米議会の対立が続いて厳しい歳出削減が回避できないと、科学に長期的なダメージが残るだろう。
Starvation diet p.401
A severe approach to slashing US spending bodes ill for the research enterprise.
doi: 10.1038/494401b
A severe approach to slashing US spending bodes ill for the research enterprise.
doi: 10.1038/494401b
The move towards providing full open access to research papers was undermined last week, but should prevail in the long term.
doi: 10.1038/494401a
The narrow distribution of awards aimed at the broad arena of the ‘life sciences’ raises concerns.
doi: 10.1038/494402a
Ernest Moniz considers natural gas a bridge to clean energy.
doi: 10.1038/494409a
Revised guidelines for heart health are set to move away from target-based approach.
doi: 10.1038/494410a
Forensic testing of seized ivory could track down poachers.
doi: 10.1038/494411a
Japanese study of induced pluripotent stem cells aims to demonstrate safety in humans.
doi: 10.1038/494413a
Government mandates that taxpayer-funded research be freely available within 12 months.
doi: 10.1038/494414a
RNA ‘sponges’ mop up sequences that curb gene expression.
doi: 10.1038/494415a
ゲノム（genome）に始まり、今では「オーム（ome）」が付く言葉がいくつも存在するが、存在意義のあるものばかりなのだろうか。
doi: 10.1038/494416a
ロッキード・マーチン社の元最高経営責任者オーガスティン氏は科学者ではないが、政治家からも研究者からも信頼され、米国の科学に大きな影響力を持っている。
doi: 10.1038/494420a
大質量ブラックホールが存在する銀河からのX線放射パターンが何を意味するのかについては議論が続いてきた。NASAのNuSTAR宇宙望遠鏡からのデータは、少なくともこのような銀河の1つに関しては、問題の解決につながりそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/494432a
一部のウイルスがCRISPR/Cas系と呼ばれている防御機構を使うという発見は、ウイルスとその感染相手である細菌の間で進化してきた「しっぺ返し」を示す、見事な例である。
doi: 10.1038/494433a
マカクザルが、唇を鳴らしているサルの顔のコンピューターアニメーションを見たときの反応は、ヒトの発話を特徴付ける顎、舌と唇の振動が、霊長類の顔の表情のリズミカルな動きから進化した可能性を示唆している。
doi: 10.1038/494434a
中国では、窒素循環に人間活動が非常に大きな影響を与えていることが分析から明らかになった。この知見は、地球資源の1人当たりの使用が全球的に増大していることと合わせて、先進国の消費パターンの再検討を求めている。
doi: 10.1038/nature11954
どんなに栄養豊富な食餌であっても、その影響は宿主に寄生している腸内細菌叢にきわめて大きく依存している。重度の栄養不良の治療に抗生物質を使えば、このような細菌叢の構成に影響を与えて栄養素をもっとうまく使えるようになるかもしれない。
doi: 10.1038/494437a
住血吸虫は成体幹細胞を持っていることがわかった。これは住血吸虫がヒトの体内に長期にわたって住みつくことの説明となる可能性がある。細胞が産生するタンパク質の1つを標的とすれば、住血吸虫の防御機構に損傷を与えられるかもしれない。
doi: 10.1038/nature11953
細胞分裂の際の染色体の分離に起こった誤りは、腫瘍の進化に重要な役割を持つ可能性がある。こういった過誤の原因となる一般的な遺伝的欠陥がやっと見つかったが、それによってもたらされた意外な進展は関心を集めそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/494439a
The atomic-resolution structure of the entire respiratory complex I is reported, with the resolution high enough to map out the locations and orientations of nearly all amino-acid side chains—some of which link to human neurodegenerative diseases—and reveals which amino-acid interactions take place at the hydrophilic domain–membrane domain interface.
doi: 10.1038/nature11871
Two models (relativistic disk reflection and absorption-dominated) can explain the pattern of X-ray emission from the galaxy NGC 1365, but here reflection arising close to a rapidly spinning black hole is shown to be the correct model.
doi: 10.1038/nature11938
Stellar data from the Kepler spacecraft are used to infer the existence of a sub-Mercury-sized exoplanet, the smallest yet discovered, in orbit around a Sun-like star.
doi: 10.1038/nature11914
A very large, osmotically induced electric current is generated by a salinity gradient between the ends of a single boron nitride transmembrane nanotube, owing to the anomalously high surface charge carried by the nanotube’s internal surface in water at large pH.
doi: 10.1038/nature11876
Data on bulk nitrogen deposition, plant foliar nitrogen and crop nitrogen uptake in China between ad 1980 and ad 2010 show that the average annual bulk deposition of nitrogen increased by approximately 8 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare during that period and that nitrogen deposition rates in the industrialized and agriculturally intensified regions of China are as high as the peak levels of deposition in northwestern Europe in the 1980s.
doi: 10.1038/nature11917
Populations experiencing environmental change can often only avoid extinction through evolutionary change; in a system in which Escherichia coli has to evolve resistance to an antibiotic, the authors show that gradual environmental change allows mutational pathways that rapid change precludes, and can therefore make the difference between extinction and survival.
doi: 10.1038/nature11879
Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis sp. nov. and Fuxianhuia xiaoshibaensis sp. nov.— early Cambrian fuxianhuiid fossils from a new Lagerstätte in Yunnan, China—show that ancestral arthropods had cephalic organization that included an antenniform first appendage, which corresponds to the deutocerebral head segment of modern arthropods.
doi: 10.1038/nature11874
High concentrations of salt activate sour- and bitter-taste-sensing cells in the tongues of mice, and genetic silencing of these pathways abolishes behavioural aversion to concentrated salt; this ‘co-opting’ of the two primary aversive taste pathways (sour and bitter) may have evolved so that high salt levels reliably trigger behavioural rejection.
doi: 10.1038/nature11905
This study reports the identification of adult stem cells in the human parasite Schistosoma mansoni (blood fluke); the cells proliferate and differentiate into derivatives of multiple germ layers, and their maintenance requires a fibroblast growth factor receptor orthologue.
doi: 10.1038/nature11924
A mathematical method, known as ergodic rate analysis, has been developed and used to study the rates of molecular events from single time measurements of large populations of fixed cells; this new method is able to overcome some of the previous limitations with regards to studying cell-size control.
doi: 10.1038/nature11897
Atypical protein kinase C ι/λ is shown to be critical, through its regulation of the transcription factor GLI, for hedgehog-dependent processes, such as the growth of basal cell carcinomas.
doi: 10.1038/nature11889
CRISPR/Cas systems are bacterial adaptive immune systems that provide sequence-specific protection from invading nucleic acids, including from bacteriophages; in a notable reverse a vibriophage-encoded CRISPR/Cas system, used to disable a bacteriophage inhibitory chromosomal island in Vibrio cholerae, is identified.
doi: 10.1038/nature11927
A mechanism to explain chromosomal instability (CIN) in colorectal cancer is demonstrated; three new CIN-suppressor genes (PIGN, MEX3C and ZNF516) encoded on chromosome 18q are identified, the loss of which leads to DNA replication stress, resulting in structural and numerical chromosome segregation errors, which are shown to be identical to phenotypes seen in CIN cells.
doi: 10.1038/nature11935
A class of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) with enhancer-like activity is found to associate with the co-activator complex Mediator and promote its genomic association and enzymatic activity; together with Mediator, the lncRNAs also help to maintain the chromosomal architecture of active regulatory elements.
doi: 10.1038/nature11884
The telomere-biding protein TRF2 is shown to protect telomeres from activating the DNA-damage response through two mechanisms: preventing the activation ATM kinase through its dimerization domain, in addition to independently suppressing signalling events occurring downstream of ATM.
doi: 10.1038/nature11873
