Nature contents: 16 January 2014

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>     Volume 505 Number 7483      nature •Visit Nature homepage •Subscribe to Nature •View Table of Contents The science that matters. Every week.           Jump to the content that matters to you View Table of Contents ▶ ▼ News & Comment   ▼ Biological Sciences   ▼ Chemical Sciences   ▼ Physical Sciences   ▼ Earth & Environmental Sciences   ▼ Careers & Jobs       This week's highlights     Specials - Insight: Frontiers in Biology     This collection of seven timely reviews covers important developments in biology, ranging from the subcellular to the organismal level, and including molecular mechanisms and biomedicine. Topics touched on include state-of-the-art cancer-predisposition-gene discovery, brain function at the level of neural projections, mitochondrial research and new approaches to the treatment of haematological disorders. ▼ more       Chemical Sciences More Chemical sciences ▼   Nanoparticle solutions as adhesives for gels and biological tissues   Hydrogels are invaluable materials for many emerging technological and biomedical applications. But making assemblies of these gels is difficult because typical adhesives don't work with hydrogels. But now Ludwik Leibler and colleagues show that gels can be strongly glued together simply by spreading a nanoparticle solution onto one gel's surface and then pressing another gel onto it. The method relies on the nanoparticles' ability to bind to polymer chains in the gels, and to act as connectors between chains from the two different gels. The approach also works for some biological tissues, as the authors demonstrate by joining two pieces of calf's liver.       Earth & Environmental Sciences More Earth & Environmental sciences ▼   A signature of transience in bedrock river incision rates over timescales of 104–107 years   River incision rates are important indicators of the extent of climate-related erosional change in the landscape, and measured rates of bedrock river incision are also thought to constrain active tectonic processes. All this assumes, however, that a rate of river incision meaningfully records information about external forcing factors. This assumption is called into question in this week's Nature. Using measurements of river incision into bedrock from a range of geological settings, Noah Finnegan and colleagues show that the average incision rate depends on the time interval over which it is measured — complicating any effort to extract meaningful conclusions about the past       Biological Sciences More Biological sciences ▼   A mitochondrial genome sequence of a hominin from Sima de los Huesos   The human remains from the Sima de los Huesos ('pit of bones') cave in Atapuerca, Spain, are of particular importance as they are from the poorly known Middle Pleistocene period, dating to more than 400,000 years ago. Now a near-complete genome sequence has been obtained from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from a well-preserved femur from the collection, the oldest hominin genetic material so far recovered. The mtDNA suggests links with the still-enigmatic Denisovans of eastern Eurasia.       Podcast & Video     In this week's podcast: why birds fly in formation, how old trees are efficient carbon eaters, and cracking down on personal genomics. In our latest video feature, people have long been intrigued by birds that fly in a 'V' shape. Now researchers show ibises position themselves and their wings to take advantage of the airflow created by the bird in front.         News & Comment Read daily news coverage▶ ▲top               THIS WEEK           Editorials                   Power to the people ▶     A planned database collating medical information for England's population is a laudable exercise, with huge potential for research. But people's right to opt out has been greatly downplayed.             Cool heads needed ▶     As cold weather rages, it is easy to forget the difference between weather and climate.             V is for vortex ▶     An endangered species helps scientists to learn why migrating birds fly in a familiar formation.             World View                   Physiological data must remain confidential ▶     Electronic devices that track our emotions, heart rate or brain waves should be regulated to protect individual privacy, says Stephen Fairclough.             Seven Days                   Seven days: 10–16 January 2014 ▶     The week in science: Astronomers glimpse super-deep galaxies, India marks polio-free milestone, and Italian police investigate animal activism.             NEWS IN FOCUS           Comet craft ready to wake ▶     Stakes high as European Space Agency waits for Rosetta orbiter to come out of hibernation.             Researchers question rescued polar expedition ▶     Australian Antarctic Division says it did not approve research strategy of stricken mission.             Repositories share key research tools ▶     But some biological resource centres face funding issues.             Ampere to get rational redefinition ▶     Single-electron flow measured in bid to overhaul SI base unit.             Kepler clue to supernova puzzle ▶     Two white dwarfs favoured as precursors of type Ia supernovae.             Features                   Climate change: The case of the missing heat ▶     Sixteen years into the mysterious 'global-warming hiatus', scientists are piecing together an explanation.             Astrophysics: The heart of darkness ▶     The supermassive black holes that lie at the centre of every large galaxy are full of mysteries. But astronomers are finally getting a clear look.             COMMENT           Development: Time to leave GDP behind ▶     Gross domestic product is a misleading measure of national success. Countries should act now to embrace new metrics, urge Robert Costanza and colleagues.             Regulation: The FDA is overcautious on consumer genomics ▶     A US drug-agency clampdown is unwarranted without evidence of harm, say Robert C. Green and Nita A. Farahany.             Books and Arts                   Development: Liquid assets ▶     Margaret Catley-Carlson is invigorated by a brace of books on the future of world water supplies.             Books in brief ▶             Astronomy: The great unseen ▶     Eric Hand views a planetarium show on dark matter and dark energy that is both dislocating and transfixing.             Correspondence                   Polar rescue: science was not well served Nick Gales | Education: Shift aims of China's poorer universities Yanhong Tang, Xin Miao | Technology: Rapid progress in producing graphene Kostya S. Novoselov | Communication: Use multimedia in grant applications Michael R. Doran, William B. Lott, Steven E. Doran | Research: Publish on the basis of quality, not gender Lukas Koube             Correction                   Corrections ▶               Specials - Insight: Frontiers in biology ▲top               Frontiers in biology ▶             Realizing the promise of cancer predisposition genes ▶             Circuit dynamics of adaptive and maladaptive behaviour ▶             Interneuron cell types are fit to function ▶             The bone marrow niche for haematopoietic stem cells ▶             Mitochondrial form and function ▶             The multilayered complexity of ceRNA crosstalk and competition ▶             PIWI proteins and PIWI-interacting RNAs in the soma ▶                 Biological Sciences ▲top             RESEARCH           Latest Online                   Molecular control of δ-opioid receptor signalling ▶     Gustavo Fenalti, Patrick M. Giguere, Vsevolod Katritch et al.     The 1.8 Å high-resolution X-ray crystal structure of the human δ-opioid receptor is presented, with site-directed mutagenesis and functional studies revealing a crucial role for a sodium ion in mediating allosteric control in this receptor.             Leukaemogenesis induced by an activating β-catenin mutation in osteoblasts ▶     Aruna Kode, John S. Manavalan, Ioanna Mosialou et al.     A mouse model shows that osteoblast activating β-catenin mutations alone are sufficient to initiate the development of acute myeloid leukaemia acting through increased Notch signalling.             Broadly permissive intestinal chromatin underlies lateral inhibition and cell plasticity ▶     Tae-Hee Kim, Fugen Li, Isabel Ferreiro-Neira et al.     A study investigating the mechanisms underlying lateral inhibition and lineage plasticity in the mouse small intestine crypts in vivo finds that crypt cells maintain a permissive chromatin state upon which a transcription factor acts to determine lineage specification, and this is the basis of lateral inhibition.             Rate of tree carbon accumulation increases continuously with tree size ▶     N. L. Stephenson, A. J. Das, R. Condit et al.     A global analysis shows that for most tree species the largest trees are the fastest-growing trees, a finding that resolves conflicting assumptions about tree growth and that has implications for understanding forest carbon dynamics, resource allocation trade-offs within trees and plant senescence.             Cell-autonomous correction of ring chromosomes in human induced pluripotent stem cells ▶     Marina Bershteyn, Yohei Hayashi, Guillaume Desachy et al.     Generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells from patient fibroblasts containing ring chromosomes with large deletions reveals that reprogrammed cells lose the abnormal chromosome and duplicate the wild-type homologue through compensatory uniparental disomy, suggesting that cellular reprogramming may hold potential for 'chromosome therapy'.             Sensory–motor transformations for speech occur bilaterally ▶     Gregory B. Cogan, Thomas Thesen, Chad Carlson et al.     Direct neural recordings from electrodes over bilateral cortices show that sensory–motor transformations for speech occur bilaterally; neural responses are robust during both perception and production in an overt word-repetition task, and bilateral sensory–motor responses can perform transformations between speech-perception and speech-production representations during a non-word transformation task.             Articles and Letters                   CNVs conferring risk of autism or schizophrenia affect cognition in controls ▶     Hreinn Stefansson, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Stacy Steinberg et al.     Rare copy-number variants (CNVs) conferring risk of schizophrenia or autism affect fecundity of carriers in Iceland, and carriers of these CNVs who do not suffer disease or have not been diagnosed with intellectual disability show phenotypes in brain structure and cognitive abilities between those of non-carrier controls and patients with schizophrenia.             Biochemical reconstitution of topological DNA binding by the cohesin ring ▶     Yasuto Murayama, Frank Uhlmann     Many DNA processes require chromosomes to be held together by a ring-shaped complex called cohesin, but despite the importance of this protein, its interaction with DNA has not been reproduced in vitro; here, using purified yeast proteins, cohesin loading is successfully recapitulated, offering mechanistic insight into how the loader complex mediates topological cohesin binding.             UvrD facilitates DNA repair by pulling RNA polymerase backwards ▶     Vitaly Epshtein, Venu Kamarthapu, Katelyn McGary et al.     UvrD acts in nucleotide excision repair by using its helicase/translocase activity to induce RNA polymerase backtracking, enabling repair enzymes to access DNA lesions.             Upwash exploitation and downwash avoidance by flap phasing in ibis formation flight ▶     Steven J. Portugal, Tatjana Y. Hubel, Johannes Fritz et al.     Position and flap phasing between birds in formation flight indicate aerodynamic benefit.             A mitochondrial genome sequence of a hominin from Sima de los Huesos ▶     Matthias Meyer, Qiaomei Fu, Ayinuer Aximu-Petri et al.     A full mitochondrial genome from a 400,000-year-old Middle Pleistocene hominin from Spain unexpectedly reveals a close relationship to Denisovans, a sister group to the Neanderthals, raising interesting questions about the origins of Neanderthals and Denisovans.             Perturbed neural activity disrupts cerebral angiogenesis during a postnatal critical period ▶     Christina Whiteus, Catarina Freitas, Jaime Grutzendler     In mice, chronic stimulation by repetitive sounds, whisker deflection, motor activity or seizures during a postnatal developmental critical period, leads to permanent reductions in brain microvascular density, an effect that impairs oxygen delivery to neurons but can be prevented by blocking nitric oxide signalling.             Muc5b is required for airway defence ▶     Michelle G. Roy, Alessandra Livraghi-Butrico, Ashley A. Fletcher et al.     The airway mucin Muc5b (but not Muc5ac) is required for mucociliary clearance, defence against bacterial infection in the airways and middle ear, and maintenance of immune homeostasis in the lungs; Muc5b deficiency causes accumulation of apoptotic macrophages, impairment of phagocytosis and reduced production of interleukin-23, leading to infection and inflammation.             Cytokinin signalling inhibitory fields provide robustness to phyllotaxis ▶     Fabrice Besnard, Yassin Refahi, Valérie Morin et al.     The regularly spaced arrangement of plant organs around the stem known as phyllotaxis depends on auxin-based inhibitory fields; this study identifies another hormone-based inhibitory field downstream of auxin which is generated by movement of the cytokinin signalling inhibitor ARABIDOPSIS HISTIDINE PHOSPHOTRANSFER PROTEIN 6 and regulates the periodicity of organ production.             Chasing acyl carrier protein through a catalytic cycle of lipid A production ▶     Ali Masoudi, Christian R. H. Raetz, Pei Zhou et al.     The crystal structures of three forms of Escherichia coli acyl carrier protein engaging LpxD, an acyltransferase in the lipid A biosynthetic pathway, are reported.             Trapping the dynamic acyl carrier protein in fatty acid biosynthesis ▶     Chi Nguyen, Robert W. Haushalter, D. John Lee et al.     A highly specific chemical crosslinking method is used to trap a complex between an acyl carrier protein and a fatty acid dehydratase during fatty acid biosynthesis; subsequent X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations techniques enable the detailed study of this complex.             Icosahedral bacteriophage ΦX174 forms a tail for DNA transport during infection ▶     Lei Sun, Lindsey N. Young, Xinzheng Zhang et al.     Here, the atomic structure of a virally encoded, cell-wall-spanning, DNA-translocating conduit from bacteriophage ΦX174 is described.             News & Views                   Bird flight: Fly with a little flap from your friends ▶     Florian T. Muijres, Michael H. Dickinson             Plant science: Fairy chemicals ▶     Andrew Mitchinson             Molecular biology: The tug of DNA repair ▶     Irina Artsimovitch             Corrigendum                   Corrigendum: A Jurassic mammaliaform and the earliest mammalian evolutionary adaptations ▶     Chang-Fu Zhou, Shaoyuan Wu, Thomas Martin et al.             Research Highlights                   Zoology: Starfish eyes see the light | Molecular biology: RNA retrieved from intact tissue | Palaeontology: Trilobites ventured beyond the ocean | Metabolism: How exercise benefits the body | Microbiology: Marine bacteria shed tiny sacs         NEWS & COMMENT           V is for vortex | Repositories share key research tools | Regulation: The FDA is overcautious on consumer genomics | Power to the people | Comet craft ready to wake             More Biological Sciences ▶                 nature.com webcasts Macmillan Science Communication presents a custom webcast series: Drugging the Human Methylome   Two independent, but complimentary, webcasts and live Q & A's broadcasting on:   21 January    23 January    Sponsored by: Epizyme          Chemical Sciences ▲top             RESEARCH           Articles and Letters                   Asymmetric synthesis from terminal alkenes by cascades of diboration and cross-coupling ▶     Scott N. Mlynarski, Christopher H. Schuster, James P. Morken     A single-flask, catalytic enantioselective conversion of terminal alkenes into a number of chiral products is described: this tandem diboration/cross-coupling reaction works on a broad range of substrates, requires small amounts of commercially available catalysts, and provides products in high yield and high selectivity.             More Chemical Sciences ▶               Physical Sciences ▲top             RESEARCH           Latest Online                   Electronics: Protecting the weak from the strong ▶     George V. Eleftheriades             Articles and Letters                   A Be-type star with a black-hole companion ▶     J. Casares, I. Negueruela, M. Ribó et al.     A black hole with mass 3.8 to 6.9 times that of the Sun is found to be orbiting the nearby Be-type star MWC 656; the black hole is encircled by an accretion disk and X-ray quiescent, implying that Be binaries with black-hole companions are difficult to detect in conventional X-ray surveys.             Nanoparticle solutions as adhesives for gels and biological tissues ▶     Séverine Rose, Alexandre Prevoteau, Paul Elzière et al.     Strong, rapid adhesion between two hydrogels and even slices of animal tissue can be achieved at room temperature by using a silica nanoparticle solution as a 'glue'.             Asymmetric synthesis from terminal alkenes by cascades of diboration and cross-coupling ▶     Scott N. Mlynarski, Christopher H. Schuster, James P. Morken     A single-flask, catalytic enantioselective conversion of terminal alkenes into a number of chiral products is described: this tandem diboration/cross-coupling reaction works on a broad range of substrates, requires small amounts of commercially available catalysts, and provides products in high yield and high selectivity.             News & Views                   Astrophysics: Black hole found orbiting a fast rotator ▶     M. Virginia McSwain             Electronics: Protecting the weak from the strong ▶     George V. Eleftheriades             Erratum                   Erratum: Reducing the contact time of a bouncing drop ▶     James C. Bird, Rajeev Dhiman, Hyuk-Min Kwon et al.             Research Highlights                   Materials: Warm carbon coat reduces friction | Physics: Why penguins do the wave         NEWS & COMMENT           Physiological data must remain confidential | Comet craft ready to wake | Astrophysics: The heart of darkness | Astronomy: The great unseen | Ampere to get rational redefinition | Kepler clue to supernova puzzle             More Physical Sciences ▶               Earth & Environmental Sciences ▲top             RESEARCH           Latest Online                   Rate of tree carbon accumulation increases continuously with tree size ▶     N. L. Stephenson, A. J. Das, R. Condit et al.     A global analysis shows that for most tree species the largest trees are the fastest-growing trees, a finding that resolves conflicting assumptions about tree growth and that has implications for understanding forest carbon dynamics, resource allocation trade-offs within trees and plant senescence.             Convective forcing of mercury and ozone in the Arctic boundary layer induced by leads in sea ice ▶     Christopher W. Moore, Daniel Obrist, Alexandra Steffen et al.     Sea-ice leads (open water channels), which increase with an ongoing shift from perennial to seasonal sea ice, are shown to initiate convection in the Arctic boundary layer, thus supplying ozone and gaseous mercury to the surface and possibly leading to additional pollution effects.             Articles and Letters                   A signature of transience in bedrock river incision rates over timescales of 104–107 years ▶     Noah J. Finnegan, Rina Schumer, Seth Finnegan     Rates of river incision into bedrock are thought to reflect rates of rock uplift as well as the strength of climatic forcing of erosion over time, but here incision rate is shown to depend on the measurement interval.             Amazon River carbon dioxide outgassing fuelled by wetlands ▶     Gwenaël Abril, Jean-Michel Martinez, L. Felipe Artigas et al.     Global carbon budgets reveal that inland waters emit substantial amounts of carbon, which is believed to originate from the terrestrial biosphere; however, here the carbon emitted from the Amazon River system is shown to originate from temporary wetlands in the flooded area itself, such as flooded forests.             News & Views                   Earth science: River incision revisited ▶     Roman A. DiBiase             50 & 100 Years Ago ▶             Corrigendum                   Corrigendum: Probabilistic cost estimates for climate change mitigation ▶     Joeri Rogelj, David L. McCollum, Andy Reisinger et al.             Research Highlights                   Geology: Landslide triggered earthquakes | Climate change: Past warmth drives glacial melting | Microbiology: Marine bacteria shed tiny sacs | Oceanography: Sea-level swings get more extreme         NEWS & COMMENT           Cool heads needed | Researchers question rescued polar expedition | Climate change: The case of the missing heat | Development: Time to leave GDP behind             More Earth & Environmental Sciences ▶               Special - Technology Feature ▲top               High-security labs: Life in the danger zone ▶     Instruments for studying microbes under biological containment cannot be readily removed from labs for servicing. A US facility is finding ways around that problem.                 Nature Methods METHOD OF THE YEAR: SINGLE-CELL SEQUENCING   Nature Methods presents a series of articles that report the unique considerations related to sequencing single cells and their recent exciting applications in biology and medicine.   Access the METHOD OF THE YEAR and METHODS TO WATCH by visiting: www.nature.com/nmeth/focus/moy2013           Careers & Jobs ▲top               Disease research: Rare insights ▶     Scientists who specialize in uncommon diseases can find a research focus with a purpose.                   Female speakers ▶     Conference committees with women enlist more female speakers, says study.                   Living in the present ▶     Prospective biomedical postgraduate students ignore long-term salary prospects, according to analysis.                   Ireland lines up grants ▶     Irish fellowships aim to retain and reclaim early-career female researchers.             Careers related news & comment                   Seven days: 10–16 January 2014 | Repositories share key research tools Monya Baker | Astronomy: The great unseen Eric Hand               naturejobs.com Science jobs of the week       Post Doctoral Research Fellow     University College Dublin            Post-Doctoral Scientist     The George Washington University            Postdoctoral Associate     University of Florida            Post-doctoral Scientist     Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR)          No matter what your career stage, student, postdoc or senior scientist, you will find articles on naturejobs.com to help guide you in your science career. 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