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Volume 461 Issue 7262, 17 September 2009

The cover shows the devastating results of potato blight (Phytophthora infestans) infestation - the pathogen that triggered the Irish potato famine in the nineteenth century. The genome of this still dangerous pathogen has now been sequenced, revealing fast evolving effector genes that may contribute to the rapid adaptability to host plants that has made potato blight so difficult to control. Cover photo: William E. Fry, Cornell Univ./ Concept: Bang Wong, Broad Inst.

Authors

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Editorial

  • Collaborations between researchers and industry are essential to biomedical progress. But relations have to be completely open.

    Editorial
  • The United States can learn from the UK body that rates the effectiveness of medical procedures.

    Editorial
  • Despite the long odds against success, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has come a long way.

    Editorial
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Research Highlights

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Journal Club

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News

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News Feature

  • Paul Thacker, a reporter-turned-Congressional-investigator, has disrupted the careers of several top researchers with lucrative industry ties. Meredith Wadman tracks his effect on US science.

    • Meredith Wadman
    News Feature
  • How do researchers and policy-makers decide on the value of health? Daniel Cressey looks at Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

    • Daniel Cressey
    News Feature
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Correspondence

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Opinion

  • In 11 days the curtain will rise in Bangkok for the penultimate round of negotiations before the climate change conference in Copenhagen. David Victor warns of the dangers of a rushed, stapled-together deal.

    • David Victor
    Opinion
  • Fifty years ago this week, a Nature paper legitimized the idea that there could be civilizations elsewhere, able to communicate and wanting to contact us. Fred Kaplan reflects on its origins, impacts and legacy.

    • Fred Kaplan
    Opinion
  • Adding iron to the ocean is not an effective way to fight climate change, and we don't need further research to establish that, say Aaron Strong, Sallie Chisholm, Charles Miller and John Cullen.

    • Aaron Strong
    • Sallie Chisholm
    • John Cullen
    Opinion
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Books & Arts

  • An overdue theory of how machines and tools evolve downplays human creativity, argues Jon Agar.

    • Jon Agar
    Books & Arts
  • Engineer Duncan Miller has spent decades reviving the lost art of acoustic recording to wax cylinders, a technique pioneered by Thomas Edison. Nature finds out how his Vulcan Cylinder Record Company, based in Sheffield, UK, has combined sleuthing and modern chemistry to craft a new repertoire for the hand-cranked phonograph.

    • Jascha Hoffman
    Books & Arts
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News & Views

  • Atmospheric oxidation of hydrocarbons emitted from plants leads to the formation of aerosol particles that affect cloud properties. Contrary to what was thought, this process might add to global warming.

    • Paul J. Ziemann
    News & Views
  • The development of healthy monkeys from embryos in which the egg contains nuclear DNA from one donor and mitochondrial DNA from another suggests a method to prevent inheritance of certain human diseases.

    • Eric A. Shoubridge
    News & Views
  • ... that is the dilemma addressed in a study of oppositely charged liquid drops controlled by an electric field. Contrary to conventional wisdom, beyond a critical charge, the drops fail to merge.

    • Frieder Mugele
    News & Views
  • Many people infected with the hepatitis C virus are not cured despite gruelling therapy. A human genetic variant that predicts successful treatment has been identified. So is personalized therapy now a possibility?

    • Shawn P. Iadonato
    • Michael G. Katze
    News & Views
  • Radiation-induced DNA damage has been attributed to hydroxyl radicals, which form when water absorbs high-energy photons or charged particles. But another product of water's radiolysis might be the real culprit.

    • Léon Sanche
    News & Views
  • Genomic imprinting, in which genes are expressed from either the maternal or paternal genome, involves the addition of methyl marks to DNA. Paradoxically, demethylation of histone proteins is an essential first step.

    • Robert Feil
    News & Views
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Article

  • Nearly 5% of membrane proteins are 'tail-anchored' to the endoplasmic reticulum by a single carboxy-terminal transmembrane domain. These tail-anchored proteins are targeted post-translationally by the ATPase Get3, but the mechanism of recognition and targeting by Get3 is not known. Here, the crystal structures of yeast Get3 in a nucleotide-free 'open' state and a nucleotide-bound 'closed' state are presented.

    • Agnieszka Mateja
    • Anna Szlachcic
    • Robert J. Keenan
    Article
  • The mitochondrial genome is of maternal origin and mutations in mitochondrial DNA are the cause of many human diseases. The efficient replacement of the mitochondrial genome in mature non-human primate oocytes is now demonstrated. This approach may offer a reproductive option to prevent the transmission of diseases caused by mutations in mitochondrial DNA in affected families.

    • Masahito Tachibana
    • Michelle Sparman
    • Shoukhrat Mitalipov
    Article
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Letter

  • For most binary stars, the theoretical and observed precession rates are in agreement, but the observed precession rate for the DI Herculis system is a factor of four slower than the theoretical rate, a disagreement that once was interpreted as evidence for a failure of general relativity. Here, both stars of DI Herculis are reported to rotate with their spin axes nearly perpendicular to the orbital axis, an observation that leads to the reconciliation of the theoretical and observed precession rates.

    • Simon Albrecht
    • Sabine Reffert
    • Joshua N. Winn
    Letter
  • Adjacent drops of fluid coalesce, and oppositely charged drops have long been assumed to experience an attractive force that favours their coalescence. However, here it is observed that oppositely charged drops moving towards each other in a strong electric field do not coalesce when the field strength exceeds a certain value but rather 'bounce' off one another. This observation calls for a re-evaluation of our understanding of processes such as storm cloud formation and ink-jet printing, which involve electrically induced droplet motion.

    • W. D. Ristenpart
    • J. C. Bird
    • H. A. Stone
    Letter
  • Volatile organic compounds, such as isoprene and monoterpenes, are emitted by terrestrial vegetation and have been suggested to be involved in organic aerosol formation, which in turn affects radiative forcing and climate. Simulation experiments conducted in a plant chamber now reveal that isoprene can significantly inhibit new particle formation; this may explain the observed seasonality in the frequency of aerosol nucleation events.

    • Astrid Kiendler-Scharr
    • Jürgen Wildt
    • Andreas Wahner
    Letter
  • The response of the Greenland ice sheet (GIS) to changes in climate remains uncertain. During the Holocene climatic optimum — an unusually warm period from about 9,000 to 6,000 years ago — changes in Greenland appear inconsistent with the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. Here, the Greenland Holocene temperature history and the evolution of GIS surface elevation are extracted from four GIS locations; the results may resolve this disparity.

    • B. M. Vinther
    • S. L. Buchardt
    • A. M. Svensson
    Letter
  • Adaptive radiations often follow the evolution of key traits. The mechanism by which a species determines the sex of its offspring has been linked to critical ecological and life-history traits but not to major adaptive radiations. A coevolutionary relationship is now established in 94 amniote species between the sex-determining mechanism and whether a species bears live young or lays eggs. This is used to predict the evolution of genotypic sex determination before the acquisition of live birth in three extinct marine reptiles.

    • Chris L. Organ
    • Daniel E. Janes
    • Mark Pagel
    Letter
  • Phytophthora infestans is a fungus-like eukaryote and the most destructive pathogen of potato, with current annual worldwide potato crop losses due to late blight estimated at $6.7 billion. Here, the sequence of the P. infestans genome is reported. Comparison with two other Phytophthora genomes showed rapid turnover and extensive expansion of certain secreted disease effector proteins, probably explaining the rapid adaptability of the pathogen to host plants.

    • Brian J. Haas
    • Sophien Kamoun
    • Chad Nusbaum
    Letter Open Access
  • 170 million people worldwide are chronically infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV), which is the leading cause of cirrhosis in North America. Many patients are not cured by the current recommended treatment regime, with patients of European ancestry having a higher probability of being cured than those of African ancestry. Here, a genetic polymorphism near the IL28B gene is found to be associated with a better response to treatment; it occurs with higher frequency in European populations.

    • Dongliang Ge
    • Jacques Fellay
    • David B. Goldstein
    Letter
  • The derivation and differentiation of disease-specific human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) offers a new strategy for modelling disease. Familial dysautonomia (FD) is a rare but fatal peripheral neuropathy caused by a mutation in the IKBKAP gene. Here, patient-specific FD-iPSCs are derived and differentiated into cells of all three germ layers, including peripheral neurons; the cells are then analysed for mechanism of disease specificity and response to candidate drugs.

    • Gabsang Lee
    • Eirini P. Papapetrou
    • Lorenz Studer
    Letter
  • In vertebrates, the excitatory synaptic drive for inducing spinal central pattern generators (CPGs) — which are responsible for generating rhythmic movements — can originate from either supraspinal glutamatergic inputs or from within the spinal cord. A spinal input to the CPG is now identified using a combination of intersectional gene expression and optogenetics in zebrafish larvae; the results reveal that during early development Kolmer–Agduhr cells provide a positive drive to the spinal CPG for spontaneous locomotion.

    • Claire Wyart
    • Filippo Del Bene
    • Ehud Y. Isacoff
    Letter
  • In human cancers with deregulated Ras signalling, including tumours that have inactivated the Nf1 tumour suppressor, the cascade comprising Raf, mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (MEK) and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) is a therapeutic target. Here, in mice, the effects of inhibitors of MEK in a model of myeloproliferative disorder initiated by inactivating Nf1 and in a model of acute myeloid leukaemia are compared.

    • Jennifer O. Lauchle
    • Doris Kim
    • Kevin Shannon
    Letter
  • In mammals, the parental origin-specific expression of imprinted genes is known to be regulated by differential DNA methylation of paternal and maternal alleles, but it is unclear how particular imprinted loci are selected for de novo DNA methylation during gametogenesis. Here it is shown that AOF1, or KDM1B under new nomenclature, functions as a histone H3 lysine 4 demethylase and is required for de novo DNA methylation of some imprinted genes in oocytes.

    • David N. Ciccone
    • Hui Su
    • Taiping Chen
    Letter
  • Unregulated transcription of noncoding and antisense RNAs is potentially deleterious to a cell and the accumulation of these transcripts is suppressed by several mechanisms. How cells differentiate coding RNAs from transcripts targeted for degradation is not clear. The variant histone H2A.Z, in cooperation with heterochromatin and RNAi factors, is now found to mediate suppression of antisense transcripts in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

    • Martin Zofall
    • Tamás Fischer
    • Shiv I. S. Grewal
    Letter
  • A major portion of plant genomes is made up of retrotransposons, which proliferate by reverse transcription of RNA intermediates. The methylation of DNA prevents transcription, and is a means by which retrotransposon movement is suppressed. The study of transposon dynamics in Arabidopsis thaliana now reveals bursts of retrotransposition when DNA methylation is disturbed.

    • Sayuri Tsukahara
    • Akie Kobayashi
    • Tetsuji Kakutani
    Letter
  • In plants and mammals, retrotransposons are transcriptionally silenced by DNA methylation, but activating transcription by mutating a gene involved in DNA methylation does not activate retrotransposition. Here it is shown that, after transcriptional reactivation, transposition remains suppressed due to the activity of a plant-specific RNA polymerase and a histone methyltransferase. This mechanism appears to be specific for a particular retrotransposon known as Évadé.

    • Marie Mirouze
    • Jon Reinders
    • Olivier Mathieu
    Letter
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Careers Q&A

  • First director of the Centre for Systems Biology in Luxembourg.

    • Flora Roenneberg
    Careers Q&A
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Postdoc Journal

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Career Brief

  • Ethics training is a new must for all National Science Foundation grant recipients.

    Career Brief
  • Faculty members say industry research has contributed to important work.

    Career Brief
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Careers and Recruitment

  • Some think Osaka can once again be a centre for the biosciences industry. David Cyranoski calculates the odds.

    • David Cyranoski
    Careers and Recruitment
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Futures

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Brief Communications Arising

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