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Empirically validated mathematical models show that a combination of intraspecific competition between subterranean social-insect colonies and scale-dependent feedbacks between plants can explain the spatially periodic vegetation patterns observed in many landscapes, such as the Namib Desert ‘fairy circles’.
The near-complete in vitro reconstitution of the mitotic spindle assembly checkpoint reveals how the assembly of its effector, the mitotic checkpoint complex, is catalysed.
Ultrafast photo-magnetic recording in transparent films of the dielectric cobalt-substituted garnet has very low heat load and is much faster than existing alternatives.
Some phages—viruses that infect bacteria—encode peptides that are secreted from infected cells and that, beyond a certain threshold, stimulate other viruses to switch from the lytic (killing the host cell) to lysogenic (dormant) phase.
Interleukin-17 functions as a neuromodulator in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, acting directly on RMG hub interneurons to alter their response properties and contribution to behaviour.
A robust and scale-independent strategy for the design of reconfigurable architected materials (in which properties are adjusted by altering structure rather than composition) is described, based on space-filling assemblies of polyhedra.
Depletion of malic enzyme 3 in pancreatic cancer cells that have a deletion of the gene for malic enzyme 2 selectively kills the cells, suggesting that the enzyme might represent a therapeutic target for this subset of cancers.
The first high-resolution (3.5 Å) structure of a full-length cyclic-nucleotide-gated channel, revealing an unconventional, voltage-insensitive voltage-sensor domain and a unique coupling mechanism between cyclic-nucleotide-binding and pore-opening.
A reactive astrocyte subtype termed A1 is induced after injury or disease of the central nervous system and subsequently promotes the death of neurons and oligodendrocytes.
A study of how temperature and water availability fluctuations affect the carbon balance of land ecosystems reveals different controls on local and global scales, implying that spatial climate covariation drives the global carbon cycle response.
The genome of the Southern Ocean phytoplankton Fragilariopsis cylindrus differs markedly from the genomes of its more temperate relatives, with divergent alleles being differentially expressed in environmentally specific conditions such as freezing and darkness.
Wild-type Drosophila epithelial cells outcompete proto-oncogenic cells through translocation of the ligand Sas to the wild-type–tumour cell interface, where it binds the PTP10D receptor of the tumour cell, initiating pro-apoptotic signalling.
Lasing action from an optically pumped bound state in the continuum cavity is demonstrated, of both fundamental interest and with applications from optical trapping to biological sensing and quantum information.
Oxygen isotope records derived from stalagmites in the eastern Amazon reveal that rainfall was about half of today’s during the Last Glacial Maximum but half again as much during the mid-Holocene, broadly coinciding with global changes in temperature and carbon dioxide.
Analysis of exceptionally preserved fossils of the Cambrian hyolith Haplophrentis leads to a proposed evolutionary relationship with Lophophorata, the group containing brachiopods and phoronids, on the basis of a newly described tentacular feeding apparatus.
The cryo-electron microscopy structure of a yeast spliceosome stalled before mature RNA formation provides insight into the mechanism of exon ligation.
The structure of the bacterial ribosome in complex with the ArfA and the release factor RF2 shows how ArfA recruits RF2 to terminate translation of messenger RNAs that lack a stop codon in the ribosome.
