Patent abuse slows down research and innovation, and must be confronted. Delays to US legislation are not reassuring, but there has been some progress in the courts.
doi: 10.1038/510007a
Reforms at the US Department of Energy are recharging research.
doi: 10.1038/510007b
Policies in Ireland and China make Nature’s 2014 mentoring awards timely.
doi: 10.1038/510008a
The rise of antibiotic resistance rekindles interest in a century-old virus treatment.
doi: 10.1038/510015a
Study under way on Mongolian steppes aims to improve knowledge of warming effects on vegetation.
doi: 10.1038/510016a
But more players have joined the quest to treat spinal-cord injury with embryonic cells.
doi: 10.1038/510018a
Agreement on changes to constitution pave way for university funding shake-up.
doi: 10.1038/510019a
Signal of gravitational waves was too weak to be significant, studies suggest.
doi: 10.1038/510020a
光子をエネルギーに変換できる人工光合成装置の開発の取り組みが進んでいる。
doi: 10.1038/510022a
長い間無視されてきたアルツハイマー病の重要な遺伝的リスク因子に、研究者の関心が向き始めている。
doi: 10.1038/510026a
クシクラゲの一種の概要ゲノムと、それ以外の10種の有櫛動物の遺伝子転写プロファイルの解析から、この生物の神経系が他の生物とは別の進化起源を持つことが示唆された。
doi: 10.1038/nature13340
スコシア海で得られた、氷山によって運ばれた岩屑の新たな記録から、最終氷期極大期以降の南極氷床は、気候と全球海水準の変化に歩調を合わせて、偶発的に後退していることが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature13345
マウスで6種類のRNA分子が同時に欠失すると、呼吸器と生殖能力の不全が引き起こされることが分かった。これは細胞表面にある繊毛と呼ばれる構造の不適切な組み立てが原因である。
doi: 10.1038/510040a
可視光観測と電波観測の結果の解析から、活動銀河の中心部から強力なジェットが噴き出す仕組みが明らかにされた。こうした銀河の中心部では、超大質量ブラックホールがMAD（magnetically arrested disk）を介して物質を降着しているのである。
doi: 10.1038/510042a
最近の臨床研究の急速な進展は、全部とはいわないまでも、ほとんどの感染者でのC型肝炎ウイルス根絶に効果があり、忍容性が良好で、経口投与可能な薬剤の開発への転換期に我々があることを示唆している。
doi: 10.1038/510043a
パーキンソン病に関わるとされるタンパク質の品質管理経路におけるミッシングリンクが修飾型のユビキチンタンパク質であることが、別々に行われた3つの研究によって突き止められた。
doi: 10.1038/510044a
A computational method is reported that can be used to design protein nanomaterials in which two distinct subunits co-assemble into a specific architecture; five 24-subunit cage-like protein nanomaterials are designed, and experiments show that their structures are in close agreement with the computational design models.
doi: 10.1038/nature13404
The draft genome of the ctenophore Pleurobrachia bachei (Pacific sea gooseberry) is presented, together with ten other ctenophore transcriptomes — these genomes have a very different neurogenic, immune and developmental gene content when compared with other animal genomes, and it is proposed that ctenophore neural systems, and possibly muscle specification, evolved independently from those in other animals.
doi: 10.1038/nature13400
Loss-of-function studies of the miR-34/449 microRNA family in mouse and Xenopus reveal their evolutionarily conserved role in ciliogenesis by repressing expression of the centriolar protein Cp110.
doi: 10.1038/nature13413
The structure of human GLUT1 in an inward-open conformation is reported; access to the structure of the human protein, instead of just a bacterial homologue, made it possible to map (inactivating) mutations associated with GLUT1 deficiency syndrome onto the structure.
doi: 10.1038/nature13306
A study of 76 radio-loud active galaxies shows that the magnetic field in the bipolar jet that emanates from each galaxy is tightly correlated with the luminosity of the accretion disk; the jet-launching regions of these galaxies are therefore thought to be threaded by dynamically important magnetic fields that will affect the properties of the accretion disks.
doi: 10.1038/nature13399
A palladium-catalysed C–H bond activation process is reported that proceeds through a four-membered-ring cyclopalladation pathway; it allows a methyl group that is adjacent to an unprotected secondary amine to be transformed into a synthetically versatile nitrogen heterocycle.
doi: 10.1038/nature13389
Two well-dated, high-resolution records of iceberg-rafted debris are presented that document variability in Antarctic Ice Sheet discharge during the last deglaciation.
doi: 10.1038/nature13397
The largest assemblage so far of published data shows that C3 crops have decreased zinc and iron levels under CO2 conditions predicted for the middle of this century, with worldwide nutritional implications.
doi: 10.1038/nature13179
Simultaneous recordings from hippocampus and entorhinal cortex in rats show that as the animals learn odour guidance cues during their exploration of two-dimensional space in the laboratory, ensembles of coherently firing neurons emerge in both locations, with cortical–hippocampal oscillatory coupling occurring in a specific range of the beta-gamma frequency band.
doi: 10.1038/nature13162
Distinct groups of microorganisms have been thought to grow on methane and on short-chain alkanes; now, the methanotroph Methylocella silvestris is shown to express two distinct soluble di-iron centre monooxygenases that allow it to use either methane or propane as a carbon and energy source.
doi: 10.1038/nature13192
Segmented filamentous bacteria drive the acquisition of the TH17 phenotype in an antigen-specific manner; these findings begin to elucidate how gut-induced TH17 cells can contribute to distal organ-specific autoimmune disease.
doi: 10.1038/nature13279
In mice, it is possible to induce a psoriasis-like condition by applying imiquimod; here, the production of interleukin-23 that is stimulated by such skin inflammation is shown to depend on the interaction of nociceptors expressing the Nav1.8 and TRPV1 channels with skin-resident dendritic cells.
doi: 10.1038/nature13199
Ubiquitin, known for its role in post-translational modification of other proteins, undergoes post-translational modification itself; after a decrease in mitochondrial membrane potential, the kinase enzyme PINK1 phosphorylates ubiquitin at Ser 65, and the phosphorylated ubiquitin then interacts with ubiquitin ligase (E3) enzyme parkin, which is also phosphorylated by PINK1, and this process is sufficient for full activation of parkin enzymatic activity.
doi: 10.1038/nature13392
Cancer cells often have extra centrosomes, a paradox considering the detrimental effect extra centrosomes usually have on cell division; a study of human cells reveals that extra centrosomes can promote cancer cell invasion phenotypes through a pathway involving increased microtubule nucleation and Rac1 activity.
doi: 10.1038/nature13277
A new mass-spectrometry method has been developed to obtain high-resolution spectra of folded proteins bound to lipids; using this technique as well as X-ray crystallography provides evidence for membrane protein conformational change as a result of lipid–protein interaction.
doi: 10.1038/nature13419
