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Volume 494 Issue 7438, 28 February 2013

In the beginning was the word genome, and genomics. Now there are thousands of omes and omics out there, some of them firmly established as important bodies of knowledge and fields of study. Some are not, however, and have been variously condemned as unnecessary, trivial, frivolous, non-grammatical and worse. A News Feature in this issue surveys the omics scene with a view to spotting some that are here to stay. The puzzle on the cover airs a few of these words good, bad and ugly. Go.nature.com/7ihxut for printable puzzle. (Cover: Charles Wenz & Kelly Krause/ Nature)

Editorial

  • The move towards providing full open access to research papers was undermined last week, but should prevail in the long term.

    Editorial

    Advertisement

  • A severe approach to slashing US spending bodes ill for the research enterprise.

    Editorial
  • The narrow distribution of awards aimed at the broad arena of the ‘life sciences’ raises concerns.

    Editorial
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World View

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Research Highlights

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Seven Days

  • The week in science: Canada launches satellite to search for asteroids; big new biology prizes awarded; and Irish science gets cash injection.

    Seven Days
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News

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Correction

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News Feature

  • Where once there was the genome, now there are thousands of ’omes. Nature goes in search of the ones that matter.

    • Monya Baker
    News Feature
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Comment

  • The US National Academy of Sciences has to become more nimble and responsive if it is to survive another 150 years, says Marjory S. Blumenthal.

    • Marjory S. Blumenthal
    Comment
  • Neuroscientists should help to develop compelling video games that boost brain function and improve well-being, say Daphne Bavelier and Richard J. Davidson.

    • Daphne Bavelier
    • Richard J. Davidson
    Comment
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Books & Arts

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Correspondence

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Clarification

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News & Views

  • The implications of the X-ray emission patterns of galaxies hosting supermassive black holes have been contentious. Data from NASA's NuSTAR telescope seem to resolve the issue — at least for one such galaxy. See Letter p.449

    • Christopher S. Reynolds

    Collection:

    News & Views
  • The discovery that some viruses use a defence mechanism known as a CRISPR/Cas system beautifully illustrates the evolutionary tit-for-tat between viruses and the bacteria they infect. See Letter p.489

    • Manuela Villion
    • Sylvain Moineau
    News & Views
  • Rhesus macaques' responses to computer-animated images of lip-smacking monkey faces suggest that the jaw, tongue and lip oscillations that characterize human speech may have evolved from rhythmic primate facial expressions.

    • W. Tecumseh Fitch
    News & Views
  • An analysis reveals the huge impact of human activity on the nitrogen cycle in China. With global use of Earth's resources rising per head, the findings call for a re-evaluation of the consumption patterns of developed societies. See Letter p.459

    • Mark A. Sutton
    • Albert Bleeker

    Special:

    News & Views
  • The impact of a diet, no matter how rich it is, depends crucially on the host's resident gut microbes. Treatment of severe malnutrition with antibiotics may affect the composition of this microbiota to favour better use of nutrients.

    • Ruth E. Ley
    News & Views
  • The discovery that schistosomes possess adult stem cells could explain the long-term persistence of these parasitic worms in humans. Targeting a protein produced by the cells might damage schistosome defences. See Letter p.476

    • Edward J. Pearce
    News & Views
  • Chromosome-segregation errors during cell division may play a key part in tumour evolution. The long-awaited identification of a common genetic defect causing such errors comes with an interesting conceptual twist. See Letter p.492

    • Aniek Janssen
    • René H. Medema
    News & Views
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Article

  • The atomic-resolution structure of the entire respiratory complex I is reported, with the resolution high enough to map out the locations and orientations of nearly all amino-acid side chains—some of which link to human neurodegenerative diseases—and reveals which amino-acid interactions take place at the hydrophilic domain–membrane domain interface.

    • Rozbeh Baradaran
    • John M. Berrisford
    • Leonid A. Sazanov
    Article
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Letter

  • Stellar data from the Kepler spacecraft are used to infer the existence of a sub-Mercury-sized exoplanet, the smallest yet discovered, in orbit around a Sun-like star.

    • Thomas Barclay
    • Jason F. Rowe
    • Susan E. Thompson
    Letter
  • Data on bulk nitrogen deposition, plant foliar nitrogen and crop nitrogen uptake in China between ad 1980 and ad 2010 show that the average annual bulk deposition of nitrogen increased by approximately 8 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare during that period and that nitrogen deposition rates in the industrialized and agriculturally intensified regions of China are as high as the peak levels of deposition in northwestern Europe in the 1980s.

    • Xuejun Liu
    • Ying Zhang
    • Fusuo Zhang

    Special:

    Letter
  • Populations experiencing environmental change can often only avoid extinction through evolutionary change; in a system in which Escherichia coli has to evolve resistance to an antibiotic, the authors show that gradual environmental change allows mutational pathways that rapid change precludes, and can therefore make the difference between extinction and survival.

    • Haley A. Lindsey
    • Jenna Gallie
    • Benjamin Kerr
    Letter
  • Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis sp. nov. and Fuxianhuia xiaoshibaensis sp. nov.— early Cambrian fuxianhuiid fossils from a new Lagerstätte in Yunnan, China—show that ancestral arthropods had cephalic organization that included an antenniform first appendage, which corresponds to the deutocerebral head segment of modern arthropods.

    • Jie Yang
    • Javier Ortega-Hernández
    • Xi-guang Zhang
    Letter
  • High concentrations of salt activate sour- and bitter-taste-sensing cells in the tongues of mice, and genetic silencing of these pathways abolishes behavioural aversion to concentrated salt; this ‘co-opting’ of the two primary aversive taste pathways (sour and bitter) may have evolved so that high salt levels reliably trigger behavioural rejection.

    • Yuki Oka
    • Matthew Butnaru
    • Charles S. Zuker
    Letter
  • This study reports the identification of adult stem cells in the human parasite Schistosoma mansoni (blood fluke); the cells proliferate and differentiate into derivatives of multiple germ layers, and their maintenance requires a fibroblast growth factor receptor orthologue.

    • James J. Collins III
    • Bo Wang
    • Phillip A. Newmark
    Letter
  • A mathematical method, known as ergodic rate analysis, has been developed and used to study the rates of molecular events from single time measurements of large populations of fixed cells; this new method is able to overcome some of the previous limitations with regards to studying cell-size control.

    • Ran Kafri
    • Jason Levy
    • Marc W. Kirschner
    Letter
  • CRISPR/Cas systems are bacterial adaptive immune systems that provide sequence-specific protection from invading nucleic acids, including from bacteriophages; in a notable reverse a vibriophage-encoded CRISPR/Cas system, used to disable a bacteriophage inhibitory chromosomal island in Vibrio cholerae, is identified.

    • Kimberley D. Seed
    • David W. Lazinski
    • Andrew Camilli
    Letter
  • A mechanism to explain chromosomal instability (CIN) in colorectal cancer is demonstrated; three new CIN-suppressor genes (PIGN, MEX3C and ZNF516) encoded on chromosome 18q are identified, the loss of which leads to DNA replication stress, resulting in structural and numerical chromosome segregation errors, which are shown to be identical to phenotypes seen in CIN cells.

    • Rebecca A. Burrell
    • Sarah E. McClelland
    • Charles Swanton
    Letter
  • A class of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) with enhancer-like activity is found to associate with the co-activator complex Mediator and promote its genomic association and enzymatic activity; together with Mediator, the lncRNAs also help to maintain the chromosomal architecture of active regulatory elements.

    • Fan Lai
    • Ulf A. Orom
    • Ramin Shiekhattar
    Letter
  • The telomere-biding protein TRF2 is shown to protect telomeres from activating the DNA-damage response through two mechanisms: preventing the activation ATM kinase through its dimerization domain, in addition to independently suppressing signalling events occurring downstream of ATM.

    • Keiji Okamoto
    • Cristina Bartocci
    • Eros Lazzerini Denchi
    Letter
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Corrigendum

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Feature

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Career Brief

  • Many drug-makers hope to recruit in next few years.

    Career Brief
  • Research institutions opt out of European Union's rankings scheme.

    Career Brief
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Futures

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