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Volume 469 Issue 7328, 6 January 2011

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization are sponsoring 2011 as the International Year of Chemistry. So Nature starts the year with an issue focused on chemistry - in many respects the central science and a vital resource for physicists and biologists. In a Comment on page 21, George Whitesides and John Deutch argue that academic chemistry is at a crossroads. 'Business as usual' is not an option, they say: to solve new problems, chemistry will need to be braver in its research choices and in how it organizes them. Illustration by Sarah Jane Coleman.

Postdoc Journal

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Editorial

  • The International Year of Chemistry is under way. Chemists should celebrate their discipline's past as the foundation of other fields, and face the future with increasing confidence.

    Editorial
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World View

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Seven Days

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News

  • Spending cuts and political battles loom on the horizon.

    • Ivan Semeniuk
    • Meredith Wadman
    • Jeff Tollefson
    News
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News Q&A

  • Bart Gordon reflects on his career at the sharp end of science politics.

    • Ivan Semeniuk
    News Q&A
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News

  • Nature looks at key findings and events that could emerge from the research world in 2011.

    • Richard Van Noorden
    • Heidi Ledford
    • Adam Mann
    News
  • A neutrino observatory encased in ice at the South Pole could spot new physics.

    • Adam Mann
    News
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News Feature

  • Researchers have spent 25 years exploring the remarkable properties of fullerenes, carbon nanotubes and graphene. But commercializing them is neither quick nor easy.

    • Richard Van Noorden
    News Feature
  • In the past two decades, the green-chemistry movement has helped industry become much cleaner. But mindsets change slowly, and the revolution still has a long way to go.

    • Katharine Sanderson
    News Feature
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Comment

  • Chemistry needs an overhaul if it is to solve big global problems and advance fundamental understanding, say George M. Whitesides and John Deutch.

    • George M. Whitesides
    • John Deutch
    Comment
  • Ten leading chemists set priorities for the forthcoming decades, and reveal the scientists they find inspiring.

    Comment
  • More than ever before, new techniques show the bond to be a convenient fiction, albeit one that holds the field of chemistry together, finds Philip Ball.

    • Philip Ball
    Comment
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Books & Arts

  • Giovanni Frazzetto is captivated by an illustrated biography of Marie and Pierre Curie.

    • Giovanni Frazzetto
    Books & Arts
  • Robert Boyle's widely misunderstood book elevated the status of chemistry, explains Lawrence Principe.

    • Lawrence Principe
    Books & Arts
  • Jan Zalasiewicz enjoys a romp through vertebrate evolution and its eccentric scholars.

    • Jan Zalasiewicz
    Books & Arts
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Correspondence

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Obituary

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News & Views Forum

  • Many scientists now use the power of computer models to advance their subjects. But there is a choice: to simplify complex systems or to include more detail. Modelling the intricate processes of sedimentary geology is a case in point.

    • Chris Paola
    • Mike Leeder
    News & Views Forum
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News & Views

  • Nature constructs macromolecules with a precision that chemists have struggled to achieve. So a strategy that offers simple routes to large molecules, starting from small templates, could be the next big thing in synthesis. See Letter p.72

    • Christopher Hunter
    News & Views
  • Mutualism can be a double-edged sword if the animals concerned also compete for food. This may explain the discovery that catfish mimics in the Amazon rarely engage in mimicry with related species. See Letter p.84

    • James Mallet
    • Kanchon Dasmahapatra
    News & Views
  • Isotopic evidence from carbon and sulphur points to the spread of anoxia and toxic sulphide as the chief culprits in at least one of a series of crises for marine ecosystems during the nascent stages of early animal evolution. See Letter p.80

    • Graham Shields-Zhou
    News & Views
  • Using photonic chips to control single photons in waveguides is a promising route to technologies based on the photons'quantum properties. The ability to measure entanglement on such chips is a key step in that direction.

    • Mirko Lobino
    • Jeremy L. O'Brien
    News & Views
  • With age comes wisdom, or so they say. The reality is that, with age, the ability to store memories declines. One way of tackling this problem might be to raise neuronal levels of the signalling molecule EphB2. See Article p.47

    • Robert C. Malenka
    • Roberto Malinow
    News & Views
  • Computers use transistor-based logic gates as the basis of their functions, but molecular logic gates would make them much faster. A report of DNA-based logic gates could be a first step towards molecular computing.

    • Thomas Carell
    News & Views
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Article

  • It is shown that amyloid-β oligomers interact with the receptor tyrosine kinase EphB2 and trigger its degradation. EphB2 regulates NMDA-type glutamate receptors and its depletion in normal mice reduces NMDA receptor currents and impairs long-term potentiation, both of which are important for memory formation. Increasing EphB2 levels in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease improves memory.

    • Moustapha Cissé
    • Brian Halabisky
    • Lennart Mucke
    Article
  • Humans and animals readily learn to associate neutral cues paired with rewards, but the exact role that dopamine release has in this learning is controversial. Using previously established rat strains selectively bred for many generations to have greater or lesser propensity to assign value to learned cues, this study uses cyclic voltammetry to measure dopamine signals in the different strains and also examines the effect of blocking dopamine. It is concluded that dopamine selectively mediates motivational, rather than predictive, aspects of the cues.

    • Shelly B. Flagel
    • Jeremy J. Clark
    • Huda Akil
    Article
  • Nitrogen-fixing rhizobia use lipochitooligosaccharide (LCO) signal molecules to initiate a symbiotic relationship with plant roots. Although it has been suggested that mycorrhizal fungi also secrete chemical signals for this process, the identity of these molecules was unknown. It is now shown that like rhizobia, mycorrhizal fungi produce LCOs and that these molecules are important for the establishment of the symbiotic relationship between plant root and fungus.

    • Fabienne Maillet
    • Véréna Poinsot
    • Jean Dénarié
    Article
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Letter

  • A primordial carbon-to-oxygen ratio (C/O) greater than 0.8 in an exoplanet causes a carbide-dominated interior, as opposed to the silicate-dominated composition found on Earth; the atmospheres also can differ from those in the Solar System. The solar C/O is 0.54. This study reports an analysis of spectra from the transiting hot Jupiter WASP-12b that reveals that C/O>1 in its atmosphere, based upon the observed concentrations of the prominent molecules CO, CH4 and H2O.

    • Nikku Madhusudhan
    • Joseph Harrington
    • Richard G. West
    Letter
  • Nuclei with equal neutron (N) and proton (Z) numbers show enhanced correlations that have been predicted to favour an unusual type of pairing, distinct from normal nuclear superfluidity. Here, technically challenging observations are reported of excited states in the N = Z = 46 nucleus 92Pd, from which evidence is inferred for a type of spin-aligned structure in the ground and low-lying excited states, not established in nuclei before and differing from previous predictions.

    • B. Cederwall
    • F. Ghazi Moradi
    • S. Williams
    Letter
  • Templates are widely used to arrange molecular components so they can be covalently linked into complex molecules that are not readily accessible by classical synthetic methods. But, as larger structures are targeted, the synthesis of the templates themselves becomes challenging. It is now shown that 'molecular Verniers' can solve this problem: using a template with six binding sites and molecular building blocks with four porphyrins acting as binding sites, a 12-porphyrin nano-ring with a diameter of 4.7 nm is created. The ease and efficiency of this synthesis establishes Vernier templating as a powerful new strategy for producing large monodisperse macromolecules.

    • Melanie C. O’Sullivan
    • Johannes K. Sprafke
    • Harry L. Anderson
    Letter
  • The anomeric effect is a chemical phenomenon that refers to an observed stabilization of six-membered carbohydrate rings when they contain an electronegative substituent at the C1 position of the ring. This stereoelectronic effect influences the three-dimensional shapes of many biological molecules, but the underlying physical origin is unclear. Here it is shown that complexes formed between a truncated peptide motif and an isolated sugar in the gas phase are nearly identical structurally; however, the strength of the polarization of their interactions with the peptide differs greatly. It will be important to re-evaluate the influence, and biological effects, of substituents at position C2 of the six-membered carbohydrate rings.

    • Emilio J. Cocinero
    • Pierre Carcabal
    • Benjamin G. Davis
    Letter
  • It has been suggested that the Cambrian ocean was oxygen deficient, but physical evidence for widespread anoxia has been lacking. Now, sulphur isotope data from Cambrian rocks at six different locations around the world is presented, with the finding of a positive sulphur isotope excursion in phase with a large excursion in the marine carbon isotope record, which is thought to be indicative of a global carbon cycle perturbation at the time. With the help of a box model, these isotope shifts support the idea of large-scale anoxic and sulphidic conditions in the later Cambrian ocean.

    • Benjamin C. Gill
    • Timothy W. Lyons
    • Matthew R. Saltzman
    Letter
  • Müllerian mimics have convergently evolved similar warning colouration because of the advantage of strength in numbers. However, it is not clear if this effect is sufficient to maintain coexistence when competitive exclusion would be expected to favour one mimic at the expense of the others. Here, Müllerian mimicry in catfish is characterized, and it is shown through morphometric and stable isotope analysis that mimics do not occupy identical niches, so are not in direct competition, thus explaining their coexistence.

    • Markos A. Alexandrou
    • Claudio Oliveira
    • Martin I. Taylor
    Letter
  • The positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function is well established, but the specific shape of the relationship can vary. Here, experimental evolution is used to show that the strength and slope depends on evolutionary history, with specialists and generalists that have evolved from the same ancestor giving rise to different diversity–function relationships.

    • Dominique Gravel
    • Thomas Bell
    • Nicolas Mouquet
    Letter
  • To shed light on the natural history of Precambrian life, the evolutionary history of almost 4,000 gene families across the three domains of life are mapped onto a geological timeline. Over one-quarter of modern gene families arose during a period of rapid diversification of bacterial lineages. Functionally, these genes are likely to be involved in electron transport and respiratory pathways, whereas those that arose later are implicated in functions consistent with an increasingly oxygenating biosphere.

    • Lawrence A. David
    • Eric J. Alm
    Letter
  • When genes are transcribed into RNA, the polymerase extends beyond the end of the protein-coding portion to make the 3′ untranslated region (UTR); this region contains important regulatory sequences, such as microRNA binding sites, and facilitates translation. Long tracts of untemplated adenines are added to the 3′ UTR, and the standard method for sequencing the transcriptome is based on hybridization to the poly(A) tail. A new high-throughput approach to transcriptome sequencing is reported that avoids a known limitation of the poly(A) method; the method is used to provide a more accurate analysis of functional and evolutionary aspects of 3′ UTRs of the nematode.

    • Calvin H. Jan
    • Robin C. Friedman
    • David P. Bartel
    Letter
  • Here it is shown that reactivation of endogenous telomerase activity in mice extends telomeres, reduces DNA damage signalling, allows resumption of proliferation in quiescent cultures, and eliminates degenerative phenotypes across multiple organs including testes, spleens and intestines. Accumulating evidence implicating telomere damage as a driver of age-associated organ decline and disease and the reversal of damage observed here support the development of regenerative strategies designed to restore telomere integrity.

    • Mariela Jaskelioff
    • Florian L. Muller
    • Ronald A. DePinho
    Letter
  • Studies have indicated an undefined role in DNA replication for CENP-B, a DNA binding protein associated with heterochromatin, centromeres and retrotransposon long terminal repeats (LTRs). Here it is shown that Sap1, which binds LTRs, promotes genomic instability when CENP-B activity is absent. CENP-B facilitates replication fork progression through LTRs in a way that protects against rearrangements.

    • Mikel Zaratiegui
    • Matthew W. Vaughn
    • Robert A. Martienssen
    Letter
  • The first X-ray crystal structure of a diterpene cyclase is reported — this enzyme, taxadiene synthase, catalyses the cyclization of an isoprenoid in the first committed step of the biosynthesis of the cancer chemotherapeutic drug Taxol. The C-terminal catalytic domain binds and activates the substrate in a manner seen in class I terpenoid cyclases, but the N-terminal domain and a third 'insertion' domain together adopt the fold of a class II terpenoid cyclase. It is proposed that this enzyme could be the ancestral progenitor of all terpenoid cyclases.

    • Mustafa Köksal
    • Yinghua Jin
    • David W. Christianson
    Letter
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Feature

  • Despite obstacles, many of those who kept Naturejobs postdoc and graduate journals in the past six years have been successful — but not always in ways they had anticipated.

    • Paul Smaglik
    Feature
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Futures

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