Editorials
p.307
The EU should decide definitively whether gene-edited plants are covered by GM laws.
doi: 10.1038/528307b
p.307
After 25 years of divisive debate, the governments of the world unite in Paris to fight global warming. But the hard work must start now.
doi: 10.1038/528307a
p.308
The German research community can benefit from the influx of migrants.
doi: 10.1038/528308a
News
p.315
Agreement forged in Paris aims to hold warming ‘well below’ 2 °C.
doi: 10.1038/528315a
p.317
Debate surrounds relative importance of environmental and intrinsic factors.
doi: 10.1038/528317a
p.318
Negotiations between South Korea and China to demarcate boundary could aid research.
doi: 10.1038/528318a
p.319
Scientists frustrated at delay in deciding if GM regulations apply to precision gene editing.
doi: 10.1038/528319a
p.320
Social scientists launch integration studies and warn of need to counter rising xenophobia.
doi: 10.1038/528320a
News Features
p.322
False beliefs and wishful thinking about the human experience are common. They are hurting people — and holding back science.
doi: 10.1038/528322a
News & Views
p.336
Pollution from atmospheric nitrogen deposition is a major threat to biodiversity. The 160-year-old Park Grass experiment has uniquely documented this threat and demonstrated how nitrogen reductions lead to recovery. See Letter p.401
doi: 10.1038/nature16320
p.337
Control of quantum particles has been extended to enable different types of ion to be entangled — correlated in a non-classical way. This opens up opportunities for the development of new quantum technologies. See Letters p.380 & p.384
doi: 10.1038/528337a
p.338
The finding that acute and chronic manipulations of the same neural circuit can produce different behavioural outcomes poses new questions about how best to analyse these circuits. See Article p.358
doi: 10.1038/nature16323
p.340
Large-scale cultivation and genome sequencing of the bacteria that inhabit the leaves and roots of Arabidopsis plants have paved the way for probing how microbial communities assemble and function. See Article p.364
doi: 10.1038/nature16319
p.341
Aerial photographs, remote-sensing observations and geological evidence together provide a reconstruction of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet since 1900 — a great resource for climate scientists. See Letter p.396
doi: 10.1038/528341a
p.343
The discovery that the gene SRY on the mammalian Y chromosome drives testis development marked a turning point in the decades-long quest to understand the genetic underpinnings and evolution of sex determination.
doi: 10.1038/528343a
Review
p.345
The fossil record provides a nuanced view of ecosystem collapse over intervals of mass extinction, with abundant, biomineralizing and widespread species preferentially preserved; here the authors collate evidence for ‘mass rarity’ during these intervals, and suggest that the increasing rarity of modern species, rather than their outright extinction, may be a better metric for comparing the current biodiversity crisis to the ‘Big Five’ mass extinctions in the Earth’s history.
doi: 10.1038/nature16160
Articles
p.352
Neural sequences recorded from the vocal premotor area HVC in juvenile birds learning song ‘syllables’ show ‘prototype’ syllables forming early, with multiple new highly divergent neural sequences emerging from this precursor syllable as learning progresses.
doi: 10.1038/nature15741
p.358
Transient manipulation of neural activity is widely used to probe the function of specific circuits, yet such targeted perturbations could also have indirect effects on downstream circuits that implement separate and independent functions; a study to test this reveals that transient perturbations of specific circuits in mammals and songbirds severely impair learned skills that recover spontaneously after permanent lesions of the same brain areas.
doi: 10.1038/nature16442
p.364
The microbiota of the rhizosphere (roots) and phyllosphere (leaves) of healthy plants consist of taxonomically structured bacterial communities; here the majority of species representing the main bacterial phyla from these two organs were isolated and genomes of about 400 representative bacteria were sequenced; the resources of cultured bacteria, corresponding genomes and a gnotobiotic plant system enabled an examination of the taxonomic overlap and functional specialization between the rhizosphere and phyllosphere bacterial microbiota.
doi: 10.1038/nature16192
p.370
The authors define molecular mechanisms by which distinct domains of the ubiquitin editing enzyme A20 contribute to the regulation of inflammation and cell death.
doi: 10.1038/nature16165
Letters
p.376
Global, three-dimensional simulations of rapidly rotating massive stars show that turbulence driven by magnetohydrodynamic instability is a promising mechanism for the formation of pulsars and magnetars, the latter potentially powering hyperenergetic and superluminous supernovae.
doi: 10.1038/nature15755
p.380
Harnessing the entanglement of different ionic species could bring new flexibility in quantum computing, and now two groups independently demonstrate entanglement between different atomic species; Tan et al. achieve entanglement between different elements, whereas the related paper by Ballance et al. shows entanglement between different atomic isotopes, together demonstrating a first step towards mixed-species quantum logic.
doi: 10.1038/nature16186
p.384
Harnessing the entanglement of different ionic species could bring new flexibility in quantum computing, and now two groups independently demonstrate entanglement between different atomic species; Ballance et al. achieve entanglement between different atomic isotopes, whereas the related paper by Tan et al. shows entanglement between different elements, together demonstrating a first step towards mixed-species quantum logic.
doi: 10.1038/nature16184
p.387
Nanoscale radiative heat transfer between both dielectric and metal surfaces separated by gaps as small as two nanometres is characterized by large gap-dependent heat transfer enhancements that are accurately modelled by the theoretical framework of fluctuational electrodynamics and has important implications for technological design.
doi: 10.1038/nature16070
p.392
A mechanism for the repression of homologous recombination in G1, the stage of the cell cycle preceding replication, is determined; the critical aspects are the interaction between BRCA1 and PALB2–BRCA2, and suppression of DNA-end resection.
doi: 10.1038/nature16189
p.396
The response of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) to changes in temperature during the twentieth century remains contentious, largely owing to difficulties in estimating the spatial and temporal distribution of ice mass changes before 1992, when Greenland-wide observations first became available. The only previous estimates of change during the twentieth century are based on empirical modelling and energy balance modelling. Consequently, no observation-based estimates of the contribution from the GIS to the global-mean sea level budget before 1990 are included in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here we calculate spatial ice mass loss around the entire GIS from 1900 to the present using aerial imagery from the 1980s. This allows accurate high-resolution mapping of geomorphic features related to the maximum extent of the GIS during the Little Ice Age at the end of the nineteenth century. We estimate the total ice mass loss and its spatial distribution for three periods: 1900–1983 (75.1 ± 29.4 gigatonnes per year), 1983–2003 (73.8 ± 40.5 gigatonnes per year), and 2003–2010 (186.4 ± 18.9 gigatonnes per year). Furthermore, using two surface mass balance models we partition the mass balance into a term for surface mass balance (that is, total precipitation minus total sublimation minus runoff) and a dynamic term. We find that many areas currently undergoing change are identical to those that experienced considerable thinning throughout the twentieth century. We also reveal that the surface mass balance term shows a considerable decrease since 2003, whereas the dynamic term is constant over the past 110 years. Overall, our observation-based findings show that during the twentieth century the GIS contributed at least 25.0 ± 9.4 millimetres of global-mean sea level rise. Our result will help to close the twentieth-century sea level budget, which remains crucial for evaluating the reliability of models used to predict global sea level rise.
doi: 10.1038/nature16183
p.401
Data from the long-running Park Grass Experiment is used to show that grassland biodiversity is recovering since UK atmospheric nitrogen levels started to decline 25 years ago in all but the most acidic soils.
doi: 10.1038/nature16444
p.405
Age at maturity in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is governed to a substantial extent by a locus showing dominance reversal, providing a resolution for sexual conflict in this trait, for which selection favours different ages in the two sexes.
doi: 10.1038/nature16062
p.409
The identification of an enzymatic system repairing proteins containing oxidized methionine in the bacterial cell envelope, a compartment particularly susceptible to oxidative damage by host defence mechanisms.
doi: 10.1038/nature15764
p.413
Despite progress in the development of drugs that efficiently target cancer cells,
treatments for metastatic tumours are often ineffective. The now well-established
dependency of cancer cells on their microenvironment suggests that
targeting the non-cancer-cell component of the tumour might form a basis for the
development of novel therapeutic approaches. However, the as-yet poorly
characterized contribution of host responses during tumour growth and metastatic
progression represents a limitation to exploiting this approach. Here we identify
neutrophils as the main component and driver of metastatic establishment within the
(pre-)metastatic lung microenvironment in mouse breast cancer models. Neutrophils
have a fundamental role in inflammatory responses and their contribution to
tumorigenesis is still controversial. Using various strategies
to block neutrophil recruitment to the pre-metastatic site, we demonstrate that
neutrophils specifically support metastatic initiation. Importantly, we find that
neutrophil-derived leukotrienes aid the colonization of distant tissues by
selectively expanding the sub-pool of cancer cells that retain high tumorigenic
potential. Genetic or pharmacological inhibition of the leukotriene-generating
enzyme arachidonate 5-lipoxygenase (Alox5) abrogates neutrophil pro-metastatic
activity and consequently reduces metastasis. Our results reveal the efficacy of
using targeted therapy against a specific tumour microenvironment component and
indicate that neutrophil Alox5 inhibition may limit metastatic progression.
doi: 10.1038/nature16140
p.418
A causal variant is identified at the LMO1 oncogene locus that drives the genetic association of LMO1 with neuroblastoma susceptibility; the causal SNP disrupts a GATA transcription factor binding site within a tissue-specific super-enhancer element in the first intron of LMO1, thereby affecting LMO1 expression.
doi: 10.1038/nature15540
p.422
A mechanism for the repression of homologous recombination in G1, the stage of the cell cycle preceding replication, is determined; the critical aspects are the interaction between BRCA1 and PALB2–BRCA2, and suppression of DNA-end resection.
doi: 10.1038/nature16142