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The US National Ignition Facility has so far failed to generate fusion energy, but repurposing it as a tool to study nuclear weapons and basic science could be its saving grace.
A century ago this week, physicist Lawrence Bragg announced an equation that revolutionized fields from mineralogy to biology, writes John Meurig Thomas.
Disorders caused by single genes, such as fragile X syndrome, share symptoms with the genetically complex autism spectrum disorders. It emerges that effective drugs for the former may lead to therapies for the latter.
A technique has been developed to image a fluorescent object hiding behind a light-scattering screen without the need for a detector behind the screen. The approach could find applications in imaging biological tissue. See Letter p.232
Single-molecule studies reveal how the DNA-repair protein RecA overcomes competition from another protein to bind to single-stranded DNA, and how other mediator proteins assist in this process. See Letter p.274
The discovery of a possible extrasolar planet that has the same mass as Earth and orbits α Centauri B, a member of the closest star system to the Sun, is both a technical achievement and cause for excitement. See Article p.207
Geochemical reactions in upper layers of marine sediments are coupled to those in deeper zones. It turns out that centimetre-long bacterial filaments acting as electrical cables are the metabolic link between the layers. See Article p.218
A special type of optical amplifier based on a vapour of rubidium has been demonstrated that makes faint images brighter without adding noise. This concept could find use in biological imaging and image processing.
Some of the principles underlying how amino-acid sequences determine the three-dimensional structures of proteins have been defined. This has enabled a successful approach to designing protein folds from scratch. See Article p.222
The discovery of two superluminous supernovae at large distances from Earth pushes the frontier of supernova studies to just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, and suggests that they may be common in the young Universe. See Letter p.228
The detection of an Earth-mass planet orbiting our neighbour star α Centauri B is reported; the planet has an orbital period of 3.236 days and is about 0.04 astronomical units from the star.
Through the use of a combination of state-of-the-art techniques, different populations of ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons in the mouse are shown to form separate circuits with distinct connectivity: neurons receiving input from the laterodorsal tegmentum and lateral habenula are found to mediate reward and aversion, respectively.
Oxygen reduction occurring in the surface layer of marine sediments can be coupled to sulphide oxidation in deeper anoxic layers; it is now shown that the electron transfer is mediated by filamentous bacteria acting like living electrical cables.
Rules that allow the design of strongly funnelled protein folding energy landscapes by relating secondary structure patterns to protein tertiary motifs are used to produce ideal protein structures stabilized by completely consistent local and non-local interactions.
The identification of two superluminous supernovae at redshifts of 2.05 and 3.90 extends the present technological redshift limit on supernova detection and presents the possibility of studying the deaths of the first stars to form after the Big Bang.
The image of a fluorescent object hidden behind an opaque layer can be retrieved non-invasively by exploiting the correlation properties of the speckle pattern produced by illuminating the object through the layer using laser light.
The integration of biological and chemocatalytic routes can be used to convert acetone–butanol–ethanol fermentation products efficiently into ketones by palladium-catalysed alkylation, leading to a renewable method for the alternative production of petrol, jet and diesel blend stocks in high yield.
Observations of firn structure and meltwater retention on the Greenland ice sheet's percolation zone, a region of the ice sheet that is perennially covered by snow and firn, quantify the capacity of the firn to store future surface meltwater and to delay expansion of the area contributing to sea-level rise.
Stabilization of the Earth’s rotation axis by a combination of long-term excess ellipticity and elastic stresses in the broken lithosphere provides an explanation for oscillatory true polar wander events spanning the past few billion years of Earth history.
The creation of orthogonal ‘AND’ logic gates by combining DNA-binding proteins into complex, layered circuits opens the way to the design of programmable integrated circuits in synthetic biology.
In a mouse model of colorectal cancer, barrier deterioration results in adenoma invasion by microbial products that trigger tumour-elicited inflammation, which in turn drives IL-23-dependent tumour growth.
IL-22 is one of the factors that, although important for wound healing, also promote tumorigenesis; the regulation of IL-22BP, the IL-22 binding protein, via the NLRP3 and NLRP6 inflammasomes provides an unanticipated mechanism, controlling IL-22 and thereby the development of colon cancer.
IL-21- and CD40-dependent cognate interactions with T cells are identified as key drivers for the generation of IL-10-producing regulatory B cells, which can protect against autoimmune disease.
Single-molecule analysis of RecA filament assembly on its in vivo substrate, SSB-coated single-stranded DNA, reveals that a dimer of RecA is required for nucleation, and is followed by bidirectional growth of the filament through monomer addition; the recombination mediator RecOR accelerates nucleation and growth, and the addition of RecF further stimulates nucleation.
piRNAs act to protect the genome from the damaging effect of unrestrained expression of mobile elements; here it is suggested that the phosphodiesterase Zucchini may be the nuclease that generates the 5′ ends of primary piRNAs.
Zucchini has been identified as an endoribonuclease responsible for the maturation of small RNA molecules that protect the genome from the damaging effects of unrestrained expression of mobile elements.
