The latest instalment of the Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lays out the state of the world — and the challenges ahead.
doi: 10.1038/508007a
Few biology degrees still feature natural history. Is the naturalist a species in crisis?
doi: 10.1038/508007b
Above the ‘big neuroscience’ commotion, literature plays its part.
doi: 10.1038/508008a
Crimean institutions put their future in Russia’s hands as Ukraine attempts research reforms.
doi: 10.1038/508015a
Agencies face rising applications for rare-disease therapies resulting from increasingly precise disease definitions.
doi: 10.1038/508016a
Facing engineering constraints, researchers propose four destinations for European rover.
doi: 10.1038/508019a
As hints emerge of a major weather event this year, poor data could thwart attempts to improve predictions.
doi: 10.1038/508020a
Analysis of chemical patterns on DNA shows promise for explaining disease, but few results have yet been replicated.
doi: 10.1038/508022a
免疫系はがんに対する強力な武器になる可能性があるが、免疫系ががんをどのように制御するかはいまだに解決されていない。
doi: 10.1038/508024a
南極での数年にわたる観測によって、宇宙が誕生時に膨張したことを示す有力な証拠が得られた。
doi: 10.1038/508028a
酵素のプラスミンには脳に転移したがん細胞を防御する働きがあり、腫瘍細胞のタンパク質であるセルピンはプラスミン産生を阻害することが突き止められた。この結果は脳への転移形成機構の主な特色を明らかにしている。
doi: 10.1038/508046a
妊娠中のマウスでビタミンAが不足すると、生まれた仔のリンパ節が小型になり成体になってからの免疫応答が損なわれることが分かった。この知見は、ビタミンAが他の多くの重要な機能に加えて、免疫の発生にも関与していることを示している。
doi: 10.1038/nature13216
太陽系中で環系を誇示している天体は、もはや惑星だけではなくなった。ケンタウルス族の天体の1つの周りに2つの高密度の環が観測されたのである。この天体は比較的小型で氷でできており、太陽系の遠い場所から侵入してきたものだ。
doi: 10.1038/nature13218
脳の毛細血管を取り囲む収縮性の細胞は、健全なニューロンへの血液供給を制御していて、こうした細胞が死ぬと血管が絞扼されて脳の損傷が悪化することが分かった。
doi: 10.1038/nature13217
地球の成長のシミュレーションによって、月の形成時期とその時期以降に地球に集積した質量の間の相関が明らかになった。この関係から、地球の年齢を測定する方法が得られる。
doi: 10.1038/508051a
ヒト腫瘍中の細胞には遺伝学的不均一性が広く見られるが、これは最適なクローンが優勢になるのを何が妨げているのかという疑問につながる。異なるクローン間での相互依存性が実証されたことは、この謎の答えを見つける手がかりとなりそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/508052a
Neuronal activity relaxes pericytes, leading to capillary dilation and increased blood flow, before arterioles dilate, suggesting that pericytes initiate blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) functional imaging signals; pericytes constrict and die in rigor in ischaemia, which will cause a long-lasting blood flow decrease after stroke, and damage the blood–brain barrier.
doi: 10.1038/nature13165
High-resolution structures of the Photorhabdus luminescent TcA toxin subunit and the entire Tc toxin complex reveal important new insights into Tc complex structure and function.
doi: 10.1038/nature13015
A new high-throughput sequencing method to determine mRNA poly(A)-tail length enabled studies of individual RNAs across species and developmental stages to investigate the role of poly(A) length in translational regulation; the relationship between poly(A) length and translational efficiency shown in early embryo systems does not occur later in development, a finding that explains different regulatory consequences of microRNAs acting at different developmental times.
doi: 10.1038/nature13007
Observations of a stellar occultation by (10199) Chariklo, a minor body that orbits the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune, reveal that it has a ring system, a property previously observed only for the four giant planets of the Solar System.
doi: 10.1038/nature13155
In combination with sympathetic cooling of translational degrees of freedom (leading to Coulomb crystallization), cooling of the rotational degrees of freedom of magnesium hydride ions using a helium buffer gas leads to temperatures in a tunable range from 60 kelvin down to about 7 kelvin for a single ion, the lowest such temperature so far recorded.
doi: 10.1038/nature12996
The resonant interaction between γ-ray photons and an ensemble of nuclei with a periodically modulated resonant transition frequency can be used to control the waveforms of the photons coherently; for example, individual γ-ray photons can be converted into a coherent, ultrashort pulse train or into a double pulse.
doi: 10.1038/nature13018
A large number of N-body simulations of the giant-impact phase of planet formation, combined with the measured concentrations of highly siderophile elements in Earth’s mantle, reveal that the Moon must have formed at least 40 million years after the condensation of the first solids of the Solar System.
doi: 10.1038/nature13172
CA2 neuron inactivation leads to a severe deficit in social memory, while having little effect on other well-known hippocampal functions such as contextual or spatial memory.
doi: 10.1038/nature13028
Human fibroblasts can be converted into hepatocytes capable of repopulating mouse livers by shortcutting reprogramming to pluripotency with factors promoting endoderm and hepatocyte differentiation.
doi: 10.1038/nature13020
A rare constitutional translocation between chromosomes 15 and 21 predisposes to catastrophic chromosomal damage followed by amplification of megabase regions, causing a specific subtype of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
doi: 10.1038/nature13115
This study finds that triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) show an increased basal level of endoplasmic reticulum stress and activation of the XBP1 branch of the unfolded protein response; furthermore, XBP1 promotes tumour formation of TNBC cell lines by interacting with and regulating HIF1α.
doi: 10.1038/nature13119
New apparatus is used to maintain proliferating cancer cells in low-glucose conditions, demonstrating that mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) is essential for optimal proliferation in these conditions; the most sensitive cell lines are defective in OXPHOS upregulation and may therefore be sensitive to current antidiabetic drugs that inhibit OXPHOS.
doi: 10.1038/nature13110
In a mouse model of tumours initiated by Wnt signalling in which a proportion of tumours are biclonal, that is, composed of basal and luminal clones with distinct genetic alterations, these clones are shown to cooperate to maintain tumour growth in a Wnt-dependent manner.
doi: 10.1038/nature13187
Patients with melanomas carrying an activating BRAF mutation respond to treatment with BRAF inhibitors although resistance to the inhibitor usually emerges; this resistance is shown to arise through increased expression of receptor tyrosine kinases such as EGFR; however, these changes decrease cell fitness and during a break from inhibitor treatment these cells are selected against, revealing that some patients who acquire EGFR expression may benefit from inhibitor re-treatment after a drug holiday.
doi: 10.1038/nature13121
Dietary vitamin A during pregnancy is required for the formation of secondary lymphoid organs of the developing embryo and affects the offspring’s immune competence in adulthood.
doi: 10.1038/nature13158
In Caenorhabditis elegant, mitochondrial activity as measured by the frequency of the mitochondrial flash in young adult animals is a powerful predictor of lifespan across genetic, environmental and stochastic factors.
doi: 10.1038/nature13012
