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The elephant shark (Callorhinchus milii) is a cartilaginous fish native to the temperate waters off southern Australia and New Zealand, living at depths of 200 to 500 metres and migrating into shallow waters during spring for breeding. The genome sequence is published in this issue of Nature. Comparison with other vertebrate genomes shows that it is the slowest evolving genome of all known vertebrates � coelacanth included. Genome analysis points to an unusual adaptive immune system lacking the CD4 receptor and some associated cytokines, indicating that cartilaginous fishes possess a primordial gnathostome adaptive immune system. Also absent are genes encoding secreted calcium-binding phosphoproteins, in line with the absence of bone in cartilaginous fish. Cover: Rudie Kuiter/OceanwideImages.com
As public pressure builds for drug companies to make more results available from clinical trials, the industry should not forget that it relies on collective goodwill to test new therapies.
Violent incidents at academic institutions have spurred universities to adopt formal procedures designed to keep campuses safer. But do the tactics work?
Practical, interdisciplinary ways of working forged during the Second World War had a lasting impact on a generation of physicists and their findings, says David Kaiser.
Sound artist Daniel Fishkin tries to convey the experience of tinnitus. As the latest incarnation of his installation series Composing the Tinnitus Suites opens in Brooklyn, New York, he talks about building a mechanical model of the inner ear.
Wnt signalling molecules are thought to direct the development of an organism by spreading through tissues. But flies grow with almost normal appendages even when their main Wnt protein cannot move. Two scientists discuss the implications of this finding for our understanding of development. See Article p.180
In flow batteries, energy is produced by passing solutions of 'electroactive' materials — often, metal salts — through an electrochemical cell. A non-metallic electroactive material opens the way to large-scale energy storage. See Letter p.195
Patients differ in their requirement for, and response to, various drug doses. A general platform that allows continuous monitoring of drug levels in the blood of rats may open the door to patient-specific dosing.
Superconducting quantum circuits are the core technology behind the most sensitive magnetometers. An analogous device has now been implemented using a gas of ultracold atoms, with possible applications for rotation sensing.
Two crystal structures reveal that the Vif and Vpx proteins of human and simian immunodeficiency viruses mediate evasion of host defences by reprogramming the cellular protein-degradation machinery. See Letters p.229 & p.234
Examination of demographic age trajectories for species from a wide range of taxonomic groups shows that these species have very diverse life-history patterns; mortality and reproduction vary greatly with age for both long- and short-lived species, and the relationships between ageing, mortality and reproduction are clearly complex.
Whole-genome analysis of the elephant shark, a cartilaginous fish, shows that it is the slowest evolving of all known vertebrates, lacks critical bone formation genes and has an unusual adaptive immune system.
Replacement of the wingless (wg) gene in Drosophila with one that expresses a membrane-tethered form of Wg results in viable flies with normally patterned appendages of nearly the right size; early wg transcription and memory of signalling ensure continued target-gene expression in the absence of Wg release, even though the spread of Wg could boost cell proliferation.
Observations of local galaxy I Zw 18 imply that the dust mass in star-forming, metal-poor environments is much lower than expected, and, therefore, that the amount of dust in young galaxies of the early Universe, such as redshift-6.6 galaxy Himiko, is probably a factor of about 100 less than previously thought.
High-quality graphene is grown on copper and then transferred to the underlying substrate, typically silicon oxide or quartz, by simply etching away the copper; the graphene is held in place during etching by capillary bridges.
Flow batteries, in which the electro-active components are held in fluid form external to the battery itself, are attractive as a potential means for regulating the output of intermittent renewable sources of electricity; an aqueous flow battery based on inexpensive commodity chemicals is now reported that also has the virtue of enabling further improvement of battery performance through organic chemical design.
A method of selectively activating both allylic carbon–hydrogen bonds and carbon–carbon bonds can furnish sophisticated molecular scaffolds with all-carbon quaternary stereogenic centres that can themselves be derivatized.
Drilling by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program has recovered primitive, modally layered, orthopyroxene-bearing cumulate rocks from the lower plutonic crust formed at a fast-spreading ridge, leading to a better-constrained estimate of the bulk composition of fast-spreading oceanic crust.
A comprehensive study into the effects of polymorphisms on gene expression dynamics during a 12-hour development period of Caenorhabditis elegans shows that both cis and trans expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) can increase and decrease gene expression, depending on the time point, and that trans eQTLs can act as modifiers of expression during a given period of development.
HMGA2 promotes lung cancer progression in mice and humans; in mouse and human lung cancer cells, HMGA2 competes with mRNAs like TGFBR3 for the let-7 microRNA family, and in human non-small-cell lung cancer tissue, expression levels of HMGA2 and TGFBR3 are correlated, suggesting that HMGA2 functions both as a protein-coding gene and as a non-coding RNA.
The bacteria responsible for causing tuberculosis in mammals and zebrafish are shown to preferentially recruit and infect permissive macrophages while evading microbicidal ones.
Using long-term intravital photography to explore the cellular changes after compression-induced traumatic brain injury in a murine model, it is shown that parenchymal and meningeal inflammation as well as cell death can be modulated by topical treatment with purinergic receptor antagonists and glutathione.
This study provides a crystal structure of the Vif–CBF-β–CUL5–ELOB–ELOC complex, which shows that Vif mimics the action of SOCS2 to interact with CUL5 and ELOC.
The crystal structure of a ternary complex of the lentiviral accessory protein Vpx with the E3 ligase substrate adaptor DCAF1 and the HIV-1 restriction factor SAMHD1 shows how Vpx recruits SAMHD1 to the cell’s ubiquitination machinery.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae bearing engineered alginate and mannitol catabolic pathways can ferment sugars from brown macroalgae to produce ethanol, potentially allowing the use of brown macroalgae as a viable feedstock for the production of biofuels and renewable chemicals.
Femtosecond crystallography with an X-ray free-electron laser is used to analyse micrometre-sized protein crystals, generating a high-resolution structure of the protein without previous knowledge of what it looks like.