Table of contents
Volume 462 Number 7269 pp11-126
(this content only available online) indicates content that is available online only
Editorials
On the road to REDD p11
An emissions trading scheme gives forests a market value on the basis of how much carbon they sequester. It could help to control global warming — if developing nations meet their responsibilities.
doi:10.1038/462011a
A drug-induced low p11
The sacking of a government adviser on drugs shows Britain's politicians can't cope with intelligent debate.
doi:10.1038/462011b
140 years on p12
Nature's birthday offers an occasion to reflect on the past and look to the future.
doi:10.1038/462012a
Research Highlights
Materials science: Brass eye p14
doi:10.1038/462014a
Animal behaviour: Fruit-bat fellatio p14
doi:10.1038/462014b
Climate: Aerosols overlooked p14
doi:10.1038/462014c
Planetary science: Jet setting p14
doi:10.1038/462014d
Neuroscience: Bridging the gap p14
doi:10.1038/462014e
Evolutionary genetics: Mutation elevation p14
doi:10.1038/462014f
Moon matters: Lunar hideaway p15
doi:10.1038/462015a
Neurology: Impossible movements p15
doi:10.1038/462015b
Animal behaviour: Deep sleep p15
doi:10.1038/462015c
Ecology: Boom and bust p15
doi:10.1038/462015d
Correction p15
doi:10.1038/462015e
News
News briefing: 5 November 2009 p16
The week in science
doi:10.1038/462016a
Brazil mulls major climate action p18
If adopted, the move would put the country ahead of other developing nations on emissions curbs.
Jeff Tollefson
doi:10.1038/462018a
Initiative targets malaria eradication p19
Focus shifts to blocking parasite transmission.
Declan Butler
doi:10.1038/462017a
Children's study fights to survive p20
US politicians, once supportive of a massive research project on childhood health, are now criticizing it.
Meredith Wadman
doi:10.1038/462020a
10,000 genomes to come p21
Vertebrates in line for massive sequencing project.
Erika Check Hayden
doi:10.1038/462021a
California stem-cell grants awarded p22
First major round of research targeted at therapies takes off.
Erika Check Hayden
doi:10.1038/462022a
Dark-matter test faces obstacles p23
Access to crystals may hamper bid to repeat experiment.
Geoff Brumfiel
doi:10.1038/462023a
Science favoured by German coalition p24
Budgets set to double as new government backs previous spending commitments.
Alison Abbott
doi:10.1038/462024a
Column
In which we say goodbye p25
Our departing columnist David Goldston reflects on some misconceptions about science and politics.
David Goldston
doi:10.1038/462025a
News Features
Carbon trading: How to save a forest p26
Projects in Madagascar could provide a model for stemming deforestation. But first these efforts must deal with the poverty and political upheaval that threaten forests, reports Anjali Nayar.
doi:10.1038/462026a
Conservation biology: Reflecting the past p30
Unsatisfied with merely halting environmental destruction, some conservationists are trying to reconstruct ecosystems of the past. Emma Marris travels back in time with the rewilders.
doi:10.1038/462030a
Correspondence
Sharing: lessons from natural history's success story p34
Robert Guralnick, Heather Constable, John Wieczorek, Craig Moritz & A. Townsend Peterson
doi:10.1038/462034a
No final answers yet on sex determination in birds p34
Asato Kuroiwa
doi:10.1038/462034b
Toxicity testing by category for 30,000 chemicals? p34
Kees van Leeuwen & Gerwin Schaafsma
doi:10.1038/462034c
Authors beware, and protect your online identity p34
Irene Hames
doi:10.1038/462034d
NICE should value real experiences over hypothetical opinions p35
Paul Dolan
doi:10.1038/462035a
Eastern European science stuck in an outmoded system p35
Gregor Majdi
doi:10.1038/462035b
Research into group differences isn't wrong, just pointless p35
Steven Rose
doi:10.1038/462035c
Opinion
Global Darwin: Contempt for competition p36
Darwin's idea of the 'struggle for existence' struck a chord with his fellow countrymen. But Russians rejected the alien metaphor, says Daniel Todes, in the second of four weekly pieces on reactions to evolutionary theory.
Daniel Todes
doi:10.1038/462036a
Books and Arts
Amphibian mystery misread p38
A book blaming a fungus for the disappearance of amphibians from wild places wrongly downplays the role of environmental change, warn Alan Pounds and Karen Masters.
J. Alan Pounds & Karen L. Masters review Extinction in Our Times: Global Amphibian Decline by James P. Collins & Martha L. Crump
doi:10.1038/462038a
Newton and the money men p39
Robert Iliffe reviews Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist by Thomas Levenson
doi:10.1038/462039a
Florence's observatory restored p40
Alison Abbott reviews Torrino della Specola
doi:10.1038/462040a
News and Views
Immunology: In the beginning p41
Immune cells cross the inflamed blood–brain barrier. But it's unclear how brain inflammation begins before immune-cell entry. Studies of a model of multiple sclerosis start to solve this 'chicken and egg' conundrum.
Richard M. Ransohoff
doi:10.1038/462041a
See also: Editor's summary
Earth science: Lasting earthquake legacy p42
Earthquakes occur within continental tectonic plates as well as at plate boundaries. Do clusters of such mid-plate events constitute zones of continuing hazard, or are they aftershocks of long-past earthquakes?
Tom Parsons
doi:10.1038/462042a
See also: Editor's summary
Cancer: A tumour gene's fatal flaws p44
Mutations in RAS genes are common in human tumours, but RAS has proved impossible to target with drugs. Its associated NF-
B signalling pathway, however, may turn out to be this tumour gene's Achilles heel.
Julian Downward
doi:10.1038/462044a
See also: Editor's summary
Materials science: Soft is strong p45
The mechanisms that govern the rate at which glasses soften on heating have long been a mystery. The finding that colloids can mimic the full range of glass-softening behaviours offers a fresh take on the problem.
C. Austen Angell & Kazuhide Ueno
doi:10.1038/462045a
See also: Editor's summary
Genetics: Crossover control in two steps p46
During meiotic cell division, chromosome pairs exchange genetic material in a tightly controlled crossover process. Higher-order chromosome structure may regulate this genetic reshuffling at two distinct stages of meiosis.
Yonatan B. Tzur & Monica P. Colaiácovo
doi:10.1038/462046a
140th Birthday miscellany p48
With this issue, it is 140 years since Nature first appeared on 4 November 1869. To mark the anniversary, these two pages offer a miscellany from that issue and from 1889, 1909, 1929, 1949, 1969 and 1989.
doi:10.1038/462048a
Review
Cooperation between non-kin in animal societies p51
Tim Clutton-Brock
doi:10.1038/nature08366
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (645K)
See also: Editor's summary
Articles
An oestrogen-receptor-
-bound human chromatin interactome p58
Many transcription factors bind to regulatory DNA elements that are distant from gene promoters. These distal binding sites are thought to regulate transcription through long-range chromatin interactions, but, until now, the impact of chromatin interactions on transcription regulation has not been investigated in a genome-wide manner. A new strategy — chromatin interaction analysis by paired-end tag sequencing — is now described for the de novo detection of global chromatin interactions.
Melissa J. Fullwood, Mei Hui Liu, You Fu Pan, Jun Liu, Han Xu, Yusoff Bin Mohamed, Yuriy L. Orlov, Stoyan Velkov, Andrea Ho, Poh Huay Mei, Elaine G. Y. Chew, Phillips Yao Hui Huang, Willem-Jan Welboren, Yuyuan Han, Hong Sain Ooi, Pramila N. Ariyaratne, Vinsensius B. Vega, Yanquan Luo, Peck Yean Tan, Pei Ye Choy, K. D. Senali Abayratna Wansa, Bing Zhao, Kar Sian Lim, Shi Chi Leow, Jit Sin Yow, Roy Joseph, Haixia Li, Kartiki V. Desai, Jane S. Thomsen, Yew Kok Lee, R. Krishna Murthy Karuturi, Thoreau Herve, Guillaume Bourque, Hendrik G. Stunnenberg, Xiaoan Ruan, Valere Cacheux-Rataboul, Wing-Kin Sung, Edison T. Liu, Chia-Lin Wei, Edwin Cheung & Yijun Ruan
doi:10.1038/nature08497
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (920K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary
Combinatorial binding predicts spatio-temporal cis-regulatory activity p65
The precise patterns of gene expression required for development are primarily controlled by transcription factors binding to cis-regulatory modules; however, decoding this regulatory landscape remains challenging. Here, a novel approach is used to predict spatio-temporal cis-regulatory activity based only on in vivo transcription factor binding and enhancer activity data, and is then applied to Drosophila mesoderm development.
Robert P. Zinzen, Charles Girardot, Julien Gagneur, Martina Braun & Eileen E. M. Furlong
doi:10.1038/nature08531
Abstract | Full Text | PDF (1,238K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary
Letters
A neutron star with a carbon atmosphere in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant p71
The surface of hot neutron stars is known to be covered by a thin atmosphere but observations have been unable to confirm the atmospheric composition of isolated neutron stars. An analysis of archival observations of the compact X-ray source in the centre of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant now reveals that an extremely young carbon-atmosphere neutron star (with low magnetic field) produces a good fit to the spectrum.
Wynn C. G. Ho & Craig O. Heinke
doi:10.1038/nature08525
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (362K)
See also: Editor's summary
A quantum gas microscope for detecting single atoms in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice p74
There are two different approaches for creating complex atomic many-body quantum systems — the macroscopic and the microscopic — which have, until now, been fairly disconnected. A quantum gas 'microscope' is now demonstrated that bridges the two approaches and can be used to detect single atoms held in a Hubbard-regime optical lattice. This quantum gas microscope may enable addressing and read-out of large-scale quantum information systems based on ultracold atoms.
Waseem S. Bakr, Jonathon I. Gillen, Amy Peng, Simon Fölling & Markus Greiner
doi:10.1038/nature08482
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (526K)
See also: Editor's summary
Optomechanical crystals p78
In a photonic crystal, the periodicity of the host medium is used to manipulate the properties of light, whereas in a phononic crystal it is mechanical vibrations that are subject to such control. Here, a structure that acts as both a photonic and phononic crystal — an 'optomechanical' crystal — is described; the strong coupling between photons and phonons realized in this structure should find application in a host of sensing and communication technologies.
Matt Eichenfield, Jasper Chan, Ryan M. Camacho, Kerry J. Vahala & Oskar Painter
doi:10.1038/nature08524
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (2,063K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary
Soft colloids make strong glasses p83
Glasses can be divided into fragile or strong, depending on whether they show a marked dependence of their relaxation time with temperature when approaching the glass transition. Although colloidal particles have previously been found to produce only fragile glasses, here it is shown that deformable colloidal particles exhibit the same variation in fragility as that observed in molecular liquids. Colloids are easy to study, so this model should provide new insight into glass formation in molecular systems.
Johan Mattsson, Hans M. Wyss, Alberto Fernandez-Nieves, Kunimasa Miyazaki, Zhibing Hu, David R. Reichman & David A. Weitz
doi:10.1038/nature08457
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (467K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Angell & Ueno
Long aftershock sequences within continents and implications for earthquake hazard assessment p87
Within plate interiors, assessments of earthquake hazards rely heavily on the assumption that the locations of the few recorded small earthquakes reflect continuing deformation that will cause future large earthquakes. Here, however, a simple model shows that many of these recent earthquakes are probably aftershocks of large earthquakes that occurred hundreds of years ago, causing earthquake prediction to overestimate hazard in presently active areas, and underestimate it elsewhere.
Seth Stein & Mian Liu
doi:10.1038/nature08502
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (177K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Parsons
Experimental evolution of bet hedging p90
In the face of fluctuating environmental conditions, bet hedging — stochastic switching between phenotypes — can be an advantageous strategy. But how does bet hedging evolve? The de novo evolution of bet hedging in experimental bacterial populations subjected to an environment that continually favoured new phenotypic states is now reported. The findings suggest that risk-spreading strategies may have been among the earliest evolutionary solutions to life in fluctuating environments.
Hubertus J. E. Beaumont, Jenna Gallie, Christian Kost, Gayle C. Ferguson & Paul B. Rainey
doi:10.1038/nature08504
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (714K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary
Effector T cell interactions with meningeal vascular structures in nascent autoimmune CNS lesions p94
The tissues of the central nervous system are shielded from the blood circulation by specialized vessels, impermeable to cells and most circulating macromolecules. Despite this, central nervous system tissues are subject to immune surveillance and are vulnerable to autoimmune attack. Here, intravital two-photon imaging is used to observe, in real-time, the interactive processes between effector T cells and cerebral structures leading to an experimental rat model of autoimmune encephalitis.
Ingo Bartholomäus, Naoto Kawakami, Francesca Odoardi, Christian Schläger, Djordje Miljkovic, Joachim W. Ellwart, Wolfgang E. F. Klinkert, Cassandra Flügel-Koch, Thomas B. Issekutz, Hartmut Wekerle & Alexander Flügel
doi:10.1038/nature08478
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (860K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Ransohoff
HMGB proteins function as universal sentinels for nucleic-acid-mediated innate immune responses p99
Activation of innate immune responses by nucleic acids is crucial to protective and pathological immunities. This activation is known to be mediated by transmembrane Toll-like receptors and cytosolic receptors; however, it remains unclear whether a mechanism exists that integrates these two nucleic-acid-sensing systems. High-mobility group box (HMGB) proteins 1, 2 and 3 are now shown to function as universal sentinels for nucleic-acid-mediated innate immune responses.
Hideyuki Yanai, Tatsuma Ban, ZhiChao Wang, Myoung Kwon Choi, Takeshi Kawamura, Hideo Negishi, Makoto Nakasato, Yan Lu, Sho Hangai, Ryuji Koshiba, David Savitsky, Lorenza Ronfani, Shizuo Akira, Marco E. Bianchi, Kenya Honda, Tomohiko Tamura, Tatsuhiko Kodama & Tadatsugu Taniguchi
doi:10.1038/nature08512
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (474K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary
Requirement for NF-
B signalling in a mouse model of lung adenocarcinoma p104
NF-B transcription factors have been implicated in cellular transformation and tumorigenesis, but despite extensive biochemical characterization of NF-B signalling, its requirement in tumour development is not completely understood. Here, the NF-B pathway is shown to be required for the development of tumours in a mouse model of lung adenocarcinoma in a p53-status-dependent manner, providing support for the development of NF-B inhibitory drugs as targeted therapies.
Etienne Meylan, Alison L. Dooley, David M. Feldser, Lynn Shen, Erin Turk, Chensi Ouyang & Tyler Jacks
doi:10.1038/nature08462
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (489K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Downward
Systematic RNA interference reveals that oncogenic KRAS-driven cancers require TBK1 p108
KRAS is a proto-oncogene that is mutated in a wide variety of human cancers. Although this makes KRAS an obvious candidate for the development of targeted therapies, it has so far remained refractory to this approach. Systematic RNA interference is now used to detect synthetic lethal partners of oncogenic KRAS, revealing that TBK1 and NF-B signalling are essential in KRAS mutant tumours. This may provide an alternative approach for targeting KRAS therapeutically.
David A. Barbie, Pablo Tamayo, Jesse S. Boehm, So Young Kim, Susan E. Moody, Ian F. Dunn, Anna C. Schinzel, Peter Sandy, Etienne Meylan, Claudia Scholl, Stefan Fröhling, Edmond M. Chan, Martin L. Sos, Kathrin Michel, Craig Mermel, Serena J. Silver, Barbara A. Weir, Jan H. Reiling, Qing Sheng, Piyush B. Gupta, Raymond C. Wadlow, Hanh Le, Sebastian Hoersch, Ben S. Wittner, Sridhar Ramaswamy, David M. Livingston, David M. Sabatini, Matthew Meyerson, Roman K. Thomas, Eric S. Lander, Jill P. Mesirov, David E. Root, D. Gary Gilliland, Tyler Jacks & William C. Hahn
doi:10.1038/nature08460
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (827K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary | News and Views by Downward
Rationally tuning the reduction potential of a single cupredoxin beyond the natural range p113
Redox processes, which are at the heart of numerous functions in chemistry and biology, are accomplished in nature by only a limited number of redox-active agents. A long-standing issue is how redox potentials are fine-tuned over a broad range with little change to the redox-active site or electron-transfer properties. Here it is shown that two important secondary coordination sphere interactions, hydrophobicity and hydrogen-bonding, are capable of tuning the reduction potential of a single cupredoxin over a 700 mV range.
Nicholas M. Marshall, Dewain K. Garner, Tiffany D. Wilson, Yi-Gui Gao, Howard Robinson, Mark J. Nilges & Yi Lu
doi:10.1038/nature08551
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (365K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary
Structural basis of inter-protein electron transfer for nitrite reduction in denitrification p117
Anthropogenic addition of bio-available nitrogen to the global nitrogen cycle has led to a host of environmental problems. Copper-containing nitrite reductase (CuNIR) is a key enzyme in the process of denitrification by catalysing the one-electron reduction of nitrite to nitric oxide, but details of the mechanism of the electron-transfer reaction are still unknown. Here, the high-resolution crystal structure of the electron-transfer complex for CuNIR is presented and analysed.
Masaki Nojiri, Hiroyasu Koteishi, Takuya Nakagami, Kazuo Kobayashi, Tsuyoshi Inoue, Kazuya Yamaguchi & Shinnichiro Suzuki
doi:10.1038/nature08507
PDB code
3D view
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (1,187K) | Supplementary information
See also: Editor's summary
Naturejobs
ProspectsCareer resilience p122
It's not enough to be an expert on a specific topic. Today's scientists also need to be able to apply their knowledge, argues Peter Fiske.
Peter Fiske
doi:10.1038/nj7269-122a
News
Networking in VIVO p123
An interdisciplinary networking site for scientists.
Virginia Gewin
doi:10.1038/nj7269-123a
Postdoc journal
The career less travelled p123
Chance plays an important part in our career decisions.
Sam Walcott
doi:10.1038/nj7269-123b
In Brief
Academic benefits p123
Retirement benefits and perks figure in survey rankings.
doi:10.1038/nj7269-123c
Topping out p123
Top students abandon US pipeline for science, technology, engineering and medicine.
doi:10.1038/nj7269-123d
Changes planned for ERC p123
European Research Council reorganizes its structure and management.
doi:10.1038/nj7269-123e
Futures
Clear proof p126
The final demonstration of the failure of cold fusion.
Jeff Hecht
doi:10.1038/462126a
