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Fast-growing economies can learn from the West's mistakes and couple social and 'hard' sciences to address their own societal needs, says Colin Macilwain.
By studying disadvantaged children, Richard Tremblay has traced the roots of chronic aggressive behaviour back as far as infancy. Now he hopes to go back further.
Wnt signalling molecules are thought to direct the development of an organism by spreading through tissues. But flies grow with almost normal appendages even when their main Wnt protein cannot move. Two scientists discuss the implications of this finding for our understanding of development. See Article p.180
A genome-wide association study meta-analysis of more than 100,000 subjects of European and Asian ancestries reveals 42 new risk loci for rheumatoid arthritis, with follow-up studies identifying 98 biological candidate genes that are either already being targeted by drugs or could be in the future.
Chimaeric human–murine adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids are described that transduce human primary hepatocytes more efficiently than currently used AAV vectors; the novel vectors may be good clinical candidates.
Whole-exome sequencing and analysis of 115 cervical carcinoma–normal paired samples, in addition to transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing for a subset of these tumours, reveal novel genes mutated at significant levels within this cohort and provide evidence that HPV integration is a common mechanism for target gene overexpression; results also compare mutational landscapes between squamous cell carcinomas and adenocarcinomas.
Replacement of the wingless (wg) gene in Drosophila with one that expresses a membrane-tethered form of Wg results in viable flies with normally patterned appendages of nearly the right size; early wg transcription and memory of signalling ensure continued target-gene expression in the absence of Wg release, even though the spread of Wg could boost cell proliferation.
Diffuse white matter injury is common in very preterm infants; here, enhanced epidermal growth factor receptor signalling in oligodendrocyte precursor cells in a mouse model of such injury is shown to increase cellular and functional recovery.
A risk haplotype for type 2 diabetes is identified with four amino acid substitutions in SLC16A11, which is present at ∼50% frequency in Native American samples and ∼10% in east Asian samples, but is rare in European and African samples; SLC16A11 may alter hepatic lipid metabolism, causing an increase in triacylglycerol levels.