ヒトを対象とした研究の倫理審査はそれぞれの研究機関で独自に行われることが多いが、これを見直して、統一的な審査にすべきだ。
Ethical overkill p.143
Institutions should take a unified look at protections for research on human subjects.
doi: 10.1038/516143b
Institutions should take a unified look at protections for research on human subjects.
doi: 10.1038/516143b
The European Commission’s plans to allow individual countries a veto on the farming of genetically modified crops, although a compromise, should enable the technology to move forward.
doi: 10.1038/516143a
Nations must keep expanding conservation efforts to avoid a biodiversity crisis.
doi: 10.1038/516144a
Ten years after the devastating Sumatra earthquake, warnings for the Indian Ocean go out, but often do not reach the people most at risk.
doi: 10.1038/516151a
Space-agency scientists present plan to piggyback on two missions.
doi: 10.1038/516153a
Rapid local diagnosis is essential for curbing spread.
doi: 10.1038/516154a
Firms embrace costly immunotherapy to fight intractable leukaemias and lymphomas.
doi: 10.1038/516156a
New Allen institute will create simulations of cell behaviour.
doi: 10.1038/516157a
種の絶滅は急速に進んでいるが、その実態把握は容易ではない。
doi: 10.1038/516158a
科学者たちは数十年にわたって、成体細胞を胚細胞にする再プログラム化を行ってきたが、その仕組みがようやく分かり始めた。
doi: 10.1038/516162a
ほぼ全ての種類の細胞を生じる多能性幹細胞は、成熟した細胞を操作することで作り出せる。この過程を徹底的に調べ直したことが、新種の多能性細胞の特徴付けにつながった。
doi: 10.1038/516172a
グラフェンと呼ばれる原子1個分の厚みの材料は、ヘリウムのような小型の原子も通過させない。プロトンがグラフェンを通り抜けられるという発見は、新種の膜の開発を可能にし、燃料電池の研究を助けると考えられる。
doi: 10.1038/nature14074
FtsZタンパク質は輪のような構造を作って、これが細菌細胞を締め付けて分裂を可能にしている。肺炎連鎖球菌（Streptococcus pneumoniae）では、もう1つのタンパク質であるMapZが細胞中央の適切な位置にFtsZを誘導することが今回、明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature14071
ベストロフィンと脂質スクランブラーゼの結晶構造が初めて得られた。これらのタンパク質ファミリーは、性質が大きく異なる基質を膜を横断して輸送し、どちらのファミリーもカルシウムイオンに依存している。この輸送の仕組みが、結晶構造によって明らかになってきた。
doi: 10.1038/nature13944
亀裂の入った金属薄膜を弾性のある基板上に置くと、機械的振動を極めて高い感度で検知できることが分かった。この結果は多数の生物系に適用されるタイリングの原理から着想を得たものだ。
doi: 10.1038/516178a
全球的な解析によって、持続可能ではない淡水供給源の使用に対する社会の依存度が大きくなっていることが明らかになった。このような資源への依存は、地下水の貯蔵量を激減させ、温暖化した世界で起こる水不足から、人類が立ち直る力を徐々に衰えさせる。
doi: 10.1038/516179a
Carbon atoms to which four distinct carbon substituents are attached — quaternary carbon stereocentres — are common features of molecules found in nature; in this Review, the authors discuss catalytic enantioselective reactions that have been developed during the past decade for synthesizing organic molecules containing such carbon atoms.
doi: 10.1038/nature14007
The forced expression of key transcription factors can induce somatic cells to acquire pluripotency characteristics; here high levels of reprogramming factors are used to induce mouse embryonic fibroblasts to a stable alternative pluripotent state with low intercellular adhesion.
doi: 10.1038/nature14047
This study presents an extensive molecular characterization of the reprograming process by analysis of transcriptomic, epigenomic and proteomic data sets describing the routes to pluripotency; it finds distinct routes towards two stable pluripotent states characterized by distinct epigenetic events.
doi: 10.1038/nature14046
The authors describe the structure of a Ca2+-activated lipid scramblase which catalyses the passive movement of lipids between the two leaflets of a lipid bilayer; the structure reveals the location of a regulatory calcium-binding site embedded within the membrane and the presence of a hydrophilic membrane-traversing cavity that is exposed to the lipid bilayer, where catalysis is likely to occur.
doi: 10.1038/nature13984
The X-ray crystal structure of a eukaryotic Ca2+-activated chloride channel, BEST1, and its function in liposomes are described; the structure shows that Ca2+ binds to the cytosolic region of this pentameric channel and reveals that the pore is approximately 95 Å long with at least 15 distinct anion-binding sites.
doi: 10.1038/nature13913
Observations of emission and absorption lines of the deuterated trihydrogen cation (H2D+) from a dense interstellar cloud core, combined with chemical modelling, reveal that the core needed at least one million years to form Sun-like stars.
doi: 10.1038/nature13924
A mechanical crack-based sensor inspired by the mechanism spiders use to sense minute variations in stress offers ultrahigh sensitivity to pressure and vibration and can easily be mounted on human skin for the purposes of speech recognition and the monitoring of physiological signals.
doi: 10.1038/nature14002
Measurements show that monolayers of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride are unexpectedly highly permeable to thermal protons and that their conductivity rapidly increases with temperature, but that no proton transport is detected for few-layer crystals.
doi: 10.1038/nature14015
Gas hydrates are ice-like solids that have guest species encaged within a crystalline water framework, making the empty hydrate a natural — though long assumed to be inaccessible — point of reference; it is now shown that several days of continuous vacuum pumping removes all guests from neon hydrate, and the physical properties of the empty hydrate have been determined.
doi: 10.1038/nature14014
Gas hydrates are ice-like solids that have guest species encaged within a crystalline water framework, making the empty hydrate a natural — though long assumed to be inaccessible — point of reference; it is now shown that several days of continuous vacuum pumping removes all guests from neon hydrate, and the physical properties of the empty hydrate have been determined.
doi: 10.1038/nature13971
Spheroidal microfossils from the Ediacaran Doushantuo phosphorites show clear signs of cell differentiation, programmed cell death, and separation between soma and germline, and seem to represent a hitherto unknown experiment in multicellular life like nothing on Earth today.
doi: 10.1038/nature13766
The authors show that two primate-specific genes encoding KRAB domain containing zinc finger proteins, ZNF91 and ZNF93, have evolved during the last 25 million years to repress retrotransposon families that emerged during this time period; according to the new data KZNF gene expansion limits the activity of newly emerged retrotransposons, which subsequently mutate to evade repression.
doi: 10.1038/nature13760
Pstpip2-mutant mice fed a high-fat diet are protected against inflammatory bone disease and bone erosion; this protection is associated with reductions in intestinal Prevotella levels and pro-IL-1β expression, and is dependent on the deletion of both caspases 1 and 8.
doi: 10.1038/nature13788
CsgG and CgsE form an encaging translocon for selective, iterative diffusion of curli subunits across the non-energized bacterial outer membrane.
doi: 10.1038/nature13768
Inactivation of the S1PR2–Gα13–ARHGEF1 signalling pathway in mice allows Akt activation and promotes dissemination of germinal centre B cells, consistent with a role of function-disrupting mutations in the systemic dissemination of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.
doi: 10.1038/nature13765
A new mechanism is identified for correct placement of the division machinery in Streptococcus pneumoniae that relies on the novel factor MapZ to form ring structures at the cell equator; these structures move apart as the cell elongates, acting as permanent markers of division sites.
doi: 10.1038/nature13966
In the presence of a short DNA oligonucleotide containing a protospacer adjacent motif, a guide-RNA-programmed Cas9 is able to specifically bind and/or cleave single-stranded RNA—this system can be used to isolate specific endogenous RNA transcripts from a cell lysate without any tag or modification.
doi: 10.1038/nature13769
A conserved tyrosine residue, Tyr 57, of histone H2A is phosphorylated by an unsuspected tyrosine kinase activity of casein kinase 2, influencing a series of histone marks associated with active transcription and regulating transcription elongation.
doi: 10.1038/nature13736
The interplay of histone acetylation and RNA polymerase II activity is investigated using fluorescence microscopy; acetylation of H3 at Lys 27 enhances the recruitment of a transcriptional activator and accelerates the transition of RNA polymerase II from initiation to elongation, thus indicating that histone acetylation has a causal effect on two distinct steps in transcription activation.
doi: 10.1038/nature13714
