Reviews & Analysis

An ensemble of climate models predicts that winds along the world's coasts will intensify because of global warming, inducing more ocean upwelling — a process that will affect the health of coastal marine ecosystems. See Letter p.390

The contribution of explosions known as novae to the lithium content of the Milky Way is uncertain. Radioactive beryllium, which transforms into lithium, has been detected for the first time in one such explosion. See Letter p.381

Bacteria use CRISPR–Cas systems to develop immunity to viruses. Details of how these systems select viral DNA fragments and integrate them into bacterial DNA to create a memory of invaders have now been reported. See Articles p.193 & p.199

How does marijuana cause the irresistible hunger pangs known as the munchies? Paradoxically, the answer seems to involve an unusual mode of activation of a brain circuit best known for suppressing appetite. See Article p.45

Reference epigenomes spanning multiple fetal and adult brain regions provide new insights into brain development and neurodegenerative disorders

Integrative analyses of reference epigenomes reveal complex context-specific relationships between chromatin state, accessibility, DNA methylation and gene expression

Integrative analyses of reference epigenomes reveal context-specific regulatory motifs, factors, modules, pathways and networks

Robust statistical pipelines and novel computational methods enable large-scale integrative analysis of reference epigenomes

A package of papers investigates the functional regulatory elements in genomes that have been obtained from human tissue samples and cell lines. The implications of the project are presented here from three viewpoints. See Articles p.317, p.331, p.337 & p.344 and Letters p.350, p.355, p.360 & p.365

Reference epigenomes reveal relationships between cell types and tissues, and the regulatory mechanisms underlying differentiation and development

Reference epigenomes enable comprehensive annotations of dynamic non-coding regulatory and transcribed elements across hundreds of human cell types and tissues

Reference epigenomes provide leads about the cell-type specificity and molecular basis of natural and disease-associated genetic variants

Epigenome profiling reveals multi-tissue regulatory dynamics associated with progression of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other complex diseases

The cosmic microwave background is a faint glow of light left over from the Big Bang. It fills the entire sky and records the Universe's early history. Two independent experts outline what we know about this ancient light, both theoretically and observationally.

Many experiments have probed the mechanisms by which transplanted stem cells give rise to all the cell types of the blood, but it emerges that the process is different in unperturbed conditions. See Letter p.542

High-resolution astronomical observations of a nearby molecular gas cloud have revealed a quadruplet of stars in the act of formation. The system is arguably the youngest multiple star system detected so far. See Letter p.213

A record of boron isotopes in fossils of microscopic plankton provides fresh evidence that some ocean regions were a source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere when Earth warmed at the end of the last ice age. See Letter p.219

A review of the phases of copper oxides (especially the ‘strange metal’), discussing their high-temperature superconductivity and their various forms of quantum matter, and the implications for fundamental theory.