| | Metabolism: Inflammation keeps old mice healthy
Immune cells called regulatory T cells accumulate in fat during ageing. The anti-inflammatory activity of these cells worsens age-associated defects in metabolism, in contrast to its effect in obesity. | Genomics: Acorn worms in a nutshell
The genome sequences of two members of the hemichordate group of marine invertebrates bring the evolution of their relatives, including vertebrates, into sharper focus. | Circadian clocks: A receptor for subtle temperature changes
The protein IR25a is best known for its role as an odour receptor in flies, but an analysis reveals that it also acts to synchronize the circadian clock by sensing small temperature fluctuations. | A perisinusoidal niche for extramedullary haematopoiesis in the spleen
Haematopoietic stem cells normally reside in a bone marrow niche but they are recruited to the spleen after physiological stresses; here, endothelial cells and stromal cells around sinusoidal blood vessels of the spleen are shown to secrete key niche factors to support this process. | Hemichordate genomes and deuterostome origins OPEN
Sequencing the genomes of two enteropneusts reveals complex genomic organization and developmental innovation in the ancestor of deuterostomes, a group of animals including echinoderms (starfish and their relatives) and chordates (which includes humans). | The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies
An analysis of when children develop a sense of fairness (receiving less or more than a peer) is compared across seven different societies; aversion to receiving less emerges early in childhood in all societies, whereas aversion to receiving more emerges later in childhood and only in three of the seven societies studied. | Therapeutic antibodies reveal Notch control of transdifferentiation in the adult lung
Inhibitory antibodies to two specific human and mouse Notch ligands, Jagged1 and Jagged2, are generated and shown to have beneficial effects in a goblet cell metaplasia asthma model; systemic Jagged1 inhibition transdifferentiates secretory cells into ciliated cells in the mouse, demonstrating that Jagged1 from ciliated cells normally holds back secretory cells to adopt the ciliated fate. | Ubiquitous time variability of integrated stellar populations
The number of long-period variable stars in a stellar population is directly related to their lifetime, which is difficult to predict from first principles; here a time-dependent stellar population model is constructed that includes the effects of long-period variable stars, and is applied to the galaxy M87. | Sweet and bitter taste in the brain of awake behaving animals
Activation of the sweet and bitter cortical fields in awake mice evokes predetermined behavioural programs, independent of learning and experience, illustrating the hardwired and innate nature of the sense of taste. | Potential sea-level rise from Antarctic ice-sheet instability constrained by observations
Recent work has suggested that sections of the West Antarctic ice sheet are already rapidly retreating, raising concerns about increased sea-level rise; now, an ice-sheet model is used to simulate the mass loss from the entire Antarctic ice sheet to 2200, suggesting that it could contribute up to 30 cm of sea-level rise by 2100 and 72 cm by 2200, but is unlikely to contribute more. | Drosophila Ionotropic Receptor 25a mediates circadian clock resetting by temperature
A Drosophila chemosensory receptor, expressed in leg sensory neurons, is necessary for behavioural and molecular synchronization of the fly's circadian clock to low-amplitude temperature cycles; this temperature-sensing pathway functions independently from the known temperature sensors of the fly's antennae. | Depletion of fat-resident Treg cells prevents age-associated insulin resistance
Fat-resident regulatory T cells (fTreg cells) accumulate in adipose tissue of mice as a function of age, but not obesity; mice without fTreg cells are protected against age-associated insulin resistance, but remain susceptible to obesity-associated insulin resistance and metabolic disease, indicating different aetiologies of age-associated versus obesity-associated insulin resistance. | Neonicotinoid pesticide exposure impairs crop pollination services provided by bumblebees
Despite substantial evidence that neonicotinoid pesticides can have negative effects on bees, there have been no reports that this leads to problems with pollination; here bumblebee colonies exposed to a neonicotinoid are shown to provide reduced pollination services to apple trees, leading to a reduction in seed number. | | Corrigendum: The ‘obligate diploid’ Candida albicans forms mating-competent haploids | | Corrigendum: Mutant IDH inhibits HNF-4α to block hepatocyte differentiation and promote biliary cancer | | Corrigendum: The formation and fate of internal waves in the South China Sea | Pharmacogenomic agreement between two cancer cell line data sets
In panels of cancer cell lines analysed for their response to drug libraries, some studies have proposed distinct pharmacological sensitivities for some cell lines while other studies have not seen the same trends; here the data in the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia and the Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer are reassessed, and the authors report a stronger degree of concordance between the two data sets than that in a previous study. | | Dpp spreading is required for medial but not for lateral wing disc growth
The morphogen Decapentaplegic (Dpp) has been implicated in both wing patterning and growth in fruitflies; here, a nanobody-based morphotrap approach has been developed that rules out a role for the Dpp gradient in regulating lateral wing growth.
Stefan Harmansa, Fisun Hamaratoglu, Markus Affolter et al. | Novel antibody–antibiotic conjugate eliminates intracellular S. aureus
Antibiotic-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, such as MRSA, are proving increasingly difficult to treat; here, one reason for this is confirmed to be the fact that S. aureus bacteria can reside in intracellular reservoirs where they are protected from antibiotics, but a new strategy—based on an antibody–antibiotic conjugate—can specifically target these reservoirs.
Sophie M. Lehar, Thomas Pillow, Min Xu et al. | Tumour exosome integrins determine organotropic metastasis
Exosomes originating from lung-, liver- and brain-tropic tumour cells are preferentially incorporated by specific resident cells of the target organs, thus preparing the site for metastasis; the expression of distinct combinations of exosomal integrin proteins determines the exosomal targeting to each of the three organs, and blocking these integrins reduces organotropic exosome uptake by the target organs, thereby reducing the likelihood of organotropic metastasis.
Ayuko Hoshino, Bruno Costa-Silva, Tang-Long Shen et al. | Gating machinery of InsP3R channels revealed by electron cryomicroscopy
This study has determined the electron cryomicroscopy structure of the mammalian type 1 InsP3 receptor in a ligand-free state at 4.7 Å resolution; although the central Ca2+-conduction pathway is similar to other ion channels, the unique architecture of the C-terminal domains of the tetrameric channel suggests that a distinctive allosteric mechanism underlies the activation of InsP3 gating.
Guizhen Fan, Matthew L. Baker, Zhao Wang et al. | | Accreting protoplanets in the LkCa 15 transition disk
Transition disks are natural laboratories for the study of planet formation, with inner clearings explained by the influence of accreting planets, but attempts to observe directly accretion onto protoplanets have proven unsuccessful so far; here the authors detect infrared emission from multiple companions of the LkCa 15 system and Ha emission from the innermost (LkCa 15 b), showing hot (~10,000 K) gas falling deep into the potential well of an accreting protoplanet.
S. Sallum, K. B. Follette, J. A. Eisner et al. | Measurement of interaction between antiprotons
The interaction between antiprotons, produced by colliding high-energy gold ions, is shown to be attractive, and two important parameters of this interaction are measured, namely the scattering length and the effective range.
The STAR Collaboration, L. Adamczyk, J. K. Adkins et al. | Nanostructure surveys of macroscopic specimens by small-angle scattering tensor tomography
An imaging method that combines small-angle X-ray scattering with tensor tomography to probe nanoscale structures in macroscopic samples is introduced and demonstrated by measuring the main orientation and the degree of orientation of nanoscale mineralized collagen fibrils in a human trabecula bone sample.
Marianne Liebi, Marios Georgiadis, Andreas Menzel et al. | Six-dimensional real and reciprocal space small-angle X-ray scattering tomography
A small-angle X-ray scattering computed tomography method that reduces the amount of data that needs to be collected and analysed to reconstruct the three-dimensional scattering distribution in reciprocal space of a three-dimensional sample in real space is demonstrated by measuring the orientation of collagen fibres within a human tooth.
Florian Schaff, Martin Bech, Paul Zaslansky et al. | Methane storage in flexible metal–organic frameworks with intrinsic thermal management
Two flexible metal-organic frameworks are presented as solid adsorbents for methane that undergo reversible phase transitions at specific methane pressures, enabling greater storage capacities of usable methane than have been achieved previously, while also providing internal heat management of the system.
Jarad A. Mason, Julia Oktawiec, Mercedes K. Taylor et al. | North Pacific deglacial hypoxic events linked to abrupt ocean warming
The processes responsible for driving the expansion of the ocean's oxygen minimum zones remain uncertain; here sediment core data from the Gulf of Alaska suggest that reduced oxygen solubility was a result of ocean warming initiating the expansion of the North Pacific oxygen minimum zone, leading to increased marine productivity and carbon export and, in turn, further reductions in dissolved oxygen levels.
S. K. Praetorius, A. C. Mix, M. H. Walczak et al. | The effects of life history and sexual selection on male and female plumage colouration
By quantifying the colouration of all approximately 6,000 species of passerine birds, certain life-history traits such as large body size and tropical distribution are found to increase ornamentation in both male and female birds, whereas cooperative breeding increases it in females only, and sexual selection diminishes it in females more than it increases it in males.
James Dale, Cody J. Dey, Kaspar Delhey et al. | Migratory neuronal progenitors arise from the neural plate borders in tunicates
Neuronal precursor cells in the tunicate Ciona intestinalis are shown to delaminate and undergo directed cell migration along either side of the neural tube before differentiating into bipolar neurons, suggesting that vertebrate neural-crest-derived sensory neurons have much deeper evolutionary roots.
Alberto Stolfi, Kerrianne Ryan, Ian A. Meinertzhagen et al. | Decapentaplegic and growth control in the developing Drosophila wing
The morphogen Decapentaplegic (Dpp) has been implicated in both wing patterning and growth in fruitflies; here, a CRISPR–Cas9 approach is used to rule out the Dpp gradient driving wing growth.
Takuya Akiyama, Matthew C. Gibson | Diversion of aspartate in ASS1-deficient tumours fosters de novo pyrimidine synthesis
ASS1, a urea cycle enzyme, promotes cancer cell proliferation by facilitating pyrimidine synthesis via CAD (carbamoyl-phosphate synthase 2, aspartate transcarbamylase, and dihydroorotase complex) activation.
Shiran Rabinovich, Lital Adler, Keren Yizhak et al. | DNA-dependent formation of transcription factor pairs alters their binding specificity
A high-throughput analysis of DNA binding in over 9,000 interacting transcription factor pairs reveals that the interactions are often actively mediated by the DNA itself and the composite DNA sites recognized are different from the individual motifs of each transcription factor.
Arttu Jolma, Yimeng Yin, Kazuhiro R. Nitta et al. | Histone H1 couples initiation and amplification of ubiquitin signalling after DNA damage
At the initiation of DNA double-strand break repair, a number of ubiquitylation events occur; here, the RNF8 ubiquitin E3 ligase and the ubiquitin-conjugating E2 enzyme, UBC13, are shown to primarily modify H1-type linker histones, via a K63 linkage.
Tina Thorslund, Anita Ripplinger, Saskia Hoffmann et al. | The inner workings of the hydrazine synthase multiprotein complex
Hydrazine is an intermediate in the process of anaerobic ammonium oxidation which has a major role in the Earth’s nitrogen cycle; the crystal structure of a hydrazine synthase enzyme provides insights into the mechanism of hydrazine synthesis.
Andreas Dietl, Christina Ferousi, Wouter J. Maalcke et al. | | | | |
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