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Volume 526 Issue 7572

Editorials

Let’s think about cognitive bias p.163

The human brain's abit of finding what it wants to find is a key problem for research. Establishing robust methods to avoid such bias will make results more reproducible.

doi: 10.1038/526163a

Optimistic outlook p.164

In difficult times, Turkey is investing in a clutch of new scientific research centres.

doi: 10.1038/526164b

Time to get clean p.164

Formal recognition of drug pollution will help to protect humans and ecosystems.

doi: 10.1038/526164a

News

Morphing neutrinos win physics Nobel p.175

Demonstration by Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald that neutrinos oscillate between identities showed that the particles have mass.

doi: 10.1038/nature.2015.18513

News Features

News & Views

Fifteen years of interventions p.198

A comprehensive modelling effort has revealed the relative contributions of different malaria-control measures to the massive reductions in disease prevalence that have occurred in Africa between 2000 and 2015. See Article p.207

doi: 10.1038/526198a

Mediating transcription and RNA export p.199

The finding that the Mediator protein complex contributes to messenger RNA export from the nucleus in yeast adds to a growing list of roles for the complex in regulating transcriptional processes.

doi: 10.1038/526199a

Individuality sniffed out in flies p.200

The discovery that certain neurons' odour responses differ between individual fruit flies, but are consistent across the hemispheres of each fly's brain, indicates that sensory processing depends on an individual's experience. See Letter p.258

doi: 10.1038/nature15636

Antiviral action countered by Nef p.202

The HIV protein Nef is a viral 'Swiss army knife' with many functions. New work now shows how Nef increases infectivity — by inhibiting two of the host cell's antiviral proteins, SERINC3 and SERINC5. See Articles p.212 & p.218

doi: 10.1038/nature15637

Quantum dots and the Kondo effect p.203

Nanotechnology studies explore the extreme properties of strongly interacting electronic systems through conductance measurements, and probe quantum phase transitions close to absolute zero temperature. See Letters p.233 & p.237

doi: 10.1038/526203a

Surprisingly fast motions in a dust disk p.204

A recently commissioned planet-finding instrument has been used to study a young solar system around the star AU Microscopii, leading to the discovery of rapidly moving features in the dust disk around the star. See Letter p.230

doi: 10.1038/526204a

Articles

The effect of malaria control on Plasmodium falciparum in Africa between 2000 and 2015 p.207

In this study, the authors present an analysis of the malaria burden in sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2015, and quantify the effects of the interventions that have been implemented to combat the disease; they find that the prevalence of Plasmodium falciparum infection has been reduced by 50% since 2000 and the incidence of clinical disease by 40%, and that interventions have averted approximately 663 million clinical cases since 2000, with insecticide-treated bed nets being the largest contributor.

doi: 10.1038/nature15535

HIV-1 Nef promotes infection by excluding SERINC5 from virion incorporation p.212

The transmembrane protein SERINC5 is identified as a potent inhibitor of HIV-1 particle infectivity that is counteracted by Nef; Nef redirects SERINC5 from the plasma membrane to a Rab7-positive endosomal compartment, thus excluding it from HIV-1 particles, emphasizing the potential of SERINC5 as a potent anti-retroviral factor.

doi: 10.1038/nature15399

SERINC3 and SERINC5 restrict HIV-1 infectivity and are counteracted by Nef p.218

The transmembrane proteins SERINC3 and SERINC5 are identified as new restriction factors for HIV-1 replication; this restriction is counteracted by Nef and glycoGag, which prevent SERINC3 and SERINC5 from becoming incorporated into HIV-1 virions and from profoundly blocking HIV-1 infectivity, suggesting a potential new therapeutic strategy for immunodeficiency viruses.

doi: 10.1038/nature15400

Letters

Two-channel Kondo effect and renormalization flow with macroscopic quantum charge states p.233

Zero-temperature quantum phase transitions and their associated quantum critical points are believed to underpin the exotic finite-temperature behaviours of many strongly correlated electronic systems, but identifying the microscopic origins of these transitions can be challenging and controversial; Iftikhar et al. (see also the related paper by Keller et al.) show how such behaviours can be engineered into nanoelectronic quantum dots, which permit both precise experimental control of the quantum critical behaviour and its exact theoretical characterization.

doi: 10.1038/nature15384

Universal Fermi liquid crossover and quantum criticality in a mesoscopic system p.237

Zero-temperature quantum phase transitions and their associated quantum critical points are believed to underpin the exotic finite-temperature behaviours of many strongly correlated electronic systems, but identifying the microscopic origins of these transitions can be challenging and controversial; Keller et al. (see also the related paper by Iftikhar et al.) show how such behaviours can be engineered into nanoelectronic quantum dots, which permit both precise experimental control of the quantum critical behaviour and its exact theoretical characterization.

doi: 10.1038/nature15261

Sex‐specific demography and generalization of the Trivers–Willard theory p.249

The Trivers–Willard theory proposes that the sex ratio of offspring should vary with maternal condition when it has sex‐specific influences on offspring fitness. In particular, mothers in good condition in polygynous and dimorphic species are predicted to produce an excess of sons, whereas mothers in poor condition should do the opposite. Despite the elegance of the theory, support for it has been limited. Here we extend and generalize the Trivers–Willard theory to explain the disparity between predictions and observations of offspring sex ratio. In polygynous species, males typically have higher mortality rates, different age‐specific reproductive schedules and more risk‐prone life history tactics than females; however, these differences are not currently incorporated into the Trivers–Willard theory. Using two‐sex models parameterized with data from free‐living mammal populations with contrasting levels of sex differences in demography, we demonstrate how sex differences in life history traits over the entire lifespan can lead to a wide range of sex allocation tactics, and show that correlations between maternal condition and offspring sex ratio alone are insufficient to conclude that mothers adaptively adjust offspring sex ratio.

doi: 10.1038/nature14968

Plasticity-driven individualization of olfactory coding in mushroom body output neurons p.258

Neuronal representations of sensory stimuli tend to become sparse and decorrelated, with different odours giving rise to fewer neuronal spikes in rare neurons, as signal processing moves up to higher brain layers; here comprehensive recording from the Drosophila olfactory processing centre finds instead some highly correlated tuning curves that vary flexibly from animal to animal.

doi: 10.1038/nature15396

Crystal structure of human glycine receptor-α3 bound to antagonist strychnine p.277

Neurotransmitter-gated ion channels of the Cys-loop receptor family are essential mediators of fast neurotransmission throughout the nervous system and are implicated in many neurological disorders. Available X-ray structures of prokaryotic and eukaryotic Cys-loop receptors provide tremendous insights into the binding of agonists, the subsequent opening of the ion channel, and the mechanism of channel activation. Yet the mechanism of inactivation by antagonists remains unknown. Here we present a 3.0 Å X-ray structure of the human glycine receptor-α3 homopentamer in complex with a high affinity, high-specificity antagonist, strychnine. Our structure allows us to explore in detail the molecular recognition of antagonists. Comparisons with previous structures reveal a mechanism for antagonist-induced inactivation of Cys-loop receptors, involving an expansion of the orthosteric binding site in the extracellular domain that is coupled to closure of the ion pore in the transmembrane domain.

doi: 10.1038/nature14972