News & Views |
Featured
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News |
Genomics boosts brain-cancer work
Molecular findings start to open up avenues of diagnosis and treatment.
- Erika Check Hayden
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News |
Bacterial clocks chime in unison
Genetic circuit allows entire colonies to keep time.
- Erika Check Hayden
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News |
Lemurs' wet and wild past
Model shows how mammals could have 'rafted' to Madagascar.
- Geoff Brumfiel
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Books & Arts |
Vision of a personal genomics future
The director of the US National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, calls for a revolution in personalized medicine. Such advances should be shared beyond the developed world, says Abdallah S. Daar.
- Abdallah S. Daar
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Opinion |
Fixing the communications failure
People's grasp of scientific debates can improve if communicators build on the fact that cultural values influence what and whom we believe, says Dan Kahan.
- Dan Kahan
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News |
Brother sperm train together
Mouse sperm cells team up with their kin in the race to fertilize eggs.
- John Whitfield
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News Feature |
Five hard truths for synthetic biology
Can engineering approaches tame the complexity of living systems? Roberta Kwok explores five challenges for the field and how they might be resolved.
- Roberta Kwok
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News |
The scientific diplomat
AAAS president Peter Agre talks to Nature about his recent visits to Cuba and North Korea.
- David Cyranoski
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News |
NIH scrutinizes drug-company payments at Baylor
Funding agency raises 'serious concerns' about conflicts of interest.
- Brendan Borrell
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Letter |
Mechanism of substrate recognition and transport by an amino acid antiporter
The amino acid antiporter AdiC is important for the survival of enteric bacteria such as Escherichia coli in extremely acid environments. Although the structure of substrate-free AdiC is known, how the substrate (arginine or agmatine) is recognized and transported by AdiC remains unclear. The crystal structure of an E. coli AdiC variant bound to arginine is now reported and analysed.
- Xiang Gao
- , Lijun Zhou
- & Yigong Shi
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Letter |
Competition drives cooperation among closely related sperm of deer mice
Sperm can increase their swimming velocity and gain a competitive advantage over sperm from another male by forming cooperative groups, such that selection should favour cooperation of the most closely related sperm. Sperm of deer mice are now shown to aggregate more often with conspecific than heterospecific sperm, in accordance with this theory, whereas in a monogamous species lacking sperm competition, sperm indiscriminately group with unrelated conspecific sperm.
- Heidi S. Fisher
- & Hopi E. Hoekstra
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Letter |
Evidence for grid cells in a human memory network
Rodents have an orientation map of their surroundings, produced and updated by a network of neurons in the entorhinal cortex known as 'grid cells'. However, it is currently unknown whether humans encode their location in a similar manner. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans, a macroscopic signal representing a subject's position in a virtual reality environment is now detected that meets the criteria for defining grid-cell encoding.
- Christian F. Doeller
- , Caswell Barry
- & Neil Burgess
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News |
Health benefits of red-wine chemical unclear
Sceptics continue to ask whether resveratrol really can delay the effects of ageing.
- Lizzie Buchen
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News |
Mystery of the brown giant panda deepens
Rare sighting of brown-and-white panda sparks conservation debate.
- Henry Nicholls
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News |
Robotic roach creates order from chaos
Chaos theory eases the path of autonomous robots.
- Zeeya Merali
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Letter |
DNMT1 maintains progenitor function in self-renewing somatic tissue
Progenitor cells sustain the capacity of self-renewing tissues for proliferation while suppressing cell cycle exit and terminal differentiation. DNA methylation is one potential epigenetic mechanism for the cellular memory needed to preserve the somatic progenitor state through cell divisions. The DNA methyltransferase 1 and other regulators of DNA methylation are now shown to be essential for epidermal progenitor cell function.
- George L. Sen
- , Jason A. Reuter
- & Paul A. Khavari
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Letter |
Genome-wide RNAi screen identifies human host factors crucial for influenza virus replication
High mutation rates in the influenza A virus facilitate the generation of viral escape mutants, rendering vaccines and drugs potentially ineffective, but targeting host cell determinants could prevent viral escape. Here, 287 human host cell genes influencing influenza A virus replication are found using a genome-wide RNA interference screen. An independent assay is then used to investigate overlap between genes necessary for different viral strains.
- Alexander Karlas
- , Nikolaus Machuy
- & Thomas F. Meyer
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News |
Parasitic wasps' DNA laid bare
Nasonia wasp genomes should improve agricultural biological control.
- Brendan Borrell
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Letter |
KAP1 controls endogenous retroviruses in embryonic stem cells
Much of the mammalian genome is derived from retroelements, a significant proportion of which are endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). ERVs are transcriptionally silenced during early embryogenesis by histone and DNA methylation, but the initiators of this process are largely unknown. Here, deletion of KAP1 is shown to lead to a marked upregulation of a range of ERVs in mouse embryonic stem cells and in early embryos.
- Helen M. Rowe
- , Johan Jakobsson
- & Didier Trono
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Article |
Coupled chaperone action in folding and assembly of hexadecameric Rubisco
Form I Rubisco, one of the most abundant proteins in nature, catalyses the fixation of atmospheric CO2 in photosynthesis. The limited catalytic efficiency of Rubisco has sparked extensive efforts to re-engineer the enzyme to enhance agricultural productivity. To bring this goal closer, the formation of cyanobacterial form I Rubisco is now analysed by in vitro reconstitution and cryo-electron microscopy.
- Cuimin Liu
- , Anna L. Young
- & Manajit Hayer-Hartl
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Letter |
An allosteric mechanism of Rho-dependent transcription termination
Rho is a general transcription termination factor in bacteria, but the mechanism by which it disrupts the RNA polymerase (RNAP) elongation complex is unknown. Here, Rho is shown to bind tightly to the RNAP throughout the transcription cycle, with the formation of the RNAP–Rho complex being crucial for termination. Furthermore, RNAP is proposed to have an active role in Rho termination through an allosteric mechanism.
- Vitaly Epshtein
- , Dipak Dutta
- & Evgeny Nudler
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Letter |
Long-term potentiation depends on release of d-serine from astrocytes
The involvement of astroglia in long-term potentiation (LTP) of synaptic transmission remains controversial. Clamping internal Ca2+ in individual astrocytes in the CA1 area of the hippocampus is now shown to block LTP induction at nearby excitatory synapses through an effect on the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor. This LTP blockade can be reversed by exogenous D-serine, normally released in a Ca2+-dependent manner from astrocytes.
- Christian Henneberger
- , Thomas Papouin
- & Dmitri A. Rusakov
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Article
| Open AccessGenome sequence of the palaeopolyploid soybean
Soybean is an important crop plant, providing seed protein and oil and fixing atmospheric nitrogen through symbioses with soil-borne microorganisms. Using a whole-genome shotgun approach, its 1.1-gigabase genome is now sequenced and integrated with physical and high-density genetic maps to create a chromosome-scale draft sequence assembly.
- Jeremy Schmutz
- , Steven B. Cannon
- & Scott A. Jackson
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Letter |
JARID2 regulates binding of the Polycomb repressive complex 2 to target genes in ES cells
Polycomb proteins have a key role in regulating the expression of genes essential for development, differentiation and maintenance of cell fates. Here, Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) is shown to form a complex with JARID2, a Jumonji domain protein. JARID2 is required for the binding of Polycomb proteins to target genes in embryonic stem cells as well as for the proper differentiation of ES cells.
- Diego Pasini
- , Paul A. C. Cloos
- & Kristian Helin
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Letter |
Structural basis for the photoconversion of a phytochrome to the activated Pfr form
Phytochromes regulate numerous photoresponses in plants and microorganisms through their ability to photointerconvert between a red-light-absorbing, ground state (Pf) and a far-red-light-absorbing, photoactivated state (Pfr). The structures of several phytochromes as Pf have been determined previously; here, the three-dimensional solution structure of the bilin-binding domain as Pfr is described. The results shed light on the structural basis for photoconversion to the activated Pfr form.
- Andrew T. Ulijasz
- , Gabriel Cornilescu
- & Richard D. Vierstra
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Research Highlights |
Molecular biology: Flowering time unravelled
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Research Highlights |
Neuroscience: Brain cell gain and cocaine
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Research Highlights |
Cancer biology: Kicking out cancer cells
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Research Highlights |
Drug discovery: Virtual antibiotic screen
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Research Highlights |
Immunology: Double punch for HIV
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Research Highlights |
Neuroscience: Dark migraine relief
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Research Highlights |
Biology: Snakes face the heat
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News & Views |
50 & 100 years ago
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Research Highlights |
Materials science: Sequencing with carbon
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News & Views |
Astrocytes as aide-mémoires
Memory formation is known to occur at the level of synaptic contacts between neurons. It therefore comes as a surprise that another type of brain cell, the astrocyte, is also involved in establishing memory.
- Mirko Santello
- & Andrea Volterra
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News & Views |
Model offers intermediate insight
Chemical models of enzymes' active sites aid our understanding of biological reactions. Such a model of a reaction intermediate promises to advance our knowledge of the biochemistry of iron-containing haem enzymes.
- Kenneth D. Karlin
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News & Views |
Tackling unintelligent design
The key enzyme in photosynthesis, Rubisco, is a relic of a bygone age. The ability to assemble Rubisco in the test tube offers the prospect of genetically manipulating the enzyme to make it fit for the modern world.
- R. John Ellis
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News & Views |
Learn to beat an identity cheat
Parent birds commonly face the problem of distinguishing their own brood from foreign chicks. Learnt chick-recognition evolves only when parents do not mistakenly learn to reject their own young.
- Rebecca Kilner
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News |
Disease epidemic killing only US bats
European bats seemingly unaffected by fungal infection.
- Lizzie Buchen
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News |
Parasitic larva ditches doomed host
A cunning insect detects when its host is under threat from predators to make a timely escape.
- Lucas Laursen
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News |
Streamlined chemical tests rebuffed
Europe impedes introduction of REACH safety assessments.
- Natasha Gilbert
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Letter |
Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure and gene content
Little is known about the recent evolution of the Y chromosome because only the human Y chromosome has been fully sequenced. The sequencing of the male-specific region of the Y chromosome (MSY) in the chimpanzee and comparison between the MSYs of the two species now reveals that they differ radically in sequence structure and gene content, indicating rapid evolution over the past 6 million years.
- Jennifer F. Hughes
- , Helen Skaletsky
- & David C. Page
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Letter |
Self versus non-self discrimination during CRISPR RNA-directed immunity
Distinguishing self from non-self is a vital function for immune systems to repel invaders without inducing autoimmunity. One system, which protects bacteria and archaea from invasion by phage and plasmid DNA, involves clustered, regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) loci. Here, in Staphylococcus epidermidis, the mechanism of CRISPR self/non-self discrimination is defined.
- Luciano A. Marraffini
- & Erik J. Sontheimer
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