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Listen up p.121
Human echolocation kicks off the Nature podcast’s new series on sound science
doi: 10.1038/517121b
Human echolocation kicks off the Nature podcast’s new series on sound science
doi: 10.1038/517121b
As two new fronts in the war on disease demonstrate, creativity remains a key weapon for scientists in the hunt for drugs.
doi: 10.1038/517121a
Leading researchers hang on despite austerity, but their Herculean efforts may not be enough.
doi: 10.1038/517127a
Geneticists debate whether focus should shift from sequencing genomes to analysing function.
doi: 10.1038/517128a
Vessels used mainly for seabed surveys will expand in focus.
doi: 10.1038/517129a
Companies and clinicians turn to ketamine to treat mental-health disorder as pipeline of new drugs dries up.
doi: 10.1038/517130a
科学者や退役軍人たちによる湾岸戦争病の認知をめぐる闘いは、戦争終結から24年経った今もなお続いている。
doi: 10.1038/517132a
個人レベルでの大気汚染の監視が、小形で安価なセンサーの普及によって可能になってきた。
doi: 10.1038/517136a
沿岸海洋域が二酸化炭素のシンクとしてどの程度の働きをするのかはよく分かっていない。300万を超える観測結果に基づく推定値は、このようなシンクが考えられていたよりも小さく、高緯度域に集中していることを示唆している。
doi: 10.1038/nature14082
一部の酵素の分子拡散率は、反応を触媒する際に上昇するが、その理由は解明されていなかった。触媒反応によって生じた熱がタンパク質全体に分散し、それによって酵素分子が動かされると考えられる結果が今回得られた。
doi: 10.1038/nature14079
短期から中期的な将来に、大幅な地球温暖化を回避しながら、我々が採掘して燃料として使用できる地球の化石燃料の量はどのくらいなのだろうか。1つのモデルからその答えが得られ、このような「燃やせない」燃料がどの地域にあるかが示された。
doi: 10.1038/517150a
膀胱がんの細胞は化学療法によって死滅する際にプロスタグランジンE2を放出することが知られている。逆説的だが、この分子は生き残ったがん幹細胞の増殖を促進し、これが腫瘍の再増殖につながることが分かった。
doi: 10.1038/nature14075
最長で6時間の寿命を持つスピン系が今回明らかにされた。こうした系は、量子情報交換ネットワークの構築に使用できると考えられ、もし光学的伝送が失敗しても「量子メモリースティック」として配送できる。
doi: 10.1038/517153a
損傷を受けた後の肝臓再生にどの種類の細胞が関わっているのかについて、これまでに得られている証拠は相反するものだった。肝臓が損傷を受けると、肝細胞から管様の前駆細胞が生じることが今回明らかになった。この知見はこれまでの相反するデータに折り合いをつけることになる。
doi: 10.1038/517155a
哺乳類の脳の神経が作り出すナビゲーションシステムが三次元コンパスとして働くという知見は、哺乳類が複雑な環境内で自身の位置をどうやって確認するのかという問題の解明に役立つ。
doi: 10.1038/nature14076
A study of freely moving bats provides new insights into how the brain encodes a three-dimensional neural compass; neurons were identified encoding the three Euler rotation angles of the head (azimuth, pitch, and roll) and recordings from these head-direction cells revealed a toroidal model of spatial orientation mapped out by cells tuned to two circular variables (azimuth × pitch).
doi: 10.1038/nature14031
Mannan, a component of yeast cell walls, is shown to be a viable food source for Bacteroides thetaiotamicron, a dominant member of the gut microbiota, which catabolizes the mannan ‘selfishly’—countering the general assumption that multiple members of the gut microbiota take a role in, and benefit from, polysaccharide catabolism.
doi: 10.1038/nature13995
This study shows that glutathione, a ubiquitous antioxidant, is also a critical signalling molecule that allosterically activates the master virulence regulator in the intracellular pathogen Listeria monocytogenes.
doi: 10.1038/nature14029
Spectrographically obtained zirconium, niobium and technetium abundances in a sample of low-mass stars of type S are used to determine that, in these stars, heavy elements are synthesized by the slow-neutron-capture process at a temperature of less than about 250 million kelvin, and that the process began one million to three million years ago.
doi: 10.1038/nature14050
An essential ingredient of future worldwide quantum communication is the generation of long-lived entangled quantum states; a coherence time of six hours is now reported for optically addressable nuclear spins in europium-doped yttrium orthosilicate.
doi: 10.1038/nature14025
A ruthenium–disulfide catalyst is presented that is effective in generating compounds of medical and industrial utility (alcohols that contain a phenol, an aldehyde, or a carboxylic acid) by room-temperature, inexpensive, high-yielding cross-metathesis.
doi: 10.1038/nature14061
To limit global warming to a rise of 2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels, we cannot use all of our fossil fuel reserves; here an integrated assessment model shows that this temperature limit implies that we must leave unused a third of our oil reserves, half of our gas reserves and over 80 per cent of our coal reserves during the next 40 years, and indicates where these are geographically located.
doi: 10.1038/nature14016
Seismicity and ground deformation measurements show how a recent segmented dyke intrusion in the Bárðarbunga volcanic system in Iceland grew laterally for 45 kilometres over 14 days; dyke opening and seismicity were focused at the most distal segment, where lateral dyke growth with segment barrier breaking by pressure build-up occurred.
doi: 10.1038/nature14111
The discovery of claspers in fossils of antiarch placoderms, an ancient group of armoured fish, suggests that internal fertilization was the ancestral type of reproduction for all jawed vertebrates: this contrasts with the current understanding that external fertilization must be the ancestral state.
doi: 10.1038/nature13825
In vivo evidence for the existence of regenerative dendritic events in place cell dendrites of awake, behaving mice suggests an active role for dendritic spikes in building the representation of space in the hippocampus.
doi: 10.1038/nature13871
A fraction of the intestinal microbiota as precise as a single bacterial species confers infection resistance by synthesizing Clostridium difficult-inhibiting metabolites from host-derived bile salts.
doi: 10.1038/nature13828
Using human bladder cancer xenograft models, a new mechanism involving an active proliferative response of cancer stem cells to chemotherapy-induced damage is shown, driven by prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) release in a manner similar to PGE2-induced wound repair; pharmacological inhibition of the PGE2/COX2 axis by celecoxib attenuates chemoresistance, suggesting a possible adjunctive therapy for bladder carcinomas.
doi: 10.1038/nature14034
Interactions between T and B cells in the germinal centre are brief but involve extensive cell-surface contact in an entangled mode; ICOSL promotes T–B entanglement and B-cell acquisition of CD40L, which drives B cells to upregulate ICOSL, thus forming an intercellular feed-forward loop that is required for efficient positive selection and development of the bone marrow plasma cell compartment.
doi: 10.1038/nature13803
Unlike the limited post-injury neuronal regeneration in humans, severed axons in C. elegant can regenerate through a cellular fusion mechanism; this study identifies the molecular basis for this process which includes phosphatidylserine recognition and a role for specific molecules that also act in apoptosis.
doi: 10.1038/nature14102
Structural and biochemical approaches are used to show how RNF146 activity is allosterically regulated by the binding of poly(ADP-ribose) ligand, and how substrate specificity is achieved with protein poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation and ubiquitination occurring in the same protein complex.
doi: 10.1038/nature13826
It has been traditionally assumed that the heat released during a single enzymatic catalytic event does not perturb the enzyme in any way; however, here single-molecule fluorescence correlation spectroscopy is used to show that, for enzymes that catalyse chemical reactions with large reaction enthalpies, the heat released at the protein's active site during catalysis transiently displaces the protein's centre-of-mass, essentially giving rise to a recoil effect that propels the enzyme.
doi: 10.1038/nature14043
