Volume 462 Issue 7271, 19 November 2009

This third special issue in Nature's year-long celebration of Charles Darwin focuses on the dire challenges to Earth's biodiversity — and finds some reason for hope.

Information-sharing resources are essential to biologists and deserve international support.

The week in science

The government's election promises vowed more support for science, but so far budgets look set to shrink.

National Science Foundation to cut support for Arabidopsis resource.

Fermilab pins hopes on untested technology in race to stay at the cutting edge of physics.

But the issue is gaining attention as nations prepare for next year's summit.

But analysts expect effects of financial crisis to be more marked next year.

Referral to European Court may help to harmonize laws on intellectual property.

While species losses mount worldwide, conservationists in Brazil have made great strides towards saving the golden lion tamarin and its forest habitat from destruction. Gene Russo reports.

Gretchen Daily knows the value of ecosystems — but can ascribing financial worth to them help to maintain biodiversity? Emma Marris meets an ecosystem-services evangelist.

Genetic sequences in a cell's mitochondria can be used to accurately determine species. Could this be because they are responsible for creating what they identify? Nick Lane investigates.

Specialist advice can be invaluable in shaping policy, but, argues Colin Macilwain, democracies need to keep a careful eye on the powers acquired by an unelected elite.

The value of biodiversity must be accounted for, says Pavan Sukhdev. It is time for governments to invest to secure the flow of nature's 'public goods'.

Natural ecosystems and biodiversity must be made a bulwark against climate change, not a casualty of it, argue Will R. Turner, Michael Oppenheimer and David S. Wilcove.

To save biodiversity, on-the-ground agencies need to set the conservation research agenda, not distant academics and non-governmental organizations, argue Robert J. Smith and colleagues.

Palaeontologists must model the causes of biodiversity rather than simply cataloguing fossils, says Douglas Erwin, as they curate the only record of ecosystems undamaged by humans.

Latin Americans first saw evolution as a reason to 'whiten' their societies, then as a reason to take pride in their mixed lineage, says Jürgen Buchenau in the last of four pieces on Darwin's global influence.

Shared experiences on global voyages linked Darwin and his fellow naturalists, explains Alistair Sponsel.

Nicky Clayton, a biologist and psychologist who studies the behaviour of birds, and who is also a salsa and tango dancer, collaborated with Rambert Dance Company to create a work commemorating Charles Darwin. As The Comedy of Change tours the United Kingdom, she explains how communicating via motion is common to both dance and the natural world.

Ideas about the mutability of species may have been part of Enlightenment imagery before Lamarck.

Light from a distant γ-ray burst backs up a key prediction of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity — that photon speed is the same regardless of energy. But it might set the stage for evolution of the theory.

A structure for the enzyme RNA polymerase II in combination with the transcription factor TFIIB changes our view of how the polymerase and its helper proteins initiate transcription.

On the face of it, self-fertilization is the efficient way to breed: compared with outcrossing, there's usually much less fuss, for a start. So why isn't reproduction by selfing far more prevalent than it is?

Temperature estimates derived from isotopes in polar ice cores reveal much about Earth's past climate. According to the latest analysis, interglacial periods were rather warmer than previously thought.

Genome-wide maps of methylated cytosine bases at single-base-pair resolution in human cells reveal distinct differences between cell types. These maps provide a starting point to decode the function of this enigmatic mark.

Each week some 20,000 people die from malaria. There will be no magic ways of reducing this dreadful toll, not least because the mosquito vector and the parasite itself have formidable abilities to resist control measures. Angles of attack that rest on evolutionary principles are being explored.

DNA cytosine methylation has essential roles in a number of cellular processes. Here, the first genome-wide, single-base-resolution maps of methylated cytosines in a mammalian genome — from both human embryonic stem cells and fetal fibroblasts — are presented, along with analyses of the transcriptome, histone modifications, and sites of DNA–protein interaction for several regulatory factors. The results reveal key differences in methylation patterns between the two genomes.

Transcription of eukaryotic protein-coding genes is initiated by RNA polymerase II (Pol II) in a complex with transcription factors including the transcription factor IIB (B). The crystal structure of the complete Pol II–B complex is now presented with complementary functional data. The results shed light on the mechanism of transcription initiation, including the transition to RNA elongation.

Lorentz invariance — the postulate that all observers measure exactly the same speed of light in vacuum, independent of photon energy — is a cornerstone of Einstein's special relativity, but it has been suggested that it might break near the Planck scale. A possible variation of photon speed with energy is a key test for this proposed violation; here, by studying sharp features in γ-ray burst light-curves to look for even tiny variations in photon speed, no evidence for the violation of Lorentz invariance is found.

Fermi arcs, which are open-ended gapless sections in the large Fermi surface, have been observed in the pseudogap state of high-transition-temperature (high-T_c) copper oxide superconductors rather than the closed loop expected of an ordinary metal. This is all the more puzzling because Fermi pockets have been suggested by recent quantum oscillation measurements. Fermi pockets are now measured in a high-T_c copper oxide superconductor and, surprisingly, they appear to coexist with the Fermi arcs.

Graphene, an atom-thin carbon sheet is interesting for its fundamental properties as well as for its possible applications in electronics, is not strictly two-dimensional. Microscopic corrugations, or ripples, have been observed in all graphene sheets so far. Direct experimental study of the physics of such ripples has been hindered by the lack of flat graphene layers. Ultraflat graphene is now achieved through its deposition on the atomically flat terraces of cleaved mica surfaces.

Reconstructions of temperature variations from Antarctic ice cores rely on the assumption that the relationship between hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios and temperature are stable in space and time. Three East Antarctic ice core records are now analysed alongside input from general circulation models to reveal that during warmer interglacial periods the isotope ratios are less sensitive to temperature than during colder interglacials; consequently, previous estimates of interglacial temperatures are probably too cold.

The ocean takes up 20 to 35 per cent of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions, but uncertainties remain as to the distribution of this CO₂ in the ocean, its rate of uptake over the industrial era, and the relative roles of the ocean and terrestrial biosphere in anthropogenic CO₂ sequestration. An observationally based reconstruction of the spatially resolved, time-dependent history of anthropogenic carbon in the ocean over the industrial era now allows these questions to be addressed.

The tendency of organisms to reproduce by cross-fertilization, despite the advantages of self-fertilization and particularly the cost of males, is one of the oldest puzzles of evolutionary biology. Two advantages of outcrossing that could outweigh this cost have been suggested: the avoidance of inbreeding and an enhanced ability to adapt to environmental change. Here, the study of outcrossing in populations of Caenorhabditis elegans suggests that both of these explanations are correct.

Gamma oscillations in the brain are thought to 'bind' spatially distributed cells, a function that is probably important in perception, attentional selection and memory. However, it is unclear why the frequency of gamma oscillations varies substantially across space and time. Here, the study of the frequency of gamma oscillations in the CA1 area of the hippocampus suggests that variations in gamma frequency may be important for routeing information in the brain.

The interaction between the different molecular mechanisms that regulate changes in embryonic stem cell (ESC) fate is not fully understood. A dynamic systems-level study of cell fate change in murine ESCs following a well-defined perturbation is now presented; the data demonstrate how a single genetic perturbation leads to widespread changes in several molecular regulatory layers, and provide a dynamic view of information flow in the epigenome, transcriptome and proteome.

Most secreted proteins are synthesized as 'preproteins' with amino-terminal, cleavable signal peptides which mediate targeting and translocation across membranes by translocases. The main bacterial translocase comprises the SecYEG protein-conducting channel and the peripheral ATPase motor SecA. Signal peptides, thought to be involved in preprotein targeting to SecA, are now shown to have a new role beyond targeting as allosteric activators of the translocase.

Allosteric regulation is used to control protein activity across a broad range of biological processes. Effectors are thought to function by selectively stabilizing a specific conformational state with distinct binding or enzymatic activity, thereby regulating protein activity. Here, the characterization of the binding of cyclic AMP to the catabolite activator protein demonstrates that allosteric proteins can be regulated predominantly by changes in their structural dynamics.

Some of the world's fastest-growing economies are facing science and engineering workforce shortfalls.

Writing about issues that matter helps ease my worries about the world's problems.

Rewards are few for postdocs in Canada, says survey.

Lack of family-friendly policies responsible for leaky pipeline for women in the US.

R&D closure is the latest in a series of hits to drug companies.

The emerging field of quantum information science is harnessing nature's strangest habits — and providing an academic haven for young physicists. Eric Hand reports.

On the dubious position of Aelfus in the evolutionary tree of mankind.