Volume 496 Issue 7445, 18 April 2013

Italy’s parliament must listen to expert advice before deregulating stem-cell therapies.

Nature’s podcast charts 12 landmark discoveries in the history of science.

Lack of funding and recruitment freezes are driving young researchers out of the country, warns Varvara Trachana.

The week in science: IVF Nobel laureate Bob Edwards dies, Thermo Fisher Scientific buys up Life Technologies for $13.6 billion, and Romania’s national research council resigns en masse.

Translational research wins in Obama’s budget, but its economic value remains uncertain.

But worries persist about unintended consequences of tinkering with nature.

Contextuality theorem could improve secure communication.

The genes of an ancient fish, the coelacanth, have much to reveal about our distant past.

Simulations identify past megadroughts, but at wrong times.

Decades after Thomas Lovejoy isolated fragments of the Brazilian rainforest in a grand experiment, researchers are building on his legacy around the world.

Finding and vaccinating Nigerian nomads may be one of the last obstacles to the eradication of polio.

Illegal logging threatens tropical forests and carbon stocks. Governments must work together to build an early warning system, say Jim Lynch and colleagues.

The way Willi Hennig discovered evolutionary relationships should not be forgotten, say Quentin Wheeler, Leandro Assis and Olivier Rieppel.

Stuart Pimm applauds eminent biologist E. O. Wilson's pragmatic and passionate career advice.

John Carmody enjoys an exhibition that charts the trajectory of anaesthesia from its botanical beginnings.

To mark UNESCO's World Book and Copyright Day on 23 April, Josie Glausiusz asks science editors at leading book publishers about trends and technology.

The discovery of lipids on ceramic fragments from the Japanese Jōmon period provides the earliest evidence for the use of pottery for cooking and may prompt a rethink of some aspects of human innovation. See Letter p.351

One of the most extreme starburst galaxies in the early Universe has been identified and characterized. This system shows the rapid formation of a massive galaxy when the Universe was only 6% of its current age. See Letter p.329

The relatedness of animals influences their behaviour, but how do they detect their kin? It seems that nasal sensory neurons differentiate between minute structural differences in urinary peptides that reflect genetic variation.

A laser pulse can switch certain crystals from an insulating phase to a highly conducting phase. The ultrafast molecular motions that drive the transition have been directly observed using electron diffraction. See Letter p.343

Human activity, such as agricultural fertilizer use, has increased the amount of nitrogen deposited onto forests from the atmosphere. The photosynthetic response to this in evergreen needleleaf forests has been quantified globally.

Predicting when the dynamics of a complex system will undergo a sudden transition is difficult. New experiments show that the spatial distribution of organisms can indicate when such tipping points are near. See Letter p.355

Genome sequencing and phylogenomic analysis show that the lungfish, not the coelacanth, is the closest living relative of tetrapods, that coelacanth protein-coding genes are more slowly evolving than those of tetrapods and lungfish, and that the genes and regulatory elements that underwent changes during the vertebrate transition to land reflect adaptation to a new environment.

Here it is shown that ion flux through the TrkH–TrkA complex is upregulated by ATP and downregulated by ADP; solving the X-ray crystal structures of the tetrameric TrkA ring in the absence and presence of TrkH suggests a mechanism by which ATP-induced conformational changes in TrkA augment the activity of TrkH.

This study reports the X-ray crystal structure of a Ktr K⁺ transporter; the structure of this KtrAB complex reveals how the dimeric membrane protein KtrB interacts with the cytosolic octameric KtrA regulatory protein.

A massive starburst galaxy with 100 billion solar masses of gas is identified at a redshift of 6.34; a ‘maximum starburst’ converts the gas into stars at a rate more than 2,000 times that of the Milky Way.

Electrical detection and coherent manipulation of a single ³¹P nuclear spin qubit is reported; the high fidelities are promising for fault-tolerant nuclear-spin-based quantum computing using silicon.

Quantum mechanical calculations reveal a surprising strain-stiffening phenomenon in two crystalline solids, one of which is cementite, a precipitate found in carbon steels.

An ultrabright femtosecond electron source is used to monitor the molecular motions in the organic salt (EDO-TTF)₂PF₆ as it undergoes its photo-induced insulator-to-metal phase transition.

An analysis of the relative effects of transpiration and evaporation, which can be distinguished by how they affect isotope ratios in water, shows that transpiration is by far the largest water flux from Earth’s continents, representing 80 to 90 per cent of terrestrial evapotranspiration and using half of all solar energy absorbed by land surfaces.

Chemical analysis of food residues associated with Japanese Jōmon pottery, which dates from the Late Pleistocene epoch and is the oldest pottery so far investigated, shows that most deposits were derived from high-trophic-level aquatic food.

Early warning signals of systems collapse include increased recovery time after perturbations, and here spatially extended, connected yeast populations are used to identify a new warning indicator: recovery length after spatial disturbances.

A study of compulsive drug-seeking behaviour in rats reveals that prolonged cocaine self-administration decreases prelimbic cortex activity resulting in increased compulsive drug-seeking actions; conversely, increasing activity in the prelimbic cortex decreases drug-seeking behaviour, a finding relevant to addiction treatment.

Genetically encoded probes for the non-peptidic morphogen retinoic acid allow the quantitative measurement of physiological RA concentration in vivo; the results support the source–sink diffusion model of morphogen dynamics proposed by Francis Crick in 1970.

Hepatitis A virus particles released from cells can hijack and become wrapped in host-derived membranes by using proteins that facilitate the budding of many enveloped viruses, calling into question the traditional distinction between enveloped and non-enveloped viruses.

PARKIN, a protein involved in mitochondria clearance by autophagy, is often mutated in early-onset familial Parkinson’s disease; here the cellular repertoire of PARKIN targets is identified by quantitative proteomics.

The Schizosaccharomyces pombe HP1 protein, Swi6, is shown to exist in an auto-inhibited state when unbound to chromatin, switching to a spreading-competent state upon binding to the HK9 methyl mark; disrupting this switch affects heterochromatin assembly and gene silencing.

Inhibition of kynurenine 3-monooxygenase (KMO) leads to amelioration of Huntington’s-disease-relevant phenotypes in yeast, fruitfly and mouse models; here the crystal structures of free and inhibitor-bound yeast KMO are presented, which could aid the development of targeted therapies for human neurodegenerative diseases.

Prospects are starting to look bright in the growing field of science intended to aid regulation of food safety and drug development.

Former engineer takes up structural biology to help to develop cancer treatments.

The ultimate challenge.