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Cell biology: The
micronucleus gets its big break
Extensive
chromosomal rearrangement – chromothripsis – is seen in
several cancers. Imaging and sequencing of single cells
shows that this phenomenon can occur inside cellular
anomalies known as micronuclei.
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Cancer: Opening LOX to
metastasis
New findings
implicate the enzyme lysyl oxidase (LOX), secreted by
oxygen-deprived breast cancer cells, in inducing bone
lesions that precede and facilitate the spread of the
cancer cells to the bone.
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Microbiology:
Exclusive networks in the sea
The
identification of an exchange of nutrients and
signalling molecules between a planktonic alga and a
bacterium demonstrates that targeted mutualistic
interactions occur across domains of life in the
oceans.
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Cancer: Precise
control of localized signals
The
tumour-suppressor protein PTEN is mostly found in the
cell cytoplasm, tethered to endosome vesicles. This
localization regulates the enzyme's activity towards
specific lipids and influences its control of cell
growth.
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A
prefrontal–thalamo–hippocampal circuit for goal-directed
spatial navigation
Trajectory-dependent
firing of neurons within the nucleus reuniens of the
thalamus–hippocampus circuit predicted subsequent
running direction, and disruption of this circuit
reduced predictive firing in the hippocampus, suggesting
that the thalamus is a key node in the integration of
signals during goal-oriented
navigation.
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Chromothripsis from
DNA damage in micronuclei
The mechanism
for chromothripsis, “shattered” chromosomes that can be
observed in cancer cells, is unknown; here, using
live-cell imaging and single-cell sequencing,
chromothripsis is shown to occur after a chromosome is
isolated into a micronucleus, an abnormal nuclear
structure.
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Cell-intrinsic
adaptation of lipid composition to local crowding drives
social behaviour
Little is known
about how individual cells within a group of cells
exposed to the same external signals can produce a
specific individual response to their local
microenvironment; a quantitative analysis of cell
crowding reveals that single cells can autonomously
sense local crowding though their ability to spread and
activate focal adhesion kinase (FAK), which ultimately
results in changes in cellular lipid
composition.
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Improving survival by
exploiting tumour dependence on stabilized mutant p53
for treatment
Novel hotspot
mutant p53 gain-of-function mouse model shows that
tumours depend on its sustained expression, and genetic
and pharmacological approaches reveal mutant p53 as an
actionable cancer drug target.
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Interaction and
signalling between a cosmopolitan phytoplankton and
associated bacteria
Molecular
characterization of interactions between a globally
distributed marine diatom and its bacterial
consortium.
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The hypoxic cancer
secretome induces pre-metastatic bone lesions through
lysyl oxidase
Metastasis to
the bone of certain breast cancers can be driven by the
enzyme lysyl oxidase (LOX) produced by primary tumour
cells.
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New species from
Ethiopia further expands Middle Pliocene hominin
diversity
A new hominin
species, Australopithecus deyiremeda, which lived
between 3.5 and 3.3 million years ago, at around the
same time as species such as Au. afarensis
(‘Lucy’), is discovered in Ethiopia; its morphology
suggests that some dental features traditionally
associated with later genera such as Paranthropus
and Homo emerged earlier than previously
thought.
Yohannes
Haile-Selassie, Luis Gibert, Stephanie M. Melillo et
al. |
Whole–genome
characterization of chemoresistant ovarian
cancer
Whole-genome
sequencing of tumour and germline DNA samples from 92
patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer
identifies frequent gene breakages that inactivate the
tumour suppressors RB1, NF1, RAD51B and
PTEN, and contribute to chemotherapy resistance;
acquired resistance was associated with diverse
mechanisms such as reversions of germline BRCA1/2
mutations and overexpression of the drug efflux pump
MDR1.
Ann-Marie
Patch, Elizabeth L. Christie, Dariush Etemadmoghadam
et al.
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Coordination of
mitophagy and mitochondrial biogenesis during ageing in
C. elegans
Mitophagy, a
selective type of autophagy targeting mitochondria for
degradation, interfaces with mitochondrial biogenesis to
regulate mitochondrial content and longevity in
Caenorhabditis elegans.
Konstantinos
Palikaras, Eirini Lionaki, Nektarios Tavernarakis
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A kiloparsec-scale
internal shock collision in the jet of a nearby radio
galaxy
Observations of
a collision between two knots in the jet of nearby radio
galaxy 3C 264 support the internal shock model of how
the jet plasma is energized.
Eileen
T. Meyer, Markos Georganopoulos, William B. Sparks
et al. |
Global genetic
analysis in mice unveils central role for cilia in
congenital heart disease
A forward
genetic screen in fetal mice to identify genes involved
in congenital heart disease (CHD) reveals that a large
proportion of genes associated with CHD are related to
cilia and cilia-transduced cell signalling, with
potential implications for the human
disease.
You
Li, Nikolai T. Klena, George C. Gabriel et
al. |
MAD2L2 controls DNA
repair at telomeres and DNA breaks by inhibiting 5′ end
resection
MAD2L2 regulates
DNA repair at deprotected telomeres and at
ionizing-radiation-induced double-stranded DNA breaks by
inhibiting resection of the 5′ ends; the ends are thus
shunted into the non-homologous end-joining
pathway.
Vera
Boersma, Nathalie Moatti, Sandra Segura-Bayona et
al. |
Coordinated regulation
of bidirectional COPI transport at the Golgi by
CDC42
The COPI
complex, which has a role in retrograde transport
through the Golgi, is shown to also mediate anterograde
tubular transport through the Golgi; in response to
external stimuli, the small GTPase CDC42 acts as an
essential modulator of bidirectional Golgi transport,
and promotes the sorting of cargoes destined for
anterograde transport into the tubules at the expense of
those targeted for retrograde transport.
Seung-Yeol
Park, Jia-Shu Yang, Angela B. Schmider et
al. |
REV7 counteracts DNA
double-strand break resection and affects PARP
inhibition
Loss of REV7 is
shown to regulate end resection of double-stranded DNA
breaks in BRCA1-deficient cells, leading to PARP
inhibitor resistance and restoration of homologous
recombination; REV7 dictates pathway choice in
BRCA1-deficient cells and during immunoglobulin class
switching.
Guotai
Xu, J. Ross Chapman, Inger Brandsma et
al. |
Robots that can adapt
like animals
An intelligent
trial-and-error learning algorithm is presented that
allows robots to adapt in minutes to compensate for a
wide variety of types of damage.
Antoine
Cully, Jeff Clune, Danesh Tarapore et
al. |
Ocean impact on
decadal Atlantic climate variability revealed by
sea-level observations
The circulation
of the North Atlantic Ocean, interpreted via the sea
level gradient along the US coast, is found to respond
to atmospheric drivers from the North Atlantic
Oscillation, and in turn influences the oceanic
temperature changes characterized by Atlantic
Multidecadal Oscillation; in this way, ocean circulation
acts as the intermediary between atmospheric and ocean
oscillations.
Gerard
D. McCarthy, Ivan D. Haigh, Joël J.-M. Hirschi et
al. |
Counteraction of
antibiotic production and degradation stabilizes
microbial communities
Mathematical
modelling and simulations reveal that including
antibiotic degraders in ecological models of microbial
species interaction allows the system to robustly move
towards an intermixed stable state, more representative
of real-world observations.
Eric
D. Kelsic, Jeffrey Zhao, Kalin Vetsigian et
al. |
Extreme ultraviolet
high-harmonic spectroscopy of solids
Intense light
interacting with a thin film of silicon dioxide is used
to generate broadband extreme ultraviolet radiation; the
spectra reveal detailed information on the energy
dispersion of the conduction band of silicon dioxide,
which is at present inaccessible by conventional
photoemission spectroscopy.
T.
T. Luu, M. Garg, S. Yu. Kruchinin et al.
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Atomic structure of
anthrax protective antigen pore elucidates toxin
translocation
Cryo-electron
microscopy determination of anthrax toxin protective
antigen pore structure at a resolution of 2.9 Å,
revealing the catalytic Φ-clamp and the
membrane-spanning translocation channel.
Jiansen
Jiang, Bradley L. Pentelute, R. John Collier et
al. |
Defining fundamental
steps in the assembly of the Drosophila RNAi
enzyme complex
The assembly of
single Drosophila RNA-induced silencing complexes
(RISCs) is reconstituted using seven purified proteins,
revealing that chaperones help stabilize the interaction
of the protein heterodimer Dicer-2–R2D2 bound to the
short interfering RNA with Ago2.
Shintaro
Iwasaki, Hiroshi M. Sasaki, Yuriko Sakaguchi et
al. |
Diverse coupling of
neurons to populations in sensory cortex
Exploring the
relationship between population coupling and neuronal
activity reveals that neighbouring neurons can differ in
their coupling to the overall firing rate of the
population, the circuitry of which may potentially help
to explain the complex activity patterns in cortical
populations.
Michael
Okun, Nicholas A. Steinmetz, Lee Cossell et
al.
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