Xプライズ財団のコンテストの、DNAシークエンシング技術の推進を目指す意図は高く評価すべきだ。
Overtaken by events p.535
Despite the small number of entries, the genomics X prize is to be commended for attempting to push the boundaries of DNA sequencing technology.
doi: 10.1038/497535a
Despite the small number of entries, the genomics X prize is to be commended for attempting to push the boundaries of DNA sequencing technology.
doi: 10.1038/497535a
Japan’s government must stick by its promise to help women’s careers to prosper.
doi: 10.1038/497535b
Increasing scientific globalization is welcome, but could compromise national efforts.
doi: 10.1038/497536a
Duplicated figures raise debate over expedited publication.
doi: 10.1038/497543a
Combination therapies hold great promise, but at what cost?
doi: 10.1038/497544a
Mass orgy of 17-year cicadas sets US researchers buzzing.
doi: 10.1038/497545a
Challenge may be too hard and commercially unnecessary.
doi: 10.1038/497546a
Innovation in science is at the heart of government plans to boost the economy.
doi: 10.1038/497548a
Karl Deisserothは、先駆的な画像化技術の開発を着実に積み重ねており、脳科学に大きな影響を与えている。
doi: 10.1038/497550a
ハッブル宇宙望遠鏡によって、初期宇宙での銀河誕生の瞬間が見え始めている。
doi: 10.1038/497554a
脳の海馬に含まれる場所細胞は、動物がいる特定の場所を符号化している。海馬のニューロンが時間にも応答する可能性が見いだされたことは、エピソード記憶の符号化に関する手がかりとなるかもしれない。
doi: 10.1038/497568a
裸子植物の全ゲノム概要配列が初めて解読された。これはオウシュウトウヒのゲノムで、裸子植物という大きなグループに固有の分化、適応や進化について研究を進めるための強力な基盤となる。
doi: 10.1038/nature12250
中心星に近い位置にある岩石惑星は固化が非常にゆっくりなので、水が宇宙空間に失われてしまって乾燥状態になるが、もっと遠くにある惑星は迅速に固化して水を保持していることが、単純なモデルから明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/497570a
アナログ計算を使う初めての合成遺伝回路が開発された。このような回路はデジタル計算回路に比べると関係する構成要素とリソースの数が少なく、もっと複雑な操作を実行できる。
doi: 10.1038/nature12246
アウストラロピテクス類に属するAustralopithecus sedibaの化石骨格の詳細な研究から、この初期人類種の解剖学的性質の興味深い詳細が明らかになった。だが、この結果は現生人類への進化の道すじのどこにこの種が位置するのかを確実に示しているわけではない。
doi: 10.1038/497573a
非常に多くの中性子星で、そのスピンダウン率にグリッチが観測されている。これは星の内部に超高密度の超流動体が存在することを示している。今回、強力な磁場を持つ星で、「逆向き」のグリッチが観測されるという意外な事態が起こった。
doi: 10.1038/497574a
Ubc9酵素は、小型の修飾タンパク質SUMOを標的タンパク質に結合させる反応を仲介する。Ubc9が最適に機能し、細胞が適切に減数分裂を行うには、Ubc9自体がSUMOによって修飾される必要があることが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature12249
がん関連タンパク質であるKRASに対する薬剤の開発はずっと以前から試みられてきたが、成功していない。今回、このがんタンパク質の細胞内局在状態を標的とする新規な手法が考案され、この分野の研究が再び活発になりそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/nature12248
The draft genome of the Norway spruce (P. abies) is presented; this is the first gymnosperm genome to be sequenced and reveals a large genome size (20 Gb) resulting from the accumulation of transposable elements, and comparative sequencing of five other gymnosperm genomes provides insights into conifer genome evolution.
doi: 10.1038/nature12211
When an animal is performing a cognitive task, individual neurons in the prefrontal cortex show a mixture of responses that is often difficult to decipher and interpret; here new computational methods to decode and extract rich sets of information from these neural responses are revealed and demonstrate how this mixed selectivity offers a computational advantage over specialized cells.
doi: 10.1038/nature12160
Magnetars sometimes exhibit mysterious ‘glitches’, during which angular momentum is transferred between the star’s outer and inner crusts, and involving a sudden spin-up of the star; here X-ray timing observations reveal a sudden spin-down, or ‘anti-glitch’ in a magnetar.
doi: 10.1038/nature12159
Placing graphene on a boron nitride substrate and accurately aligning their crystallographic axes, to form a moiré superlattice, leads to profound changes in the graphene’s electronic spectrum.
doi: 10.1038/nature12187
Moiré superlattices arising in bilayer graphene coupled to hexagonal boron nitride provide a periodic potential modulation on a length scale ideally suited to studying the fractal features of the Hofstadter energy spectrum in large magnetic fields.
doi: 10.1038/nature12186
Ratios of the radionuclides thorium-230 and protactinium-231 in sediment record ongoing export of 231Pa from the deep central Arctic Ocean and may indicate continuous deep-water exchange between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans throughout the past 35,000 years.
doi: 10.1038/nature12145
Terrestrial planets can be divided into two distinct types on the basis of their evolutionary history during solidification from their initial molten state: type I planets (such as Earth) solidify within several million years and retain most of their water, and type II planets (possibly such as Venus), formed inside a critical distance, are desiccated by hydrodynamic escape.
doi: 10.1038/nature12163
Molecular evidence suggests that the evolutionary split between hominoids and cercopithecoids occurred between 25 and 30 Myr ago, but fossil evidence for crown-group catarrhines (cercopithecoids and hominoids) before 20 Myr ago has been lacking; newly described fossils of a stem hominoid and a stem cercopithecoid precisely dated to 25.2 Myr ago help to fill this gap in the fossil record.
doi: 10.1038/nature12161
Two decades of summer warming in an Alaskan tundra ecosystem increased plant biomass and woody dominance, indirectly increased winter soil temperature, homogenized the soil trophic structure and suppressed surface-soil-decomposer activity, but did not change net soil carbon or nitrogen storage.
doi: 10.1038/nature12129
Synthetic analog gene circuits can be engineered to execute logarithmically linear sensing, addition, ratiometric and power-law computations in living cells using just three transcription factors.
doi: 10.1038/nature12148
Mutations in the subunits of BAF chromatin-remodelling complexes are frequently found in human cancer; here deletion of BAF subunits or expression of mutants of the ATPase subunit BRG1 attenuates genome-wide binding of topoisomerase IIα, resulting in tangled chromosomes, anaphase bridges and G2/M arrest.
doi: 10.1038/nature12146
This study uses single-cell real-time imaging to show that sonic hedgehog (SHH) is produced in the form of a particle that is transported along a novel class of specialized actin-based filopodia spanning several cell diameters within the field of SHH cell signalling, thus expanding our knowledge of ligand movement during normal vertebrate development.
doi: 10.1038/nature12157
Oncogenic Ras has previously been shown to promote macropinocytosis; here it is demonstrated that this process allows tumour cells to use extracellular proteins to generate amino acids necessary to support tumour growth.
doi: 10.1038/nature12138
KRAS is one of the most frequently mutated oncogenes and a major target in anticancer drug discovery, but small molecule modulators that work in the clinic have been elusive; here a new approach to target KRAS is described, based on interfering with its binding to the prenyl-binding protein PDEδ.
doi: 10.1038/nature12205
The structure of the HIV-1 capsid is analysed by cryo-electron microscopy and cryo-electron tomography, allowing presentation of an all-atom molecular dynamics model of the entire capsid.
doi: 10.1038/nature12162
Cellular nitrite is rapidly removed from the cell to prevent formation of the cytotoxic nitric oxide; here the X-ray crystal structure of NarK, a bacterial nitrate/nitrite transport protein, is determined with and without substrate.
doi: 10.1038/nature12139
