| | Nature Index 2015 Asia-Pacific
Mike May, Herb Brody | The Asia-Pacific impact
The Nature Index 2015 Asia-Pacific reveals strong overall results from the traditional science leaders in this region. In addition, some smaller countries excel in specific areas.
| China
Increased investment levels continue to signal China's intention of becoming a global research leader and structural reform has been implemented to encourage collaboration on the country's acute needs — such as clean energy.
| Japan
Reforms are underway to make best use of tight research budgets, but it remains unclear if changes will address Japan's many challenges or further destabilize the deeply unsettled science powerhouse.
| South Korea
Working to build a 'creative economy', the country has boosted its significant science spending with researchers particularly focusing on nanotechnology, nuclear fusion and stem-cell research.
| Australia
Amid sweeping funding cuts and an often hostile political environment, the country's science leaders look outward for multi-disciplinary collaboration and prepare to take the long-term strategic view.
| India
Space-travel success inspires the growing science and technology community, but financial difficulties create obstacles and industry is being called upon to take up more of the financial burden.
| Asian Tigers, Pacific Panthers
Even Asia-Pacific's smaller players — notably Singapore, Taiwan and New Zealand — work to improve their scientific and technical capabilities, while several tiny nations in the region are beginning to shine.
| 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
| Nature Index tables
Asia-Pacific's leading institutions for high–quality science, ordered by weighted fractional count (WFC) for 2014. Also shown are the total number of articles, and the change in WFC from 2013. Articles are from the 68 natural science journals that comprise the Nature Index (see A guide to the Nature Index, page S75).
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| | Molecular biology: RNA interference hangs by a thread
The Paf1 protein complex in fission yeast has been found to protect protein-coding genes from inhibition by RNA-mediated silencing of transcription, by stimulating the release of nascent transcripts from DNA.
| Plant biology: Coding in non-coding RNAs
The discovery of peptides encoded by what were thought to be non-coding – or 'junk' – regions of precursors to microRNA sequences reveals a new layer of gene regulation. These sequences may not be junk, after all.
| Loss of δ-catenin function in severe autism
In severe autism, deleterious variants at conserved residues are enriched in patients arising from female-enriched multiplex families, enhancing the detection of key autism genes in modest numbers of cases.
| 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.
| Signalling thresholds and negative B-cell selection in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia
This study shows that, despite malignant transformation, autoimmune checkpoints are still functional in B-cell leukaemia, with targeted activation of these checkpoints effectively killing patient-derived B-cell leukaemia in a transplant model; the results represent a novel strategy to overcome drug resistance in leukaemia patients.
| Nuclear ashes and outflow in the eruptive star Nova Vul 1670
Observations of CK Vulpeculae reveal that it is surrounded by molecular gas and dust whose large mass and chemical composition cannot have come from a nova; the best explanation is that this object is the remnant of the merger of two stars.
| 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.
| Saturn's fast spin determined from its gravitational field and oblateness
Saturn's rotation period is difficult to determine directly; here an optimization approach using its gravitational field yields a value of 10 h 32 min 45 s ± 46 s.
| 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.
| Therapy-induced tumour secretomes promote resistance and tumour progression
Tumour cells respond to an effective, targeted drug treatment with BRAF, ALK or EGFR kinase inhibitors by inducing a complex network of secreted signals that promote tumour growth, dissemination and metastasis of drug-resistant cancer cell clones, and increase the survival of drug-sensitive tumour cells, potentially contributing to incomplete tumour regression.
| The Paf1 complex represses small-RNA-mediated epigenetic gene silencing
The fission yeast is shown to have a mechanism to prevent small RNAs from inducing heterochromatin and epigenetic gene silencing; this protective model involves the highly conserved Paf1 complex, which is known to promote transcription and processing of pre-mRNA, and protects protein-coding genes from unwanted silencing by spurious transcripts.
| Primary transcripts of microRNAs encode regulatory peptides
Plant primary microRNA (miRNA) transcripts (pri-miRNAs) are not just a source of miRNAs but can also encode regulatory peptides (miPEPs) that enhance the accumulation, and so the effect, of the corresponding mature miRNAs—an observation that may have agronomical applications.
| | Regulated eukaryotic DNA replication origin firing with purified proteins
It has long been a goal to reconstitute eukaryotic DNA replication; here a purified in vitro system from budding yeast containing 16 factors, themselves composed of 42 polypeptides, fulfils the staged process of origin-dependent initiation, including its regulation by kinases.
Joseph T. P. Yeeles, Tom D. Deegan, Agnieszka Janska et al. | MAP4K4 regulates integrin-FERM binding to control endothelial cell motility
A new MAP4K4–moesin–talin–β1-integrin pathway regulating endothelial cell motility was discovered through chemical and siRNA screens; loss of Map4k4 or inhibition of MAP4K4 kinase activity altered the sprout morphology of endothelial cells during angiogenesis by blocking moesin phosphorylation, which regulates the disassembly of focal adhesions, demonstrating that this pathway is involved in both normal and pathological angiogenesis.
Philip Vitorino, Stacey Yeung, Ailey Crow et al. | | Structural imprints in vivo decode RNA regulatory mechanisms
The single-stranded nature of RNAs synthesized in the cell gives them great scope to form different structures, but current methods to measure RNA structure in vivo are limited; now, a new methodology allows researchers to examine all four nucleotides in mouse embryonic stem cells.
Robert C. Spitale, Ryan A. Flynn, Qiangfeng Cliff Zhang et al. | Square ice in graphene nanocapillaries
The structure of the low-dimensional water confined in hydrophobic pores is shown, using electron microscopy and supported by molecular dynamics simulations, to be 'square ice', which does not have the conventional tetrahedral hydrogen bonding.
G. Algara-Siller, O. Lehtinen, F. C. Wang et al. | Vapour-mediated sensing and motility in two-component droplets
Droplets of mixed water and propylene glycol deposited on clean glass exhibit a contact angle but do not suffer from contact line pinning; their motion can be controlled by the vapour emitted from neighbouring droplets to create a variety of autonomous fluidic machines with integrated sensing and motility capabilities.
N. J. Cira, A. Benusiglio, M. Prakash | A temporal shift in the circuits mediating retrieval of fear memory
Dissociating early from late fear memory retrieval in rats reveals that while the projection from the prelimbic prefrontal cortex to the amygdala is critical for fear memory retrieval at early time points, a separate circuit involving the paraventricular region of the dorsal midline thalamus is critical for fear memory retrieval at late time points, establishing the paraventricular region as a critical maintenance/retrieval node during the transition from short- to long-term fear memory.
Fabricio H. Do-Monte, Kelvin Quiñones-Laracuente, Gregory J. Quirk | Increases in tropical rainfall driven by changes in frequency of organized deep convection
An increase in the frequency of organized deep convection—essentially a large aggregation of heavily precipitating and largely stratiform clouds—is behind most of the recent increases in tropical precipitation.
Jackson Tan, Christian Jakob, William B. Rossow et al. | Lineage correlations of single cell division time as a probe of cell-cycle dynamics
Precise measurement of cell-cycle duration in thousands of mammalian cells reveals correlations among cousin cells, but no such correlations between mother and daughter cells; recapitulating this finding using a deterministic model suggests that observed cellular heterogeneities in cell-cycle duration may be attributable to deterministic processes, and eventually be controlled.
Oded Sandler, Sivan Pearl Mizrahi, Noga Weiss et al. | N6-methyladenosine marks primary microRNAs for processing
The addition of the N6-methyladenosine (m6A) mark to primary microRNAs by METTL3 in mammalian cells is found to promote the recognition of these microRNA precursors by DGCR8, a component of the microprocessor complex.
Claudio R. Alarcón, Hyeseung Lee, Hani Goodarzi et al. | Entanglement with negative Wigner function of almost 3,000 atoms heralded by one photon
The detection of a single photon from a laser interacting with an atomic ensemble is shown to produce entanglement of almost 3,000 atoms; in contrast to previous production of multi-atom entanglement, the highly non-classical nature of the present entangled state is verified by measurement of a negative quasiprobability distribution.
Robert McConnell, Hao Zhang, Jiazhong Hu et al. | The paraventricular thalamus controls a central amygdala fear circuit
Inhibiting projections from the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus to a specific division of the amygdala prevents fear conditioning in mice, indicating an important role for the thalamus–amygdala circuit in establishing and maintaining fear responses.
Mario A. Penzo, Vincent Robert, Jason Tucciarone et al. | Phosphodiesterase 9A controls nitric-oxide-independent cGMP and hypertrophic heart disease
The inhibition, in mice, of the phosphodiesterase PDE9A, which specifically regulates natriuretic-peptide-coupled cGMP signalling, is independent of nitric oxide and is upregulated in failing human hearts, and can reverse pre-established stress-induced heart disease.
Dong I. Lee, Guangshuo Zhu, Takashi Sasaki et al. | SLC38A9 is a component of the lysosomal amino acid sensing machinery that controls mTORC1
The mTORC1 protein kinase complex integrates nutrient and growth stimuli to modulate signalling pathways that regulate cellular metabolism and physiology, but the molecular nature of the amino acid sensing mechanism at the lysosome is unknown; here, an orphan member of the human solute carrier group of proteins, SLC38A9, is shown to be an integral component of the lysosomal machinery that can directly sense amino acids and activate mTORC1.
Manuele Rebsamen, Lorena Pochini, Taras Stasyk et al. | Wind from the black-hole accretion disk driving a molecular outflow in an active galaxy
Observations of an ultrafast accretion-disk wind in the X-ray spectrum of a nearby ultraluminous infrared galaxy support the theory that such winds affect the evolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies.
F. Tombesi, M. Meléndez, S. Veilleux et al. | Two insulin receptors determine alternative wing morphs in planthoppers
Some insects have alternative wing morphs, one that is long-winged and changes habitat to follow resources, and one that is short-winged and flightless but has high fertility; here, the molecular details of this switch are revealed, with opposite effects of two insulin receptors controlling the development of different wing morphs in the planthopper.
Hai-Jun Xu, Jian Xue, Bo Lu et al. | hiCLIP reveals the in vivo atlas of mRNA secondary structures recognized by Staufen 1
A method, termed hiCLIP, has been developed to determine the RNA duplexes bound by RNA-binding proteins, revealing an unforeseen prevalence of long-range duplexes in 3′ untranslated regions (UTRs), and a decreased incidence of SNPs in duplex-forming regions; the results also show that RNA structure is able to regulate gene expression.
Yoichiro Sugimoto, Alessandra Vigilante, Elodie Darbo et al. | | | | |
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