Volume 538 Issue 7624, 13 October 2016

The ExAC database has shown that many mutations thought to be harmful are benign.

‘Nexus’ is enjoying new-found popularity. But what does it actually mean?

To protect endangered species from extinction, the ecological community must become more politically involved, argues Aaron M. Ellison.

The week in science: 7–13 October 2016.

Plans to restrict freedom of movement intensify researchers’ fears over June vote.

Network would be Africa's largest demographics project if it can sustain long-term funding.

Agency looks to time-allocation model in an era of shifting commercial and international interests.

As the first T-cell therapies for tumours near US approval, researchers race to engineer less-toxic alternatives.

Undergraduates from small, elite institutions have the best chance of winning a Nobel prize.

Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa share 2016 award.

Why many ‘deadly’ gene mutations are turning out to be harmless.

The refugees and migrants surging into Europe are suffering very high levels of psychiatric disorders. Researchers are struggling to help.

An analysis by Alice B. Popejoy and Stephanie M. Fullerton indicates that some populations are still being left behind on the road to precision medicine.

A United Nations conference seeks urban sustainability. But the agenda will fail without input from researchers, warn Timon McPhearson and colleagues.

Graham Farmelo assesses a biography of star theorist-experimentalist Enrico Fermi.

Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

Nancy Thorndike Greenspan enjoys a study of the physicist as engaged public figure.

Creator of a rainbow of fluorescent probes that lit up biology.

A fresh look at the Channeled Scablands of North America shows that the ancient floods that scarred that landscape were smaller than is commonly assumed. This result could revise estimates of similar floods on Mars. See Letter p.229

In line with previous research, a demographic analysis corroborates the presence of a limit to human lifespan, indicating that increases in life expectancy are likely to slow down or stop over the coming years.

Half a century after the discovery of a plant photosynthetic pathway termed C₄, researchers are working to engineer this efficient pathway into crops such as rice to maintain food security.

Genetic studies of individuals from geographically diverse human populations provide insights into the dispersal of modern humans across the globe and how geography shaped genomic variation. See Articles p.201 & p.207 & Letter p.238

Researchers estimate that the incidence of human lethal violence at the time of the origin of our species was about six times higher than for the average mammal, but about as violent as expected, given our great-ape ancestry. See Letter p.233

Intracellular delivery methods, which are critical to both fundamental research applications and cell-based therapies, are reviewed, concentrating on membrane-disruption-based methods and the use of nanotechnology, microfluidics and laboratory-on-chip technology.

A comprehensive review of how analysis of genome sequences provided insights into the origins, evolution and spread of Ebola virus during the 2013–2016 epidemic in West Africa.

Deep whole-genome sequencing of 300 individuals from 142 diverse populations provides insights into key population genetic parameters, shows that all modern human ancestry outside of Africa including in Australasians is consistent with descending from a single founding population, and suggests a higher rate of accumulation of mutations in non-Africans compared to Africans since divergence.

Whole-genome sequence data for 108 individuals representing 28 language groups across Australia and five language groups for Papua New Guinea suggests that Aboriginal Australians and Papuans diverged from Eurasian populations approximately 60–100 thousand years ago, following a single out-of-Africa dispersal and subsequent admixture with archaic populations.

High-resolution ‘before and after’ imaging of the Moon is used to quantify the rate of crater production and provide insights into the cratering process.

Semiconducting single crystals of doped barium titanate and titanium dioxide exhibit a flexoelectric-like response upon bending that is much larger than in their undoped, insulating counterparts, reaching unprecedentedly large effective flexoelectric coefficients.

Nanometre-scale graphitic capillaries with atomically flat walls are engineered and studied, revealing unexpectedly fast transport of liquid water through channels that accommodate only a few layers of water.

Reconstruction of global average surface temperature for the past two million years shows continuous cooling until about 1.2 million years ago, followed by a general flattening, with close coupling of global temperature and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations over the past 800,000 years.

Simulations of water flow and erosion in Moses Coulee suggest that the floods that carved this canyon only partially filled it, implying much lower flood discharges than previously thought.

The percentage of human deaths caused by interpersonal violence reflects our membership of a particularly violent clade of mammals, although changes in socio-political organization have led to marked variations in this proportion.

Whole-genome sequencing of individuals from 125 populations provides insight into patterns of genetic diversity, natural selection and human demographic history during the peopling of Eurasia and finds evidence for genetic vestiges of an early expansion of modern humans out of Africa in Papuans.

De novo assembly and phasing of the genome of an individual from Korea using a combination of different sequencing approaches provides a useful population-specific reference genome and represents the most contiguous human genome assembly so far.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide association analyses for birth weight in 153,781 individuals identified 60 genomic loci in which birth weight and fetal genotype were associated and found an inverse genetic correlation between birth weight and cardiometabolic risk.

A mouse study reveals that acetylcholine signalling networks have a role in the regulation of body weight homeostasis, with increased activity of cholinergic neurons decreasing food consumption through downstream hypothalamic targets.

Demographic analysis of life expectancy and maximum reported age at death provides evidence that human lifespan has reached its natural limit.

Stem cells of the liver, colon and small intestine gradually accumulate mutations throughout life at a similar rate even though cancer incidence varies greatly among these tissues.

Genomic duplications in the SOX9 region are associated with human disease phenotypes; a study using human cells and mouse models reveals that the duplications can cause the formation of new higher-order chromatin structures called topologically associated domains (TADs) thereby resulting in changes in gene expression.

The CRISPR-associated bacterial enzyme C2c2 is shown to contain two separable, distinct sites for the highly sensitive detection and cleavage of single-stranded RNA.

Scientists are uncovering the hidden switches in our genome that dial gene expression up and down, but much work lies ahead to peel back the many layers of regulation.

Offering your skills as a volunteer can be rewarding but needs careful thought.

How Stefanie Marquez-Vilendrer found a job in industry.

Prepare for excellence!