Critics of the European Human Brain Project were justified, says an independent report on the project. Both its governance and its scientific direction need to be adjusted.
doi: 10.1038/519389a
The UK research assessment should inspire everybody to reward excellent societal impacts.
doi: 10.1038/519389b
The next few years will see NASA missions probe the innermost secrets of gas giants.
doi: 10.1038/519390a
Nature watches a porcine autopsy that will help create a powerful animal model of diabetes.
doi: 10.1038/519397a
Ten-year US-led project seeks to plug gaps in global-warming simulations.
doi: 10.1038/519398a
Encrypted analysis of data in the cloud would allow secure access to sensitive information.
doi: 10.1038/519400a
Early data from Dawn spacecraft bring scientists closer to clearing up mystery about dwarf planet.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.17139
米国の助成機関が、シリコンバレーの起業家に対し、新生バイオメディカル企業を成功させるための集中訓練プログラムを試みている。
doi: 10.1038/519402a
サイクリックGMP分子は心不全から心臓を保護することが示されており、PDE9酵素の阻害はサイクリックGMPの分解を防止する。この知見はPDE9の阻害が心不全治療の薬剤標的となる可能性を示している。
doi: 10.1038/nature14373
グラフェンシートの間に挟まれた1 nm未満の厚さの氷の薄膜で、正方格子構造が観察された。この構造はバルクの氷で広く生じる六方晶系構造とは全く異なるものである。
doi: 10.1038/519417a
染色体はゲノムの完全性を確保するために、細胞分裂の周期ごとに忠実に複製されなければならない。酵母でのDNA複製開始をin vitroで再構築することで、この基本的な過程の仕組みを調べることが可能になる。
doi: 10.1038/519418a
トビイロウンカという名前のイネの害虫は環境からの合図に応じて2種類の形態のどちらかを選ぶことができる。2種類のインスリン受容体タンパク質が、形態を切り替える分子スイッチとして働いていることが明らかになってきた。
doi: 10.1038/519420a
2枚の鏡の間に閉じ込められた約3000個の原子からなる集団と1個の光子の相互作用の解析から、多原子の量子エンタングルメントの形態の1つが明らかになった。この形態に相当するものは古典力学では存在しない。
doi: 10.1038/519420b
遺伝学的に同じ細胞であっても多数の性質が異なっている場合がある。同じ系統に属する細胞の間に見られる相関関係の研究によって、母細胞と娘細胞の間の相関性が、いとこの間柄にある細胞間での相関性よりも低いように見えるという、一見矛盾しているような遺伝法則が説明された。
doi: 10.1038/nature14210
質量降着中の超大質量ブラックホールが中心にある明るい銀河の天文学的観測から、このような存在がガスを放射して銀河全体に送り出す仕組みが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/519423a
A new MAP4K4–moesin–talin–β1-integrin pathway regulating endothelial cell motility was discovered through chemical and siRNA screens; loss of Map4k4 or inhibition of MAP4K4 kinase activity altered the sprout morphology of endothelial cells during angiogenesis by blocking moesin phosphorylation, which regulates the disassembly of focal adhesions, demonstrating that this pathway is involved in both normal and pathological angiogenesis.
doi: 10.1038/nature14323
It has long been a goal to reconstitute eukaryotic DNA replication; here a purified in vitro system from budding yeast containing 16 factors, themselves composed of 42 polypeptides, fulfils the staged process of origin-dependent initiation, including its regulation by kinases.
doi: 10.1038/nature14285
Observations of an ultrafast accretion-disk wind in the X-ray spectrum of a nearby ultraluminous infrared galaxy support the theory that such winds affect the evolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies.
doi: 10.1038/nature14261
The detection of a single photon from a laser interacting with an atomic ensemble is shown to produce entanglement of almost 3,000 atoms; in contrast to previous production of multi-atom entanglement, the highly non-classical nature of the present entangled state is verified by measurement of a negative quasiprobability distribution.
doi: 10.1038/nature14293
The structure of the low-dimensional water confined in hydrophobic pores is shown, using electron microscopy and supported by molecular dynamics simulations, to be ‘square ice’, which does not have the conventional tetrahedral hydrogen bonding.
doi: 10.1038/nature14295
Droplets of mixed water and propylene glycol deposited on clean glass exhibit a contact angle but do not suffer from contact line pinning; their motion can be controlled by the vapour emitted from neighbouring droplets to create a variety of autonomous fluidic machines with integrated sensing and motility capabilities.
doi: 10.1038/nature14272
An increase in the frequency of organized deep convection—essentially a large aggregation of heavily precipitating and largely stratiform clouds—is behind most of the recent increases in tropical precipitation.
doi: 10.1038/nature14339
Inhibiting projections from the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus to a specific division of the amygdala prevents fear conditioning in mice, indicating an important role for the thalamus–amygdala circuit in establishing and maintaining fear responses.
doi: 10.1038/nature13978
Dissociating early from late fear memory retrieval in rats reveals that while the projection from the prelimbic prefrontal cortex to the amygdala is critical for fear memory retrieval at early time points, a separate circuit involving the paraventricular region of the dorsal midline thalamus is critical for fear memory retrieval at late time points, establishing the paraventricular region as a critical maintenance/retrieval node during the transition from short- to long-term fear memory.
doi: 10.1038/nature14030
Some insects have alternative wing morphs, one that is long-winged and changes habitat to follow resources, and one that is short-winged and flightless but has high fertility; here, the molecular details of this switch are revealed, with opposite effects of two insulin receptors controlling the development of different wing morphs in the planthopper.
doi: 10.1038/nature14286
Precise measurement of cell-cycle duration in thousands of mammalian cells reveals correlations among cousin cells, but no such correlations between mother and daughter cells; recapitulating this finding using a deterministic model suggests that observed cellular heterogeneities in cell-cycle duration may be attributable to deterministic processes, and eventually be controlled.
doi: 10.1038/nature14318
The inhibition, in mice, of the phosphodiesterase PDE9A, which specifically regulates natriuretic-peptide-coupled cGMP signalling, is independent of nitric oxide and is upregulated in failing human hearts, and can reverse pre-established stress-induced heart disease.
doi: 10.1038/nature14332
The mTORC1 protein kinase complex integrates nutrient and growth stimuli to modulate signalling pathways that regulate cellular metabolism and physiology, but the molecular nature of the amino acid sensing mechanism at the lysosome is unknown; here, an orphan member of the human solute carrier group of proteins, SLC38A9, is shown to be an integral component of the lysosomal machinery that can directly sense amino acids and activate mTORC1.
doi: 10.1038/nature14107
The addition of the N6-methyladenosine (m6A) mark to primary microRNAs by METTL3 in mammalian cells is found to promote the recognition of these microRNA precursors by DGCR8, a component of the microprocessor complex.
doi: 10.1038/nature14281
The single-stranded nature of RNAs synthesized in the cell gives them great scope to form different structures, but current methods to measure RNA structure in vivo are limited; now, a new methodology allows researchers to examine all four nucleotides in mouse embryonic stem cells.
doi: 10.1038/nature14263
A method, termed hiCLIP, has been developed to determine the RNA duplexes bound by RNA-binding proteins, revealing an unforeseen prevalence of long-range duplexes in 3′ untranslated regions (UTRs), and a decreased incidence of SNPs in duplex-forming regions; the results also show that RNA structure is able to regulate gene expression.
doi: 10.1038/nature14280
