After years of talk, the palm-oil industry is looking into adopting environmental standards. Such rules must be strong, and need to be implemented.
doi: 10.1038/523501a
Government labs should be subject to the same transparent oversight as academic facilities.
doi: 10.1038/523501b
The communication of risk in disease outbreaks is too often neglected; that must change.
doi: 10.1038/523502a
After a string of failed trials, drugs that target protein build-up in the brain appear to slow disease progress.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18031
Ship and planes will probe water–ice interface in fjords.
doi: 10.1038/523510a
Potentially rocky world spotted by Kepler spacecraft offers glimpse at Earth's future.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18048
From skin disorders to the immune system, sex with archaic species changed Homo sapiens.
doi: 10.1038/523512a
Lawmakers face looming deadline to reach a deal — or risk government shutdown.
doi: 10.1038/523513a
Canadian observatory aims to chart cosmic expansion rate between 10 billion and 8 billion years ago.
doi: 10.1038/523514a
医療の現場で手術前などに使われているチェックリストは、必ずしも救命率の向上に結び付いておらず、その問題点を検証する。
doi: 10.1038/523516a
臓器オルガノイドが次々と作製され、ヒトの発生に関するさまざまな発見をもたらしている。
doi: 10.1038/523520a
穀粒中のデンプン量が増えた遺伝子改変イネは、メタンを産生する土壌微生物が使える栄養素の産生量も少ない。この二重の利点は、緊急に必要とされる、世界的に持続可能な食糧生産の達成に役立ちそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/nature14633
金属有機構造体と呼ばれる多孔質固体の結晶が形成され成長する様子が、顕微鏡法を使ってリアルタイムで調べられた。この知見はこの種の有用な化合物を作る方法の設計に役立つと考えられる。
doi: 10.1038/523535a
ポリマーを使った、「常識外れ」の材料が見つかった。この材料は、誘電体コンデンサーと呼ばれるエネルギー蓄積デバイスに使うのに適した性質を複数備えていて、高温で動作可能である。
doi: 10.1038/523536a
Gタンパク質共役受容体の1つについて、タンパク質のアレスチンと複合体を作っている状態の結晶構造が初めて報告された。これによって、この種の受容体によって活性化されるシグナル伝達経路が脱感作を介して切り替えられる仕組みについての手掛かりが得られた。
doi: 10.1038/nature14637
大うつ病性障害と関連している2つの遺伝子領域が、漢民族の女性集団で行われたゲノム規模の塩基配列解読によって初めて明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature14635
遺伝性白内障を発症する2つの家系での研究から、この病気の原因となる変異が、水晶体に含まれる分子のラノステロールを合成する酵素の機能を障害するものであることが分かった。この知見は、白内障の非外科的予防と治療につながるかもしれない。
doi: 10.1038/nature14629
結晶中の電子は、強い電場をかけるとエネルギーバンドの間をトンネル移動できる。電子の経路はほぼ瞬時に干渉を起こして、極めて短い光パルスが放射されることが分かった。
doi: 10.1038/523541a
Ice-core and tree-ring data show that large volcanic eruptions in the tropics and high latitudes were primary drivers of temperature variability in the Northern Hemisphere during the past 2,500 years, firmly implicating such eruptions as catalysts in major sixth-century pandemics, famines, and socioeconomic disruptions.
doi: 10.1038/nature14565
The emergence of long-range metabolic co-dependence within a biofilm drives oscillations in growth that resolve a social conflict between cooperation and competition, thereby increasing community-level fitness against chemical attack.
doi: 10.1038/nature14660
The assembly, architecture and role of the bacterial type VI secretion system (T6SS) membrane core complex is presented.
doi: 10.1038/nature14667
G protein-coupled receptors are a large family of signalling proteins that mediate cellular responses primarily via G proteins or arrestins, and they are targets of one-third of the current clinically used drugs; here, an active form of human rhodopsin bound to a pre-activated form of the mouse visual arrestin-1 is determined, revealing unique structural features that may constitute essential elements for arrestin-biased signalling.
doi: 10.1038/nature14656
Radio and optical spectroscopic observations of a brown dwarf reveal auroral emissions powered by magnetospheric currents, showing that aurorae may be a signature of magnetospheres much larger than those observed in our Solar System.
doi: 10.1038/nature14619
The generation of high harmonics in the solid phase is studied with time-resolved measurements and a quantum many-body theory; the underlying motion of electrons is found to differ from that observed during high-harmonic generation in atomic gases, and involves quantum interference between electrons from multiple valence bands.
doi: 10.1038/nature14652
The addition of boron nitride nanosheets to polymer nanocomposites creates dielectric materials that operate at much higher working temperatures than previous polymer dielectrics, as well as being flexible, lightweight, photopatternable, scalable and robust, which now makes them more attractive for electronic device applications than ceramic dielectrics.
doi: 10.1038/nature14647
Neodymium isotopes from fossil fish teeth and tectonic reconstructions show that the deep Tasmanian Gateway opened up about 33 million years ago and that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current arose 30 million years ago, when the gateway probably moved into the latitudes of the strong westerly winds.
doi: 10.1038/nature14598
A new Middle Triassic stem-turtle from Germany sheds new light on the evolutionary transition of turtles and their long-contentious relationships to other amniotes.
doi: 10.1038/nature14472
Genomic analysis of 5,303 Chinese women with recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD) enables the identification and replication of two genome-wide significant loci contributing to risk of MDD on chromosome 10: one near the SIRT1 gene; the other in an intron of the LHPP gene.
doi: 10.1038/nature14659
A new microendoscopic method reveals that hippocampal dendritic spines in the CA1 region undergo a complete turnover in less than six weeks in adult mice; this contrasts with the much greater stability of synapses in the neocortex and provides a physical basis for the fact that episodic memories are only retained by the mouse hippocampus for a few weeks.
doi: 10.1038/nature14467
Little is known about how the relative proportions of stem cells and differentiated cells are regulated; basal stem/progenitor cells of the mouse airway epithelium self renew and differentiate into secretory and ciliated cells, and basal stem cells continuously send daughter cells a forward niche signal necessary for daughter cell fate maintenance.
doi: 10.1038/nature14553
Expression of a barley transcription factor SUSIBA2 in rice generates a plant with high-starch content and low-methane emissions by conferring a shift in the carbon flux that favours the allocation of photosynthates to aboveground biomass rather than to the roots.
doi: 10.1038/nature14673
Exploring the genetic basis of congenital cataracts in two families identifies a molecule, lanosterol, which prevents intracellular protein aggregation of various cataract-causing mutant crystallins, and which can reduce cataract severity and increase lens transparency in vivo in dogs.
doi: 10.1038/nature14650
CD8 T-cell exhaustion, although a negative prognostic indicator during persistent infections, is shown to be associated with a good outcome in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.
doi: 10.1038/nature14468
Mitochondria are shown to form a conductive pathway throughout the cell in the form of a proton motive force, and throughout this network, mitochondrial protein localization seems to be varied, allowing optimized generation and utilization of the mitochondrial membrane potential; the rapid energy distribution network, which depends on conduction rather than diffusion, could explain how the muscle can rapidly respond to energy demands.
doi: 10.1038/nature14614
Structural and biochemical studies of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) assembled on DNA containing 5-carboxycytosine reveals that Pol II can sense the oxidized methylation state of DNA and transiently slows down during transcription.
doi: 10.1038/nature14482
