After the introduction of a clumsily worded new rule, the UK government should move quickly to reassure scientists that they can continue to advise policymakers.
doi: 10.1038/531007a
A young global-sustainability platform deserves time to find its feet.
doi: 10.1038/531007b
As brain stimulation finds non-medical uses, now is the time to consider its implications.
doi: 10.1038/531008a
Scientists push for better monitoring of what remains.
doi: 10.1038/531015a
Biotechnology agency wants to upgrade capabilities to kick-start economic growth.
doi: 10.1038/531016a
Country’s austerity budget stands in way of law to modernize Soviet-era academy.
doi: 10.1038/531018a
Agencies rush to show that outbreak tactics have improved.
doi: 10.1038/531019a
Waning warming event studied in unprecedented detail.
doi: 10.1038/531020a
Mission paves the way for planned €1-billion space observatory.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2016.19452
ヨーロッパ各国で、米国にならって水圧破砕法による天然ガス生産が試みられているが、期待されたような成果は挙がっていない。
doi: 10.1038/531022a
カラフルな蛍光を発するウイルス程度の大きさの粒子は、テレビからがんの治療まで、さまざまな分野に革命をもたらす可能性を秘めている。
doi: 10.1038/531026a
電場を使って化学反応を制御できることが、単一分子実験によって明らかになった。また、その反応の速度は印加された電場の方向と強さの両方によって変えられることも分かった。
doi: 10.1038/531038a
細胞小器官であるミトコンドリアの出現につながった細胞内共生事象は、複雑な細胞の進化の過程で、現在考えられているよりも遅く起こったらしいことが、大規模な系統ゲノミクス研究によって明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature16876
合体するブラックホール系から生じた重力波が観測されたことは、宇宙をのぞく新しい窓が開いたことを意味しており、これによって最も強い場合の重力が調べられ、またブラックホールなどの宇宙物理学的な系について多くの意外な事実が明らかになると期待される。
doi: 10.1038/nature17306
マウスでは、高脂肪食が腸前駆細胞の細胞運命がもっと幹細胞に似たものになるように誘導し、腸のサイズを変化させ、腫瘍の発病率を高めることが分かった。
doi: 10.1038/531042a
宇宙線観測が目的の電波技術が進展したことで、このような加速された粒子の一部の起源について、新たな光が当てられるようになり、こうした粒子が以前に考えられていたよりもずっと遠くから飛来してきた可能性が明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/531043a
ヒルシュスプルング病では、遠位腸管に腸神経系（ENS）が存在しない。幹細胞から作られたENS前駆細胞を出生後に移植すると、この疾患のマウスモデルで死亡が防がれることが、今回明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature16877
An integrated genomic analysis of 456 human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas identifies four subtypes defined by transcriptional expression profiles and show that these are associated with distinct histopathological characteristics and differential prognosis.
doi: 10.1038/nature16965
A high-fat diet increases the number of intestinal stem cells in mammals, both in vivo and in intestinal organoids; a pathway that involves PPAR-δ confers organoid-initiating capacity to non-stem cells and induces them to form in vivo tumours after loss of the Apc tumour suppressor.
doi: 10.1038/nature17173
A combination of X-ray crystallography, electron microscopy, functional assays and time-lapse fluorescence microscopy shows that a protein of previously unknown function, TssA, forms a dodecameric complex that interacts with components of the tube and sheath of the type VI secretion system of bacteria, and that it primes and coordinates biogenesis of both the tail tube and the sheath.
doi: 10.1038/nature17182
Two crystal structures of the Escherichia coli β-barrel assembly machinery (BAM complex) are presented, one of which includes all five subunits (BamA–BamE), in two distinct conformational states; together with functional assays and molecular dynamics stimulations, these structures help to generate a model for outer membrane protein insertion.
doi: 10.1038/nature17199
High-resolution radio measurements of air showers—cascades of secondary particles in the atmosphere initiated by cosmic rays—reveal that cosmic rays with energies of 1017–1017.5 electronvolts have a mixed composition, with light elements (protons and helium nuclei) making up 80 per cent of their mass.
doi: 10.1038/nature16976
By coupling donor spins in silicon to a superconducting microwave cavity and tuning the spins to the cavity resonance, the rate of spin relaxation is increased by three orders of magnitude compared to that of detuned spins; in such a regime, spontaneous emission of radiation is the dominant mechanism of spin relaxation.
doi: 10.1038/nature16944
A surface engineering approach is described that is inspired by the water-condensation capability of the bumps on desert beetles, the droplet transportation facilitated by cactus spines and the slippery coating of the pitcher plant, to produce a structure with many water-harvesting applications.
doi: 10.1038/nature16956
Hydroxycarbonate minerals such as zincian malachite and aurichalcite are well known precursors to catalysts for methanol-synthesis and low-temperature water–gas shift reactions; here, a supercritical antisolvent method is used to prepare highly stable georgeite—a hydroxycarbonate mineral that has hitherto been ignored because of its rarity, but which is found to be a superior catalyst precursor.
doi: 10.1038/nature16935
Theory suggests that many chemical reactions (not simply, as is often thought, redox reactions) might be catalysed by an applied electric field; experimental evidence for this is now provided from single-molecule studies of the formation of carbon–carbon bonds in a Diels–Alder reaction.
doi: 10.1038/nature16989
Residual topography and gravity anomalies reveal a tectonic boundary in northeast Japan, which is proposed to represent the offshore continuation of the Median Tectonic Line; the contrast in frictional properties across this structure may control earthquake behaviour there, as recently demonstrated by the giant 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake.
doi: 10.1038/nature16945
The brain of the hagfish, a cyclostome related to the lamprey, develops domains equivalent to the median ganglionic eminence and the rhombic lip, resembling the brains of gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates), suggesting that brain regionalization in jawed vertebrates occurred before the divergence of cyclostomes and gnathostomes more than 500 million years ago.
doi: 10.1038/nature16518
Evidence that among the eukaryotic ancestor genes, those derived from the proto-mitochondrion have the closest evolutionary distances to their bacterial relatives.
doi: 10.1038/nature16941
A differentiation protocol to obtain enteric nervous system (ENS) progenitors and a range of neurons from human pluripotent stem cells is developed; the cells can migrate and graft to the colon of a chick embryo and an adult mouse colon, including in a mouse model of Hirschsprung disease, in which a functional rescue is observed.
doi: 10.1038/nature16951
Mutant Kras lung tumours are not a single disease but comprise two classes of tumours with distinct metabolic profiles, prognosis and therapeutic susceptibility, which can be discriminated by their relative mutant Kras allelic content.
doi: 10.1038/nature16967
The high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy structure of a pre-fusion coronavirus spike trimer from mouse hepatitis virus is presented; the structure reveals architectural similarities to paramyxovirus F proteins, suggesting that these fusion proteins may have evolved from a distant common ancestor.
doi: 10.1038/nature16988
A 4.0 Å resolution cryo-electron microscopy structure of the pre-fusion form of the trimeric spike from the human coronavirus HKU1 provides insight into how the spike protein mediates host-cell attachment and membrane fusion.
doi: 10.1038/nature17200
The crystal structure of Schizosaccharomyces pombe guanine nucleotide exchange factor eIF2B, providing a structural framework for the eIF2B-mediated mechanism of stress-induced translational control.
doi: 10.1038/nature16991
