科学報道には、警戒心、地道な確認、国際的視野が重要であり、疑惑のiPS治療騒動では、日本のメディアの責任も大きい。
Bad press
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個々の細胞のDNAを解読するという方法により、ヒトを全体像としてとらえる見方に変化が生じている。
doi: 10.1038/491027a
アフリカの貧困国エリトリアの医学が急速な進歩を見せたが、国際協力に対する政府の厳しい締め付けが、それを打ち砕いた。
doi: 10.1038/491024a
粒子表面上の「くっつく」パッチの位置を制御してやれば、分子内の原子間結合を模倣した集合体を形成することができる。この方法は、より小さな構成要素を使って組み立て可能な構造のレパートリーを大きく広げることになる。
doi: 10.1038/491042a
2種類の農業用殺虫剤のマルハナバチへの影響を明らかにした研究は、こうした影響が複数種の生物に及ぶことことや、昆虫の化学物質への暴露の度合いを決める因子の複雑な連鎖を考慮するリスク評価の必要性をはっきりと示している。
doi: 10.1038/nature11637
小惑星表面に見られる経年変化の一部が、太陽系の炭素に富んだ破片が惑星間に雨のように降り注いでいることが原因である可能性はあるだろうか。Dawn宇宙探査機による観測で、この答えはイエスであることが示された。
doi: 10.1038/491045a
麻酔薬がどうやって催眠効果をもたらすのかは、正確にはわかっていない。マウスでの研究で、こうした薬剤の1つであるイソフルランが脳内の睡眠を促進するニューロンの活性化によって機能していることが示唆された。
doi: 10.1038/491046a
カーボンナノチューブは光と強く相互作用する性質があり、そのためにホログラムデバイスの理想的な構成要素となる。こうしたデバイスが実現したことは、ホログラフィーに新しい機会を開くものとなろう。
doi: 10.1038/491047a
地球上の生命の起源は、まだ解明されていない大きな謎の1つである。新たな研究で、分子間の協力が、無生物である化学的物質が生物学的物質へ変わったことの一因となった可能性が示唆された。
doi: 10.1038/nature11635
The ability to design and assemble three-dimensional structures from colloidal particles is limited by the absence of specific directional bonds. As a result, complex or low-coordination structures, common in atomic and molecular systems, are rare in the colloidal domain. Here we demonstrate a general method for creating the colloidal analogues of atoms with valence: colloidal particles with chemically distinct surface patches that imitate hybridized atomic orbitals, including sp, sp
doi: 10.1038/nature11564
By characterizing the geographic and functional spectrum of human genetic variation, the 1000 Genomes Project aims to build a resource to help to understand the genetic contribution to disease. Here we describe the genomes of 1,092 individuals from 14 populations, constructed using a combination of low-coverage whole-genome and exome sequencing. By developing methods to integrate information across several algorithms and diverse data sources, we provide a validated haplotype map of 38 million single nucleotide polymorphisms, 1.4 million short insertions and deletions, and more than 14,000 larger deletions. We show that individuals from different populations carry different profiles of rare and common variants, and that low-frequency variants show substantial geographic differentiation, which is further increased by the action of purifying selection. We show that evolutionary conservation and coding consequence are key determinants of the strength of purifying selection, that rare-variant load varies substantially across biological pathways, and that each individual contains hundreds of rare non-coding variants at conserved sites, such as motif-disrupting changes in transcription-factor-binding sites. This resource, which captures up to 98% of accessible single nucleotide polymorphisms at a frequency of 1% in related populations, enables analysis of common and low-frequency variants in individuals from diverse, including admixed, populations.
doi: 10.1038/nature11632
The primary function of the thyroid gland is to metabolize iodide by synthesizing thyroid hormones, which are critical regulators of growth, development and metabolism in almost all tissues. So far, research on thyroid morphogenesis has been missing an efficient stem-cell model system that allows for the in vitro recapitulation of the molecular and morphogenic events regulating thyroid follicular-cell differentiation and subsequent assembly into functional thyroid follicles. Here we report that a transient overexpression of the transcription factors NKX2-1 and PAX8 is sufficient to direct mouse embryonic stem-cell differentiation into thyroid follicular cells that organize into three-dimensional follicular structures when treated with thyrotropin. These in vitro-derived follicles showed appreciable iodide organification activity. Importantly, when grafted in vivo into athyroid mice, these follicles rescued thyroid hormone plasma levels and promoted subsequent symptomatic recovery. Thus, mouse embryonic stem cells can be induced to differentiate into thyroid follicular cells in vitro and generate functional thyroid tissue.
doi: 10.1038/nature11525
The origins of life on Earth required the establishment of self-replicating chemical systems capable of maintaining and evolving biological information. In an RNA world, single self-replicating RNAs would have faced the extreme challenge of possessing a mutation rate low enough both to sustain their own information and to compete successfully against molecular parasites with limited evolvability. Thus theoretical analyses suggest that networks of interacting molecules were more likely to develop and sustain life-like behaviour. Here we show that mixtures of RNA fragments that self-assemble into self-replicating ribozymes spontaneously form cooperative catalytic cycles and networks. We find that a specific three-membered network has highly cooperative growth dynamics. When such cooperative networks are competed directly against selfish autocatalytic cycles, the former grow faster, indicating an intrinsic ability of RNA populations to evolve greater complexity through cooperation. We can observe the evolvability of networks through in vitro selection. Our experiments highlight the advantages of cooperative behaviour even at the molecular stages of nascent life.
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