same, but different' is the tentative message.
Just as stem cells are crucial for tissue development and regeneration, cancer stem cells underlie tumour formation and maintenance. But do cancer stem cells invariably arise from normal stem cells?
A combined computational and experimental approach is used to determine the DNA sequence preferences of nucleosomes and predict genome-wide nucleosome organization. The yeast genome encodes an intrinsic nucleosome organization, which can explain about 50% of in vivo nucleosome positions.
The tumour suppressor gene PML is shown to normally restrain angiogenesis, both in tumours and under ischaemic conditions. This involves a new pathway in which during hypoxia, PML regulates mTOR and the transcription factor HIF-1α
Observations of a luminous star-forming galaxy when the Universe was only 20% of its current age reveal high gas surface densities, large star formation rate and moderately young stellar ages, suggesting rapid assembly, fragmentation and conversion to stars of an initially very gas-rich protodisk.
The low albedo region of the seasonal polar ice caps of Mars could result from absorption by the underlying surface. But the deep and broad CO2 absorption bands that are expected in the near infrared from a thick transparent slab of CO2 ice are not observed.
Infrared and visible observations show that features on the martian south polar cap remain at CO2 ice temperatures well into summer, and must be granular materials that have been brought up to the surface of the ice.
New theoretical work shows that skyrmions can form stable ground states in various types of magnetic metals and may be observed directly with modern magnetic microscopy techniques. Moreover, it predicts that spontaneous skyrmion ground states exist generally in a large number of materials.
Nitrification, the microbial conversion of ammonia to nitrate, is a key process in the global nitrogen cycle. This reaction is predominately carried out by archaeal and not bacterial ammonia oxidizer, as the archaeal ammonia oxidizers are more abundant in soils than their well-known bacterial counterparts.
Computer algorithms have not been successful at finding coherent regions in noisy visual images under natural viewing conditions. A new approach can now determine all salient regions of an image and build them into a hierarchical structure faster and more accurately than previous approaches.
Oncogenic transformation of committed blood progenitor cells can produce leukaemic stem cells with the ability to self-renew through critical changes in gene expression.
The Notch receptor plays a pivotal role in a pathway that controls the survival of embryonic, fetal and adult stem cells, as it activates the phosphatidylinositol-3-OH kinase/Akt signalling pathway and identifies a key serine on STAT3.
Examination of the photosystem II reaction centre shows that changes in locally flexible domains allow enzyme adaptation to ambient temperature. Mutations in the packing motif of mesophiles that increase the residue bulkiness and reduce the size of cavities to promote thermophilic behaviour. Similar mechanisms may occur in other systems, including globular proteins that require acclimation to significantly different habitats.
Physical intuition predicts that DNA should unwind under tension as it is pulled towards a denatured structure, but this is not the case. Pulling of a single DNA molecule first leads to overwinding, which causes it to lengthen, not shorten. These results can be explained by a coupling between stretch and twist, such that the DNA inner radius changes under tension.
Science is cut-throat by nature, but how should young scientists handle working on competitive projects — or worse, getting scooped? Kendall Powell investigates how to release the pressure valve.
