評価の激しい浮き沈みを経験したバイオ企業の例を見ると、データに関する秘密主義は利益にならないことは明らかだ。
Burst bubbles p.609
Two medical-technology companies illustrate the ups and downs of innovation.
doi: 10.1038/526609b
Two medical-technology companies illustrate the ups and downs of innovation.
doi: 10.1038/526609b
The UK government’s decision to subsidize a nuclear power station while cutting support for renewables is short-sighted.
doi: 10.1038/526609a
The problem of abandoned fishing gear and its effects on marine life deserve greater attention.
doi: 10.1038/526610a
World Health Organization advisory committee endorses use of the RTS,S vaccine in small-scale demonstrations.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18638
Next-generation machines can penetrate kilometres below surface in days rather than years.
doi: 10.1038/526618a
Loss prompts rethink about design of future cradle-to-grave studies.
doi: 10.1038/526620a
The plummeting success rates in grant applications in the last decade are linked to flat budgets and more resubmitted proposals.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18631
Astronomers prepare to observe an impact off the coast of Sri Lanka.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18642
US regulators clear a viral melanoma therapy, paving the way for a promising field with a chequered past.
doi: 10.1038/526622a
太平洋のキリバス共和国は、温暖化による海面上昇に脅かされているが、脅威はそれだけではない。
doi: 10.1038/526624a
二酸化炭素の工業原料としての活用が、気候変動対策の1つになり得ることを示そうと、産業界で盛んな研究が行われている。
doi: 10.1038/526628a
炎症性カスパーゼは、ピロトーシスによる細胞死を引き起こすことで病原体の複製の制御を助けている。カスパーゼが基質であるガスダーミンDを切断するだけでピロトーシスの誘導には十分であることが今回明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature15632
賢い方法を使って、レーザービームに位相パターンがインプリントされた。このパターンは各点でランダムであるだけでなく、パターンの別の場所に蓄えられている情報にも依存している。
doi: 10.1038/526643a
植物細胞では、色素のアントシアニンは膜に結合している液胞という小器官に送られて、そこに蓄えられる。この過程は、液胞膜の伸長が関わるこれまで知られていなかった輸送経路によって行われていることが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/526644a
キングペンギンについての16年間にわたる研究で、この鳥の採餌行動と個体群動態は、海面温度を上昇させ、ペンギンの餌場を南下させるような気候異常によって変化していることが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/526646a
タンパク質やペプチドをシステイン残基特異的に化学修飾する有機金属試薬が開発された。これは治療に使える化合物を合成する一般的な反応経路となると考えられる。
doi: 10.1038/526646b
8万年以上前のものと思われるヒトの歯が中国南部で見つかったことは、ホモ・サピエンス(現生人類)が、これまで考えられていたよりかなり早く、この地域に居住していたことを示している。
doi: 10.1038/nature15640
局所実在性と呼ばれる、基本的な科学的仮説は、量子力学でのいくつかの予測と相いれない。以前の試験結果の信頼性を危うくしていたループホールが全く存在しない実験によって、今回こうした予測が確証された。
doi: 10.1038/nature15631
細菌の生合成経路を遮断する化合物を探索するスクリーニングにより、調節性RNAの構造中に含まれる分子スイッチを標的とすることで病原体の増殖を食い止める抗生物質のリード化合物が見つかった。
doi: 10.1038/nature15635
Here, a sparse neuronal projection from a part of the prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate, to the hippocampus is identified that, when activated, can elicit memory retrieval in mice.
doi: 10.1038/nature15389
CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing screens identify gasdermin D as a substrate for inflammatory caspases, and its N-terminal cleavage fragment, as well as the equivalent regions in other gasdermins, is shown to be capable of inducing pyroptosis.
doi: 10.1038/nature15514
Gasdermin D is identified as the required substrate for pyroptosis, mediating caspase-11 function in the non-canonical inflammasome pathway; the cleaved N-terminal domain is shown to trigger pyroptosis.
doi: 10.1038/nature15541
A novel drug, ribocil, is shown to mimic the binding of a natural ligand to a bacterial riboflavin riboswitch (a non-coding stretch of messenger RNA whose structure is affected by a ligand—usually one related to the function of the protein encoded by the messenger RNA) to cause inhibition of bacterial growth; the ability to target an RNA structural element with a synthetic small molecule may expand our view of the target space susceptible to therapeutic intervention.
doi: 10.1038/nature15542
In situ measurement of O2 in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko shows local abundances ranging from one per cent to ten per cent relative to H2O; the spatial and temporal uniformity of the O2/H2O ratio suggests that primordial O2 was incorporated into the nucleus during the comet’s formation.
doi: 10.1038/nature15707
A Bell experiment that is ‘loophole’ free—leaving no room for explanations based on experimental imperfections—reveals a statistically significant conflict with local realism
doi: 10.1038/nature15759
Palladium(ii) complexes can be used in efficient and highly selective cysteine conjugation reactions that are rapid and robust, and the resulting aryl bioconjugates are stable towards acids, bases, oxidants and external thiol nucleophiles.
doi: 10.1038/nature15739
Whether or not an increase in meltwater will make ice sheets move more quickly has been contentious, because water lubricates the ice–rock interface and speeds up the ice, but also stimulates the development of efficient drainage; now, a long-term and large-area study of a land-terminating margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet finds that more meltwater does not equal higher velocity.
doi: 10.1038/nature15722
A collection of 47 unequivocally modern human teeth from a cave in southern China shows that modern humans were in the region at least 80,000 years ago, and possibly as long as 120,000 years ago, which is twice as long as the earliest known modern humans in Europe; the population exhibited more derived features than contemporaneous hominins in northern and central China, adding to the complexity of the human story.
doi: 10.1038/nature15696
Activation of telomere maintenance mechanisms—caused by novel somatic rearrangements of TERT, by MYCN amplification, or ATRX mutations—is a hallmark of high-risk neuroblastomas.
doi: 10.1038/nature14980
The authors trained mice to attend to or suppress vision based on behavioral context and show, through novel and established techniques, that changes in visual gain rely on tunable feedforward inhibition of visual thalamus via innervating thalamic reticular neurons; these findings introduce a subcortical model of attention in which modality-specific thalamic reticular subnetworks mediate top-down and context-dependent control of sensory selection.
doi: 10.1038/nature15398
Charcot–Marie–Tooth diseases are hereditary peripheral neuropathies for which there are currently no effective therapies; here the type 2D subtype of these diseases is shown to be caused by mutations impeding a signalling pathway necessary for motor neuron survival.
doi: 10.1038/nature15510
This study finds that the Hippo pathway is essential for gut epithelial regeneration and tumour initiation; the Hippo component Yap holds off differentiation of intestinal stem cells to Paneth cells to promote a survival and self-renewal regenerative program through activation of the Egfr pathway.
doi: 10.1038/nature15382
The authors develop a mouse model of Enterococcus faecalis colonization to show that enterococci harbouring the bacteriocin-expressing plasmid pPD1 replace indigenous enterococci and have the ability to transfer the plasmid to other enterococci, which enhances the stability of the bacteriocin-expressing bacteria in the gut; this result suggests a therapeutic approach that leverages niche-specificity to eliminate antibiotic-resistant bacteria from infected individuals.
doi: 10.1038/nature15524
Acetyl-CoA carboxylases (ACCs) are large, multi-domain enzymes with crucial functions in fatty acid metabolism and are potential drug targets; here the X-ray crystal structure of the full-length, 500-kDa holoenzyme dimer of the ACC from Saccharomyces cerevisiae is solved and reveals an organization quite different from that of other biotin-dependent carboxylases.
doi: 10.1038/nature15375