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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.
Janus materials have distinct chemical functionalities on opposite faces. Zhang et al.report that a two-step covalent functionalisation and poly(methyl methacrylate)-mediated transfer process facilitates the synthesis of nonsymmetrically modified single-layer graphene.
In microbial biogeography, little is known about processes involved in soil bacterial diversity turnover. By conducting a wide-scale investigation, this study shows that dispersal limitation and environmental selection of bacteria are not mutually exclusive, highlighting the importance of landscape diversity.
The ‘wet’ chemical epitaxial growth of nanostructures on semiconducting surfaces is usually hindered by surface defects. Here, the authors show that large surface area single-layer molybdenum disulphide is an ideal substrate for epitaxial growth of a range of metallic nanoparticles.
The motion of magnetic vortices induced in type-II superconductors by a magnetic field degrades their ability to conduct electricity with zero resistance. Córdoba et al.demonstrate a means to immobilize these vortices, reversing their deleterious effect as the applied magnetic field is increased.