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Table of Contents

Volume 530 Number 7591 pp381-510

25 February 2016

About the cover

This Nature special issue examines whether scientists today consider the world of tomorrow when they make decisions — and why they should. Technology experts tell us that tomorrow’s world will be radically different from today’s (see page 398). Even the people in it could be different (page 402). And scientists, like all people, find it difficult to care much about what the world will look like after they’re gone. As Nicholas Stern warns, current climate economics models implicitly assume that lives in the future are less important — a major problem when unmanaged climate change today could affect future lives the most (page 407). Social science highlights tensions between our tendencies to care about others, yet to favour current benefits over future ones — behavioural economists Ernst Fehr and Helga Fehr-Duda call for the design of sustainable-development policies and schemes that game these evolved behaviours (page 413). Finally, John Bongaarts suggests the best thing we could do now for future generations is to ensure that there are fewer of them (page 409). Cover art: Anna Parini

This Week

Editorials

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  • Safety first

    It is worrying that US government departments are unable to divulge basic data on research projects involving human subjects. Such data should be publicly available to ensure volunteers’ safety.

  • Generation game

    A Nature special issue takes on the world of tomorrow — and the decisions shaping it today.

  • Climate changes

    The loss of three key facilitators must not impede progress on emissions mitigation.

World View

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Seven Days

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    News in Focus

    Features

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    comment

    Books and Arts

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    • Evolution: Doing the locomotion

      Kevin Padian assesses a study on how animals came to fly, wade, creep and glide.

      • Review of Restless Creatures: The Story of Life in Ten Movements
        Matt Wilkinson

    • Books in brief

      Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

    • History of science: When eugenics became law

      Victoria Nourse reviews a study on a historic US misuse of biology, the case of Buck v. Bell.

      • Review of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
        Adam Cohen

    Careers

    Features

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    Columns

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    • Changes on the ice

      Diverse faces are appearing on a frozen continent, says Robin Bell.

      • Robin Bell

    naturejobs job listings and advertising features

    Futures

    research

    Articles

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    • Ancient gene flow from early modern humans into Eastern Neanderthals

      • Martin Kuhlwilm
      • Ilan Gronau
      • Melissa J. Hubisz
      • Cesare de Filippo
      • Javier Prado-Martinez
      • Martin Kircher
      • Qiaomei Fu
      • Hernán A. Burbano
      • Carles Lalueza-Fox
      • Marco de la Rasilla
      • Antonio Rosas
      • Pavao Rudan
      • Dejana Brajkovic
      • Željko Kucan
      • Ivan Gušic
      • Tomas Marques-Bonet
      • Aida M. Andrés
      • Bence Viola
      • Svante Pääbo
      • Matthias Meyer
      • Adam Siepel
      • Sergi Castellano

      It is known that there was gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans around 50,000 years ago; now, analysis of a Neanderthal genome from the Altai Mountains in Siberia reveals evidence of gene flow 100,000 years ago in the other direction—from early modern humans to Neanderthals.

    • Expanding antigen-specific regulatory networks to treat autoimmunity

      • Xavier Clemente-Casares
      • Jesus Blanco
      • Poornima Ambalavanan
      • Jun Yamanouchi
      • Santiswarup Singha
      • Cesar Fandos
      • Sue Tsai
      • Jinguo Wang
      • Nahir Garabatos
      • Cristina Izquierdo
      • Smriti Agrawal
      • Michael B. Keough
      • V. Wee Yong
      • Eddie James
      • Anna Moore
      • Yang Yang
      • Thomas Stratmann
      • Pau Serra
      • Pere Santamaria

      Nanoparticles coated with autoantigenic peptides bound to MHC class II molecules suppress established autoimmune disease by inducing antigen-specific TR1-like regulatory T cells in mouse and humanized mouse models.

      See also

    • The dynamic N1-methyladenosine methylome in eukaryotic messenger RNA

      • Dan Dominissini
      • Sigrid Nachtergaele
      • Sharon Moshitch-Moshkovitz
      • Eyal Peer
      • Nitzan Kol
      • Moshe Shay Ben-Haim
      • Qing Dai
      • Ayelet Di Segni
      • Mali Salmon-Divon
      • Wesley C. Clark
      • Guanqun Zheng
      • Tao Pan
      • Oz Solomon
      • Eran Eyal
      • Vera Hershkovitz
      • Dali Han
      • Louis C. Doré
      • Ninette Amariglio
      • Gideon Rechavi
      • Chuan He

      Here the m1A modification is discovered in messenger RNA and mapped at the transcriptome-wide level; the modification is conserved, dynamic, accumulates in structured regions around translation initiation sites upstream of the first splice site, and correlates with higher protein expression.

      See also

    • Structural basis for activity regulation of MLL family methyltransferases

      • Yanjing Li
      • Jianming Han
      • Yuebin Zhang
      • Fang Cao
      • Zhijun Liu
      • Shuai Li
      • Jian Wu
      • Chunyi Hu
      • Yan Wang
      • Jin Shuai
      • Juan Chen
      • Liaoran Cao
      • Dangsheng Li
      • Pan Shi
      • Changlin Tian
      • Jian Zhang
      • Yali Dou
      • Guohui Li
      • Yong Chen
      • Ming Lei

      Crystal structures of the SET domains of MLL3 and a mutant MLL1 either unbound or complexed with domains from RBBP5 and ASH2L are determined; a combination of structural, biochemical and computational analyses reveals a two-step activation mechanism of MLL family proteins, which may be relevant for other histone methyltransferases.

    Letters

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    • The host galaxy of a fast radio burst

      • E. F. Keane
      • S. Johnston
      • S. Bhandari
      • E. Barr
      • N. D. R. Bhat
      • M. Burgay
      • M. Caleb
      • C. Flynn
      • A. Jameson
      • M. Kramer
      • E. Petroff
      • A. Possenti
      • W. van Straten
      • M. Bailes
      • S. Burke-Spolaor
      • R. P. Eatough
      • B. W. Stappers
      • T. Totani
      • M. Honma
      • H. Furusawa
      • T. Hattori
      • T. Morokuma
      • Y. Niino
      • H. Sugai
      • T. Terai
      • N. Tominaga
      • S. Yamasaki
      • N. Yasuda
      • R. Allen
      • J. Cooke
      • J. Jencson
      • M. M. Kasliwal
      • D. L. Kaplan
      • S. J. Tingay
      • A. Williams
      • R. Wayth
      • P. Chandra
      • D. Perrodin
      • M. Berezina
      • M. Mickaliger
      • C. Bassa

      Observations of a six-day-long radio transient following a fast radio burst have yielded the host galaxy’s redshift, which, combined with the dispersion measure, provides a direct measurement of the cosmic density of ionized baryons in the intergalactic medium including all of the so-called ‘missing baryons’.

      See also

    • Non-destructive state detection for quantum logic spectroscopy of molecular ions

      • Fabian Wolf
      • Yong Wan
      • Jan C. Heip
      • Florian Gebert
      • Chunyan Shi
      • Piet O. Schmidt

      Detecting the quantum states of molecules is harder than detecting those of atoms; here, a way around this problem is found by co-trapping a molecular and an atomic ion, using the state of the atomic ion to non-destructively determine that of the molecular ion.

    • Possible light-induced superconductivity in K3C60 at high temperature

      • M. Mitrano
      • A. Cantaluppi
      • D. Nicoletti
      • S. Kaiser
      • A. Perucchi
      • S. Lupi
      • P. Di Pietro
      • D. Pontiroli
      • M. Riccò
      • S. R. Clark
      • D. Jaksch
      • A. Cavalleri

      By exciting high-temperature K3C60 with mid-infrared pulses, a large increase in carrier mobility is obtained, accompanied by the opening of a gap in the optical conductivity; these same signatures are observed at equilibrium when cooling K3C60 below the superconducting transition temperature of 20 kelvin, which could be an indication of light-induced high-temperature superconductivity.

    • A pentanuclear iron catalyst designed for water oxidation

      • Masaya Okamura
      • Mio Kondo
      • Reiko Kuga
      • Yuki Kurashige
      • Takeshi Yanai
      • Shinya Hayami
      • Vijayendran K. K. Praneeth
      • Masaki Yoshida
      • Ko Yoneda
      • Satoshi Kawata
      • Shigeyuki Masaoka

      A complex containing five atoms of iron is shown to be a highly efficient and robust water oxidation catalyst owing to the presence of redox flexibility, which enables charge accumulation and electron transfer, and the presence of adjacent active sites that enables intramolecular O–O bond formation.

    • Timescales for detection of trends in the ocean carbon sink

      • Galen A. McKinley
      • Darren J. Pilcher
      • Amanda R. Fay
      • Keith Lindsay
      • Matthew C. Long
      • Nicole S. Lovenduski

      A climate modelling experiment is used to identify where ocean carbon uptake should change as a result of anthropogenic climate change and to distinguish these changes from internal climate variability; we may be able to detect changing uptake in some oceanic regions between 2020 and 2050, but until then, internal climate variability will preclude such detection.

      See also

    • Third-party punishment as a costly signal of trustworthiness

      • Jillian J. Jordan
      • Moshe Hoffman
      • Paul Bloom
      • David G. Rand

      In human societies, individuals who violate social norms may be punished by third-party observers who have not been harmed by the violator; this study suggests that a reason why the observers are willing to punish is to be seen as more trustworthy by the community.

    • Adult restoration of Shank3 expression rescues selective autistic-like phenotypes

      • Yuan Mei
      • Patricia Monteiro
      • Yang Zhou
      • Jin-Ah Kim
      • Xian Gao
      • Zhanyan Fu
      • Guoping Feng

      Re-expression of the Shank3 gene in adult mice results in improvements in synaptic protein composition and spine density in the striatum; Shank3 also rescues autism-like features such as social interaction and grooming behaviour, and the results suggest that aspects of autism spectrum disorders may be reversible in adulthood.

    • Inhibiting fungal multidrug resistance by disrupting an activator–Mediator interaction

      • Joy L. Nishikawa
      • Andras Boeszoermenyi
      • Luis A. Vale-Silva
      • Riccardo Torelli
      • Brunella Posteraro
      • Yoo-Jin Sohn
      • Fei Ji
      • Vladimir Gelev
      • Dominique Sanglard
      • Maurizio Sanguinetti
      • Ruslan I. Sadreyev
      • Goutam Mukherjee
      • Jayaram Bhyravabhotla
      • Sara J. Buhrlage
      • Nathanael S. Gray
      • Gerhard Wagner
      • Anders M. Näär
      • Haribabu Arthanari

      A small molecule, inhibitor of a protein–protein interaction between the transcription factor Pdr1 and the Med15 subunit of Mediator in the fungal pathogen Candida glabrata, is identified and characterized here; the compound iKIX1 inhibits Pdr1-mediated gene activation and resensitizes drug-resistant C. glabrata to azole antifungals in vitro and in animal models of disseminated and urinary tract infection.

    • Tumour-specific proline vulnerability uncovered by differential ribosome codon reading

      • Fabricio Loayza-Puch
      • Koos Rooijers
      • Levi C. M. Buil
      • Jelle Zijlstra
      • Joachim F. Oude Vrielink
      • Rui Lopes
      • Alejandro Pineiro Ugalde
      • Pieter van Breugel
      • Ingrid Hofland
      • Jelle Wesseling
      • Olaf van Tellingen
      • Axel Bex
      • Reuven Agami

      Tumours can require certain amino acids for their proliferation, and the diricore method described here helps to identify such restrictive amino acids; using this method in kidney cancer tissue and breast carcinoma cells, the authors observe an association between proline deficiency and upregulation of PYCR1, an enzyme required for proline synthesis.

    • Epithelial tricellular junctions act as interphase cell shape sensors to orient mitosis

      • Floris Bosveld
      • Olga Markova
      • Boris Guirao
      • Charlotte Martin
      • Zhimin Wang
      • Anaëlle Pierre
      • Maria Balakireva
      • Isabelle Gaugue
      • Anna Ainslie
      • Nicolas Christophorou
      • David K. Lubensky
      • Nicolas Minc
      • Yohanns Bellaïche

      As fruitfly epithelial cells round up during mitosis, tricellular junctions serve as spatial landmarks, encoding information about interphase cell shape directionality to orient mitosis, and promoting geometric and mechanical sensing in epithelial tissues.

    • Structural basis for promiscuous PAM recognition in type I–E Cascade from E. coli

      • Robert P. Hayes
      • Yibei Xiao
      • Fran Ding
      • Paul B. G. van Erp
      • Kanagalaghatta Rajashankar
      • Scott Bailey
      • Blake Wiedenheft
      • Ailong Ke

      The structure of E. coli Cascade bound to foreign target DNA is presented, revealing the basis of the relaxed Cascade PAM recognition specificity, which results from its interaction with the minor groove, and demonstrating how a wedge in Cascade forces the directional pairing of the target strand with CRISPR RNA while stabilizing the non-target displaced strand.

    Corrigendum

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