Skip to main content

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.

Volume 451 Issue 7175, 10 January 2008

Editorial

  • The world faces great risks from nuclear weapons that need to be urgently addressed by political leaders and scientists worldwide. There is now a window of opportunity to do so.

    Editorial

    Advertisement

  • Whether to build the International Linear Collider is an open question, but R&D on it should be supported.

    Editorial
  • Evolution is a scientific fact, and every organization whose research depends on it should explain why.

    Editorial
Top of page ⤴

Research Highlights

Top of page ⤴

Journal Club

Top of page ⤴

News

Top of page ⤴

News in Brief

  • Scribbles on the margins of science.

    News in Brief
Top of page ⤴

News

Top of page ⤴

News in Brief

Top of page ⤴

News Feature

  • A winning combination of isolation, local involvement and a broad ecological remit are making the management of the seas around Colombia's San Andrés islands a model for other conservationists, reports Mark Schrope.

    • Mark Schrope
    News Feature
  • Long dismissed as featureless, disorganized sacks, bacteria are now revealing a multitude of elegant internal structures. Ewen Callaway investigates a new field in cell biology.

    • Ewen Callaway
    News Feature
Top of page ⤴

Correspondence

Top of page ⤴

Books & Arts

  • Web publishing and marketing might put more science into fiction and attract new readers.

    • Jennifer Rohn
    Books & Arts
    • Frank A. J. L. James
    Books & Arts
Top of page ⤴

News & Views

  • Studies of an old genetic puzzle in a little-known protozoan reveal a new frontier in the expanding world of RNAs: an RNA template guides genome-wide DNA rearrangements during sexual reproduction.

    • Meng-Chao Yao
    News & Views
  • Using silicon as a 'thermoelectric' material to convert heat into electricity would be a technological leap forward. But silicon conducts heat so well that nobody thought that could work — until now.

    • Cronin B. Vining
    News & Views
  • It requires a quirk of fossilization for the soft parts of an animal to be preserved. Study of such a specimen of the mysterious machaeridians provides these organisms with a well defined evolutionary home.

    • Jean-Bernard Caron
    News & Views
  • Cats kill birds, and therefore eradicating cats from an island would seem to be a good strategy for protecting the native population of seabirds. But that thinking does not take account of ecological complications.

    • Matthieu Le Corre
    News & Views
  • Manipulating cells from adult human tissue, scientists have generated cells with the same developmental potential as embryonic stem cells. The research opportunities these exciting observations offer are limitless.

    • Martin F. Pera
    News & Views
  • Strange forces and effects dominate the world at the microscopic level. One such force, rooted in the random fluctuations of matter, has only now been accurately measured — 30 years after it was first predicted.

    • Sébastien Balibar
    News & Views
  • How do you watch the evolution of something that doesn't evolve? In the classical world, even posing this question would provoke raised eyebrows. But where quantum physics is involved, no question is too silly.

    • Lev Vaidman
    News & Views
Top of page ⤴

Article

  • This paper reports the ability to isolate human donor biopsies and use transcription factors to derive induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells from fetal, neonatal, and adult human primary cells, including dermal fibroblasts isolated from a skin biopsy of a healthy adult volunteer. The human iPS cells resembled embryonic stem cells in their morphology and gene expression. These data establish a method to isolate iPS cells from patients, suggesting that it may be possible to use this procedure to isolate patient-specific cells in culture.

    • In-Hyun Park
    • Rui Zhao
    • George Q. Daley
    Article
  • The microRNAs miR-126 and miR-335 have an important role in breast cancer tumourigenesis and metastasis. Loss of miR-335 expression promotes breast cancer cell invasion by targeting SOX4 and tenascin C. In breast cancer patients, loss of miR-126 and miR-335 expression is indicative of a poor prognosis.

    • Sohail F. Tavazoie
    • Claudio Alarcón
    • Joan Massagué
    Article
  • The ciliate Oxytricha trifallax cuts up and removes most of its nuclear DNA during one developmental stage, stitching 5% of its chromosomes back together at specific points. This paper demonstrates that maternal RNA remaining in the new cell could serve as a template for the chromosomal rearrangements, as shown by the disruption of proper assembly when several RNAs are removed from the cell.

    • Mariusz Nowacki
    • Vikram Vijayan
    • Laura F. Landweber
    Article
Top of page ⤴

Letter

  • Gamma-ray line radiation at 511 keV is the signature of electron–positron annihilation, which comes from the general direction of the Galactic centre, but the origin of the positrons was a mystery. This paper reports a distinct asymmetry in the 511 keV line emission coming from the inner Galactic disk, which resembles an asymmetry in the distribution of low mass X-ray binaries with strong emission at photon energies >20 keV, indicating that they may be the dominant origin of the positrons.

    • Georg Weidenspointner
    • Gerry Skinner
    • Christoph Winkler
    Letter
  • The wafer-scale electrochemical synthesis of arrays of rough silicon nanowires is reported, as is their substantially reduced thermal conductivity, which improves their potential for thermoelectric applications.

    • Allon I. Hochbaum
    • Renkun Chen
    • Peidong Yang
    Letter
  • Laboratory experiments in microcosms monitoring the hydrocarbon composition of degraded oils are used with carbon isotopic compositions of gas and oil samples taken at wellheads and a Rayleigh isotope fractionation box model to elucidate the mechanisms of hydrocarbon degradation in reservoirs. The data imply a common methanogenic biodegradation mechanism in subsurface degraded oil reservoirs resulting in consistent patterns of hydrocarbon alteration.

    • D. M. Jones
    • I. M. Head
    • S. R. Larter
    Letter
  • The location of microearthquakes beneath a hydrothermal vent field on the East Pacific Rise has been mapped to shed light on hydrothermal pathways at this location. The earthquake locations indicate that a hydrothermal down-flow zone is located on the ridge axis and that hydrothermal flow is oriented along the ridge axis, arguing that models that suggest hydrothermal cells are orientated across-axis, with off-axis recharge zones, may not apply to the East Pacific Rise.

    • M. Tolstoy
    • F. Waldhauser
    • W.-Y. Kim
    Letter
  • A new machaeridian from the Early Ordovician of Morocco with preserved soft parts is reported, showing that machaeridians are the calcareous plates carried on the back of a hitherto unknown form of segmented worm, resolving a 150-year-old mystery.

    • Jakob Vinther
    • Peter Van Roy
    • Derek E. G. Briggs
    Letter
  • It is shown that if individuals vary in their degree of cooperativeness, and if they can decide whether or not to continue interacting with each other on the basis of their respective levels of cooperativeness, then cooperation can gradually evolve from an uncooperative state. These results highlight the importance of individual behavioural differences in fostering the evolution of cooperation.

    • John M. McNamara
    • Zoltan Barta
    • Alasdair I. Houston

    Special:

    Letter
  • The availability of genomic data for many species is shedding light on the origin of sex and mating types over evolutionary time. This paper describes the sex-determination region of a zygomycete, the fungus Phycomyces blakesleeanus.

    • Alexander Idnurm
    • Felicia J. Walton
    • Joseph Heitman
    Letter
  • Widespread sense-antisense transcripts have been identified in mammalian cells. Many tumour suppressor genes have nearby antisense RNAs, and an antisense RNA to the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p15 can silence the p15 gene by inducing heterochromatin formation.

    • Wenqiang Yu
    • David Gius
    • Hengmi Cui
    Letter
  • Calcium signalling is important for apicomplexan parasite virulence. A newly discovered calcium signalling pathway based on the plant hormone abscisic acid is now reported in Toxoplasma gondii. As this pathway is absent in most animals, it may present a new target for drug intervention.

    • Kisaburo Nagamune
    • Leslie M. Hicks
    • L. David Sibley
    Letter
  • Chronic granulomatous disease is associated with lack of NADPH activity in phagocytes and characterized by recurrent bacterial and fungal infections as well as exagerated inflammation. This paper shows that the excessive inflammation can be attributed to the lack of NAPPH-derived reactive oxygen which is required for the conversion of tryptophan to kynurenine.

    • Luigina Romani
    • Francesca Fallarino
    • Paolo Puccetti
    Letter
Top of page ⤴

Erratum

Top of page ⤴

Prospects

Top of page ⤴

Special Report

  • For scientists who want to combine public outreach with research, a museum may be the perfect place to work, says Ricki Lewis.

    • Ricki Lewis

    Career Guide:

    Special Report
Top of page ⤴

Futures

  • It's only a game...

    • Toiya Kristen Finley
    Futures
Top of page ⤴

Authors

Top of page ⤴
Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Quick links