The ability to identify an individual from their anonymous genome sequence, using a clever algorithm and data from public databases, threatens the principle of subject confidentiality.
doi: 10.1038/493451a
Experiments that make deadly pathogens more dangerous demand the utmost scrutiny.
doi: 10.1038/493451b
With the Royal Institution in trouble, Britain’s crowded public-science scene must evolve.
doi: 10.1038/493452a
But Antarctic glaciers may be more vulnerable than thought.
doi: 10.1038/493459a
Study of lab-made viruses a ‘public-health responsibility’.
doi: 10.1038/493460a
Oil industry maintains that dispersants should be part of routine response to deep-water blowouts.
doi: 10.1038/493461a
Clinical-research techniques deployed to assess effectiveness of aid initiatives.
doi: 10.1038/493462a
Improved instruments and a telescope windfall could aid the search for extrasolar life.
doi: 10.1038/493464a
But new leadership’s largesse brings expectations of fast commercial pay-offs.
doi: 10.1038/493465a
仮想世界にとらえられたゼブラフィッシュが、脳の複雑な接続の解明に役立ちそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/493466a
祈り、闘い、踊り、詠唱など、ヒトの行う儀式が、社会の成長や文明の発生を理解する手がかりになりそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/493470a
記憶の長期増強と呼ばれる過程は、学習や記憶などのニューロンレベルでの情報貯蔵にかかわっている。in vitro研究の1つから、この過程についての分子レベルでの考え方を覆す結果が出たが、このデータから推論されることについて、研究者たちの見解はまちまちである。
doi: 10.1038/493482a
現在農耕に適していない土地に生えている野草から燃料を作れば、米国のバイオ燃料生産目標のかなりの部分に貢献できる可能性が、分析で明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature11853
太陽コロナの中にある構造の実際のスケールを決定するのは、空間分解能が制限されるために困難であるとわかっている。今回、高分解能での画像化が成功したことで、150 kmのスケールでの動的構造が観測された。
doi: 10.1038/493485a
植物由来のシリカと砂漠の砂のそれぞれが歯のエナメル質に及ぼす摩耗作用が比較され、歯を非常に摩耗させるのは食べ物ではない可能性が示唆された。この知見は、ヒトの祖先の食生活に関する考え方をいくらか変えることになるかもしれない。
doi: 10.1038/493486a
がん転移の際に、上皮間葉転換、つまり上皮性細胞が間葉系細胞の表現型を獲得する現象がどんな役割を果たすのかが、2つの研究により明らかにされた。これは、がんの治療でどの細胞過程を標的とすべきかを考慮する際の参考となる。
doi: 10.1038/493487a
Reconstruction of the Eemian interglacial from the new NEEM ice core shows that in spite of a climate warmer by eight degrees Celsius in Northern Greenland than that of the past millennium, the ice here was only a few hundred metres lower than its present level.
doi: 10.1038/nature11789
The minimal possible requirement for AMPA receptor trafficking during long-term potentiation is explored, revealing that no region of the receptor subunit is necessary, in contrast with previous work; the only requirement for LTP seems to be a large reserve of glutamate receptors.
doi: 10.1038/nature11775
Solar observations at a resolution of 0.2 arc seconds show the reconnection and relaxation of magnetic braids in a coronal active region, leading to the dissipation of sufficient energy to heat the structures to about 4,000,000 K.
doi: 10.1038/nature11772
Net laser cooling from 290 kelvin to about 250 kelvin is achieved in semiconductor cadmium sulphide ‘nanobelts’ and attributed to strong coupling between excitons and longitudinal optical phonons.
doi: 10.1038/nature11721
When molecules of a phenalenyl derivative, which has no net spin, are deposited on a ferromagnet, they develop into a magnetic supramolecular layer with spin-filtering properties; this could be the basis for a new approach to building molecular magnetic devices.
doi: 10.1038/nature11719
A comparative assessment of six alternative cropping systems over 20 years shows that, once well established, successional herbaceous vegetation grown on marginal lands has a direct greenhouse gas emissions mitigation capacity that rivals that of purpose-grown crops.
doi: 10.1038/nature11811
An earthquake source model in which stable, rate-strengthening behaviour at low slip rates is combined with coseismic weakening due to rapid shear heating of pore fluids, allowing unstable slip to occur in segments that can creep between events, explains a number of both long-term and coseismic observations of faults that hosted the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake and the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake.
doi: 10.1038/nature11703
Biomarker and stable isotopic analysis of lipid residues from perforated pottery vessels from sixth millennium bc Europe are consistent with these vessels having been used for making cheese, a low-lactose dairy product with digestion and storage advantages for the prehistoric lactose-intolerant farming communities.
doi: 10.1038/nature11698
Comparative analysis of the genomes of one mollusc (Lottia gigantea) and two annelids (Capitella teleta and Helobdella robusta) enable a more complete reconstruction of genomic features of the last common ancestors of protostomes, bilaterians and metazoans; against this conserved background they provide the first glimpse into lineage-specific evolution and diversity of the lophotrochozoans.
doi: 10.1038/nature11696
Optogenetic induction of phasic, but not tonic, firing in VTA dopamine neurons induces susceptibility to stress in mice undergoing a subthreshold social-defeat paradigm and in previously resilient mice that have been subjected to repeated social-defeat stress, and this effect is projection-pathway specific.
doi: 10.1038/nature11713
Specific manipulation of midbrain dopamine neurons in freely moving rodents shows that their inhibition or excitation immediately modulates depression-like phenotypes that are induced by chronic mild stress, and that their activation alters the neural encoding of depression-related behaviours in the nucleus accumbens.
doi: 10.1038/nature11740
The authors show that p53 helps cancer cells survive serine depletion by coordinating metabolic remodelling; a diet lacking serine slowed tumour growth in mice, with p53-null tumours showing greatest sensitivity to serine starvation.
doi: 10.1038/nature11743
Airway epithelial cells are important in immune homeostasis in that they dampen immune activation by clearing dying cells and producing anti-inflammatory cytokines.
doi: 10.1038/nature11714
The crystal structure of rubella virus E1 glycoprotein in its post-fusion form reveals a class II fusion protein with distinct features so far unseen in any other crystallized fusion protein; the location of an antibody-neutralization epitope also suggests that rubella-specific antibodies may function through prevention of E1 glycoprotein trimer formation during cell entry.
doi: 10.1038/nature11741
In the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe RNA interference (RNAi) machinery promotes heterochromatin assembly and silencing of centromeric repeats; here it is shown that RNAi participates in silencing other genomic regions, such as sexual differentiation genes and retrotransposons, and this process is regulated by developmental and environmental signals.
doi: 10.1038/nature11716
TET2 is shown to associate with OGT, which catalyses O-GlcNAcylation, and the two enzymes are found together at transcription start sites; TET2 facilitates the activity of OGT in O-GlcNAcylation of histone 2B, and epigenetic modifications to both DNA and histones by TET2 and OGT may be important in gene transcription regulation.
doi: 10.1038/nature11742
