生体試料を研究目的に提供した者に対して、利用状況などの情報を開示する機会を充実させるべきだ。
Blood ties p.121
Scientists should give donors more information about how their biospecimens are used.
doi: 10.1038/500121b
Scientists should give donors more information about how their biospecimens are used.
doi: 10.1038/500121b
The possibility that H7N9 avian influenza may evolve sufficiently to cause a pandemic has scientists turning again to controversial research —they must be careful how they justify the risks taken.
doi: 10.1038/500121a
Turkish government ignores calls that trials are unfair.
doi: 10.1038/500129a
Researchers debate most humane methods of dispatch.
doi: 10.1038/500130a
Silicon zip reduces energy fluctuations in laser beams to improve sensitivity of optical motion sensors.
doi: 10.1038/500131a
Family of Henrietta Lacks agrees to release of genomic data.
doi: 10.1038/500132a
Calculation offers way to probe galactic evolution.
doi: 10.1038/500135a
カナダから米国へタールサンドを運ぶキーストーンXLパイプラインの建設計画に関して、科学者の見解が分かれており、この建設計画をめぐる論争の深層を探った。
doi: 10.1038/500136a
奇妙な光学特性を有する人工構造体が、次々と商業化への道を歩んでおり、高感度アンテナ、マイクロ波画像を撮像するカメラ、平面レンズなどの事例を紹介する。
doi: 10.1038/500138a
脳は極めて複雑であり、小型の神経回路にすら数百個のニューロンを含んでいて、それらが数千個に及ぶ結合を形成している。接続の解析と光学的解析によって、このような回路の2つについて詳しい地図が得られた。
doi: 10.1038/500154a
カッシーニ探査機によって得られたデータから、土星の衛星であるエンセラダスの南極で噴出している氷の粒子のプリュームは、エンセラダスが土星から最も遠い位置にある時には、最も近い位置にある時のほぼ4倍の明るさになることが分かった。
doi: 10.1038/nature12462
代謝過程は最終産物の相対的な必要度によって調節されているが、需要が極めて少ない場合にはこの制御機構が働かなくなる可能性がある。需要が少ない場合に対処する安全機構が細菌で見つかった。
doi: 10.1038/nature12461
胚での四肢の発生の際に働く調節性DNA塩基配列を、ヒト、マカクザルとマウスで比較することにより、調節活性が増強された数千の部位が明らかになった。これらは、ヒトに特徴的な解剖学的性質の進化を推進した可能性がある。
doi: 10.1038/500158a
太陽放射がピークだった期間に相当する１万年前に氷床は後退したが、このピークはその前のピークよりは小さかった。モデル研究によって、この時期に氷床が異例に解けやすかった理由が説明された。
doi: 10.1038/500159a
新たに見つかった2個のジュラ紀の化石によって、哺乳類の系統樹について相反する再構築像が得られた。これらの相異なる系譜は、哺乳類の起源と初期の多様化に対して、根本的に異なる意味を持つ。
doi: 10.1038/500160a
Haramiyids were Mesozoic era animals that until now have been identified only from their distinctive teeth, and are thought to be related to the better-known multituberculates: here the authors describe a haramiyid that is very primitive in terms of its jaw and ankle characteristics, suggesting a lack of relationship to the multituberculates.
doi: 10.1038/nature12429
Improved electron microscopy methods are used to map a mammalian retinal circuit of close to 1,000 neurons; the work reveals a new type of retinal bipolar neuron and suggests functional mechanisms for known visual computations.
doi: 10.1038/nature12346
Reconstruction of a connectome within the fruitfly visual medulla, containing more than 300 neurons and over 8,000 chemical synapses, reveals a candidate motion detection circuit; such a circuit operates by combining displaced visual inputs, an operation consistent with correlation based motion detection.
doi: 10.1038/nature12450
The plume at the south pole of Enceladus is several times brighter when that moon is near the apocentre of its eccentric orbit around Saturn than when it is near its orbital pericentre, showing that more material appears to be escaping from beneath Enceladus’ surface at times when models predict its fissures should be under tension.
doi: 10.1038/nature12371
Quantum fluctuations of a laser are transferred onto the motion of a mechanical resonator and interfere with the fluctuations of the light reflected from the resonator, leading to ‘squeezed’ light with optical noise suppressed below the standard quantum limit.
doi: 10.1038/nature12307
Comprehensive climate and ice-sheet models show that insolation and internal feedbacks between the climate, the ice sheets and the lithosphere–asthenosphere system explain the 100,000-year period on which the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets grow and shrink.
doi: 10.1038/nature12374
A novel symbiotic consortium is described between two chemolithotrophic bacteria — anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing (anammox) bacteria and the nitrate-sequestering sulphur-oxidizing Thioploca species — in anoxic sediments of the Soledad basin at the Mexican Pacific margin.
doi: 10.1038/nature12365
Suggestions that haramiyids were related to multituberculates are substantiated with the first discovery of a haramiyid skeleton from the Jurassic period of China; recalibrating evolutionary relationships, this finding means that the lineage leading to placentals and marsupial mammals was distinct in the Triassic period, more than 200 million years ago.
doi: 10.1038/nature12353
A computational analysis of the ability of a metabolic reaction network to synthesize all biomass from a single source of carbon and energy shows that when such networks are required to be viable on one particular carbon source, they are typically also viable on multiple other carbon sources that were not targets of selection.
doi: 10.1038/nature12301
Haplotype-resolved whole-genome sequencing of the HeLa CCL-2 strain shows that HeLa is relatively stable in terms of point variation; integration of several data sets reveals strong, haplotype-specific activation of the proto-oncogene MYC by the human papilloma virus type 18 genome, and enables the relationship between gene dosage and expression to be examined.
doi: 10.1038/nature12064
This study uses calcium imaging to show that T4 and T5 neurons are divided in specific subpopulations responding to motion in four cardinal directions, and are specific to ON versus OFF edges, respectively; when either T4 or T5 neurons were genetically blocked, tethered flies walking on air-suspended beads failed to respond to the corresponding visual stimuli.
doi: 10.1038/nature12320
A new approach has been developed in order to achieve the stepwise differentiation of inner ear sensory epithelia from mouse embryonic stem cells in a three-dimensional culture: this process, which mimics normal development and produces cells that have functional characteristics of mechanosensitive hair cells, is hoped to provide further insights into inner ear development and disorder.
doi: 10.1038/nature12298
Vitamin C is a direct regulator of Tet enzyme activity and DNA methylation fidelity in mouse ES cells; addition of vitamin C promotes Tet activity, increases 5-hydroxymethlycytosine (5hmC) and DNA demethylation of many gene promoters, upregulates demethylated germline genes, and induces a state that more closely approximates that of the inner cell mass of the blastocyst.
doi: 10.1038/nature12362
MERS-CoV is a newly emerged coronavirus that is related to SARS-CoV and has proven fatal in half of the people it has infected to date: here the crystal structure of the MERS-CoV receptor binding domain is presented in complex with its receptor on human cells, CD26.
doi: 10.1038/nature12328
This study identifies 17 strains of human-derived Clostridia capable of inducing the accumulation and functional maturation of regulatory T cells; it is suggested that these strains may be useful candidates for the future development of oral bacterial therapeutics to treat human inflammatory disorders.
doi: 10.1038/nature12331
Here, the authors identify a previously unknown regulatory strategy used by Escherichia coli to control end-product levels of the pyrimidine biosynthetic pathway: this involves feedback regulation of the near-terminal pathway enzyme UMP kinase, with accumulation of UMP prevented by its degradation to uridine through UmpH, a phosphatase with a previously unknown function.
doi: 10.1038/nature12445
