Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Volume 469 Issue 7330, 20 January 2011

The Lehman Brothers building on 7th Avenue, 15 September 2008. In a Perspective review, Andrew Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England, and ecologist Robert May look at the nature of risk that led to the recent global crisis in the international banking system. Utilizing tools more often used to analyse ecological food webs and the spread of infectious diseases, they conclude that there are lessons to be learned from the exercise that could inform future public policy decisions. The idea that advances from other disciplines can usefully be applied to financial institutions is not universally accepted, as revealed in a Forum debate featuring Neil Johnson and Thomas Lux. Picture credit: Fausto Giaccone/Anzenberger/Eyevine

Editorial

  • Secure virus stocks in the United States and Russia may still prove useful and should not be destroyed. A political compromise is the best way to make that happen.

    Editorial

    Advertisement

  • The decision to shut down the ageing particle collider at Fermilab is the right one.

    Editorial
  • Ecological models can be used to guide economic policy — but should they?

    Editorial
Top of page ⤴

World View

  • The world's indifference to a request for $3.6 billion to preserve a diversity hot spot may push the country to extract oil there, says Kelly Swing.

    • Kelly Swing
    World View
Top of page ⤴

Research Highlights

Top of page ⤴

Seven Days

Top of page ⤴

News

Top of page ⤴

Correction

Top of page ⤴

News Feature

Top of page ⤴

Comment

  • Regulators, doctors and patients need to prepare for the ethical, legal and practical effects of sequencing fetal genomes from mothers' blood, says Henry T. Greely.

    • Henry T. Greely
    Comment
  • Earth scientists need better incentives, rewards and mechanisms to achieve free and open data exchange, says David Carlson.

    • David Carlson
    Comment
Top of page ⤴

Books & Arts

  • George Ellis reminds us that Brian Greene's beguiling book on parallel worlds is more theory than fact.

    • George Ellis
    Books & Arts
  • Two books chart the laboratory origins of avant-garde electronic music, finds Marc Weidenbaum.

    • Marc Weidenbaum
    Books & Arts
  • Pascal Boyer assesses what science has to say about morals.

    • Pascal Boyer
    Books & Arts
  • Relationships and behaviour are highlighted in this year's clutch of science films at the agenda-setting festival, notes Jascha Hoffman.

    • Jascha Hoffman
    Books & Arts
Top of page ⤴

Correspondence

Top of page ⤴

Obituary

  • Chemist who enabled mass spectrometry to weigh up biology.

    • Carol V. Robinson
    Obituary
Top of page ⤴

News & Views Forum

  • A growing body of literature deals with the application of theories developed in other disciplines to financial institutions, to which a paper in this issue now adds. As outlined here, however, views differ as to its relevance. See Perspective p.351

    • Neil Johnson
    • Thomas Lux
    News & Views Forum
Top of page ⤴

News & Views

  • The resting brain recapitulates activity patterns that occurred during a recent experience, possibly to aid long-term memory formation. Surprisingly, corresponding brain activity also occurs before an event happens. See Letter p.397

    • Edvard I. Moser
    • May-Britt Moser
    News & Views
  • The massive compact objects in the centres of galaxies developed in at least two ways. One seems to be a natural result of galaxy formation in the Big Bang theory of the expanding Universe — the other is enigmatic. See Letters p.374 & p.377

    • P. James E. Peebles
    News & Views
  • Two human trials investigate the efficacy of a type of antiretroviral drug — usually used to treat HIV-infected individuals — in preventing HIV infection. The results are heartening.

    • Mark A. Wainberg
    News & Views
  • Plasmonic hotspots — nanometre-sized crevices that permit the detection of single molecules — are too small to be imaged with conventional microscopes. They can now be probed using super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. See Letter p.385

    • Martin Moskovits
    News & Views
  • Social slime moulds graze on bacteria, but save some for transmission in their spores. Strains practising this primitive form of farming coexist with non-farmer strains in an intriguing cost–benefit equilibrium. See Letter p.393

    • Jacobus J. Boomsma
    News & Views
  • The transformation of tadpole to frog and of caterpillar to butterfly are two of the more obvious examples of metamorphosis. But molecular shape-shifting may occur in each of us as part of our innate antibacterial defence system. See Letter p.419

    • Robert I. Lehrer
    News & Views
  • Protein engineering of an enzyme that catalytically detoxifies organophosphate compounds in the body opens up fresh opportunities in the search for therapeutic protection against nerve agents used in chemical warfare.

    • Frank M. Raushel
    News & Views
Top of page ⤴

Editorial

Top of page ⤴

Review Article

Top of page ⤴

Perspective

Top of page ⤴

Article

  • Analysing single cells from human B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemias, this study maps the genetic heterogeneity of cells within a given tumour sample, the evolutionary path by which different subclones have emerged, and ongoing dynamic changes associated with relapse. Leukaemia-propagating cells that transplant the disease mirror the genetic variegation of the bulk tumours, providing insights into the heterogeneity of these functional subpopulations at the genetic level. This has implications for therapeutic approaches targeting the tumours and specifically leukaemia-propagating cells.

    • Kristina Anderson
    • Christoph Lutz
    • Mel Greaves

    Milestone:

    Article
  • Analysing human B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemias, this study maps the genetic heterogeneity of cells within a given tumour sample and the evolutionary path by which different subclones have emerged. Leukaemia-initiating cells that transplant the disease mirror the genetic variegation of the bulk tumours, providing insights into the heterogeneity of these functional subpopulations at the genetic level. This has implications for therapeutic approaches targeting the tumours and specifically leukaemia-initiating cells.

    • Faiyaz Notta
    • Charles G. Mullighan
    • John E. Dick

    Milestone:

    Article
  • A novel technique called native elongating transcript sequencing (NET-seq) is described, which can quantify transcription with single nucleotide resolution. It is based on sequencing nascent transcripts associated with RNA polymerase II that are captured directly from live cells, and is used to gain insights into polymerase pausing and backtracking and the directionality of transcription.

    • L. Stirling Churchman
    • Jonathan S. Weissman
    Article
Top of page ⤴

Letter

  • The masses of supermassive black holes are known to correlate with the properties of the bulge components of their host galaxies. In contrast, they appear not to correlate with galaxy disks. Disk-grown pseudobulges are intermediate in properties between bulges and disks. This paper reports pseudobulge classifications for a sample of nearby galaxies, and combines them with recent measurements of velocity dispersions in the biggest bulgeless galaxies to confirm that black holes do not correlate with disks, and that they correlate little or not at all with pseudobulges.

    • John Kormendy
    • R. Bender
    • M. E. Cornell
    Letter
  • Supermassive black holes have been detected in all galaxies that contain bulge components. Bigger black holes are found in bigger bulges, implying that black-hole growth and bulge formation regulate each other. Reports of a similar correlation between black holes and the dark matter haloes suggest that unknown, exotic physics controls black-hole growth. Here it is shown that there is almost no correlation between dark matter and parameters that measure black holes unless the galaxy also contains a bulge. It is concluded that black holes do not correlate directly with dark matter, and that black holes coevolve only with bulges.

    • John Kormendy
    • Ralf Bender
    Letter
  • This paper demonstrates a simple route for encoding a predetermined superstructure into the surface properties of colloidal spheres, enabling them to self-assemble into an intricate open crystalline lattice that is quite distinct from the close-packed periodic arrangements commonly encountered in colloidal crystals.

    • Qian Chen
    • Sung Chul Bae
    • Steve Granick
    Letter
  • On rough metallic surfaces hotspots appear under optical illumination that concentrate light to tens of nanometres. This effect can be used to detect molecules, as weak fluorescence signals are strongly enhanced by the hotspots. Such hotspots are associated with localized electromagnetic modes, caused by the randomness of the surface texture, but the detailed profile of the local electromagnetic field is unknown. Here, an ingenious approach is described, making use of the Brownian motion of single molecules to probe the local field. The study succeeds in imaging the fluorescence enhancement profile of single hotspots on the surface of aluminium thin-film and silver nanoparticle clusters with accuracy down to one nanometre, and finds that the field distribution in a hotspot follows an exponential decay.

    • Hu Cang
    • Anna Labno
    • Xiang Zhang
    Letter
  • Single-atom-thick graphene sheets can be produced at metre scales, bringing large-area applications in electronics and photovoltaics closer. However, such large pieces can be expected to be polycrystalline, so that it is important to determine the nature and size of grains in large-area graphene. This paper uses a combination of old and new transmission electron microscope techniques to carry out atomic-resolution imaging at grain boundaries as well as mapping of the location, orientation and shape of several hundred grains and boundaries with diffraction-filtered imaging. By correlating grain imaging with scanned probe and transport measurements, it is shown that the grain boundaries dramatically weaken the mechanical strength of graphene membranes, but do not as dramatically alter their electrical properties.

    • Pinshane Y. Huang
    • Carlos S. Ruiz-Vargas
    • David A. Muller

    Collection:

    Letter
  • Agriculture has been central to the success of humans and some social insects. This paper shows that social amoebae can do it too. Some isolates of Dictyostelium discoideum refrain from consuming all the available bacteria at a site and instead they incorporate them into their reproductive assemblages to seed a new bacterial crop at another location.

    • Debra A. Brock
    • Tracy E. Douglas
    • Joan E. Strassmann
    Letter
  • Place cells in the hippocampus track an animal's position as it travels through space. Previous work contends that sequential place cell maps are produced upon the initial navigation of a new area and subsequently consolidated at rest or during sleep. Here, place-cell firing patterns during rest or sleep are observed before a novel spatial experience, a phenomenon termed 'preplay'. These sequences were separate from the replay of pervious experience and suggest that internal dynamics during rest may organize cell assemblies to be ready for any novel encoding that may occur in the immediate future.

    • George Dragoi
    • Susumu Tonegawa
    Letter
  • In the retina, highly selective wiring from inhibitory cells contributes to determine the direction-selection characteristics of an individual ganglion cell, yet how the asymmetric wiring inherent to these connections is established was unknown. Here, two independent studies using complementary techniques, including pharmacology, electrophysiology and optogenetics, find that although inhibitory inputs to both sides of the direction-selective cell are uniform early in development, by the second postnatal week, inhibitory synapses on the null side strengthen whereas those on the preferred side remain constant. These plasticity changes occur independent of neural activity, indicating that a specific developmental program is executed to produce the direction-selective circuitry in the retina.

    • Wei Wei
    • Aaron M. Hamby
    • Marla B. Feller
    Letter
  • In the retina, highly selective wiring from inhibitory cells contributes to determine the direction-selection characteristics of an individual ganglion cell, yet how the asymmetric wiring inherent to these connections is established was unknown. Here, two independent studies using complementary techniques, including pharmacology, electrophysiology and optogenetics, find that although inhibitory inputs to both sides of the direction-selective cell are uniform early in development, by the second postnatal week, inhibitory synapses on the null side strengthen whereas those on the preferred side remain constant. These plasticity changes occur independent of neural activity, indicating that a specific developmental program is executed to produce the direction-selective circuitry in the retina.

    • Keisuke Yonehara
    • Kamill Balint
    • Botond Roska
    Letter
  • This study provides molecular insights into barriers to gene flow during the formation of species. The study identifies cis-regulatory mutations in two genes that cause a flower-colour change in the Texas wildflower Phlox drummondii and are part of the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway. Flowers of plants that carry one of each mutation are of intermediate colour and therefore less frequently pollinated by insects, contributing to prezygotic as well as postzygotic isolation.

    • Robin Hopkins
    • Mark D. Rausher
    Letter
  • Multipotent stem cells expressing Lgr5 are known to generate all cell types of the intestinal epithelium (enterocytes, goblet cells, Paneth cells and enteroendocrine cells). A new study shows that Paneth cells have an essential role for intestinal crypt and stem cell maintenance by supplying essential niche signals to the Lgr5-expressing cells.

    • Toshiro Sato
    • Johan H. van Es
    • Hans Clevers
    Letter
  • This paper shows that the activity of human beta-defensin 1 is regulated by its redox status, with enhanced antibiotic killing activity under reducing conditions as they are found in the distal colon. This is believed to serve to protect the healthy intestinal epithelium against potentially harmful colonization by commensal bacteria and opportunistic fungi. In vitro evidence implicates thioredoxin as the likely reducing agent.

    • Bjoern O. Schroeder
    • Zhihong Wu
    • Jan Wehkamp
    Letter
  • The HIV virion has a cone-shaped core composed of capsid proteins, which take either pentameric or hexameric form. The crystal structure of the capsid hexamer had been solved previously. Now the structure of the pentamer is provided, which allows the proposal of the first atomic-level model of the mature HIV capsid.

    • Owen Pornillos
    • Barbie K. Ganser-Pornillos
    • Mark Yeager
    Letter
  • The mechanism of action of general anaesthetics is poorly understood, although there is some evidence that their principal protein targets are pentameric ligand-gated ion channels (pLGICs). Here, the X-ray crystal structures of propofol and desflurane bound to a bacterial homologue of the pLGIC family are solved. The structures reveal a common binding site for these two anaesthetics in the upper part of the transmembrane domain of each protomer.

    • Hugues Nury
    • Catherine Van Renterghem
    • Pierre-Jean Corringer
    Letter
Top of page ⤴

Corrigendum

Top of page ⤴

Erratum

Top of page ⤴

Feature

  • Open innovation offers scientists novel ways to apply their expertise — and sometimes provides much-needed cash.

    • Cristina Jimenez
    Feature
Top of page ⤴

Column

  • Everyone puts off big tasks with smaller ones, and the only solution is to fight fire with fire, says Fabio Paglieri

    • Fabio Paglieri
    Column
Top of page ⤴

Futures

Top of page ⤴

Insight

  • The reviews in this Insight discuss in turn the cellular origins of cancer, new developments at the interface between autophagy and immunity, the role of microRNAs in cardiovascular development and disease, and the mechanisms of chromatin and gene regulation that have a role in development and cancer.

    Insight
Top of page ⤴
Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Quick links