The idea of standardizing science and removing barriers to research mobility across Europe is simple, but putting it into practice has proved more challenging.
doi: 10.1038/502005a
Behavioural geneticists must tread carefully to prevent their research being misinterpreted.
doi: 10.1038/502005b
Research on chickens is legitimate — but scientists and funders must learn to justify it.
doi: 10.1038/502006a
Research disrupted as lawmakers spar over funding.
doi: 10.1038/502013a
Arizona rock core to yield coherent picture of turbulent period.
doi: 10.1038/502014a
Australian government axes carbon tax and designated science minister, but says it will not cut research funding.
doi: 10.1038/502015a
Former US drug-company chief appeals conviction for fraud over interpretation of results.
doi: 10.1038/502017a
Theoretical physicists are pursuing competing ways to calculate how particles interact.
doi: 10.1038/502019a
‘Breakthrough therapy’ status is much sought after, but there is confusion about its definition and impact.
doi: 10.1038/502020a
The Gaia spacecraft will soon launch on a mission to chart the heavens in unprecedented detail.
doi: 10.1038/502022a
Probing the biological basis of certain traits ignites controversy. But some scientists choose to cross the red line anyway.
doi: 10.1038/502026a
自由に動き回る1個の励起量子のもう1個の量子による制御が、2つの別々に行われた実験によって実証された。この結果は、情報の処理や転送に関連すると考えられる。
doi: 10.1038/nature12689
成熟細胞に幹細胞の能力を付与することは容易ではない。この過程に対する決定的な障壁の1つが、今回明らかにされた。これが除去されれば、ほとんど全ての成熟細胞に幹細胞の性質を効率よく与えることが可能になる。
doi: 10.1038/nature12561
著しく再現性の高い相転移を数千回にわたって繰り返す合金が作られた。この発見は、変形を受けてもそれ以前の形状を「思い出せる」実用性の高い材料の開発につながりそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/502042a
生物活性を持つ分子に含まれる環状構造は、分子に剛性を生じさせ、これはその分子が標的に選択的にしっかりと結合するのに役立つ。環状構造が形成される機序が明らかになり、生化学では珍しい反応が関わっていることが分かった。
doi: 10.1038/nature12562
個々の細胞中での染色体の構造と相互作用の解析から得られたデータは、以前に単一細胞画像化と集団平均したゲノム相互作用の研究から得られた結果を統合するものだ。
doi: 10.1038/nature12691
Several irregularly shaped craters located within Arabia Terra, Mars, are interpreted as a new type of highland volcanic construct, similar to supervolcanoes on Earth, fundamentally changing the picture of ancient volcanism and climate evolution on Mars.
doi: 10.1038/nature12482
The ChIP-exo technique is used to map the organization of transcription initiation complexes across the human genome at near-base-pair resolution; most of the transcription initiation complexes give rise to non-coding, non-polyadenylated RNA, indicating that pervasive non-coding transcription arise from specific promoters and is regulated.
doi: 10.1038/nature12535
A novel genomic technique, single-cell Hi-C, detects thousands of simultaneous chromatin contacts in a single cell; this is used to show that individual chromosomes maintain domain organization at the megabase scale, but that chromosome structures vary from cell to cell at larger scales.
doi: 10.1038/nature12593
This study shows that the combination of naive pluripotency growth conditions, Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and Myc (OSKM) overexpression, and depleting the Mbd3/NuRD co-repressor results in deterministic and synchronized reprogramming to pluripotency.
doi: 10.1038/nature12587
By coupling light to strongly interacting atomic Rydberg states in a dispersive regime, it is possible to induce individual photons to travel as massive particles with strong mutual attraction, such that the propagation of photon pairs is dominated by a two-photon bound state.
doi: 10.1038/nature12512
Bound states of elementary spin waves (magnons) have been predicted to occur in one-dimensional quantum magnets; the observation of two-magnon bound states in a system of ultracold bosonic atoms in an optical lattice is now reported.
doi: 10.1038/nature12541
Localized surface plasmon resonances of an individual silver nanocube are reconstructed in three dimensions using electron energy-loss spectrum imaging, resulting in a better understanding of the optical response of noble-metal nanoparticles.
doi: 10.1038/nature12469
The enhanced reversibility (stable transition temperature even at high strain under a solid-to-solid phase transition), low hysteresis and unusual riverine microstructure (ranging through thermal cycles) of the martensitic material Zn45Au30Cu25 makes it attractive for applications from eco-friendly fridges to medical sensors.
doi: 10.1038/nature12532
An estimate of the mass balance components for all ice shelves in Antarctica indicates that about half of the ice-sheet surface mass gain is lost through oceanic erosion before reaching the ice front, and that the loss due to iceberg calving is about 34 per cent less than previously thought.
doi: 10.1038/nature12567
Wild Soay sheep rams with large horns have more offspring, yet there is considerable genetic variation at RXFP2, a locus strongly implicated in horn size (with different alleles conferring either large or small horns); this study finds that although the larger horn allele leads to more offspring, the smaller horn allele leads to increased survival, meaning heterozygous rams (which develop medium-sized horns) have high reproductive success and survival, providing a rare example of heterozygote advantage.
doi: 10.1038/nature12489
Antibiotic treatment disturbs the commensal microbiota and is often followed by infection with enteric pathogens such as Salmonella typhimurium and Clostridium difficile; pathogen expansion is fuelled by antibiotic-driven accumulation of commensal-liberated host mucosal carbohydrates.
doi: 10.1038/nature12503
Cellular immune responses in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) vaccinated with cytomegalovirus vectors expressing SIV proteins are able to stringently control highly pathogenic SIV infection, regardless of the route of challenge, after systemic spread; immunological and virological analyses of protected macaques followed for up to 3 years suggest that persistent immune surveillance by vaccine-elicited immune responses may have cleared the infection.
doi: 10.1038/nature12519
A transmembrane O-glycoprotein podoplanin (PDPN) expressed on fibroblastic reticular cells is the activating ligand for platelet receptor CLEC-2; this interaction leads to perivenular release of sphingosine-1-phosphate and expression of VE-cadherin on high endothelial venules, a key process for the maintenance of vascular integrity in lymph nodes.
doi: 10.1038/nature12501
Cyclin A is shown to maintain unstable kinetochore–microtubule (k–MT) attachments in prometaphase in order to allow for error correction; at the prometaphase–metaphase switch, k-MT attachments are stabilized when cyclin A drops below threshold levels.
doi: 10.1038/nature12507
Single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer imaging of a bacterial glutamate transporter reveals how the transport domains move.
doi: 10.1038/nature12265
Glutamate transporters are integral membrane proteins that facilitate neurotransmitter uptake from the synaptic cleft into the cytoplasm of glial cells and neurons, the mechanism of transport involves transitions between extracellular- and intracellular-facing conformations; here the authors used single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer imaging to directly observe conformational dynamics in trimers of a bacterial homologue of glutamate transporters that was embedded in the membrane.
doi: 10.1038/nature12538
This study shows the structural and biochemical characterization of a new type of polyketide synthase module that catalyses the vinylogous addition of a malonyl unit to an unsaturated thioester, generating a branch in the growing polyketide chain; this characterization provides a mechanism by which the structural diversity of polyketide natural products can be increased.
doi: 10.1038/nature12588
