In the public interest, the Italian health minister should resolve the ongoing uncertainty over a government trial of a controversial therapy.
doi: 10.1038/504331a
A rethink on monitoring land-use change is needed to estimate effects on global warming.
doi: 10.1038/504331b
Can you tell a sci-fi tale in just 200 characters? Then the Nature Futures competition is for you.
doi: 10.1038/504332a
Unexpected fractures above the world’s biggest storage site could provide path for leaks.
doi: 10.1038/504339a
Failure to impose a ban on deep-sea fishing jeopardizes the future of vulnerable ecosystems, say researchers.
doi: 10.1038/504341a
Researchers ponder whether Eastern Europe’s large areas of abandoned land should be replanted or left as a carbon sink.
doi: 10.1038/504342a
Foundations increasingly fund biomedical research, but are reluctant to pay overhead costs.
doi: 10.1038/504343a
From the US shutdown to breakthroughs in stem-cell therapies, the past 12 months have seen fluctuating fortunes for science.
doi: 10.1038/504344a
Clear brains, hydrogen bonds and gas expelled from galaxies are among the most striking images of 2013.
doi: 10.1038/504350a
Ten people who mattered this year.
doi: 10.1038/504357a
数千個の岩石試料の熱履歴の解析から、気候の寒冷化が地球表面における浸食を加速することが疑いの余地なく確証された。これには、氷河の寄与が特に大きいようである。
doi: 10.1038/504380a
がんの治療薬の探索を促進する目的で、非常に多くのがん細胞系列についてDNAおよびRNAレベル、そして薬理学的レベルでのプロファイリングが2つの研究によって行われた。だが、これら研究結果の比較から、こうした3種類の大規模データセットのうちの2種類が部分的にしか一致しないことが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature12839
衛星観測とモデリングの組み合わせることで、コーラス波と呼ばれるプラズマ振動によって電子が散乱されていると考えれば、磁気圏での電子の加速を説明できると分かった。
doi: 10.1038/504383a
ストリゴラクトンと呼ばれる「魔法」ホルモンによる破壊の標的となるタンパク質が見つかり、イネで苗条の構成が制御される仕組みが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature12843
本年度に掲載されたNews & Viewsの中から編集部が精選した8編。
doi: 10.1038/504386a
This Analysis compares two large-scale pharmacogenomic data sets that catalogued the sensitivity of a large number of cancer cell lines to approved and potential drugs, and finds that whereas the gene expression data are largely concordant between the two studies, the reported drug sensitivity measures and subsequently their association with genomic features are highly discordant.
doi: 10.1038/nature12831
This study describes comprehensive synaptic engulfment by astrocytes, mediating synapse elimination in an activity-dependent manner; this elimination process involves the MEGF10 and MERTK phagocytic pathways and persists into adulthood, with mutant mice that lack these pathways in astrocytes exhibiting a failure to refine retinogeniculate connections during development.
doi: 10.1038/nature12776
Strigolactones (SLs), key regulators of plant growth, are believed to mediate their responses through a proposed receptor (D14) that interacts with an F-box protein (D3) to form a D14–SCFD3 protein complex; here the perception of SLs by the D14–SCFD3 complex and the control of gene expression are linked by the finding that DWARF 53, a repressor protein of SL signalling, interacts with the D14–SCFD3 complex and is ubiquitinated and degraded in a SL-dependent manner.
doi: 10.1038/nature12870
Strigolactones (SLs), key regulators of plant growth, are believed to mediate their responses through a proposed receptor (D14) that interacts with an F-box protein (D3) to form a D14–SCFD3 protein complex; here the perception of SLs by the D14–SCFD3 complex and the control of gene expression are linked by the finding that DWARF 53, a repressor protein of SL function, interacts with the D14–SCFD3 complex and is ubiquitinated and degraded in a SL-dependent manner.
doi: 10.1038/nature12878
High-resolution measurements of electrons obtained by satellite during the geomagnetic storm of 9 October 2012 together with a data-driven global wave model are analysed to show that scattering by a magnetospheric electromagnetic emission, known as ‘chorus’, can explain the temporal evolution of the observed increase in relativistic electron flux.
doi: 10.1038/nature12889
Engineered dissipation is used to deterministically produce and stabilize entanglement between two trapped-ion quantum bits, independently of their initial states; the entanglement is stabilized even in the presence of experimental noise and decoherence.
doi: 10.1038/nature12801
An entangled Bell state of two superconducting quantum bits can be stabilized for an arbitrary time using an autonomous feedback scheme, that is, one that does not require a complicated external error-correcting feedback loop.
doi: 10.1038/nature12802
To establish what effect the Late Cenozoic cooling climate shift might have had on global erosion, inverse modelling of thermochronometric ages is used to show that erosion rates are increased by cooling, especially in glaciated mountain ranges.
doi: 10.1038/nature12877
A prospective longitudinal study identifies the earliest known indicator of social disability in human infancy: decline in attention to others’ eyes in infants who are later diagnosed with autism; the decline is evident already within the first 2 to 6 months of life, which reveals the early unfolding of the disorder but also offers a promising opportunity for the future of early intervention.
doi: 10.1038/nature12715
Two private, heterozygous mutations in two functionally related genes, GUCY1A3 and CCT7, are identified in an extended family with myocardial infarction; these genes encode proteins that work together to inhibit platelet activation after nitric oxide stimulation, suggesting a link between impaired nitric oxide signalling and myocardial infarction risk.
doi: 10.1038/nature12722
Two small-molecule disruptors of the glucokinase–glucokinase-regulatory-protein complex, AMG-1694 and AMG-3969, are identified that decrease blood glucose levels in various models of hyperglycaemic rodents.
doi: 10.1038/nature12724
This work shows that the Themis protein has a critical role in positive and negative thymocyte selection by dampening responses to low-affinity ligands but without affecting responses to high-affinity ligands, thus enabling positive selection of weakly self-reactive thymocytes.
doi: 10.1038/nature12718
The gut microbial metabolite butyrate is shown to induce the differentiation of colonic T regulatory cells in mice and to ameliorate the development of colitis; it also increases histone H3 acetylation at the Foxp3 promoter.
doi: 10.1038/nature12721
In mice, provision of butyrate—a short-chain fatty acid produced by commensal microorganisms during starch fermentation—facilitates extrathymic generation and differentiation of Foxp3+ regulatory T cells, demonstrating that metabolic by-products are sensed by cells of the immune system and affect the balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory cells.
doi: 10.1038/nature12726
The O-glycosylation enzyme Galnt11 has an important role in heterotaxy, a disorder of left–right body patterning or laterality: Galnt11 modulates Notch signalling which alters cilia types at the embryonic left–right organizer, therefore determining laterality.
doi: 10.1038/nature12723
This study establishes an important role for the enzyme Tet1 in erasing genomic imprinting in vivo — mice with a knockout of paternal Tet1 give rise to progeny with imprinting defects and associated growth and development defects, which leads to early embryonic lethality; furthermore, analysis of the DNA methylation dynamics in reprogramming primordial germ cells (PGCs) suggests that Tet1 is required at a late stage of the reprogramming process, in the second wave of DNA demethylation in PGCs.
doi: 10.1038/nature12805
During mammalian X-chromosome inactivation, the Xist long noncoding RNA coats the future inactive X chromosome and recruits polycomb repressive complex 2 to a nucleation site, but how Xist spreads silencing across the entire X chromosome is unclear; here high-resolution maps of Xist binding sites across the X chromosome are generated and show that Xist does not spread across the inactive X chromosome uniformly but in two steps, initially targeting gene-rich islands before later spreading to intervening gene-poor domains.
doi: 10.1038/nature12719
