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A male Drosophila fruitfly performs a wing threat, typical aggression behaviour, towards a rival male. Liming Wang and David Anderson show that the volatile pheromone cVA promotes male-to-male aggression by activating olfactory sensory neurons expressing the receptor protein, Or67d. This work opens the study of aggressive behaviour to detailed genetic manipulation and investigation. Cover image: Liming Wang & Michael Maire, Caltech.
Richard Besser led the United States' top public-health agency as swine flu broke out on its doorstep. And his communication shaped the early days of a pandemic, finds Brendan Maher.
An increase in premature births means that more babies are at risk of neurological damage. Erika Check Hayden talks with researchers who are developing ways to help these children.
A lack of coordination in Arctic research funding leaves scientists without the support they need for fieldwork. John England outlines how Canada can set things right, and show leadership in the north.
Floods and fires aside, the tricky science of prediction is explained in a book that treads a careful line between analysis and anecdotes of awful events, says Andrew Robinson.
Received wisdom about the main driver of the South Asian monsoon comes into question with a report that tests the idea that the Himalayas, not the Tibetan plateau, are the essential topographic ingredient.
The key enzyme in photosynthesis, Rubisco, is a relic of a bygone age. The ability to assemble Rubisco in the test tube offers the prospect of genetically manipulating the enzyme to make it fit for the modern world.
Parent birds commonly face the problem of distinguishing their own brood from foreign chicks. Learnt chick-recognition evolves only when parents do not mistakenly learn to reject their own young.
Windy weather is forecast where stars are forming. Numerical simulations show that these winds can reshape dwarf galaxies, reconciling their properties with the prevailing theory of galaxy formation.
Chemical models of enzymes' active sites aid our understanding of biological reactions. Such a model of a reaction intermediate promises to advance our knowledge of the biochemistry of iron-containing haem enzymes.
Memory formation is known to occur at the level of synaptic contacts between neurons. It therefore comes as a surprise that another type of brain cell, the astrocyte, is also involved in establishing memory.
Soybean is an important crop plant, providing seed protein and oil and fixing atmospheric nitrogen through symbioses with soil-borne microorganisms. Using a whole-genome shotgun approach, its 1.1-gigabase genome is now sequenced and integrated with physical and high-density genetic maps to create a chromosome-scale draft sequence assembly.
Tobacco smoke contains more than sixty carcinogens that bind and mutate DNA. Here, massively parallel sequencing technology is used to sequence a small-cell lung cancer cell line, exploring the mutational burden associated with tobacco smoking. Multiple mutation signatures from the cocktail of carcinogens in tobacco smoke are found, as well as evidence of transcription-coupled repair and another, more general, expression-linked repair pathway.
Here, the genomes of a malignant melanoma and a lymphoblastoid cell line from the same person are sequenced, providing the first comprehensive catalogue of somatic mutations from an individual cancer. The data provide insight into the causes of tumour formation and the development of the cancer genome, with the dominant mutational signature reflecting DNA damage due to ultraviolet light exposure.
Form I Rubisco, one of the most abundant proteins in nature, catalyses the fixation of atmospheric CO2 in photosynthesis. The limited catalytic efficiency of Rubisco has sparked extensive efforts to re-engineer the enzyme to enhance agricultural productivity. To bring this goal closer, the formation of cyanobacterial form I Rubisco is now analysed by in vitro reconstitution and cryo-electron microscopy.
The properties of 'dwarf' galaxies have long challenged the cold dark matter (CDM) model of galaxy formation, as the properties of most observed dwarf galaxies contrast with models based on the dominance of CDM. Here, hydrodynamical simulations (assuming the presence of CDM) are reported in which the analogues of dwarf galaxies — bulgeless and with shallow central dark-matter profiles — arise naturally.
The close binary Algol system contains a radio-bright KIV sub-giant star in a very close and rapid orbit with a main sequence B8 star. Evidence points to the existence of an extended, complex coronal magnetosphere originating at the cooler K subgiant, but the detailed morphology of the subgiant's corona and its possible interaction with its companion are unknown. Multi-epoch radio imaging of the Algol system now reveals a large coronal loop suggestive of a persistent asymmetric magnetic field structure aligned between the two stars.
Chiral spin liquids are a hypothetical class of spin liquids in which time-reversal symmetry is macroscopically broken even in the absence of an applied magnetic field or any magnetic dipole long-range order. Although such spin-liquid states were proposed more than two decades ago, they remain elusive. Here, evidence is presented that the time-reversal symmetry can be broken spontaneously on a macroscopic scale in the absence of magnetic dipole long-range order, suggesting the emergence of a chiral spin liquid.
Most schemes for three-dimensional (3D) structure determination of an object require multiple measurements over various orientations, or a means of scanning it section by section. A 3D imaging modality, termed ankylography, is now presented that under certain circumstances enables complete 3D structure determination from a single diffraction measurement. This approach could find broad applications in the physical and life sciences.
The elevation of the Tibetan plateau is thought to cause its surface to serve as a heat source that drives the South Asian summer monsoon, potentially coupling uplift of the plateau to climate changes on geologic timescales. Here, however, an atmospheric model is used to show that flattening of the Tibetan plateau has little effect on the monsoon, provided that the narrow orography of the Himalayas and adjacent mountain ranges is preserved.
Why hosts of brood parasites generally fail to recognize parasitic offspring after they have hatched from the egg, even when the host and parasitic chicks are very different, remains a puzzle. American coots are now shown to use first-hatched chicks in a brood as referents to learn to recognize their own chicks and discriminate against later-hatched parasitic chicks. A lack of reliable information may explain why the evolution of such chick recognition is not more common.
Although aggression is known to be regulated by pheromones in many animal species, in no system have the pheromones, their receptors and corresponding sensory neurons been identified. Here, 11-cis-vaccenyl acetate (cVA), a volatile pheromone produced by male fruitflies, is shown to promote male-to-male aggression through the activation of olfactory sensory neurons expressing the receptor Or67d.
The involvement of astroglia in long-term potentiation (LTP) of synaptic transmission remains controversial. Clamping internal Ca2+ in individual astrocytes in the CA1 area of the hippocampus is now shown to block LTP induction at nearby excitatory synapses through an effect on the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor. This LTP blockade can be reversed by exogenous D-serine, normally released in a Ca2+-dependent manner from astrocytes.
Much of the mammalian genome is derived from retroelements, a significant proportion of which are endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). ERVs are transcriptionally silenced during early embryogenesis by histone and DNA methylation, but the initiators of this process are largely unknown. Here, deletion of KAP1 is shown to lead to a marked upregulation of a range of ERVs in mouse embryonic stem cells and in early embryos.
Stomata are specialized structures in the epidermal layer of leaves that regulate the exchange of gases between the plant and the atmosphere. One or more positive intercellular signalling factors are assumed to be involved in stomatal development, but their identities remain elusive. A novel secretory protein — named stomagen — is now shown to be just such a factor; it is conserved among vascular plants and positively regulates stomatal density.
Rho is a general transcription termination factor in bacteria, but the mechanism by which it disrupts the RNA polymerase (RNAP) elongation complex is unknown. Here, Rho is shown to bind tightly to the RNAP throughout the transcription cycle, with the formation of the RNAP–Rho complex being crucial for termination. Furthermore, RNAP is proposed to have an active role in Rho termination through an allosteric mechanism.
Phytochromes regulate numerous photoresponses in plants and microorganisms through their ability to photointerconvert between a red-light-absorbing, ground state (Pf) and a far-red-light-absorbing, photoactivated state (Pfr). The structures of several phytochromes as Pf have been determined previously; here, the three-dimensional solution structure of the bilin-binding domain as Pfr is described. The results shed light on the structural basis for photoconversion to the activated Pfr form.