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Microbiology: A backup for bacteria
The finding that intestinal viruses can substitute for intestinal bacteria to promote the health of their mammalian hosts raises the possibility that viruses in the gut may be beneficial in some circumstances.
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Behavioural economics: Professional identity can increase dishonesty
An experiment shows that although bank employees behave honestly on average, their dishonesty increases when they make decisions after having been primed to think about their professional identity.
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Molecular biology: Entry signals control development
Certain structural elements allow messenger RNAs not usually processed by the protein-synthesis apparatus to be translated. It now seems that they also control the expression of genes involved in embryonic development.
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Diabetes: The good in fat
A new class of fatty acid — found in food and synthesized by mammalian tissues — enhances glucose uptake from the blood and reduces inflammation, suggesting that these fats might be used to treat diabetes.
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Structure of influenza A polymerase bound to the viral RNA promoter
The crystal structure of the bat-specific influenza A polymerase in complex with the viral RNA promoter is presented, revealing how binding of the 5′ end of the viral RNA is required to activate or enhance the polymerase allosterically.
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Structural insight into cap-snatching and RNA synthesis by influenza polymerase
Atomic resolution crystal structures of influenza A and B polymerases are presented; comparison of these structures provides mechanistic insight into influenza polymerase functions, explaining the processes of cap-snatching and cap-dependent priming, which are unique to segmented negative-strand RNA viruses.
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RNA regulons in Hox 5′ UTRs confer ribosome specificity to gene regulation
Specialized ribosomes (with a particular protein composition) carry out translation of specific transcripts; analysis of Hox mRNA translation in mice reveals that unique RNA structural elements within their 5′ UTRs, including internal ribosome entry sites and translation inhibitory elements, are responsible for this specialized mode of translation.
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Uncovering the polymerase-induced cytotoxicity of an oxidized nucleotide
Time--β bound to substrate DNA as it inserts 8-oxo-dGTP opposite either cytosine or adenine.
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An ERK/Cdk5 axis controls the diabetogenic actions of PPARγ
Blocking ERK/MAP kinases improves insulin sensitivity thorough a mechanism similar to the actions of the anti-diabetic thiazolidinediones drugs on PPARγ.
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Inhibition of cell expansion by rapid ABP1-mediated auxin effect on microtubules
In roots and dark-grown hypocotyls of Arabidopsis thaliana, ABP1-mediated auxin signalling induces swift re-orientation of the microtubule cytoskeleton from transverse to longitudinal, thus inhibiting cell expansion.
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MicroRNA silencing for cancer therapy targeted to the tumour microenvironment
A novel anti-microRNA delivery platform that targets the acidic tumour microenvironment, in which a chosen anti-miRNA is coupled to a peptide that can transport the anti-miRNA across cell membranes specifically in an acidic environment.
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IAPP-driven metabolic reprogramming induces regression of p53-deficient tumours in vivo
p53 is often mutated or lost in cancer; here inactivation of ΔNp63 and ΔNp73 in the absence of p53 is shown to result in metabolic reprogramming and tumour regression via activation of IAPP (islet amyloid polypeptide or amylin), and IAPP-based anti-diabetes therapeutic strategies show potential for the treatment of p53-deficient and mutant tumours.
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H2D+ observations give an age of at least one million years for a cloud core forming Sun-like stars
Observations of emission and absorption lines of the deuterated trihydrogen cation (H2D+) from a dense interstellar cloud core, combined with chemical modelling, reveal that the core needed at least one million years to form Sun-like stars.
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Convergent loss of PTEN leads to clinical resistance to a PI(3)Kα inhibitor
A study of genome evolution in a metastatic breast cancer bearing an activating PIK3CA mutation, following treatment with the PI(3)Kα inhibitor BYL719, shows that all metastatic lesions, when compared to the pre-treatment tumour, had lost a copy of PTEN; parallel genetic evolution of separate sites with different PTEN genomic alterations had led to a convergent PTEN-null phenotype resistant to PI(3)Kα inhibition.
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Design and fabrication of memory devices based on nanoscale polyoxometalate clusters
Flash memories are essential for modern electronics; here a selenium-templated polyoxometalate is used to engineer new metal–oxide–semiconductor devices.
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An enteric virus can replace the beneficial function of commensal bacteria
Commensal bacteria are known to have an important role in keeping the host healthy, but the role of eukaryotic viruses has been unknown; now, persistent infection in mice with various strains of enteric norovirus is shown to provide similar host protection.
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Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry
According to popular opinion, unethical business practices are common in the financial industry; here, the employees of a large, international bank are shown to behave, on average, honestly in a laboratory game to reveal dishonest behaviour, but when their professional identity as bank employees was rendered salient, the prevalence of dishonest behaviour increased.
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Global protected area expansion is compromised by projected land-use and parochialism
Internationally coordinated expansion of the global protected area network to 17% could triple the average protection of species ranges and ecoregions; if projected land-use changes and consequent habitat loss until 2040 occur, currently feasible protection levels will not be achievable, and more than 1,000 threatened species face reductions in the range of over 50%.
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A comparative encyclopedia of DNA elements in the mouse genome OPEN
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.
Feng Yue, Yong Cheng, Alessandra Breschi et al. |
Conservation of trans-acting circuitry during mammalian regulatory evolution OPEN
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.
Andrew B. Stergachis, Shane Neph, Richard Sandstrom et al. |
Principles of regulatory information conservation between mouse and human OPEN
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.
Yong Cheng, Zhihai Ma, Bong-Hyun Kim et al. |
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Individual improvements and selective mortality shape lifelong migratory performance
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.
Fabrizio Sergio, Alessandro Tanferna, Renaud De Stephanis et al. |
A cross-chiral RNA polymerase ribozyme
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.
Jonathan T. Sczepanski, Gerald F. Joyce |
Discovery and characterization of small molecules that target the GTPase Ral
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.
Chao Yan, Degang Liu, Liwei Li et al. |
Ischaemic accumulation of succinate controls reperfusion injury through mitochondrial ROS
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.
Edward T. Chouchani, Victoria R. Pell, Edoardo Gaude et al. |
Approaching disorder-free transport in high-mobility conjugated polymers
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.
Deepak Venkateshvaran, Mark Nikolka, Aditya Sadhanala et al. |
Structures of bacterial homologues of SWEET transporters in two distinct conformations
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.
Yan Xu, Yuyong Tao, Lily S. Cheung et al. |
The power of relativistic jets is larger than the luminosity of their accretion disks
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.
G. Ghisellini, F. Tavecchio, L. Maraschi et al. |
Agricultural Green Revolution as a driver of increasing atmospheric CO2 seasonal amplitude
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.
Ning Zeng, Fang Zhao, George J. Collatz et al. |
Topologically associating domains are stable units of replication-timing regulation OPEN
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.
Benjamin D. Pope, Tyrone Ryba, Vishnu Dileep et al. |
Members of the human gut microbiota involved in recovery from Vibrio cholerae infection
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.
Ansel Hsiao, A. M. Shamsir Ahmed, Sathish Subramanian et al. |
Synaptic dysregulation in a human iPS cell model of mental disorders
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.
Zhexing Wen, Ha Nam Nguyen, Ziyuan Guo et al. |
The drivers of tropical speciation
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.
Brian Tilston Smith, John E. McCormack, Andrés M. Cuervo et al. |
Structure of malaria invasion protein RH5 with erythrocyte basigin and blocking antibodies
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.
Katherine E. Wright, Kathryn A. Hjerrild, Jonathan Bartlett et al. |
Artificial chemical and magnetic structure at the domain walls of an epitaxial oxide
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.
S. Farokhipoor, C. Magén, S. Venkatesan et al. |
Direct human influence on atmospheric CO2 seasonality from increased cropland productivity
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.
Josh M. Gray, Steve Frolking, Eric A. Kort et al. |
Transcript-RNA-templated DNA recombination and repair
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.
Havva Keskin, Ying Shen, Fei Huang et al. |
Overcoming the limitations of directed C–H functionalizations of heterocycles
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.
Yue-Jin Liu, Hui Xu, Wei-Jun Kong et al. |
Tissue-specific clocks in Arabidopsis show asymmetric coupling
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.
Motomu Endo, Hanako Shimizu, Maria A. Nohales et al. |
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