The decision to use the Montreal Protocol to reduce the impact of refrigerants on global warming is a step forward ahead of the Paris climate summit.
doi: 10.1038/527133a
Proposals for UK higher education contain some positive points amid the financial gloom.
doi: 10.1038/527133b
Conflict at the Arecibo Observatory highlights the need for funders to become more flexible.
doi: 10.1038/527134a
US President Barack Obama rejects pipeline to transport oil from Canada's tar sands to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18751
Departure of long-term advocate adds to woes of the financially troubled radio telescope.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18745
A flat budget is one of several possible outcomes that worry researchers.
doi: 10.1038/527144a
Multimillion-dollar Breakthrough awards announce winners in physics, life sciences and mathematics.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18746
New prime minister Justin Trudeau gives research a higher profile.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18739
One-year-old girl treated as plans to inject DNA-cutting technology directly into patients' bodies take shape.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18737
Twitterなどのソーシャルメディアが、科学者の性差別問題の拡散に役立っている。
doi: 10.1038/527148a
異種移植研究は長きにわたって停滞してきたが、遺伝子編集技術によってその状況が一変しつつある。
doi: 10.1038/527152a
細菌の酵素であるAlkDの時間分解分子スナップショットによって、DNA中の損傷を受けた塩基を識別し除去するための前例のない機序が明らかになった。これは細胞生物学とがん治療に関わりがある。
doi: 10.1038/nature15646
我々の太陽から宇宙的スケールで近い所に、地球に似たサイズの岩石惑星が見つかった。この惑星は、親星のサイズが小さいことや近傍にあることから、惑星大気の研究に適していると考えられている。
doi: 10.1038/527169a
活性酸素種はストレスを引き起こす分子で、がんの発症を促進すると見なされてきた。だが、酸化ストレスはがんの別の部位への拡散を妨げるために有益にもなり得ることを示す新たな証拠が、今回得られた。
doi: 10.1038/nature15644
メキシコのチクシュル－ブでの隕石衝突から生じた地震波は、地球の裏側での溶岩の噴出率を倍にしたことを示唆する新しい証拠が得られた。この組み合わせが、白亜紀末期の大量絶滅につながったと考えられる。
doi: 10.1038/527172a
気候変動は大型魚類の北極圏海洋環境への移動を引き起こしつつある。あるネットワーク解析から、このような魚が幅広い種類の餌を食べるジェネラリストという食性を持つことで、既存の食物網に新たなリンクが加わり、生物多様性や食物網の安定性を変化させる可能性があることが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature16311
多孔性固体は化学工業で数多くの使い道があるため、新しい世代のものが次々と開発されてきた。今回、多孔性が永続的に維持される液体という新世代材料の開発が報告された。
doi: 10.1038/527174a
産業革命以前の3つの社会における睡眠パターンの定量的研究から、我々の本来的な睡眠時間は7時間程度であること、また睡眠周期は明暗周期だけでなく環境温度によっても決まってくることが示された。
doi: 10.1038/527176a
経済的生産性への気温の影響のミクロとマクロのレベルでの不一致を解消させる試みの1つで、気候変動が原因の全球の経済的損失は、以前の予測よりずっと大きくなるという推測がなされた。
doi: 10.1038/nature15643
Activation of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex–basomedial amygdala pathway is shown to suppress anxiety and fear-related freezing in mice, thus identifying the basomedial amygdala (and not intercalated cells, as posited by earlier models) as a novel target of top-down control.
doi: 10.1038/nature15698
Human melanoma cells grown in mice experience high levels of oxidative stress in the bloodstream such that few metastasizing cells survive to form tumours; the rare melanoma cells that successfully metastasize undergo metabolic changes that increase their capacity to withstand this stress, and antioxidant treatments increase metastasis formation by human melanoma cells, while inhibiting antioxidant pathways had the reverse effect.
doi: 10.1038/nature15726
A CRISPR-Cas9 approach is used to perform saturating mutagenesis of the human and mouse BCL11A enhancers, producing a map that reveals critical regions and specific vulnerabilities; BCL11A enhancer disruption is validated by CRISPR-Cas9 as a therapeutic strategy for inducing fetal haemoglobin by applying it in both mice and primary human erythroblast cells.
doi: 10.1038/nature15521
The structure of the full-length Slo2.2 Na+-activated K+ channel is determined by cryo-electron microscopy, revealing features that explain the high conductance and gating mechanism of the Slo K+ channel family.
doi: 10.1038/nature14958
A low-mass star that is just 12 parsecs away from Earth is shown to be transited by an Earth-sized planet, GJ 1132b, which probably has a rock/iron composition and might support a substantial atmosphere.
doi: 10.1038/nature15762
Spin-entangled states between two neutral atoms in different optical tweezers are prepared by combining them in the same optical tweezer and allowing for controlled interactions, after which the particles are dynamically separated in space and their entanglement is maintained.
doi: 10.1038/nature16073
The Hall effect is sometimes encountered in ferromagnetic materials in the absence of an external magnetic field; this so-called anomalous Hall effect is now reported in the antiferromagnetic material Mn3Sn, where it occurs as a consequence of the unusual and complex arrangement of the constituent magnetic moments.
doi: 10.1038/nature15723
Porous materials find use in applications such as gas separation, drug delivery and energy storage, but have hitherto been solid rather than liquid; now a combination of cage molecules and a crown-ether solvent that cannot enter the cage molecules is used to create a porous liquid that can solubilize methane gas better than non-porous liquids.
doi: 10.1038/nature16072
High-resolution three-dimensional thermomechanical simulations of Earth's lithosphere indicate that mantle plumes could have initiated the first subduction zones, but only in the hotter early Earth for old oceanic plates.
doi: 10.1038/nature15752
Detection of molecular biomarkers characteristic of beeswax in pottery vessels at archaeological sites reveals that humans have exploited bee products (such as beeswax and honey) at least 9,000 years ago since the beginnings of agriculture.
doi: 10.1038/nature15757
Salamanders are the only tetrapod that can fully regenerate their limbs and tail, a capacity that might be linked to their unique preaxial mode of limb development; here, data from fossils reveal the existence of preaxial polarity in various amphibians from the Carboniferous and Permian periods, suggesting that salamander-like regeneration is an ancient feature of tetrapods that was subsequently lost at least once in the lineage leading to amniotes.
doi: 10.1038/nature15397
Economic productivity is shown to peak at an annual average temperature of 13 °C and decline at high temperatures, indicating that climate change is expected to lower global incomes more than 20% by 2100.
doi: 10.1038/nature15725
In addition to its role in olfaction, Olfr78 is involved in sensing hypoxia.
doi: 10.1038/nature15721
The drug daclatasvir (DCV), which inhibits the hepatitis C virus (HCV) non-structural protein 5A (NS5A), can successfully reduce viral load in patients; here, a combination of DCV and an NS5A analogue is shown to enhance DCV potency on multiple genotypes and overcome resistance in vitro and in a mouse model.
doi: 10.1038/nature15711
Treating ovarian cancer in mouse models with inhibitors for the epigenetic regulators EZH2 and DNMT1 increases the expression of the inflammatory chemokines CXCL9 and CXCL10, resulting in enhanced tumour infiltration by effector T cells, and slowed tumour progression.
doi: 10.1038/nature15520
Crystal structures of the DNA glycosylase AlkD with DNA containing various modified bases show that neither substrate recognition nor catalysis use a base-flipping mechanism; instead, AlkD scans the phosphodeoxyribose backbone for increased cationic charge imparted by the alkylated base, and then uses the positive charge to facilitate cleavage of the glycosidic bond, thus explaining the specificity of AlkD for cationic lesions.
doi: 10.1038/nature15728
The X-ray crystal structure is presented of a seven-transmembrane eukaryotic SWEET glucose transporter, revealing the link between seven-transmembrane eukaryotic SWEETs and their three-transmembrane bacterial homologues and providing insight into eukaryotic sugar transport mechanisms.
doi: 10.1038/nature15391
