After three years of heated debate, the advocates and critics of gain-of-function research must work to agree on how best to regulate the work.
doi: 10.1038/514403a
Social-media fun for medical research bypasses animal sensitivities.
doi: 10.1038/514403b
Europe must act to stop livestock drugs from wiping out its vulture populations.
doi: 10.1038/514404a
Government to cease funding gain-of-function studies that make viruses more dangerous, pending a safety assessment.
doi: 10.1038/514411a
November vote is unlikely to break a political stalemate that has squeezed research funding.
doi: 10.1038/514412a
DNA shows a group of modern humans roamed across Asia.
doi: 10.1038/514413a
Space telescope beats mechanical failures to begin a second mission that will trace new celestial targets.
doi: 10.1038/514414a
Hybrid methods to solve structures of molecular machines create a storage headache.
doi: 10.1038/514416a
生命倫理学者たちが、科学研究で直面する幅広い倫理問題についての助言サービスを始めている。
doi: 10.1038/514418a
1万8000年前に生きていた現生人類の重要な親戚、ホモ・フローレシエンシスの発見に関わった科学者たちに話を聞く。
doi: 10.1038/514422a
統合評価モデルを使って、新たな気候政策の制定がなければ、天然ガスを潤沢に供給しても温室効果ガス排出量と気候変動にはわずかな影響しかないだろうという予測が示された。
doi: 10.1038/nature13927
HIV-1エンベロープ三量体タンパク質が標的細胞と融合する前の状態を捕捉した高分解能結晶構造は、このタンパク質複合体に対する防御免疫応答を引き出すようなワクチンの設計に役立ちそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/nature13926
遺伝子を修正したマクロファージ細胞のマウス肺への直接移植は、遺伝性の肺疾患でヒトでも見られる肺胞蛋白症の治療に効果があることが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature13758
若い惑星系中の恒星の近傍を通る多数の彗星の分析から、こうした彗星は大きく2つに分けられることが分かった。その1つは古くてガスの抜けた彗星群、もう1つはより若い彗星群で、おそらくもっと大型の惑星天体の分裂に関係していると思われる。
doi: 10.1038/514440a
炎症の際には、免疫細胞が流れ込むためにリンパ節が腫れる。新たな研究によって、リンパ節を形作っている収縮性細胞の弛緩を引き起こすシグナル伝達経路が突き止められた。
doi: 10.1038/514441a
抗体療法やワクチンの有効性を最適化する方法を明らかにした研究で、強力なHIV-1中和抗体の活性は抗体のFc領域への細胞の結合に依存することが確証された。
doi: 10.1038/514442a
The high-quality genome sequence of a 45,000-year-old modern human from Siberia reveals that gene flow from Neanderthals into the ancestors of this individual had already occurred about 7,000 to 13,000 years earlier; genomic comparisons show that he belonged to a population that lived close in time to the separation of populations in east and west Eurasia and that may represent an early modern human radiation out of Africa that has no direct descendants today.
doi: 10.1038/nature13810
This study reports the correction of pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP) in Csf2rb–/– mice by a single transfer of either wild-type or gene-corrected macrophages directly to the lungs — the transplanted macrophages persisted for at least 1 year; this transplantation strategy obviated the need for myeloablation and immunosuppression and should be a feasible therapy for humans with hereditary PAP.
doi: 10.1038/nature13807
A crystal structure of the human immunodeficiency virus Env trimer, used by the virus to infect cells, is determined here; the new structure, which shows the pre-fusion form of Env, increases our understanding of the fusion mechanism and of how the conformation of Env allows the virus to evade the immune response.
doi: 10.1038/nature13808
Statistical analysis of over a thousand spectra of the star β Pictoris reveals that it has two kinds of exocomets circling it: old exhausted comets trapped in mean-motion resonance with a massive planet, and fragments of comets.
doi: 10.1038/nature13849
Modelling the solar magnetic field using observations of the photospheric field in the four-day period preceding a coronal mass ejection shows that the formation and later ejection of a twisted rope of magnetic flux provides the physical mechanism responsible for the ejection.
doi: 10.1038/nature13815
The two-dimensional semiconducting material molybdenum disulphide shows strong piezoelectricity in its single-layered form, suggesting possible applications in nanoscale electromechanical devices for sensing and energy harvesting.
doi: 10.1038/nature13792
The tetrahedral iridium tetroxide cation [IrO4]+, which has an iridium 5d0 valence electron configuration and a formal oxidation state of IX, is generated in the gas phase, identified by infrared photodissociation spectroscopy, and predicted, by quantum chemical calculations, to be the most stable of all possible [IrO4]+ isomers.
doi: 10.1038/nature13795
The abundance of key microbial lineages can be used to predict atmospherically relevant patterns in methane isotopes and the proportion of carbon metabolized to methane during permafrost thaw, suggesting that microbial ecology may be important in ecosystem-scale responses to global change.
doi: 10.1038/nature13798
It has been hoped that making abundant natural gas available by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) would reduce greenhouse gas emissions but now modelling shows that increased consumption will have limited effect on climate change.
doi: 10.1038/nature13837
In an experiment across China to test integrated soil–crop system management for rice, wheat and maize against current practice, improvements in grain yield are equivalent to high-input techniques, but nutrient use, nutrient loss and greenhouse gas emissions are lower than current practice.
doi: 10.1038/nature13609
Nested Hox expression domains are found in jawed vertebrates and in non-vertebrate chordates, but it is unclear whether there is a link between brain regionalization and Hox expression in jawless vertebrates; here, Hox expression is shown to be integrated with hindbrain segmentation in lampreys.
doi: 10.1038/nature13723
Three 1,000-year-old mycobacterial genomes from Peruvian human skeletons reveal that a member of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex derived from seals caused human disease before contact in the Americas.
doi: 10.1038/nature13591
During inflammation, the lymph node stromal compartment is shown to accommodate high numbers of infiltrating lymphocytes by relaxing the cytoskeleton of fibroblastic reticular cells, allowing the latter to stretch and the lymph node to expand.
doi: 10.1038/nature13814
An investigation of the influence of age on the generation of insulin-producing cells after β-cell loss in mice reveals that, whereas α-cells can reprogram to produce insulin from puberty to adulthood, efficient reconstitution in the very young is through δ-cell reprogramming, leading to complete diabetes recovery.
doi: 10.1038/nature13633
A high-fat diet promotes intestinal tumorigenesis independently of obesity in a mouse model with oncogene activation, by changing the composition of the gut microbiota and altering immune regulation.
doi: 10.1038/nature13398
T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (T-ALL) is a haematological malignancy with a poor prognosis and no available targeted therapies; now two histone H3 lysine 27 demethylases, JMJD3 and UTX, are shown to have contrasting roles in human T-ALL cells and a mouse model of the disease, and a small molecule demethylase inhibitor is found to inhibit the growth of T-ALL cell lines, introducing a potential therapeutic avenue for acute leukaemia.
doi: 10.1038/nature13605
The X-ray crystal structures of a zinc-ion-transporting P-type ATPase are solved in a zinc-free, phosphoenzyme ‘ground’ state and in a transition state of dephosphorylation, characterizing these transporters of an essential micronutrient that is needed for many biological processes but is cytotoxic when free.
doi: 10.1038/nature13618
