The US Senate has just voted to defund one of the providers of aborted fetal tissue for research. Such research is too valuable to become embroiled in the bitter abortion debate.
doi: 10.1038/528163a
Japan has introduced an unproven system to make patients pay for clinical trials.
doi: 10.1038/528163b
Hard decisions on issues that will affect future generations should not be sidestepped.
doi: 10.1038/528164a
Dwindling algae harvest imperils reagent essential for culturing microbes.
doi: 10.1038/528171a
Representatives discuss ethical, social and legal issues that unite and divide them.
doi: 10.1038/528173a
Five years after a failed insertion into the planet’s orbit, Akatsuki finally reaches its target.
doi: 10.1038/528174a
Turquoise killifish genomes help to explain their 'live fast, die young' lifestyle.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18945
Decision throws construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope into question.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18944
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will spend insurance money for destroyed vehicle on lower-risk projects.
doi: 10.1038/528176a
米国で、中絶や流産した胎児組織の利用が論争を巻き起こしているが、HIVや発生の研究には胎児組織が不可欠だと考える科学者は多い。
doi: 10.1038/528178a
がんの末期などに見られる悪液質は、筋肉が消耗する著しい衰弱状態だが、その原因が明らかになりつつある。
doi: 10.1038/528182a
ショウジョウバエの一部の細胞での非対称分裂についてロバストな定量分析が行われ、この過程に関わる主要な分子が突き止められた。だが、最も関心を引きそうなのは、この複雑な細胞過程を説明する簡単な式が定義されたことである。
doi: 10.1038/528196a
2種類の活性部位を持つ触媒は、長鎖炭化水素分子を切断して、もっと使い道の多い短鎖炭化水素にする。このような活性部位のナノスケールでの間隔の制御に関する研究は、この種の触媒の設計ルールとされているものに疑問を投げ掛けることになった。
doi: 10.1038/528197a
体内のT細胞にHIV感染細胞を殺すように指示する2種類の二重特異性タンパク質構築体が設計された。こうした巧妙な工夫によって、抗レトロウイルス療法を行った後にも患者の体内で存続している潜伏ウイルスのリザーバーを駆除する方法が一歩進んだ。
doi: 10.1038/nature16321
地球が温暖化するにつれて、全球の降水量は増えるが、多くのモデルが予想しているほどではないことが新しい研究で明らかにされた。それは、水蒸気によって吸収される近赤外領域の太陽光の量が増えるからである。
doi: 10.1038/528200a
TOM複合体は、前駆体タンパク質を液状の細胞質ゾルから細胞小器官であるミトコンドリア内部へと誘導する。TOM複合体の構造が生化学的分析によって明らかになり、前駆体タンパク質がこの複合体の細い小孔を通り抜ける仕組みが解明された。
doi: 10.1038/nature16318
標準的な惑星形成モデルでは、太陽系中の岩石でできた小型惑星と小惑星の分布を同一のシミュレーション中で再現することができなかった。新たな解析では、これが不可能であることが示されている。
doi: 10.1038/nature16322
大量に存在する短鎖RNAの合成を行っているRNAポリメラーゼIIIの3種類の構造が解かれ、この酵素を転写の終結と再開の熟練工たらしめている特殊な部分が明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature16317
制御性T細胞は自己免疫応答の防止に関わっている。新規な画像化技術によって、制御性T細胞の活性化には自己反応性のエフェクターT細胞とクラスターを形成し、シグナル伝達タンパク質のインターロイキン2を感知することが必要であると分かった。
doi: 10.1038/nature16312
The spectral gap problem—whether the Hamiltonian of a quantum many-body problem is gapped or gapless—is rigorously proved to be undecidable; there exists no algorithm to determine whether an arbitrary quantum many-body model is gapped or gapless, and there exist models for which the presence or absence of a spectral gap is independent of the axioms of mathematics.
doi: 10.1038/nature16059
Drosophila intestinal stem cells (ISCs) respond to changes in diet, particularly L-glutamate levels, by modulating Ca2+ signalling to adapt their proliferation rate; furthermore, Ca2+ is shown to be central to the response of ISCs to a wide range of dietary and stress stimuli.
doi: 10.1038/nature16170
RNA interference screens were used to identify chromatin-associated factors that impede reprogramming of somatic cells into iPS cells; suppression of the chromatin assembly factor CAF-1 enhances the generation of iPS cells by rendering chromatin more accessible to pluripotency transcription factors.
doi: 10.1038/nature15749
Autoantigen-presenting dendritic cells are shown to interact with both effector and regulatory T cells, and effector-produced IL-2 activates the transcription factor STAT5 in regulatory T cells, which in turn upregulates suppressive molecules and prevents autoimmunity.
doi: 10.1038/nature16169
RNA polymerase III (Pol III), the largest eukaryote polymerase yet characterized, transcribes structured small non-coding RNAs; here cryo-electron microscopy structures of budding yeast Pol III allow building of an atomic-level model of the complete 17-subunit complex, both unbound and while elongating RNA.
doi: 10.1038/nature16143
The dwarf planet (1) Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt, is found to have localized bright areas on its surface; particularly interesting is a bright pit on the floor of the crater Occator that exhibits what is likely to be water ice sublimation, producing crater-bound haze clouds with a diurnal rhythm.
doi: 10.1038/nature15754
Infrared spectra of (1) Ceres acquired at distances of 82,000 to 4,300 kilometres from the surface indicate widespread ammoniated phyllosilicates; the presence of ammonia suggests that material from the outer Solar System was incorporated into Ceres.
doi: 10.1038/nature16172
The conversion of hydrocarbons to produce high-quality diesel fuel can be catalysed by bifunctional materials that contain a metal site and an acid site; it has been assumed that these sites should be as close as possible in order to enhance catalysis, but it is now shown that having them too close together can be detrimental to selectivity.
doi: 10.1038/nature16173
The magnitude of global precipitation increase predicted by climate models has a large uncertainty that has been difficult to constrain, but much of the range in predictions is now shown to arise from shortcomings in the modelling of atmospheric absorption of shortwave radiation; if the radiative transfer algorithms controlling the absorption were more accurate, the model spread would narrow and the mean estimate could be about 40% lower.
doi: 10.1038/nature15770
In metre-sized rock specimens, rock friction starts to decrease at a much smaller work rate than in centimetre-sized rock specimens, thus demonstrating that rock friction is scale-dependent.
doi: 10.1038/nature16138
An analysis of when children develop a sense of fairness (receiving less or more than a peer) is compared across seven different societies; aversion to receiving less emerges early in childhood in all societies, whereas aversion to receiving more emerges later in childhood and only in three of the seven societies studied.
doi: 10.1038/nature15703
Growing evidence from metagenome-wide association studies link multiple common disorders to microbial dysbiosis but effects of drug treatment are often not accounted for; here, the authors re-analyse two previous metagenomic studies of type 2 diabetes mellitus patients together with a novel cohort to determine the effects of the widely prescribed antidiabetic drug metformin and highlight the need to distinguish the effects of a disease from the effects of treatment on the gut microbiota.
doi: 10.1038/nature15766
The first formal evidence of the shared and independent ability of basal cells and luminal pro-genitors isolated from normal human mammary tissue and transduced with a single oncogene to initiate tumorigeneses when introduced into mice.
doi: 10.1038/nature15742
During postnatal development in mice, the growth factor FGF18 induces autophagy in the chondrocyte cells of the growth plate to regulate the secretion of type II collagen, a process required for bone growth.
doi: 10.1038/nature16063
It is widely accepted that contraction of skeletal muscle and the heart involves structural changes in actin-containing thin filaments to allow binding of myosin motors from neighbouring thick filaments, thus driving filament sliding; here, X-ray diffraction of single skeletal muscle cells reveals that this thin-filament mechanism can regulate muscle contraction against low load, but high-load contraction requires a second permissive step involving a structural change in the thick filament.
doi: 10.1038/nature15727
Central spindle asymmetry, generated by the kinesin Klp10A and its antagonist Patronin, polarizes endosome motility and provides a mechanism for the asymmetric segregation of signalling endosomes observed in a variety of asymmetrically dividing cell types.
doi: 10.1038/nature16443
Common fragile sites (CFSs) are difficult-to-replicate regions of eukaryotic genomes that are sensitive to replication stress and that require resolution by the MUS81–EME1 endonuclease to re-initiate POLD3-dependent DNA synthesis in early mitosis; this study defines the specific pathway of events causing the CFS fragility phenotype.
doi: 10.1038/nature16139
