Volume 514 Issue 7522, 16 October 2014

Outlook

  • Outlook |

    Waste removal is not usually described as sexy, but the once-neglected field of autophagy — which plays a part in cancer and other diseases — is a hot topic in biomedical research.

    • Michael Eisenstein

  • Outlook |

    Jules Hoffmann shared the 2011 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries in the activation of innate immunity against bacteria and fungi in fruit flies. Now based at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Strasbourg University in France, Hoffmann talks to ádám and Dávid Tárnoki about how to use the immune system to kill cancer cells.

    • Ádám Tárnoki
    •  & Dávid Tárnoki

  • Outlook |

    Laureate Barry Marshall, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Western Australia in Perth, tells Meghan Azad why he risked his health to prove his theory about the link between stomach ulcers and bacteria. He shared the 2005 Nobel prize with Robin Warren for discovering the stomach-dwelling bacterium Helicobacter pylori and for proving that it is this microorganism, not stress, that causes most peptic ulcers.

    • Meghan Azad

  • Outlook |

    Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were jointly awarded the 2008 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of HIV in 1983. Three decades on, Barré-Sinoussi is director of the Retroviral Infections unit at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Here, she tells Iria Gomez-Touriño about the latest strategies to combat the virus.

    • Iria Gomez-Touriño

  • Outlook |

    Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus proved that genetic changes could drive the formation of tumours. They were awarded the 1989 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the origin of retroviral oncogenes. Bishop — now director of the GW Hooper Foundation at the University of California, San Francisco — tells Kipp Weiskopf about 40 years in cancer research.

    • Kipp Weiskopf

  • Outlook |

    Torsten Wiesel is president emeritus of Rockefeller University in New York City. He shared half of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with David Hubel for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system. He tells Stefano Sandrone about his greatest scientific achievement and his vision of the future.

    • Stefano Sandrone

  • Outlook |

    Brian Kobilka shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Lefkowitz for their studies of G protein-coupled receptors. He is professor of molecular and cellular physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California. Haya Jamal Azouz asks Kobilka what it takes to spend 30 years answering a single research question.

    • Haya Jamal Azouz

Editorial

  • Editorial |

    What lessons can be learned from the presentation of the gravitational-waves story?

  • Editorial |

    Welcome efforts are being made to recognize academics who give up their time to peer review.

World View

  • World View |

    Scientists can help to develop a financial safety net by providing transparent market data and loss-impact analysis, says Erwann Michel-Kerjan.

    • Erwann Michel-Kerjan

Research Highlights

Social Selection

Seven Days

  • Seven Days |

    The week in science: Disaster strikes Taiwanese research vessel, UK launches its first space-weather forecasting centre, and ancient Greek shipwreck yields fresh booty.

News

Correction

News Feature

Comment

Books & Arts

  • Books & Arts |

    David Deamer welcomes a synthesis of what we know about the origins of life, as told by a master in the field.

    • David Deamer

  • Books & Arts |

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

    • Barbara Kiser

Correspondence

News & Views

  • News & Views |

    Most deaths from breast cancer occur when the primary tumour spreads to secondary sites. It now emerges that clusters of tumour cells that enter the bloodstream form metastases more often than single circulating tumour cells.

    • Alessia Bottos
    •  & Nancy E. Hynes

  • News & Views |

    Observations of two faint galaxies with a low abundance of elements heavier than helium show that the galaxies have an efficiency of star formation less than one-tenth of that of the Milky Way and similar galaxies. See Letter p.335

    • Bruce Elmegreen

  • News & Views |

    Large quasiparticles known as Rydberg excitons have been detected in a natural crystal of copper oxide. The result may find use in applications such as single-photon logic devices. See Letter p.343

    • Sven Höfling
    •  & Alexey Kavokin

  • News & Views |

    The cellular origins of most human cancers remain unknown, but an analysis of embryonic retinal cells identifies differentiating cones as the cell of origin for the childhood cancer retinoblastoma. See Letter p.385

    • Rod Bremner
    •  & Julien Sage

  • News & Views |

    Experiments with social spiders find that colony size and composition affect colony survival in a site-specific manner, indicating that natural selection on group-level traits contributes to local adaptation. See Letter p.359

    • Timothy Linksvayer

  • News & Views |

    The genomes of 101 monarch butterflies from migratory and resident populations have been sequenced, revealing genes and molecular pathways that underlie insect migration and colouration. See Article p.317

    • Richard H. Ffrench-Constant

Futures

  • Futures |

    What it takes.

    • Jon Hurwitz

Letter

  • Letter |

    The claws of the Cambrian lobopodian Hallucigenia resemble the claws and jaws of extant onychophorans, establishing a close relationship between hallucigeniid lobopodians and onychophorans, resolving tardigrades as the closest extant relatives of true arthropods, and showing that the earliest ancestor of the arthropods and their kin would have looked like a lobopodian.

    • Martin R. Smith
    •  & Javier Ortega-Hernández

  • Letter |

    The 11-subunit RNA exosome is thought to regulate the mammalian noncoding transcriptome; here, a mouse model is generated in which the essential Exosc3 subunit of the RNA exosome in B cells is conditionally deleted, revealing a link between sites of genomic RNA exosome function and AID-mediated chromosomal translocations.

    • Evangelos Pefanis
    • , Jiguang Wang
    • , Gerson Rothschild
    • , Junghyun Lim
    • , Jaime Chao
    • , Raul Rabadan
    • , Aris N. Economides
    •  & Uttiya Basu

  • Letter |

    The inherent stochasticity in metabolic reactions is a potent source of phenotypic heterogeneity in cell populations, with potentially fundamental implications for cancer research.

    • Daniel J. Kiviet
    • , Philippe Nghe
    • , Noreen Walker
    • , Sarah Boulineau
    • , Vanda Sunderlikova
    •  & Sander J. Tans

  • Letter |

    CRISPR plasmids targeting Pten and p53, alone and in combination, are delivered by hydrodynamic injection to the liver; the CRISPR-mediated mutations phenocopy the effects of deletions using Cre–LoxP technology, allowing the direct mutation of tumour suppressor genes and oncogenes in the liver using the CRISPR/Cas system, which presents a new approach for rapid development of liver cancer models and functional genomics.

    • Wen Xue
    • , Sidi Chen
    • , Hao Yin
    • , Tuomas Tammela
    • , Thales Papagiannakopoulos
    • , Nikhil S. Joshi
    • , Wenxin Cai
    • , Gillian Yang
    • , Roderick Bronson
    • , Denise G. Crowley
    • , Feng Zhang
    • , Daniel G. Anderson
    • , Phillip A. Sharp
    •  & Tyler Jacks

  • Letter |

    The innate immune receptor RIG-I is shown to sense 5′-diphosphate RNAs as found in some viral genomes in addition to its well characterized activation by RNAs bearing 5′-triphosphate moieties.

    • Delphine Goubau
    • , Martin Schlee
    • , Safia Deddouche
    • , Andrea J. Pruijssers
    • , Thomas Zillinger
    • , Marion Goldeck
    • , Christine Schuberth
    • , Annemarthe G. Van der Veen
    • , Tsutomu Fujimura
    • , Jan Rehwinkel
    • , Jason A. Iskarpatyoti
    • , Winfried Barchet
    • , Janos Ludwig
    • , Terence S. Dermody
    • , Gunther Hartmann
    •  & Caetano Reis e Sousa

  • Letter |

    Osmotic stress is known to induce a transient increase in cytoplasmic Ca2+ concentration [Ca2+]i in plants, and now OSCA1 is identified as a long-sought Ca2+ channel that mediates [Ca2+]i increases—mutants lacking OSCA1 function have impaired osmotic Ca2+ signalling in guard cells and root cells, and reduced transpiration regulation and root growth under osmotic stress.

    • Fang Yuan
    • , Huimin Yang
    • , Yan Xue
    • , Dongdong Kong
    • , Rui Ye
    • , Chijun Li
    • , Jingyuan Zhang
    • , Lynn Theprungsirikul
    • , Tayler Shrift
    • , Bryan Krichilsky
    • , Douglas M. Johnson
    • , Gary B. Swift
    • , Yikun He
    • , James N. Siedow
    •  & Zhen-Ming Pei

  • Letter |

    All-liquid batteries comprising a lithium negative electrode and an antimony–lead positive electrode have a higher current density and a longer cycle life than conventional batteries, can be more easily used to make large-scale storage systems, and so potentially present a low-cost means of grid-level energy storage.

    • Kangli Wang
    • , Kai Jiang
    • , Brice Chung
    • , Takanari Ouchi
    • , Paul J. Burke
    • , Dane A. Boysen
    • , David J. Bradwell
    • , Hojong Kim
    • , Ulrich Muecke
    •  & Donald R. Sadoway

  • Letter |

    Data from the oil- and gas-producing basin of northeastern Utah and a box model are used to assess the photochemical reactions of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds that lead to excessive atmospheric ozone pollution in winter.

    • Peter M. Edwards
    • , Steven S. Brown
    • , James M. Roberts
    • , Ravan Ahmadov
    • , Robert M. Banta
    • , Joost A. deGouw
    • , William P. Dubé
    • , Robert A. Field
    • , James H. Flynn
    • , Jessica B. Gilman
    • , Martin Graus
    • , Detlev Helmig
    • , Abigail Koss
    • , Andrew O. Langford
    • , Barry L. Lefer
    • , Brian M. Lerner
    • , Rui Li
    • , Shao-Meng Li
    • , Stuart A. McKeen
    • , Shane M. Murphy
    • , David D. Parrish
    • , Christoph J. Senff
    • , Jeffrey Soltis
    • , Jochen Stutz
    • , Colm Sweeney
    • , Chelsea R. Thompson
    • , Michael K. Trainer
    • , Catalina Tsai
    • , Patrick R. Veres
    • , Rebecca A. Washenfelder
    • , Carsten Warneke
    • , Robert J. Wild
    • , Cora J. Young
    • , Bin Yuan
    •  & Robert Zamora

  • Letter |

    High-resolution radio imaging of the γ-ray-emitting nova V959 Mon, hosted by a white dwarf and its binary companion, shows that gaseous ejecta are expelled along the poles as a wind from the white dwarf, that denser material drifts out along the equatorial plane, propelled by orbital motion, and that γ-ray production occurs at the interface between these polar and equatorial regions.

    • Laura Chomiuk
    • , Justin D. Linford
    • , Jun Yang
    • , T. J. O’Brien
    • , Zsolt Paragi
    • , Amy J. Mioduszewski
    • , R. J. Beswick
    • , C. C. Cheung
    • , Koji Mukai
    • , Thomas Nelson
    • , Valério A. R. M. Ribeiro
    • , Michael P. Rupen
    • , J. L. Sokoloski
    • , Jennifer Weston
    • , Yong Zheng
    • , Michael F. Bode
    • , Stewart Eyres
    • , Nirupam Roy
    •  & Gregory B. Taylor

  • Letter |

    Here, colonies of social spiders are used to investigate the evolution of a group-level trait, the ratio of individuals with the ‘docile’ versus ‘aggressive’ phenotype in a colony; experimental colonies were generated with varying ratios and established in the wild, revealing group-level selection.

    • Jonathan N. Pruitt
    •  & Charles J. Goodnight

  • Letter |

    The nature of the retinal cell-type-specific circuitry that predisposes to retinoblastoma is demonstrated, in which a program that is unique to post-mitotic human cone precursors sensitizes to the oncogenic effects of retinoblastoma (Rb) protein depletion; hence, the loss of Rb collaborates with the molecular framework of cone precursors to initiate tumorigenesis.

    • Xiaoliang L. Xu
    • , Hardeep P. Singh
    • , Lu Wang
    • , Dong-Lai Qi
    • , Bradford K. Poulos
    • , David H. Abramson
    • , Suresh C. Jhanwar
    •  & David Cobrinik

  • Letter |

    Spatially resolved infrared observations of two galaxies with oxygen abundances below 10 per cent of the solar value show that stars formed very inefficiently in seven star-forming clumps, suggesting that star formation may have been very inefficient in the early Universe.

    • Yong Shi
    • , Lee Armus
    • , George Helou
    • , Sabrina Stierwalt
    • , Yu Gao
    • , Junzhi Wang
    • , Zhi-Yu Zhang
    •  & Qiusheng Gu

  • Letter |

    Rydberg excitons (condensed-matter analogues of hydrogen atoms) are shown to exist in single-crystal copper oxide with principal quantum numbers as large as n = 25 and giant wavefunctions with extensions of around two micrometres; this has implications for research in condensed-matter optics.

    • T. Kazimierczuk
    • , D. Fröhlich
    • , S. Scheel
    • , H. Stolz
    •  & M. Bayer

Article

  • Article |

    Cryo-electron microscopy is used to visualize the AMPA receptor GluA2 and the kainate receptor GluK2 in several functional states — having access to so many different structural states has enabled the authors to propose a molecular model for the gating cycle of glutamate receptors.

    • Joel R. Meyerson
    • , Janesh Kumar
    • , Sagar Chittori
    • , Prashant Rao
    • , Jason Pierson
    • , Alberto Bartesaghi
    • , Mark L. Mayer
    •  & Sriram Subramaniam

  • Article |

    The monarch butterfly, well known for its spectacular annual migration across North America, is shown by genome sequencing of monarchs from around the world to have been ancestrally migratory and to have dispersed out of North America to occupy its current broad distribution; the authors also discovered signatures of selection associated with migration within loci implicated in flight muscle function, leading to greater flight efficiency.

    • Shuai Zhan
    • , Wei Zhang
    • , Kristjan Niitepõld
    • , Jeremy Hsu
    • , Juan Fernández Haeger
    • , Myron P. Zalucki
    • , Sonia Altizer
    • , Jacobus C. de Roode
    • , Steven M. Reppert
    •  & Marcus R. Kronforst

  • Article |

    On the basis of transplantation experiments it is generally believed that a very small number of haematopoietic stem cells maintain multi-lineage haematopoiesis by stably producing a hierarchy of short-lived progenitor cells; here a new transposon-based labelling technique shows that this might not be the case during non-transplant haematopoiesis, but rather that a large number of long-lived progenitors are the main drivers of steady-state haematopoiesis during most of adulthood.

    • Jianlong Sun
    • , Azucena Ramos
    • , Brad Chapman
    • , Jonathan B. Johnnidis
    • , Linda Le
    • , Yu-Jui Ho
    • , Allon Klein
    • , Oliver Hofmann
    •  & Fernando D. Camargo

    Collection:

Corrigendum

Feature

Nature Outlook

  • Nature Outlook |

    Medical Masterclass

    From the basic functions of the cell to cures for HIV and cancer, Nature Outlook: Medical Research Masterclassuses the 2014 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting as a basis to explore the latest research in medicine and physiology. Topics are viewed from the perspectives of Nobel laureates and the young researchers aiming to emulate their success.

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