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Volume 448 Issue 7151, 19 July 2007

Editorial

  • The questions to be explored at the Large Hadron Collider offer a chance to rekindle public interest in the fundamental principles of the Universe in which we live.

    Editorial

    Advertisement

  • Field trials of AIDS prevention methods are as essential as they are politically awkward.

    Editorial
  • Hands off the Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology.

    Editorial
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Research Highlights

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News

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News in Brief

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Business

  • The US Patent and Trade Office has cracked open the door on its normally closed patent evaluation process. Heidi Ledford looks at how its peer-review project is faring.

    Business
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News Feature

  • Physicists say that 96% of the Universe is unseen, and appeal to the ideas of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' to make up the difference. In the first of two articles, Jenny Hogan reports that attempts to identify the mysterious dark matter are on the verge of success. In the second, Geoff Brumfiel asks why dark energy, hailed as a breakthrough when discovered a decade ago, is proving more frustrating than ever to the scientists who study it.

    • Jenny Hogan
    News Feature
  • Why is dark energy, hailed as a breakthrough when discovered a decade ago, proving so frustrating to the scientists who study it?

    • Geoff Brumfiel
    News Feature
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Correspondence

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Books & Arts

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Essay

  • Where relativity and quantum mechanics clash, new laws of physics should emerge.

    • Giovanni Amelino-Camelia
    Essay
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News & Views

  • The floor of the English Channel provides evidence for two catastrophic floods arising from the drainage of huge glacial lakes in the area of the southern North Sea. These megafloods made Britain what it is today.

    • Philip Gibbard
    News & Views
  • Researchers have engineered embryonic stem-like cells from normal mouse skin cells. If this method can be translated to humans, patient-specific stem cells could be made without the use of donated eggs or embryos.

    • Janet Rossant
    News & Views
  • Like any particle, electrons are also waves that can interfere with each other. Remarkably, this interference can even happen between electrons from different sources that have never physically interacted.

    • Markus Kindermann
    News & Views
  • Can we really learn about complex human psychiatric disorders through genetic manipulations in mice? Yes, according to studies of how altering the gene encoding neuregulin 1 affects signalling in the mouse brain.

    • Lorna W. Role
    • David A. Talmage
    News & Views
  • Analyses of growth kinetics in seedlings reveal exquisite connections between the signalling pathways controlled by the circadian clock and by light, and illuminate the molecular mechanisms involved.

    • Ghislain Breton
    • Steve A. Kay
    News & Views
  • In mice, deletion of the Rab8 protein disrupts organized molecular distribution to membranes of intestinal epithelial cells. Death by starvation follows, exactly as it does in humans with microvillus inclusion disease.

    • Aparna Lakkaraju
    • Enrique Rodriguez-Boulan
    News & Views
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Introduction

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Glossary

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Perspective

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Review Article

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Perspective

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Review Article

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Perspective

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Article

  • Four transcription factors Oct4, Sox2, c-Myc and Klf4 are known to convert fibroblasts to pluripotent stem cells, if Fbx15 expression is also selected. But the induced stem cells were shown to be distinct from normal embryonic stem cells. However, if cells expressing Nanog and Oct4 are selected, then the reprogrammed fibroblasts are similar to embryonic stem cells in both biological potency and epigenetic state.

    • Keisuke Okita
    • Tomoko Ichisaka
    • Shinya Yamanaka
    Article
  • Four transcription factors Oct4, Sox2, c-Myc and Klf4 are known to convert fibroblasts to pluripotent stem cells, if Fbx15 expression is also selected. But the induced stem cells were shown to be distinct from normal embryonic stem cells. However, if cells expressing Nanog and Oct4 are selected, then the reprogrammed fibroblasts are similar to embryonic stem cells in both biological potency and epigenetic state.

    • Marius Wernig
    • Alexander Meissner
    • Rudolf Jaenisch
    Article
  • Changes in residual protein entropy are a potentially important component of the change in the free energy of protein association, but such thermodynamics have been virtually impossible to determine experimentally. Here the authors used solution NMR spectroscopy to show that the change in internal dynamics of calmodulin varies significantly on binding a variety of target domains, which indicates that changes in residual protein conformational entropy can contribute significantly to the free energy of protein-ligand association.

    • Kendra King Frederick
    • Michael S. Marlow
    • A. Joshua Wand
    Article
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Letter

  • On Jupiter's moon Io, volcanic hot gases form an atmosphere that is then ionized and distributed around its orbit, forming a torus. Although it is known that the plasma leaks away, the leakage locations were unknown. Mendillo et al. report that sodium is ejected from the wake of the Io-torus interaction, together with a spherically symmetrical outflow region. The spatial extent of the ionospheric wake is more than twice that observed by the Galileo spacecraft, implying considerable variability.

    • Michael Mendillo
    • Sophie Laurent
    • W. Clem Karl
    Letter
  • Neder et al. experimentally demonstrate a fundamental effect: quantum interference between two particles that are indistinguishable and come from independent sources. This can only be observed by recording a joint probability of finding the particles in two detectors at separate places. Experiments with photons have not succeeded in observing the interference effect; here, instead, this experiment is carried out with electrons manipulated in an interferometer fabricated in a semiconductor two-dimensional electron gas.

    • I. Neder
    • N. Ofek
    • V. Umansky
    Letter
  • Geckos use structures on the hairs of their feet to generate adhesive forces, enabling them to cling onto surfaces, and rapidly attach and detach. Messersmith et al. have combined this strategy of geckos with the chemical approach to underwater adhesion used by mussels. The resulting 'geckel' adhesive shows remarkable reversible adhesion over 1,000 cycles in both wet and dry conditions.

    • Haeshin Lee
    • Bruce P. Lee
    • Phillip B. Messersmith
    Letter
  • A hypothesis for the permanent isolation of Britain from mainland Europe during interglacial high sea levels has been confirmed. Gupta et al. analysed a new regional bathymetric map of part of the area, finding a valley with landforms indicating large-scale subaerial erosion by high-magnitude water discharges. They suggest breaching of a rock dam at the Dover Strait instigated drainage of a large lake in the North Sea basin.

    • Sanjeev Gupta
    • Jenny S. Collier
    • Graeme Potter
    Letter
  • The proposed origin of modern humans has been controversial; whereas genetic analyses mostly support a single African origin, measurements of anatomy give mixed results. A new analysis of a large database of skull measurements by Manica and colleagues shows that 'distance from Africa' accounts for up to a quarter of heritable variation in craniometric traits, strongly indicating a common African heritage.

    • Andrea Manica
    • William Amos
    • Tsunehiko Hanihara
    Letter
  • Gene regulation via genomic imprinting is found in both mammals and flowering plants, yet it remains unclear how new imprinted loci evolve. In plants, the imprinted seed development gene MEDEA has been found to have arisen by gene duplication. Its paralogue, SWINGER, has retained the ancestral function, whereas MEDEA became imprinted and acquired new function by positive Darwinian selection.

    • Charles Spillane
    • Karl J. Schmid
    • Ueli Grossniklaus
    Letter
  • As the most common cardiac arrythmia, atrial fibrillation is of interest to physicians, and has recently been shown to have genetic components. Gudjbartsson et al. have conducted a genome-wide association scan in populations from around the globe, and find a strong link to a gene involved in early heart development. This gene, PITX2, could be a candidate for therapeutic intervention.

    • Daniel F. Gudbjartsson
    • David O. Arnar
    • Kari Stefansson
    Letter
  • Circadian oscillations and light levels both affect plant growth; Maloof and colleagues now describe one mechanism by which the two pathways converge. Coordination between circadian control of transcription of two bHLH genes and light-dependent regulation of their proteins accounts for observed diurnal growth rhythms of Arabidopsis seedlings, providing an example of how coincidence between external and internal cues regulates function.

    • Kazunari Nozue
    • Michael F. Covington
    • Julin N. Maloof
    Letter
  • During development and tumour metastasis, groups of cells can migrate together. Using border cell migration in Drosophila as a model, Rorth et al. show that cells move in two distinct phases by different mechanisms. To mediate these movements, information processing of signalling pathways occurs at the single-cell and the multicellular level.

    • Ambra Bianco
    • Minna Poukkula
    • Pernille Rørth
    Letter
  • Rab8 is a small GTP-binding protein thought to regulate basolateral transport in vitro. In this paper, Rab8 conditional knockout mice are used to show that Rab8 plays an important part in vivo in the maintenance of the apical surface of intestinal cells; the mice eventually starve owing to poor absorption of food.

    • Takashi Sato
    • Sotaro Mushiake
    • Akihiro Harada
    Letter
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Prospects

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Special Report

  • Cooperation and small group size make the UK Medical Research Council's institutes a success.

    • Jill U. Adams
    Special Report
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Movers

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Bricks & Mortar

  • California Institute for Regenerative Medicine offers start-up grants for young scientists.

    • Monya Baker
    Bricks & Mortar
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Career View

  • It's important to periodically reflect and refocus.

    • Maria Ocampo-Hafalla
    Career View
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Futures

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Authors

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Insight

  • In 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will come into operation at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. The highest-energy accelerator ever built, it heralds a new era in particle-physics research, in which we hope to complete the standard model and even go beyond, into a new realm of physics.

    Insight
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