厳しい財政状況の下、政府や助成機関は、よく似た内容の研究に重複して助成することのないよう、もっと留意すべきだ。
Twice the price p.577
Governments and funding agencies must do more to prevent the awarding of grants to research projects with significant overlap.
doi: 10.1038/493577a
Governments and funding agencies must do more to prevent the awarding of grants to research projects with significant overlap.
doi: 10.1038/493577a
The United States must boost energy spending to make its mark on the climate debate.
doi: 10.1038/493577b
Research balloons have taught us much about the atmosphere, and could now fly into space.
doi: 10.1038/493578a
Graphene and virtual brain win billion-euro competition.
doi: 10.1038/493585a
Wide-ranging review edges towards single funding pot.
doi: 10.1038/493586a
Researchers marshal technology in bid to thwart fungal outbreak in Central America.
doi: 10.1038/493587a
Nature probe reveals lack of oversight of researchers who win two grants for similar projects.
doi: 10.1038/493588a
Alternative transistor relies on exotic semiconductor.
doi: 10.1038/493589a
President will use regulations to sidestep stalled Congress.
doi: 10.1038/493590a
斉一説を揺るがすことだが、我々は今、太陽系のつかの間の壮大なスペクタクルを目にしているかもしれない。
doi: 10.1038/493592a
漁業資源管理では、これまで魚の大きさによる制限が行われてきたが、かえって害があるとの疑問が生じている。
doi: 10.1038/493597a
ヒアリのワーカーの一部は、そのコロニーに複数匹の女王を許容するが、これら以外のワーカーは、女王を1匹しか受け入れない。このような行動の違いは、まれな染色体対上にある遺伝子クラスターによって制御されていることが明らかになった。この知見が社会性の進化や遺伝学などの研究分野に持つ意味について、2人の研究者が見解を述べている。
doi: 10.1038/nature11854
太陽の磁気活動は、ほぼ11年を一区切りとして周期的に変動している。この活動について新たに得られた、時間的に幅を持った代わりの記録の分析は、惑星がこの周期の振幅に影響を及ぼす可能性を示唆している。
doi: 10.1038/493613a
スプライソソーム複合体は、転写されたRNAからイントロン塩基配列を除去してメッセンジャーRNAを作り出す。スプライソソームを構成するタンパク質の1つのPrp8の構造から、複合体の活性部位が明らかになり、スプライシングの起源について手がかりが得られた。
doi: 10.1038/nature11857
海洋の溶存有機窒素の分解は、海表面付近にいる微生物の領分だと考えられてきた。だが、このような微生物が分解には向かないことがわかり、窒素プールの生物地球化学的性質に再検討が必要となっている。
doi: 10.1038/493616a
生細胞に含まれるポリマーと同じような硬さのブラシ状ポリマーが合成され、これを使って力応答性の材料が作られた。こうした進歩は、薬剤送達や生体組織工学への応用への道を開くだろう。
doi: 10.1038/nature11855
ウランを使った材料の隠れた電子秩序は、数十年にわたって物理学研究者の頭を悩ませてきた。新たな理論研究は、それが時間反転対称性の1回の破れだけではなく、二重の破れに起因するとしている。
doi: 10.1038/493619a
The formation of Ising quasiparticles in URu2Si2 results from ‘hastatic’ order, which breaks double time-reversal symmetry, mixing states of integer and half-integer spin, and accounts for the large entropy of condensation and the magnetic anomaly observed in torque magnetometry.
doi: 10.1038/nature11820
Mutations in mitochondrial DNA cause a wide range of disorders in humans, with a high prevalence; here it is shown that the nucleus of an affected woman’s egg could be inserted into healthy donor egg cytoplasm by spindle transfer, allowing the birth of healthy offspring.
doi: 10.1038/nature11647
Nuclear genome transfer using unfertilized donor oocytes is performed and shown to be effective in preventing the transmission of mitochondrial DNA mutations; the swapped oocytes can develop to the blastocyst stage, and produce parthenogenetic embryonic stem-cell lines that show normal karyotypes and only mitochondrial DNA from the donor oocyte.
doi: 10.1038/nature11800
The crystal structure of yeast Prp8 bound to a U5 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein particle assembly factor Aar2 is solved, offering insight into the architecture of the spliceosome active site, and supporting a possible common origin of eukaryotic pre-messenger-RNA splicing and group II intron splicing.
doi: 10.1038/nature11843
In combination with existing observations and detailed circumstellar models, the detection of hydrogen deuteride emission from the star TW Hydrae implies a circumstellar disk mass of more than 0.05 solar masses, which is enough to form a planetary system like our own.
doi: 10.1038/nature11805
A layered on-chip structure of magnetic thin films is engineered to permit the vertical transfer of magnetic information over near-atomic distances.
doi: 10.1038/nature11733
Thermal transitions of polyisocyanide single molecules to polymer bundles and finally networks lead to hydrogels mimicking the properties of biopolymer intermediate-filament networks; their analysis shows that bundling and chain stiffness are crucial design parameters for hydrogels.
doi: 10.1038/nature11839
Palaeoproxy evidence shows that the sea-surface-temperature gradient across the tropical Pacific Ocean strengthened during the Medieval Warm Period but weakens in model-projected future warming; this is because solar radiation induces greater precipitation for the same temperature change than greenhouse gases.
doi: 10.1038/nature11784
Riverine carbon-14 measurements show that anthropogenic disturbance of peat swamp forest in southeast Asia is causing increased release of carbon that has been stored in the peat for thousands of years.
doi: 10.1038/nature11818
Fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) are socially polymorphic, with some workers tolerating several queens in their colony and others tolerating just one; this study shows that a non-recombining supergene is responsible for this social polymorphism, and the operation of this genomic region is remarkably similar to that of sex chromosomes.
doi: 10.1038/nature11832
Calcium imaging in live mice shows that a rare population of unmyelinated sensory neurons—expressing the G-protein-coupled receptor MRGPRB4—responds specifically to massage-like stroking of hairy skin, with positive reinforcing behavioural effects.
doi: 10.1038/nature11810
Alzheimer’s-prone mice deficient in NLRP3 or caspase-1 fail to develop learning deficits and show reduced neuropathology.
doi: 10.1038/nature11729
Mice expressing a constitutively active form of RagA are unable to inhibit mTORC1 after birth and to trigger autophagy, and succumb perinatally.
doi: 10.1038/nature11745
Lymphocyte migration in the spleen is visualized live in mice using a real-time two-photon laser-scanning microscopy approach revealing that marginal zone and follicular B cells are highly motile and can shuttle between compartments, and integrin adhesion is the key to cellular retention in the marginal zone.
doi: 10.1038/nature11738
Evidence for a link between cellular senescence and metabolic regulation is provided, through the observation that p53 represses the expression of malic enzymes, thereby regulating NADPH, lipid and glutamine metabolism; in turn, this repression further activates p53, promoting cellular senescence.
doi: 10.1038/nature11776
To identify comprehensively factors involved in RNAi and microRNA-mediated gene expression regulation, this study performed a phylogenetic analysis of 86 eukaryotic species; the candidates this approach highlighted were subjected to Bayesian analysis with transcriptional and proteomic interaction data, identifying protein orthologues of already known RNAi silencing factors, as well as other hits involved in splicing, suggesting a connection between the two processes.
doi: 10.1038/nature11779
The structures of three distinct human transcription factor IID (TFIID) protein assemblies are solved using cryo-electron microscopy; by incorporating TAF8 and TAF10, the key structural changes that remodel TFIID during assembly are determined, particularly the transition from a symmetric core-TFIID to an asymmetric holo-complex.
doi: 10.1038/nature11791
Several crystal structures of the rotary motor of bacterial V-ATPase are solved at high resolution, representing different asymmetric structures and enabling the prediction of a model for the rotational mechanism of V1-ATPase.
doi: 10.1038/nature11778
