Volume 470 Issue 7333, 10 February 2011

The Hungarian government needs to up its stake in the nation's scientific future.

Ten years after the human genome was sequenced, its promise is still to be fulfilled.

To fix the drug pipeline, governments must take on drug-makers instead of capitulating to their every demand, says Colin Macilwain.

The week in science.

Country's future depends on democracy, education and research reform, say scientists.

One year after an assistant professor murdered three colleagues at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, researchers are striving for a new 'normal'.

Overt sexism is no longer the norm, but societal barriers remain for women in science.

Drug-maker plans to cut jobs and spending as industry shies away from drug discovery.

Third-generation sequencing machines promise to make their mark one molecule at a time.

Theresa Deisher once shunned religion for science. Now, with renewed faith, she is fighting human-embryonic-stem-cell research in court.

An obscure group of tiny creatures takes centre stage in a battle to work out the tree of life.

Most protein research focuses on those known before the human genome was mapped. Work on the slew discovered since, urge Aled M. Edwards and his colleagues.

Anthropology isn't in the crisis that parts of the media would have you believe, but it must do better, argue Adam Kuper and Jonathan Marks.

Peter Border asks how we can protect our personal genomic data while making them available for research.

Andrew Robinson enjoys a chemical romp from aluminium to zinc.

The Mars canal controversy is a reminder to be cautious when interpreting alien worlds, notes Michael Carr.

Martin Kemp explains the resonances of Pascale Pollier's autopsy-inspired sculpture.

Seismologist who helped demonstrate that Earth's continents move constantly.

Quantum measurements always have a back-action: they 'kick' the system in a particular way. This can be used to drive the system to any desired state using a fixed type of measurement, provided it can be 'unsharpened'.

In mice, brain neurons that respond during either mating or aggression exhibit spatial overlap, and some even respond during both. This may help to explain the relationship between sex and violence in human behaviour. See Article p.221

Sediments at the edge of Antarctica are a largely unexploited source of information about climate change. They have now provided a valuable local record of sea surface temperatures for the past 12,000 years. See Letter p.250

Solving the structure of protein complexes is particularly challenging when they contain many subunits. In the case of the APC, a fruitful strategy has been to gain information by subtracting subunits. See Article p.227 and Letter p.274

A long-standing problem in chemistry has been to find catalysts that allow molecules to distinguish between the two faces of reaction intermediates called carbocations. A way around the problem has been found. See Letter p.245

Prostate cancer is a common cause of male cancer-related deaths. Complete sequencing of prostate cancer genomes now reveals previously unknown balanced rearrangements. Single-nucleotide resolution afforded by sequencing indicates that complex rearrangements may arise from transcriptional or chromatin aberrancies and engage prostate tumorigenic mechanisms.

Certain regions of the hypothalamus are important in aggression, but until recently, it has been difficult to specifically stimulate specific cell types within a mixed population of cells. Here, optogenetics is used to solve this specificity problem, finding that optogenetic stimulation of a subdivision within the ventromedial hypothalamus can elicit inappropriate attack behaviours in mice, but electrical stimulation does not produce the same result. Additional analysis of genetic and electrophysiological activity revealed overlapping neuronal subpopulations involved in fighting and mating, with potential competition between these behaviours, as neurons activated during aggression are inhibited during mating.

The APC/C is a large multiprotein complex that functions as an E3 ubiquitin ligase to regulate the cell cycle. Here, the entire APC/C complex is reconstituted, and in combination with structural studies a pseudo-atomic model for 70% of the complex is provided. These results contribute towards a molecular understanding of the roles of individual subunits in APC/C assembly and their interactions with co-activators, substrates and regulatory proteins.

Massive clusters of galaxies have been found as early as 3.9 billion years after the Big Bang. Cosmological simulations predict that these systems should descend from 'protoclusters' — early overdensities of massive galaxies that merge hierarchically to form a cluster. Observational evidence for this picture, however, is sparse because high-redshift protoclusters are rare and difficult to observe. Here, a protocluster region 1 billion years (z = 5.3) after the Big Bang is reported. This cluster extends over >13 megaparsecs, contains a luminous quasar as well as a system rich in molecular gas. A lower limit of >4 × 10¹¹ solar masses of dark and luminous matter in this region is placed, consistent with that expected from cosmological simulations.

The Berezinskii–Kosterlitz–Thouless (BKT) phase transition, occurring in two-dimensional Bose gases, is expected to show an extended range of universal scaling behaviour in thermodynamic quantities; however, a clear demonstration of this 'critical' behaviour has remained elusive. Its existence is now confirmed through in situ density and density-fluctuation measurements of two-dimensional caesium Bose gases at different temperatures and interaction strengths.

In a significant step forward in complexity and capability for bottom-up assembly of nanoelectronic circuits, this study demonstrates scalable and programmable logic tiles based on semiconductor nanowire transistor arrays. The same logic tile, consisting 496 configurable transistor nodes in an area of about 960 μm², could be programmed and operated as, among other functions, a full-adder, full-subtractor and multiplexer. The promise is that these logic tiles can be cascaded to realize fully integrated nanoprocessors with computing, memory and addressing capabilities.

Here it is shown that chiral dithiophosphoric acids can catalyse the intramolecular hydroamination and hydroarylation of dienes and allenes to generate heterocyclic products in exceptional yield and enantiomeric excess. A mechanistic hypothesis is presented that involves the addition of the acid catalyst to the diene, followed by S_N2′ displacement of the resulting dithiophosphate intermediate, and mass spectroscopic and deuterium labelling studies support the proposed mechanism.

The Antarctic Peninsula is currently one of the fastest-warming locations on Earth, but its long-term variability has remained unclear. This study uses TEX₈₆ sea surface temperature proxy evidence to show that a long-term cooling of about 3–4 °C occurred in waters near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula over the past 12,000 years, consistent with orbitally controlled changes in insolation. Shorter-term variability in temperature at the Antarctic Peninsula appears to have been strongly influenced by the position of westerly winds. The present influence of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation system on the Antarctic Peninsula may have arisen only during the late Holocene.

New molecular research has pulled acoel flatworms from their basal position in animal evolution, uniting them with creatures such as echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins and allies) — indeed, very much closer to the chordates, the group that includes ourselves. The work follows previous revelations that Xenoturbella, a simple flatworm of mysterious evolutionary connections, also belonged to this group. The research implies that acoels are not primitively simple, as had been thought, but have lost features such as a body cavity, anus and gill slits.

The retina is a laminated structure made up of several different cellular subtypes that assemble precise connections between them. This study sheds new light on the molecular mechanisms governing the development of these specific circuits. Transmembrane molecules typically most active as repulsive signals during axonal guidance exhibit specific expression patterns within the retina, allowing for the connectivity between cell types to occur properly. Mutant mice lacking specific isoforms of these semaphorin or plexin molecular families displayed significant defects in the retinal circuitry. Thus, repulsive cues present on the neuronal processes themselves drive proper wiring between lamina within the retina.

A non-coding region on chromosome 9p21 was previously shown to associate with coronary artery disease and type 2 diabetes, and the region has been implicated in regulating neighbouring genes. Here, 33 distinct enhancers within this region are identified, showing that SNPs in one of the enhancers affect STAT1 binding. Furthermore, it is shown that in human vascular endothelial cells the enhancer interval physically interacts with a number of specific loci and that IFN-γ activation strongly affects the chromatin structure and transcriptional regulation of the 9p21 locus, including STAT1 binding, long-range enhancer interactions and expression of neighbouring genes.

In a mouse model of prostate cancer it is found that that the TGF-β signalling pathway limits tumour progression and metastasis. Using markers of this pathway and other biologically relevant factors, a four-gene signature is identified that is associated with poorer clinical outcome and metastatic progression in several prostate cancer cohorts, especially in combination with other clinical parameters. This signature may prove useful for the development of a better prognostic test for those cases of prostate cancer in which deciding on the right treatment regime while avoiding over-treatment constitutes an important clinical challenge.

The anaphase promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) is a large multimeric ubiquitin E3 ligase that regulates the eukaryotic cell cycle in processes such as chromatid segregation and completion of mitosis. It catalyses the polyubiquitylation of a diverse array of mitotic regulatory proteins and targets them for proteasomal degradation. Target selection also involves a co-activator protein (either Cdc20 or Cdh1) together with core APC/C subunits. Here, a cryo-EM structure of APC/C^Chd1 bound to a D-box peptide substrate is presented. The structure provides important insight into the recognition and catalytic mechanism of APC/C substrates.

Identifying the genomic regulatory sequences, such as enhancers, that control early embryonic development remains a difficult challenge. Here, profiling of histone modifications and chromatin regulators in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) reveals unique signatures that are used to identify over 2,000 putative enhancers. These enhancers are either active in the h ESCs or associated with early developmental genes.

Staufen 1 (STAU1) protein binds regions of dsRNA in the 3′ UTR of mRNAs and promotes their degradation, a process known as SMD (Staufen-mediated mRNA decay). Although a specific stem-loop binding site had been defined for one SMD target, it was unclear how STAU1 was directed to other SMD targets that lack this structure. This paper reports that pairing of Alu element sequences in long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and in the 3′ UTR of the SMD target generates a dsRNA structure that STAU1 recognizes. This result highlights a new function for lncRNAs.

A DNA sequence isn't enough; to understand the workings of the genome, we must study chromosome structure.

With biological databases growing in size and number, curators are needed to update and correct their contents. For those who prefer computers to pipettes, there are opportunities.

A new academic post in Turkey proves opportune for microbiologist Cory Dunn.

Unemployment rates remain relatively low.

Management plan affects all grant applicants.

Hiring drive is part of campaign focusing on junior and senior scientists.

Breakfast with the enemy.