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Volume 491 Issue 7424, 15 November 2012

Volume 491 Issue 7424

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The domestic pig (Sus scrofa) is an important livestock species, its genome shaped by thousands of years of domestication and, latterly, sophisticated breeding practices. A high-quality draft genome sequence for a female domestic Duroc pig is published in this issue of Nature, under the auspices of the Swine Genome Sequencing Consortium. Comparisons of the genomes of wild and domestic pigs shed light on the evolutionary relationship between European and Asian wild boars, and reveal the rapid evolution of genes involved in the immune response and in olfaction. The authors identify many possible disease-causing gene variants, increasing the potential of the pig as a biomedical model, and present a detailed analysis of endogenous porcine retroviruses, knowledge of which is important for the possible use of pigs in xenotransplantation. Cover: Mike Kemp, Rubberball,Getty Images/ Pompeii: Ren Mattes, Hemis, Corbis

Editorial

  • Editorial |

    As looming tax increases and budget cuts threaten to plunge the US economy back into recession, Congress should take a hard look at introducing a carbon tax as an important part of the solution.

  • Editorial |

    Japan still has lessons to learn from Fukushima if it is to convince the public about nuclear energy.

  • Editorial |

    The push to conserve cultural-heritage sites must not leave out areas of interest to science.

World View

Research Highlights

Seven Days

  • Seven Days |

    The week in science: Fukushima clean-up costs rocket, UK funds open-access publication and Denmark abandons fat tax.

News

News Feature

  • News Feature |

    Jonathan Tilly defied decades of dogma by suggesting that women can make new eggs throughout their lives. Now some of his critics are taking a second look.

    • Trisha Gura

  • News Feature |

    Fully fledged quantum computers are still a long way off. But devices that can simulate quantum systems are proving uniquely useful.

    • Geoff Brumfiel

Comment

  • Comment |

    Software engineers must close the loophole used to intercept online communications, say Ben Laurie and Cory Doctorow.

    • Ben Laurie
    • Cory Doctorow

  • Comment |

    The latest furore over GM food highlights the need for good-quality research on highly sensitive topics, says François Houllier.

    • François Houllier

Books & Arts

  • Books & Arts |

    Forty years on from UNESCO's world heritage convention, Alison Abbott contemplates the state of Italy's vast legacy.

    • Alison Abbott

  • Books & Arts |

    Since July, astronomers have killed off one trope of science fiction and given fresh life to another. Leigh Phillips gets Mars Trilogy author Kim Stanley Robinson's reaction.

    • Leigh Phillips

  • Books & Arts |

    John Gilbey applauds a call for the digital to join the physical, biological and social in science.

    • John Gilbey

Correspondence

Obituary

News & Views Forum

  • News & Views Forum |

    A phylogenetic reconstruction of the diversification of birds across space and time provides a novel resource for evolutionary studies. But the methods used to construct this tree, and what insights can be inferred from it, are a source of debate. Two evolutionary biologists provide opinions on how to draw the lines. See Letter p.444

    • Robert E. Ricklefs
    • Mark Pagel

News & Views

  • News & Views |

    A new assessment of drought trends over the past 60 years finds little evidence of an expansion of the area affected by droughts, contradicting several previous estimates. See Letter p.435

    • Sonia I. Seneviratne

  • News & Views |

    The construction of in vitro assemblies of biological components that exhibit properties of living matter may shed light on the physical aspects of the dynamic reorganization that continuously occurs inside cells. See Letter p.431

    • M. Cristina Marchetti

  • News & Views |

    Behavioural traits can influence an individual animal's fitness, and trait combinations can change over its lifetime, according to a study of wild trout during a key period in their development.

    • Alison M. Bell

  • News & Views |

    Sun exposure indisputably increases the risk of skin cancer. Mouse studies suggest that, in red-haired individuals, genetic factors also contribute through a mechanism that acts independently of exposure to sunlight. See Letter p.449

    • Mizuho Fukunaga-Kalabis
    • Meenhard Herlyn

  • News & Views |

    Entanglement between a photon and a stationary particle is a key resource for quantum communication. The effect has now been observed for a photon and a single electron spin in a semiconductor nanostructure. See Letters p.421 & p.426

    • Sophia E. Economou

  • News & Views |

    Nitric oxide is a vital signalling molecule that controls blood flow and pressure. Unexpectedly, a redox switch in the protein haemoglobin α within endothelial cells regulates this molecule's diffusion in blood vessels. See Letter p.473

    • Mark T. Gladwin
    • Daniel B. Kim-Shapiro

Introduction

Review Article

Article

  • Article | | Open Access

    This study presents the assembly and analysis of the genome sequence of a female domestic Duroc pig and a comparison with the genomes of wild and domestic pigs from Europe and Asia; the results shed light on the evolutionary relationship between European and Asian wild boars.

    • Martien A. M. Groenen
    • Alan L. Archibald
    • Lawrence B. Schook

  • Article |

    Exome sequencing and copy number analysis are used to define genomic aberrations in early sporadic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma; among the findings are mutations in genes involved in chromatin modification and DNA damage repair, and frequent and diverse somatic aberrations in genes known as embryonic regulators of axon guidance.

    • Andrew V. Biankin
    • Nicola Waddell
    • Sean M. Grimmond

  • Article |

    The structure of the bacteriophage transposase MuA bound to DNA sequences that mimic both the transposon ends and the target DNA ends is solved; the picture of this synaptic complex illustrates the intricacy of Mu transposition, and exposes the architectural diversity among DDE recombinases in complex with substrate DNAs.

    • Sherwin P. Montaño
    • Ying Z. Pigli
    • Phoebe A. Rice

Letter

  • Letter |

    Fast, single-photon detection enables the observation of entanglement between a stationary quantum bit (a single quantum dot spin) and a propagating quantum bit (a single photon), marking a first step towards the implementation of a quantum network with nodes consisting of semiconductor spin quantum bits.

    • W. B. Gao
    • P. Fallahi
    • A. Imamoglu

  • Letter |

    Active materials are hierarchically assembled, starting from extensile microtubule bundles, to form emulsions with unexpected collective biomimetic properties such as autonomous motility.

    • Tim Sanchez
    • Daniel T. N. Chen
    • Zvonimir Dogic

  • Letter |

    A physically based approach to drought modelling shows that there has been little change in drought from 1950 to 2008, contradicting previous work that suggested an increase in recent years.

    • Justin Sheffield
    • Eric F. Wood
    • Michael L. Roderick

  • Letter |

    Changes in the Walker circulation, an enormous east–west atmospheric circulation over the equatorial Pacific Ocean, are shown to be driven by changes in zonal sea surface temperature gradients rather than by changes in the hydrological cycle, as previously suggested.

    • Hiroki Tokinaga
    • Shang-Ping Xie
    • Yuko M. Okumura

  • Letter |

    The authors analyse the tempo and geography of diversification for all 10,000 species of birds: diversification has sped up over time, bursts are spread out across the tree and across the world, and high rates are not concentrated in the tropics.

    • W. Jetz
    • G. H. Thomas
    • A. O. Mooers

  • Letter |

    Individuals with the red hair/fair skin phenotype usually carry a polymorphism in the gene encoding the melanocortin 1 receptor (Mc1r) that results in the production of pigment containing a high pheomelanin-to-eumelanin ratio; here it is shown in a mouse model that inactivation of Mc1r promotes melanoma formation in the presence of the Braf oncogene, thus suggesting that pheomelanin synthesis is carcinogenic by an ultraviolet-radiation-independent mechanism.

    • Devarati Mitra
    • Xi Luo
    • David E. Fisher

  • Letter |

    The M2 isoform of pyruvate kinase (PKM2) is a key glycolytic enzyme that is overexpressed in cancer cells; here, serine is shown to bind to and directly activate PKM2, and the resulting reduction in enzyme activity under serine-deprivation conditions is shown to lead to the diversion of glucose-derived carbon to promote serine biosynthesis required for cell proliferation.

    • Barbara Chaneton
    • Petra Hillmann
    • Eyal Gottlieb

  • Letter |

    Detailed characterization of the regulatory domain of a plasma-membrane Ca2+-ATPase — a calcium pump — in complex with calmodulin results in a two-step structural model that explains how calmodulin-mediated regulation of pump activation affords highly responsive control over the intracellular calcium concentration in eukaryotes.

    • Henning Tidow
    • Lisbeth R. Poulsen
    • Poul Nissen

  • Letter |

    This study presents a new model for the regulation of nitric oxide signalling in endothelial cells; the oxidation state of endothelial haemoglobin α, controlled by cytochrome B5 reductase 3, regulates nitric oxide bioactivity and diffusion towards its vascular smooth muscle targets.

    • Adam C. Straub
    • Alexander W. Lohman
    • Brant E. Isakson

  • Letter |

    Analysis of the respective crystal structures of the yeast single-component type-II NADH dehydrogenase Ndi1 in its substrate-free form and when bound to NADH, ubiquinone and NADH–ubiquinone shows that Ndi1 homodimerization through its carboxy-terminal domain is critical for its catalytic activity and membrane targeting.

    • Yue Feng
    • Wenfei Li
    • Maojun Yang

Feature

  • Feature |

    A US 'green-card' visa can open up career possibilities. But getting one requires stamina — and a dash of luck.

    • Karen Kaplan

Career Brief

Futures

  • Futures |

    The art of soldiering on.

    • William T. Vandemark

Insight

  • Insight |

    Metabolism and disease

    Metabolic diseases, such as diabetes and obesity, are a threat to global health. This Insight focuses on some of the underlying biology that can contribute to these disorders, including the central nervous system's control of metabolism, circadian rhythms, cancer metabolism and mitochondrial disorders, as well as metabolic phenotyping.

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