To boost its research quality and innovation, China must strengthen its scientific foundations and let researchers — not policymakers — set the agenda for innovation and discovery.
doi: 10.1038/534435a
Pooling clinical details helps doctors to diagnose rare diseases — but more sharing is needed.
doi: 10.1038/534435b
The problem of gun violence in the United States must finally be addressed.
doi: 10.1038/534436a
Rival parties avoid carbon controversy of former years.
doi: 10.1038/534443a
Struggle in Northern Cape province highlights a balancing act that scientists leading gigantic projects face.
doi: 10.1038/534444a
Sea-floor instruments will monitor seismic activity very close to the Cascadia fault.
doi: 10.1038/534446a
Stark differences between men and women’s immune responses pose medical conundrum.
doi: 10.1038/534447a
After historic first discovery last September, twin observatories detected gravitational waves again on Boxing Day.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2016.20093
Florida repository of marine sediments dates back to early days of US polar exploration.
doi: 10.1038/nature.2016.20096
中国の科学の驚くべき急成長の道筋と今後の課題を特集する。
doi: 10.1038/534451a
研究の潜在能力と量は急激な成長を遂げ、質も向上している。
doi: 10.1038/534452a
印象的な研究によって、世界の科学界での中国の存在感を高めている研究者10人を紹介する。
doi: 10.1038/534456a
塩基配列解読で世界を席巻した中国は、今度は精密医療（precision medicine）の分野で世界の頂点の座を狙っている。
doi: 10.1038/534462a
重力波の観測は天文学の新時代の先駆けとなる歴史的事件だった。今回、ブラックホール系でどのようなことが起こってこのような重力波が発生したのかが、宇宙の数値モデルによって説明された。
doi: 10.1038/534478a
細胞間のコミュニケーションは分泌顆粒からのホルモン放出によっているが、こうした小胞が細胞膜と融合する仕組みは分かっていなかった。今回、in vivoでこの過程が可視化され、安定な中間的融合段階の存在を示す証拠が得られた。
doi: 10.1038/nature18446
ゲージ理論は素粒子物理学の標準模型の基盤となっているが、従来の計算法を使ってその研究を行うのは難しい。実験的量子系を使えば、研究に新しい道が開けることが今回示された。
doi: 10.1038/534480a
動物と近縁のフィラステレア綱に属する単細胞生物Capsaspora owczarzakiについての詳しい解析は、多細胞生物への移行の間に生じた遺伝子調節の変化についての手掛かりを与えてくれる。
doi: 10.1038/nature18447
2012年の気温が高かった春期には、米国の陸生生態系による炭素取り込み量が増大し、夏期に起こった深刻な干ばつによって生じた炭素損失を相殺していたことが、解析によって示された。だが、このことは、暖かい春が干ばつを悪化させた可能性を暗示している。
doi: 10.1038/nature18450
精子と卵の結合は、2種類の細胞表面タンパク質によっている。個々のタンパク質について行われた構造解析と、複合体を形成した状態について行われた構造解析から、認識過程とそれに続く精子–卵融合についての手掛かりが得られた。
doi: 10.1038/nature18448
Advances in meson spectroscopy can enhance our understanding of how composite objects emerge from the fundamental underlying theory of interacting quarks and gluons, quantum chromodynamics.
doi: 10.1038/nature18011
Two spider toxins are shown to target the Nav1.1 subtype of sodium channel specifically, shedding light on the role of these channels in mechanical pain signalling.
doi: 10.1038/nature17976
The effect of natural genetic diversity on the proteome is characterized using an outbred mouse model with extensive variation; both transcripts and proteins from mouse livers are quantified to identify a large set of protein quantitative trait loci (pQTL), and mediation analysis identifies causal protein intermediates of distant pQTL.
doi: 10.1038/nature18270
The X-ray crystal structure of rat transient receptor potential channel TRPV6 at 3.25 Å resolution is reported, providing new insights into its assembly and calcium-selective permeation.
doi: 10.1038/nature17975
Numerical simulations of the formation of binary black holes provide a framework within which to interpret the recent detection of the first gravitational-wave source and to predict the properties of subsequent binary-black-hole gravitational-wave events; the calculations predict detections of about 1,000 black-hole mergers per year once gravitational-wave observatories reach full sensitivity.
doi: 10.1038/nature18322
A digital quantum simulation of a lattice gauge theory is performed on a quantum computer that consists of a few trapped-ion qubits; the model simulated is the Schwinger mechanism, which describes the creation of electron–positron pairs from vacuum.
doi: 10.1038/nature18318
A direct comparison of high harmonic generation in the solid and gas phases of Ar and Kr reveals higher harmonics in these rare-gas solids caused by strong interband couplings; evidence of recollisions implies that gas-phase techniques for attosecond pulse generation and orbital tomography could be adapted for solids.
doi: 10.1038/nature17660
Negative capacitance is observed in a model system of multidomain ferroelectric–dielectric superlattices; the multidomain state can increase the temperature range over which negative capacitance can be observed.
doi: 10.1038/nature17659
Cold-drawing of multimaterial fibres consisting of a brittle core embedded in a ductile polymer cladding results in controllable fragmentation of the core to produce uniformly sized rods parallel to the drawing direction for cylindrical geometries and narrow, parallel strips perpendicular to the drawing direction for flat geometries.
doi: 10.1038/nature17980
Replacing the iron atom in Fe-porphyrin IX proteins with a noble-metal atom enables the creation of enzymes that catalyse reactions not catalysed by native Fe-enzymes or other metalloenzymes; this approach could be used to generate other artificial enzymes that could catalyse a wide range of abiological transformations.
doi: 10.1038/nature17968
People infected with West Nile virus often experience cognitive side effects including memory loss through unknown mechanisms; mice and humans infected with the virus experience a loss in hippocampal presynaptic terminals, which can be reversed by disrupting complement or microglia in mice.
doi: 10.1038/nature18283
Structural and functional studies of the tail knob protein of bacteriophage ϕ29 shed light on how the phage breaches the membrane barrier and ejects its DNA genome into the host cell.
doi: 10.1038/nature18017
Super-resolution imaging provides direct evidence in live cells that membrane fusion and fission are mediated through an intermediate hemi-fused structure, where fusion and calcium/dynamin-dependent fission mechanisms compete to determine the transition of the intermediate to fusion or fission.
doi: 10.1038/nature18598
An investigation into the nuclear events involved in autophagy regulation identifies the histone arginine methyltransferase CARM1 as a transcriptional co-activator of transcription factor TFEB; CARM1 levels are decreased by the SKP2-containing E3 ubiquitin ligase and increased during autophagy induction after nutrient starvation.
doi: 10.1038/nature18014
The cancer drug rocaglamide A cements the RNA helicase eIF4A on polypurine sequences and thereby prevents scanning of the 43S subunit along the messenger RNA, highlighting how a drug can act by stabilizing sequence-selective RNA–protein interactions.
doi: 10.1038/nature17978
This study describes the structures of the IZUMO1 protein, found on sperm, and the JUNO protein, found on eggs, and sheds light on their roles in sperm–egg fusion during fertilization.
doi: 10.1038/nature18595
The structure of the IZUMO1–JUNO complex, crucial for sperm–oocyte interaction during fertilization, is reported, providing a first step towards understanding the mechanics of the interaction.
doi: 10.1038/nature18596
Small molecules are powerful tools for investigating protein function, and can serve as leads for new therapeutics, but most human proteins lack known small-molecule ligands; here, a quantitative analysis of cysteine-reactive small-molecule fragments screened against thousands of proteins is reported.
doi: 10.1038/nature18002
The structure of the METTL3–METTL14 complex, which mediates N6-adenosine methylation of RNA, suggests that the METTL3 subunit is the catalytic core while METTL14 serves to bind RNA.
doi: 10.1038/nature18298
