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There is a blind
spot in AI research
Fears about the
future impacts of artificial intelligence are
distracting researchers from the real risks of deployed
systems, argue Kate Crawford and Ryan
Calo.
Kate
Crawford, Ryan Calo |
Natural history: Voices
from the greenwood
Caspar Henderson
applauds a paean to the brilliant forest ecologist
Oliver Rackham.
Caspar
Henderson |
Biomechanics: The
wonders of whirl
John E. Moalli
and Adam P. Summers relish a book on biomechanical spin,
from wheels to free-falling felines.
John
E. Moalli, Adam P. Summers |
Q&A: Lexi Jamieson
Marsh and Ellen Currano: Face to face
Outside the hall
containing the posters and exhibits at last month's
Geological Society of America meeting in Denver,
Colorado, was a surprise. A travelling photography
exhibition displayed large, black-and-white portraits of
women — wearing beards. To challenge perceptions of who
is and is not a scientist, the Bearded Lady Project
(www.thebeardedladyproject.com)
has photographed more than 75 female Earth scientists; a
documentary will be released in early 2017. Filmmaker
and project mastermind Lexi Jamieson Marsh and
palaeobotanist Ellen Currano of the University of
Wyoming in Laramie, who inspired the project, talk about
'invisible women', communities of inclusivity and
rocking a moustache.
Alexandra
Witze |
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DNA repair:
Telomere-lengthening mechanism revealed
Shortening of
the ends of chromosomes limits a cell's lifespan. Some
cancer cells avoid this fate through a mechanism called
alternative lengthening of telomeres, molecular details
of which have now been defined. |
Behavioural biology:
Stones that could cause ripples
Monkeys have
been observed pounding stones and unintentionally
forming sharp-edged, tool-like fragments. This
deliberate breakage raises questions about the evolution
of intentional stone modification. |
The stem osteichthyan
Andreolepis and the origin of tooth
replacement
The extinct
Andreolepis, an early fish that is close to the
common ancestor of all bony fish and land vertebrates,
shed its teeth by basal resportion—the earliest example
of this mode of tooth replacement. |
The MCL1 inhibitor
S63845 is tolerable and effective in diverse cancer
models
S63845
specifically inhibits MCL1 and induces tumour cell death
in vitro and in vivo in diverse
cancer-derived cell lines with an acceptable safety
margin. |
Break-induced telomere
synthesis underlies alternative telomere
maintenance
Alternative
lengthening of telomeres in cancer cells is initiated by
a specialized replisome and noncanonical homologous
recombination at damaged telomeres, culminating in the
synthesis of long tracts of telomere DNA. |
| Thermophilic archaea
activate butane via alkyl-coenzyme M
formation |
Mantle dynamics
inferred from the crystallographic preferred orientation
of bridgmanite
Deformation
experiments on bridgmanite indicate that it may be the
main contributor to the shear wave anisotropy observed
around several subducting plates. |
T-cell acute leukaemia
exhibits dynamic interactions with bone marrow
microenvironments
Here, leukaemia
cells are followed by intravital microscopy as they
infiltrate mouse bone marrow and respond to
chemotherapy, revealing that at all stages analysed they
are highly motile and do not display any associations
with particular bone marrow
sub-compartments. |
Fluvial sediment
supply to a mega-delta reduced by shifting
tropical-cyclone activity
About a third of
the sediment delivery of the Mekong River is shown to be
associated with rainfall generated by tropical cyclones,
suggesting that future delta stability will be strongly
moderated by changes to tropical cyclone intensity,
frequency and track. |
Chromosome
conformation elucidates regulatory relationships in
developing human brain
High-resolution
three-dimensional maps of chromatin contacts in the
developing human brain help to identify
enhancer–promoter contacts, many of which are associated
with human cognitive function and disease. |
TET-mediated DNA
demethylation controls gastrulation by regulating
Lefty–Nodal signalling
Inactivation of
three Tet genes in mice leads to gastrulation
phenotypes similar to those in embryos with increased
Nodal signalling, revealing a functional redundancy of
Tet genes and showing balanced and dynamic DNA
methylation and demethylation is crucial to regulate key
signalling pathways in early body plan
formation. |
Reconstitution in
vitro of the entire cycle of the mouse female germ
line
Using a protocol
that recapitulates both meiosis and oocyte growth in
vitro, the authors induce mouse pluripotent stem
cells to differentiate into fully functional oocytes
that can be fertilized and generate viable offspring,
thereby recapitulating the full mammalian female
germline cycle in a dish. |
Mechanism for DNA
transposons to generate introns on genomic
scales
The observations
that introns are acquired in bursts and that exons are
often nucleosome-sized can be explained by the
generation of introns from DNA transposons, which insert
between nucleosomes. |
Wild monkeys flake
stone tools
Wild capuchin
monkeys in Brazil deliberately break stones,
unintentionally producing flakes similar to the ancient
sharp-edged flakes characterized as intentionally
produced Pliocene–Pleistocene hominin tools, although
why they do so remains unclear. |
| Erratum: Follicular
CXCR5-expressing CD8+ T cells curtail chronic
viral infection |
| Corrigendum: Design of
a hyperstable 60-subunit protein
icosahedron |
| Corrigendum: Fumarate
is an epigenetic modifier that elicits
epithelial-to-mesenchymal
transition | |
Accurate de
novo design of hyperstable constrained
peptides
Computational
methods for the de novo design of
conformationally restricted peptides produce
exceptionally stable short peptides stabilized by
backbone cyclization and/or internal disulfide bonds
that are promising starting points for a new generation
of peptide-based drugs.
Gaurav
Bhardwaj, Vikram Khipple Mulligan, Christopher D. Bahl
et al. |
Genome evolution in
the allotetraploid frog Xenopus
laevis
OPEN
The two
homoeologous subgenomes in the allotetraploid frog
Xenopus laevis evolved asymmetrically; one often
retained the ancestral state, whereas the other
experienced gene loss, deletion, rearrangement and
reduced gene expression.
Adam
M. Session, Yoshinobu Uno, Taejoon Kwon et
al. |
Diversity-oriented
synthesis yields novel multistage antimalarial
inhibitors
The bicyclic
azetidines, a class of potent, well-tolerated
antimalarial compounds that is active against multiple
stages of the Plasmodium life-cycle, has been
discovered following screens against libraries of
compounds reminiscent of natural
products.
Nobutaka
Kato, Eamon Comer, Tomoyo Sakata-Kato et
al. |
Frizzled proteins are
colonic epithelial receptors for C. difficile
toxin B
Here, a
genome-wide CRISPR–Cas9 screen is used to identify the
Wnt receptors frizzled as physiologically relevant
Clostridium difficile toxin B receptors,
providing new therapeutic targets for treating C.
difficile infections.
Liang
Tao, Jie Zhang, Paul Meraner et
al. | |
Ultraluminous X-ray
bursts in two ultracompact companions to nearby
elliptical galaxies
A search of
archival X-ray data for 70 nearby galaxies yielded two
flaring sources in globular clusters or ultracompact
dwarf companions of parent elliptical
galaxies.
Jimmy
A. Irwin, W. Peter Maksym, Gregory R. Sivakoff et
al. |
Multi-petahertz
electronic metrology
Investigations
using single-cycle intense optical fields to drive
electron motion in bulk silicon dioxide show that the
light-induced electric currents extend in frequency up
to about 8 petahertz.
M.
Garg, M. Zhan, T. T. Luu et al. |
X-ray structure of the
human α4β2 nicotinic receptor
Nicotinic
acetylcholine receptors are ligand-gated ion channels
that mediate fast chemical neurotransmission; here, the
first X-ray crystal structure of a nicotinic receptor is
reported, revealing how nicotine stabilizes the receptor
in a non-conducting, desensitized
conformation.
Claudio
L. Morales-Perez, Colleen M. Noviello, Ryan E.
Hibbs |
Real-space
investigation of energy transfer in heterogeneous
molecular dimers
Scanning
tunnelling microscopy is shown to be effective for
probing energy transfer in a molecular dimer with
submolecular resolution in real space.
Hiroshi
Imada, Kuniyuki Miwa, Miyabi Imai-Imada et
al. |
Asthenosphere rheology
inferred from observations of the 2012 Indian Ocean
earthquake
Analysis of the
postseismic deformation of the moment magnitude 8.6
Indian Ocean earthquake in 2012 reveals that the
asthenospheric layer must be thin and of low viscosity,
constraining the structure of oceanic upper-mantle
rheology.
Yan
Hu, Roland Bürgmann, Paramesh Banerjee et
al. |
Upper-mantle water
stratification inferred from observations of the 2012
Indian Ocean earthquake
Postseismic
recordings of the moment magnitude 8.6 Indian Ocean
earthquake of 2012, combined with the characteristics of
olivine creep, provide constraints on the water content
of the asthenosphere.
Sagar
Masuti, Sylvain D. Barbot, Shun-ichiro Karato et
al. |
A renewed model of
pancreatic cancer evolution based on genomic
rearrangement patterns
Pancreatic
cancer is not caused by a specific series of genetic
alterations that occur sequentially but by one, or few,
catastrophic events that result in simultaneous
oncogenic genetic rearrangements, giving rise to highly
aggressive tumours.
Faiyaz
Notta, Michelle Chan-Seng-Yue, Mathieu Lemire et
al. |
Cortico-fugal output
from visual cortex promotes plasticity of innate motor
behaviour
Projections from
the mouse visual cortex to the brainstem accessory optic
system promote the adaptive plasticity of the
optokinetic reflex, which stabilizes images on the
retina when an animal is moving.
Bao-hua
Liu, Andrew D. Huberman, Massimo Scanziani |
Allogeneic
transplantation of iPS cell-derived cardiomyocytes
regenerates primate hearts
Allogenic
induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes
transplanted directly into infarcted cynomolgus monkey
hearts show electrical coupling with host cardiomyocytes
improve cardiac contractile function after mild
immunosuppression.
Yuji
Shiba, Toshihito Gomibuchi, Tatsuichiro Seto et
al. |
Fetal liver
endothelium regulates the seeding of tissue-resident
macrophages
PLVAP
selectively controls the seeding of fetal liver
monocyte-derived tissue-resident macrophages, seemingly
by interacting with chemotactic and adhesive molecules
at the diaphragms of liver sinusoidal
endothelium.
Pia
Rantakari, Norma Jäppinen, Emmi Lokka et
al. |
The epichaperome is an
integrated chaperome network that facilitates tumour
survival
Chaperomes are
dynamic assemblies of proteins that regulate cellular
homeostasis but specific cellular stresses remodel
chaperome components into a stable chaperome network
called the epichaperome, which might offer a new cancer
target.
Anna
Rodina, Tai Wang, Pengrong Yan et
al. |
Molecular basis of
Lys11-polyubiquitin specificity in the deubiquitinase
Cezanne
The structures
of the deubiquitinating enzyme Cezanne alone or in
complex with its substrate or product are solved,
showing how Cezanne specifically targets Lys11-linked
polyubiquitin.
Tycho
E. T. Mevissen, Yogesh Kulathu, Monique P.C. Mulder
et al. |
Atomic structure of
the entire mammalian mitochondrial complex I
The
atomic structure of ovine mitochondrial complex I is
solved at 3.9 Å resolution, revealing that supernumerary
subunits stabilize the complex and providing insight
into the molecular basis of its function and
regulation.
Karol
Fiedorczuk, James A. Letts, Gianluca Degliesposti et
al. | |
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