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Neuronal connectivity in the mature brain is stabilized by the extracellular matrix. This study shows that degradation of chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans in the matrix increases connectivity in the adult cortex by causing a large increase in motility and functional plasticity of dendritic spines.
The ‘on’ and ‘off’ states of the photoswitchable protein Dronpa have been characterized, but the interconversion process remains poorly understood. Here the authors perform time-resolved ultrafast infrared measurements to follow both the structural changes and proton transfer events that occur during conversion.
Botulinum toxins can cause substantial neurodegeneration. Peng et al. study cultured rat hippocampal neurons and find that botulinum toxin-induced cytotoxicity occurs only when there is effective cleavage of the SNARE proteins, syntaxin 1 or SNAP-25, by type C and type E botulinum toxins.
Primary sensory areas of newborn mammals typically display input-dependent plasticity. Thomson and colleagues use a sensory prosthetic device in rats to show that adult rats can discriminate different infrared light signals, when the signals are routed to somatosensory cortex by electrical microstimulation.
It is generally believed that jaws evolved from a gill arch, but this is unsupported by palaeontological or developmental data. Gillis et al. study three gnathostome taxa and identify a conserved molecular mechanism that delineates the dorsal and ventral skeletal segments of the jaw, hyoid and gill arches.
The bullet shape of Rhabdoviruses is thought to depend on their matrix protein, which stabilizes the nucleocapsid coil. Desfosses and colleagues show that the nucleoprotein of the vesicular stomatitis virus can fold the genome into a bullet-shaped skeleton in the absence of other viral components.
Engineering heterogeneous metallic nanocrystals could produce diverse materials with tunable properties. Here the authors develop a strategy for the rational and independent programming of each architecture-determining element, such as the shape, size and spatial relationship of the component nanocrystals.
Diluted magnetic semiconductors are promising spintronic materials, however the simultaneous doping of charge and magnetic moment has prevented synthesis of bulk samples. This work reports the synthesis of a bulk magnetic semiconductor (Ba1−xKx)(Zn1−yMny)2As2with Curie temperatures up to 180 K.
For quantum technologies to become widespread and scalable, bright sources of indistinguishable single photons are essential. Through deterministic positioning of quantum dots in pillar cavities, Gazzano et al.present a solid-state single-photon source with brightness as large as 0.65 photons per pulse.
Charge separation determines the efficiency of semiconductor-based photocatalysts. Here Li et al. show that, in BiVO4, photogenerated electrons and holes accumulate on different crystal facets and the targeted deposition of cocatalysts increases the efficiency of photocatalytic water oxidation.
In the Earth’s lower mantle, pressure changes can cause spin transitions of iron, in turn influencing mantle properties. Here a new Mössbauer spectroscopy method is applied to show that Fe3+remains in the high-spin state at pressure–temperature conditions relevant for the lower mantle.
Bacterial CRISPR–Cas systems provide adaptive immunity against phage by transcribing interfering RNA from phage DNA inserted into the bacterial genome. Using deep-sequencing, the authors detect a bias in the phage genome locations sampled, suggestive of selection.
Integrating stereo information from two eyes or two ears is fundamental to localizing visual and auditory stimuli. Kenneth Catania investigates the olfactory sensitivity of eastern American moles, and finds that they use bilateral chemosensory cues in combination with serial sampling to localize odorants.