Editorials
Epidemic of painkiller addiction and overdoses in the United States needs a wide-ranging response.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-07657-z
New laws that promote centuries-old herbal remedies are a backwards step for China. Only controlled clinical trials can satisfy concerns.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-07650-6
Researchers join those donning headphones to cope with open-plan chatter.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-07617-7
News
Researchers funded by the US military are developing appliances to record neural activity and automatically stimulate the brain to treat mental illness.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2017.23031
Expanded genetic alphabet could allow for the production of new protein-based drugs.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2017.23040
Long-awaited industrial strategy pins hopes on commercial gains from research.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2017.23043
Scientists fear plans to abandon clinical trials of centuries-old remedies will put people at risk.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2017.23038
News Features
Plans to build ‘exascale’ machines are moving forward, but still face major technological challenges.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-07523-y
News & Views
The way in which chromosomes come together within a single nucleus after cell division has now been shown to involve a
small DNA-binding protein named BAF, which might help to join chromosomes with one another.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-07439-7
Quantum-computing devices can be more powerful than their classical counterparts, but controlling large quantum systems is difficult. Two studies report work that overcomes this challenge.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-07438-8
Analyses in mice suggest that dietary salt increases blood pressure partly by affecting some of the microbes that inhabit the gut. The implications of this work for hypertension warrant further study in humans.
doi: 10.1038/nature24760
A system for monitoring a person’s vital signs — such as their blood pressure and heart rate — offers many advantages over currently used technologies, including enhanced sensing capabilities, comfort and convenience.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-07434-y
A study of 64 archaeological sites across four continents shows that the growth of agricultural and political systems provoked economic disparities, more so in Eurasia than in North America.
doi: 10.1038/nature24758
Rhodium catalysts have been developed that can be tuned to produce two different products from methane. The findings could aid the development of industrial processes that exploit this abundant resource.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-07437-9
The energy source that drives vesicle fusion with a target organelle in vivo has been unclear. It emerges that proteins that tether fusing structures together also decrease the energy needed for the final fusion step.
doi: 10.1038/nature24754
Articles
Programmable quantum simulations of many-body systems are demonstrated using a reconfigurable array of 51 individually trapped cold atoms with strong, coherent interactions controlled via excitation to Rydberg states.
doi: 10.1038/nature24622
High salt intake changed the gut microbiome and increased TH17 cell numbers in mice, and reduced intestinal survival of Lactobacillus species, increased the number of TH17 cells and increased blood pressure in humans.
doi: 10.1038/nature24628
BRCA1, but not BRCA2, suppresses the formation of tandem duplications at stalled replication forks in primary mammalian cells.
doi: 10.1038/nature24477
Letters
IceCube has measured the absorption of atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos in the Earth, and found that the interaction cross-section of multi-TeV neutrinos is within 50 per cent of the predictions of the standard model.
doi: 10.1038/nature24459
Many-body dynamical phases in an Ising-like quantum spin model with long-range interactions are observed by measuring correlations in single shots, using a quantum simulator composed of 53 qubits.
doi: 10.1038/nature24654
Single-site isolated rhodium species anchored on zeolites or titanium dioxide are shown to catalyse the direct conversion of methane to methanol and acetic acid, using oxygen and carbon monoxide under mild conditions.
doi: 10.1038/nature24640
The functionalization of specific inert C–H bonds avoids the need for functional groups in organic synthesis and here the challenges of this approach are overcome using a dirhodium catalyst that is capable of C–H bond site-selectivity.
doi: 10.1038/nature24641
Halogen abundances in chondrites are 6 to 37 times lower than previously reported, which is consistent with the low abundances of these elements found in Earth.
doi: 10.1038/nature24625
Analyses of house-size distributions in the Old and New World showed that wealth disparities increased with the domestication of plants and animals and with increased sociopolitical scale.
doi: 10.1038/nature24646
Longitudinal and circular muscle fibres have distinct regulatory roles during planarian regeneration.
doi: 10.1038/nature24660
Sperm-activated lysosomes enhance proteostasis in nematode oocytes just before fertilization; this could prevent transmission of damaged proteins to the next generation and may explain the immortality of the germ-cell lineage.
doi: 10.1038/nature24620
Tethering proteins, known to mediate initial recognition and attachment during membrane fusion, are essential for driving the transition from the hemifused state to fusion pore formation.
doi: 10.1038/nature24469
Cancers growing in high-oxygen environments, such as lung adenocarcinomas, select for the iron–sulfur cluster synthesizing enzyme NFS1 to support malignant proliferation and to protect from oxidative damage.
doi: 10.1038/nature24637
A modified Escherichia coli is used to demonstrate that semi-synthetic organisms can use non-natural hydrophobic base pairs to genetically encode for the incorporation of non-canonical amino acids into proteins.
doi: 10.1038/nature24659
A pathway for the production of aromatic amino acid metabolites in Clostridium sporogenes is described; modulation of serum levels of these metabolites in gnotobiotic mice affects intestinal permeability and systemic immunity.
doi: 10.1038/nature24661
Cryo-electron microscopy analysis of yeast Rad26 bound to RNA polymerase II provides insight into the initiation of the transcription-coupled DNA repair mechanism in eukaryotes.
doi: 10.1038/nature24658