人新世を新しい地質年代単位と認めるかどうかを層序学者が決定するには、もう少し時間が必要だ。
All in good time p.129
Stratigraphers have yet to decide whether the Anthropocene is a new unit of geological time.
doi: 10.1038/519129b
Stratigraphers have yet to decide whether the Anthropocene is a new unit of geological time.
doi: 10.1038/519129b
Political interference in the selection process for the headquarters of the Square Kilometre Array should not go unchallenged.
doi: 10.1038/519129a
As the first true science journal marks 350 years, we must defend scholarly pursuits.
doi: 10.1038/519130a
But surveillance of avian influenza viruses is patchy and slow.
doi: 10.1038/519137a
National Science Foundation under pressure from lawmakers to revise its agenda.
doi: 10.1038/519138a
Geneticists meet to work out why the rate of change in the genome is so hard to pin down.
doi: 10.1038/519139a
Commercial hunting wiped out almost three million animals last century.
doi: 10.1038/519140a
As the Large Hadron Collider switches on again, a graphical guide to what it might find.
doi: 10.1038/519142a
人類が地球に与えた影響を認め、新しい地質年代として区分しようという機運が高まっているが、その陰には激しい議論がある。
doi: 10.1038/519144a
世界各地で血なまぐさい紛争が起こり、長期化しているが、複雑性科学を通じて紛争の解決策を見いだそうとする研究者がいる。
doi: 10.1038/19148a
土星の衛星であるエンセラダスに由来するケイ素に富んだ粒子が見つかったことから、エンセラダス内部では現在、岩石熱水相互作用が起こっていると考えられる。これは地球以外の場所で現在起こっている熱水活動を示す初めての証拠である。
doi: 10.1038/519162a
分泌型酵素であるNotumが、Wntタンパク質に結合している脂質で、Wnt受容体タンパク質の活性化に必要とされるものを取り除き、それによってWntシグナル伝達経路を阻害していることが分かった。
doi: 10.1038/nature14208
進化中の集団に含まれる数十万個に及ぶ酵母細胞の子孫を追跡するシステムが開発され、数千の細胞が集団全体の適応度の初期の上昇に関わっていることが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature14207
細菌はCRISPR–Cas系を使ってウイルスに対する免疫を生じさせる。このような系がウイルスのDNA断片を選び出して、細菌のDNAに組み込み、侵入者に関する記憶とする仕組みが、今回詳しく解明された。
doi: 10.1038/nature14204
気候シミュレーションによって、黒色炭素粒子のような光を吸収する粒子の気候に対する影響をくまなく評価する際には、こうした粒子と大気中での対流過程および雲過程の間の相互作用を考慮する必要があることが示唆された。
doi: 10.1038/519167a
アフリカハイギョの研究から、この生物には音によって生じる圧力波を検知する未発達の能力があることが明らかになった。この知見は、四肢と指を持つ最初の脊椎動物である初期四肢類で聴力がどのようにして生じたのかについて解明を進めるものだ。
doi: 10.1038/519168a
Formal criteria must be met to define a new human-driven epoch; the geological evidence appears to do so, with 1610 and 1964 both likely to satisfy the requirements for the start of the Anthropocene.
doi: 10.1038/nature14258
Random DNA barcodes were used to simultaneously track hundreds of thousands of lineages in large cell populations, revealing deterministic dynamics early in their evolution.
doi: 10.1038/nature14279
The biochemical activity of Notum as a carboxylesterase that removes an essential lipid moiety from Wnt proteins is uncovered; the interaction of Notum with glypicans is required to ensure localization at the cell surface, and Notum may provide a new target for therapeutic development in diseases with defective Wnt signalling.
doi: 10.1038/nature14259
The bacterial CRISPR/Cas system acquires short phage sequences known as spacers that integrate between CRISPR repeats and constitute a record of phage infection; this study shows that the Cas1–Cas2 complex is the minimal machinery required for spacer acquisition and the complex integrates oligonucleotide DNA substrates into acceptor DNA in a manner similar to retroviral integrases and DNA transposases with Cas 1 as the catalytic subunit and Cas2 acting to increase integration activity.
doi: 10.1038/nature14237
Bacterial CRISPR–Cas loci acquire short phage sequences called spacers that integrate between DNA repeats and how these viral sequences are chosen was unknown; in these studies of the type II CRISPR–Cas system of Streptococcus pyogenes, the Cas9 nuclease known to inactivate invading viral DNA was found to be required for the selection of functional spacers during CRISPR immunity.
doi: 10.1038/nature14245
Observations confirm models of galaxy cooling in which cold clouds precipitate out of hot gas via thermal instability, and the precipitation threshold is incorporated into a theoretical framework that explains how precipitation and thermal conduction regulate star formation.
doi: 10.1038/nature14167
Analysis of silicon-rich, nanometre-sized dust particles near Saturn shows them to consist of silica, which was initially embedded in icy grains emitted from Enceladus’ subsurface waters and released by sputter erosion in Saturn’s E ring; their properties indicate their ongoing formation and transport by high-temperature hydrothermal reactions from the ocean floor and up into the plume of Enceladus.
doi: 10.1038/nature14262
Ultracold atomic gases in optical lattices potentially offer simulations of condensed-matter phenomena beyond what theory and computations can access; compensated optical lattice techniques applied to the Hubbard model now enable unprecedented low temperatures to be reached for fermions — only 1.4 times that of the antiferromagnetic phase transition, approaching the limits of present modelling techniques.
doi: 10.1038/nature14223
Atmospheric warming may reduce CO2 emissions from hardwater lakes by reducing the duration of ice cover, increasing lake water pH and favouring CO2 sequestration.
doi: 10.1038/nature14172
Studies of gene-expression levels in embryos of Caenorhabditis elegant and of other phyla reveal the timing and location of expression of all genes and support a model in which the endoderm program dates back to the origin of multicellularity while the ectoderm originated as a secondary germ layer freed from ancestral feeding functions.
doi: 10.1038/nature13996
Up to half of children with severe developmental disorders of probable genetic origin remain without a genetic diagnosis; here, in a systematic and nationwide study of 1,133 children with severe, undiagnosed developmental disorders, and their parents, exome sequencing and array-based detection of chromosomal rearrangements reveals novel genes causing developmental disorders, increasing the proportion of children that can now be diagnosed to 31%.
doi: 10.1038/nature14135
Population recordings reveal that neurons in the mouse superior colliculus are grouped according to their preferred orientations or movement axes for visual line stimuli, similar to the columnar arrangement in visual cortex of higher mammals; this functional architecture suggests that the superior colliculus samples the visual world unevenly for stimulus orientations.
doi: 10.1038/nature14103
Collective behaviour in animal groups can improve individual perception and decision-making, but the neural mechanisms involved have been hard to access in classic models for these phenomena; here it is shown that Drosophila’s olfactory responses are enhanced in groups of flies, through mechanosensory neuron-dependent touch interactions.
doi: 10.1038/nature14024
Cationic substances, including some drugs, can activate mast cells in an IgE-independent manner, leading to histamine release, inflammation and airway contraction; here, the G-protein-coupled receptor MrgprB2, the orthologue of human MRGPRX2, is shown to be the sole mast cell receptor for these substances in mice.
doi: 10.1038/nature14022
Group 2 innate lymphoid cells are shown to have a critical role in energy homeostasis by producing methionine-enkephalin peptides in response to interleukin 33, thus promoting the beiging of white adipose tissue; increased numbers of beige (also known as brown-like or brite) fat cells in white adipose tissue leads to increased energy expenditure and decreased adiposity.
doi: 10.1038/nature14115
The orexin system regulates sleep and arousal in humans, with orexin receptor antagonists becoming promising therapeutics for insomnia; now, the X-ray crystal structure of the human OX2 receptor in the presence of the insomnia drug suvorexant is solved.
doi: 10.1038/nature14035
