国際科学会議(ICSU)は、加盟団体の納得が得られるよう、活動の意義と方向性を明確にする必要がある。
A global vision p.311
The International Council for Science needs to define its mission and show its members that it is worth their membership fees.
doi: 10.1038/515311a
The International Council for Science needs to define its mission and show its members that it is worth their membership fees.
doi: 10.1038/515311a
Italy’s curators must band together to preserve their valuable collections.
doi: 10.1038/515311b
doi: 10.1038/515312a
Comet lander is now hibernating, but has already altered our understanding of these objects.
doi: 10.1038/515319a
Crowdsourced disaster surveys strive for more reliability in online collaboration.
doi: 10.1038/515321a
Project puts spotlight on protected reserves that boost biodiversity.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2014.16350
Disease sites targeted in assembly of more-complete version of the human genome sequence.
doi: 10.1038/515323a
National laboratories collaborate to purchase top-flight machines.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2014.16347
Natureは、米国の研究機関が受け取る多額の助成金について、間接費の実態を調査した。
doi: 10.1038/515326a
途上国の科学の育成を目指して設立された国際理論物理学センターは、世界中で10万人を超す研究者を育ててきた。
doi: 10.1038/515330a
ヒトとモデル無脊椎動物でのENCODE計画に続いて、マウスENCODEプロジェクトは今回、この重要なモデル哺乳類動物のゲノム調節についての包括的なデータセットを公表した。
doi: 10.1038/515346a
自身の鏡像であるRNAを組み立てられるRNA酵素が作られた。この結果は、RNA分子が生命の誕生以前の地球上でどうやって増殖できたのかというずっと以前からの謎を解く助けとなりそうだ。
doi: 10.1038/nature13935
分域壁は、強磁性、強誘電性、強弾性の材料中に存在する天然の境界である。これらは反応性の領域になることもあり、バルク材料ではこれまで観察されたことがない結晶相を作り出すらしい。
doi: 10.1038/515348a
卒中や心臓発作の際に組織傷害性の活性酸素種の濃度が高くなるのは、代謝中間体であるコハク酸の蓄積を介していることが明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/nature13941
20世紀には、農業の発展によって穀物生産量が急激に増加した。だが、これによって大気中二酸化炭素の季節的なフラックスが変化したことが、2つの研究により明らかになった。
doi: 10.1038/515351a
葉の細胞を種類別に単離して調べる手法が開発され、植物の脈管系に当たる維管束の細胞に存在する概日時計が、近隣の細胞の概日時計と連絡し合ってそれを調節していることが分かった。
doi: 10.1038/nature13936
The Mouse ENCODE Consortium has mapped transcription, DNase I hypersensitivity, transcription factor binding, chromatin modifications and replication domains throughout the mouse genome in diverse cell and tissue types; these data were compared with those from human to confirm substantial conservation in the newly annotated potential functional sequences and to reveal pronounced divergence of other sequences involved in transcriptional regulation, chromatin state and higher order chromatin organization.
doi: 10.1038/nature13992
Mouse genomic footprinting reveals conservation of transcription factor (TF) recognition repertoires and trans-regulatory circuitry despite massive turnover of DNA elements that contact TFs in vivo.
doi: 10.1038/nature13972
As part of the mouse ENCODE project, genome-wide transcription factor (TF) occupancy repertoires and co-association patterns in mice and humans are studied; many aspects are conserved but the extent to which orthologous DNA segments are bound by TFs in mice and humans varies both among TFs and genomic location, and TF-occupied sequences whose occupancy is conserved tend to be pleiotropic and enriched for single nucleotide variants with known regulatory potential.
doi: 10.1038/nature13985
Blazars are quasars with a jet pointing towards Earth; analysis of archival observations of a sample of blazars reveals that jet power is larger than, and correlates with, the accretion luminosity, in agreement with numerical simulations.
doi: 10.1038/nature13856
The strain induced on the walls between ferroelastic domains of a thin film of terbium manganite grown on a substrate of strontium titanate can generate an unusual two-dimensional ferromagnetic phase that is yet to be produced by conventional chemical means.
doi: 10.1038/nature13918
Measurements and simulations of several high-mobility conjugated polymers show that their charge transport properties reflect an almost complete lack of disorder in the polymers, despite their amorphous microstructures, resulting from the resilience of the planar polymer backbone conformations to side-chain disorder.
doi: 10.1038/nature13854
A robust and synthetically useful method is reported that overcomes the complications associated with performing C–H functionalization reactions on heterocycles; a reactive PdX2 (X = ArCONOMe) species is generated in situ, and is directed to the appropriate C–H bond by an N-methoxy amide group.
doi: 10.1038/nature13885
The increase in amplitude of the atmospheric carbon dioxide cycle over the past fifty years can be attributed in part to the intensification of agriculture in the Northern Hemisphere.
doi: 10.1038/nature13893
Increases in agricultural productivity are shown, using production statistics and a carbon accounting model, to explain as much as a quarter of the observed increase in the seasonal amplitude of the Northern Hemisphere atmospheric carbon dioxide cycle.
doi: 10.1038/nature13957
A study of DNA replication timing in mouse and human cells reveals that replication domains (domains of the genome which replicate at the same time) share a correlation with topologically associating domains; these results reconcile cell-type-specific sub-nuclear compartmentalization with developmentally stable chromosome domains and offer a unified model for large scale chromosome structure and function.
doi: 10.1038/nature13986
Diversification of Neotropical birds is not directly linked to the Andean uplift, the major landscape change of the Neogene period; instead, most diversification is post-Neogene and species diversity is dependent on how long lineages have persisted in the landscape and how easily they disperse.
doi: 10.1038/nature13687
A cross-sectional study of migrating raptors aged from 1 to 27 years old shows that migratory performance gradually improves with age and is driven both by selective mortality and individual improvement, with younger birds leaving progressively earlier as they age and becoming more proficient at coping with adverse environmental conditions, such as unfavourable winds.
doi: 10.1038/nature13696
Generation and neural differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) from patients enables new ways to investigate the cellular pathophysiology of mental disorders; this approach was used with samples from a family with a schizophrenia pedigree and a DISC1 mutation, revealing synaptic abnormalities and large-scale transcriptional dysregulation.
doi: 10.1038/nature13716
A detailed analysis of Arabidopsis leaf tissues using two new versatile techniques reveals that within vasculature tissue circadian clocks have characteristics distinct from those in other tissues, and that the vasculature clocks affect circadian clock regulation in other tissues; indicating that plants, like mammals, have a dual clock system.
doi: 10.1038/nature13919
Recovery from cholera is characterized by a pattern of accumulation of bacterial taxa that shows similarities to the pattern of maturation of the gut microbiota in healthy children, raising the possibility that some of these taxa may be useful for ‘repair’ of the gut microbiota in individuals whose gut communities have been ‘wounded’ through a variety of insults.
doi: 10.1038/nature13738
Reticulocyte-binding protein homologue 5 (PfRH5) of Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria parasite, is known to be necessary for red blood cell invasion, making PfRH5 a promising vaccine candidate; here the X-ray crystallographic structure of PfRH5 in complex with basigin and with inhibitory antibodies is determined.
doi: 10.1038/nature13715
A metabolomics study on the ischaemic heart identifies succinate as a metabolite that drives the production of reactive oxygen species and contributes to ischaemia-reperfusion injury; pharmacological inhibition of succinate accumulation ameliorates ischaemia-reperfusion injury in a mouse model of heart attack and a rat model of stroke.
doi: 10.1038/nature13909
Endogenous RNA transcripts are shown to mediate recombination with yeast chromosomal DNA; as the level of RNAs in the nucleus is quite high, these results may open up new understanding of the plasticity of repair and genome instability mechanisms.
doi: 10.1038/nature13682
Here, a cross-chiral RNA polymerase is developed—an RNA enzyme that can catalyse the templated polymerization of activated mononucleotides that are of the opposite handedness—shedding light on how RNA-based life could have emerged.
doi: 10.1038/nature13900
Using a structure-based approach, small molecule inhibitors that selectively target the GTPase Ral are identified and characterized; these first-generation inhibitors will be valuable tools for elucidating the Ral signalling pathway and constitute a step towards developing Ral-specific agents for cancer therapy.
doi: 10.1038/nature13713
The X-ray crystal structures of two bacterial homologues of the SWEET sugar transporters are solved in two conformational states, and comparison of these states suggests that transport occurs via a ‘rocker-switch’ mechanism.
doi: 10.1038/nature13670