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Lessons from
history for the future of work
Global
comparisons of previous social and economic upheavals
suggest that what is to come depends on where you are
now, argues Robert C. Allen.
Robert
C. Allen |
Reboot for
the AI revolution
As artificial
intelligence puts many out of work, we must forge new
economic, social and educational systems, argues Yuval
Noah Harari.
Yuval
Noah Harari |
The second
Renaissance
Ian Goldin calls
on scientists to help society to weather the disruptive
transformations afoot.
Ian
Goldin |
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| Outlook:
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
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WITH SUPPORT FROM |
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Metropolis
of minds
Smriti
Mallapaty |
Scaling the
heights
Cities are
magnets for people, resources and infrastructure —
essential components for the generation of new ideas. We
present here other factors that make for an ideal
knowledge city. The elements might seem obvious, but
there's no magic formula for how to combine them. Data
analysis by Aaron Ballagh, data visualization by Daniel
Ormella. |
Steeped in
science
For centuries a
hub of ideas and trade, London is embracing ambitious
developments to boost research and local connections,
despite the uncertainty caused by
Brexit.
Anna
Petherick |
On the
biotech block
New York's
expensive office and lab spaces have deterred innovative
life science firms, but with growing support for
start-ups, the scene is changing.
Alexandra
Ossola |
Comment:
Where the streets are paved with
ideas
Most of the
world's research and entrepreneurship is concentrated in
a few megacities.
Richard
Florida |
Destination
Daejeon
A focus on basic
research is shifting scientific resources from Seoul to
South Korea's central city.
Mark
Zastrow |
Spain's
science rivalry
Barcelona lures
scientists while Madrid is bound by
bureaucracy.
Monica
G. Salomone |
A league of
their own
China's
political and economic centres, Beijing and Shanghai,
connect on a scientific level.
Hepeng
Jia |
Neighbours
in knowledge
Buoyed by
government support, Shenzhen emulates Guangzhou's
academic excellence.
Hepeng
Jia |
A guide to
the Nature Index
A description of
the terminology and methodology used in this supplement,
and a guide to the functionality available free online
at natureindex.com. | | |
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Molecular
evolution: No escape from the tangled
bank
Ecological
interactions emerge spontaneously in an experimental
study of bacterial populations cultured for 60,000
generations, and sustain rapid evolution by natural
selection. |
Gravitational
waves: A golden binary
The discovery of
gravitational waves from a neutron-star merger and the
detection of the event across the electromagnetic
spectrum give insight into many aspects of gravity and
astrophysics. |
Inflammation:
Memory beyond immunity
Epithelial stem
cells maintain the skin's epidermis and promote wound
healing in response to injury. Scientists from two
fields discuss implications of the discovery that these
stem cells harbour a memory of previous injuries, which
enables skin to respond rapidly to subsequent
assaults. |
Photobiology:
How flowers get the blues to lure
bees
The petals of a
range of flowers harbour repeated patterns of
nanostructures that show similar levels of disorder
across species. This degree of disorder produces a blue
halo of scattered light that helps bees to find
flowers. |
Inflammatory
memory sensitizes skin epithelial stem cells to tissue
damage
After acute
inflammation, epithelial stem cells retain a memory that
accelerates restoration of the skin barrier during
subsequent tissue damage, and this enhancement is
dependent on the AIM2 inflammasome and its downstream
effectors. |
Structure of
phycobilisome from the red alga Griffithsia
pacifica
Single-particle
cryo-electron microscopy is used to resolve the
structure of the phycobilisome, a 16.8-megadalton
light-harvesting megacomplex, from the red alga
Griffithsia pacifica at a resolution of
3.5 Å. |
Disorder in
convergent floral nanostructures enhances signalling to
bees
Disordered
nanoscale striations on petals, tepals and bracts have
evolved multiple times among flowering plants and
provide a salient visual signal to foraging bumblebees
(Bombus terrestris). |
The dynamics
of molecular evolution over 60,000
generations
Using data from
sixty thousand generations of the E. coli
long-term evolution experiment, the authors shed new
light on the processes that govern molecular
evolution. |
Molecular
basis of USP7 inhibition by selective small-molecule
inhibitors
Small molecules
are identified that inhibit the ubiquitin-specific
protease USP7 with high affinity and specificity as
explained by co-crystal structures, and are shown to
reduce tumour growth in mice. |
USP7
small-molecule inhibitors interfere with ubiquitin
binding
The development
of selective ubiquitin-specific protease-7 (USP7)
inhibitors GNE-6640 and GNE-6776, which induce tumour
cell death and reveal differential kinetics of Lys-48
and Lys-63-linked ubiquitin chain depolymerization by
USP7. |
Mfsd2b is
essential for the sphingosine-1-phosphate export in
erythrocytes and platelets
Identification
of a transmembrane protein, Mfsd2b, that is essential
for the export of the signalling molecule
sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) from red blood cells and
platelets. |
Network
control principles predict neuron function in the
Caenorhabditis elegans
connectome
Application of
network control theory to the neuronal connectome of
Caenorhabditis elegans, allowing prediction of
the involvement of individual neurons in
locomotion. |
Glucose
feeds the TCA cycle via circulating
lactate
Metabolic flux
analysis in mice reveals that lactate often acts as the
primary carbon source for the tricarboxylic acid cycle
both in normal tissues and in tumour
microenvironments. |
Single-molecule
imaging reveals receptor–G protein interactions at cell
surface hot spots
G-protein-coupled
receptors and their G protein partners are studied by
single-molecule imaging in living cells, which reveals
hot spots on the cell membrane where receptors and G
proteins interact and signal. |
Transitional
basal cells at the squamous–columnar junction generate
Barrett’s oesophagus
Barrett’s
oesophagus—a metaplasia that can be induced by
persistent acid reflux, and predisposes patients to
oesophageal cancer—arises from a population of basal
cells at the gastro-oesophageal junction. |
Indirect
effects drive coevolution in mutualistic
networks
An approach to
ecological interactions that integrates coevolutionary
dynamics and network structure, showing that selection
in mutualisms is shaped not only by the mutualistic
partners but by all sorts of indirect effects from other
species in the network. |
The X-ray
counterpart to the gravitational-wave event
GW170817
Detection of
X-ray emission at a location coincident with the
kilonova transient of the gravitational-wave event
GW170817 provides the missing observational link between
short gamma-ray bursts and gravitational waves from
neutron-star mergers. |
Optical
emission from a kilonova following a
gravitational-wave-detected neutron-star
merger
Optical to
near-infrared observations of a transient coincident
with the detection of the gravitational-wave signature
of a binary neutron-star merger and a low-luminosity
short-duration γ-ray burst are presented and
modelled. |
| Spectroscopic
identification of r-process nucleosynthesis in a double
neutron-star merger |
| A
gravitational-wave standard siren measurement of the
Hubble constant |
| Erratum:
Strains, functions and dynamics in the expanded Human
Microbiome
Project | |
DNA
sequencing at 40: past, present and
future
The history and
future potential of DNA sequencing, including the
development of the underlying technologies and the
expansion of its areas of application, are
reviewed.
Jay
Shendure, Shankar Balasubramanian, George M. Church
et
al. | |
Mastering
the game of Go without human
knowledge
Starting from
zero knowledge and without human data, AlphaGo Zero was
able to teach itself to play Go and to develop novel
strategies that provide new insights into the oldest of
games.
David
Silver, Julian Schrittwieser, Karen Simonyan et
al. |
BRCA1–BARD1
promotes RAD51-mediated homologous DNA
pairing
The tumour
suppressor complex BRCA1–BARD1, which facilitates the
generation of a single-stranded DNA template during
homologous recombination, also binds to the recombinase
RAD51 and enhances its function.
Weixing
Zhao, Justin B. Steinfeld, Fengshan Liang et
al. |
Human TRPML1
channel structures in open and closed
conformations
Two structures
of human transient receptor potential mucolipin 1
(TRPML1), in the closed and agonist-bound open states,
have been resolved by electron
cryo-microscopy.
Philip
Schmiege, Michael Fine, Günter Blobel et
al. | |
A
parts-per-billion measurement of the antiproton magnetic
moment
The magnetic
moment of the antiproton is measured at the
parts-per-billion level, improving on previous
measurements by a factor of about 350.
C.
Smorra, S. Sellner, M. J. Borchert et
al. |
Solving a
Higgs optimization problem with quantum annealing for
machine learning
A machine
learning algorithm implemented on a quantum annealer—a
D-Wave machine with 1,098 superconducting qubits—is used
to identify Higgs-boson decays from background
standard-model processes.
Alex
Mott, Joshua Job, Jean-Roch Vlimant et
al. |
Ion sieving
in graphene oxide membranes via cationic control of
interlayer spacing
Cations are used
to control the interlayer spacing of graphene oxide
membranes, enabling efficient and selective sieving of
hydrated cations.
Liang
Chen, Guosheng Shi, Jie Shen et
al. |
Organic long
persistent luminescence
A blend of two
organic molecules excited by a simple LED light source
can release the stored excitation energy slowly as ‘long
persistent luminescence’ over periods of up to an
hour.
Ryota
Kabe, Chihaya Adachi |
Social
behaviour shapes hypothalamic neural ensemble
representations of conspecific sex
Interactions
with male and female intruders activated overlapping
neuronal populations in the ventromedial hypothalamus of
inexperienced adult male mice, and these ensembles
gradually separated as the mice acquired social and
sexual experience with conspecifics.
Ryan
Remedios, Ann Kennedy, Moriel Zelikowsky et
al. |
Establishment
of mouse expanded potential stem
cells
Cultures of
expanded potential stem cells can be established from
individual eight-cell blastomeres, and by direct
conversion of mouse embryonic stem cells and induced
pluripotent stem cells, highlighting the feasibility of
establishing expanded potential stem cells for other
mammalian species.
Jian
Yang, David J. Ryan, Wei Wang et
al. |
Radically
truncated MeCP2 rescues Rett syndrome-like neurological
defects
Analysis of the
minimal functional unit for MeCP2 protein shows that its
function is to recruit the NCoR/SMRT co-repressor
complex to methylated sites on chromatin, which may have
use in designing strategies for gene therapy of Rett
syndrome.
Rebekah
Tillotson, Jim Selfridge, Martha V. Koerner et
al. |
Cytoplasmic
chromatin triggers inflammation in senescence and
cancer
Cytoplasmic
chromatin activates the innate immunity cytosolic
DNA-sensing cGAS–STING pathway, leading both to
short-term inflammation to restrain activated oncogenes
and to chronic inflammation that associates with tissue
destruction and cancer.
Zhixun
Dou, Kanad Ghosh, Maria Grazia Vizioli et
al. |
Enhanced
proofreading governs CRISPR–Cas9 targeting
accuracy
A new engineered
version of SpCas9, called HypaCas9, displays enhanced
accuracy of editing without significant loss of
efficiency at the desired target.
Janice
S. Chen, Yavuz S. Dagdas, Benjamin P. Kleinstiver et
al. |
Cryo-electron
microscopy structure of the lysosomal calcium-permeable
channel TRPML3
A cryo-electron
microscopy structure shows that the mucolipin domain of
the lysosomal calcium channel TRPML3 binds
phosphatidylinositol-3,5-bisphosphate and gates the
channel.
Marscha
Hirschi, Mark A. Herzik Jr, Jinhong Wie et
al. |
Structure of
mammalian endolysosomal TRPML1 channel in
nanodiscs
The structure of
mouse transient receptor potential mucolipin 1 (TRPML1),
a cation channel located within endosomal and lysosomal
membranes, is resolved using single-particle electron
cryo-microscopy.
Qingfeng
Chen, Ji She, Weizhong Zeng et
al. | | |
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