Volume 531 Issue 7593, 10 March 2016

An unexpected data signal that could change everything has particle physicists salivating.

The risks and rewards of genome editing resonate beyond the clinic.

Lack of continued help for poor families involved in Huntington’s-disease research has sown resentment and mistrust, says Ignacio Muñoz-Sanjuan.

Apparently creationist research prompts soul searching over process of editing and peer review.

Wildlife trafficking on Facebook sparks concern; grizzlies delisted as endangered; and Japanese particle accelerator starts work.

Conference aims to raise awareness of shared resources for building lab equipment.

Decision could determine who profits from the gene-editing technique in future.

The pressure is on to choose between several proposals for space-based detectors.

Policy statement aims to halt missteps in the quest for certainty.

Project Baseline will monitor effects of climate change on plant evolution.

Cases may signal start of anticipated wave of birth defects in country hit hard by Zika virus.

A special issue explores what it means to be living in an age of gene editing.

The real power of the biological tool lies in exploring how genomes work.

Birds and bees are just the beginning for a burgeoning technology.

Arguments about whether process or product should be the focus of regulation are stalling progress, says Jennifer Kuzma.

The citizen-science community has a responsible, proactive attitude that is well suited to gene-editing, argues Todd Kuiken.

Margaret Myers on a study of the impacts of the country's presence in Latin America.

Stuart Pimm examines E. O. Wilson's grand vision for an Earth shared equally between humanity and nature.

Sara Reardon is moved by a play about the toll of infant sex-assignment surgery.

An analysis confirms the long-standing theory that sex increases the rate of adaptive evolution by accelerating the speed at which beneficial mutations sweep through sexual, as opposed to asexual, populations. See Letter p.233

Quantum computers will one day wildly outperform conventional machines. An experimental feat reveals a fundamental property of exotic superconductors that brings this quantum technology a step closer. See Letter p.206

In flowering plants, sperm-containing pollen tubes are guided towards ovules by attractants from the female reproductive organ. Receptors for the attractant molecule AtLURE1 have now been found. See Letters p.241 & p.245

Carbon dioxide is an abundant resource, but difficult for industry to use effectively. A simple reaction might allow it to be used to make commercial products more sustainably than with current processes. See Letter p.215

Satellite data have allowed scientists to generate a quantitative model to assess the response rates of different ecosystems to climate variability. The index provides a tool for comparing regional sensitivity and resilience. See Letter p.229

Nitric oxide gas has now been found to act as a switch during developmental remodelling of axonal projections from neurons: high gas levels promote the degeneration of unwanted axons and low levels support subsequent regrowth.

In the mammalian navigational system, neurons have been identified in the CA2 region of the hippocampus that keep track of position when an animal is not moving.

Defects in the ribosome quality control (RQC) complex, which clears proteins that stalled during translation, can cause neurodegeneration; here it is shown that in RQC-defective cells a peptide tail added by the RQC subunit 2 to stalled polypeptides promotes their aggregation and the sequestration of chaperones in these aggregates, affecting normal protein quality control processes.

The X-ray crystal structure of a two-pore channel from Arabidopsis thaliana reveals the structure and the mechanism of voltage gating of this class of ubiquitous cation-selective ion channels.

Observations of repeated fast radio bursts, having dispersion measures and sky positions consistent with those of FRB 121102, show that the signals do not originate in a single cataclysmic event and may come from a young, highly magnetized, extragalactic neutron star.

The splitting of zero-energy Majorana modes in a tunnel-coupled InAs nanowire with epitaxial aluminium is exponentially suppressed as the wire length is increased, resulting in protection of these modes; this result helps to establish the robust presence of Majorana modes and quantifies exponential protection in nanowire devices.

Low-temperature measurements of the Hall effect in cuprate materials in which superconductivity is suppressed by high magnetic fields show that the pseudogap is not related to the charge ordering that has been seen at intermediate doping levels, but is instead linked to the antiferromagnetic Mott insulator at low doping.

Molten salts at intermediate temperatures enable efficient carbonate-promoted carboxylation of very weakly acidic C–H bonds, revealing a new way to transform inedible biomass and carbon dioxide into valuable feedstock chemicals.

An approach to selectively manipulate the C–H bonds of alicyclic amines at sites remote to nitrogen is demonstrated by the synthesis of new derivatives of several bioactive molecules, including varenicline, a drug used to treat nicotine addiction.

The net balance of terrestrial biogenic greenhouse gases produced as a result of human activities and the climatic impact of this balance are uncertain; here the net cumulative impact of the three greenhouse gases, methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, on the planetary energy budget from 2001 to 2010 is a warming of the planet.

Using satellite data and a novel analytical approach, a new index of the sensitivity of vegetation to climate variability is developed, revealing areas of high sensitivity that include tundra, boreal forest, tropical forest and temperate grasslands.

In a comparison between replicate sexual and asexual populations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, sexual reproduction increases fitness by reducing clonal interference and alters the type of mutations that get fixed by natural selection.

The salamander, or axolotl, is well known to be able to regenerate missing body parts, but the signals that drive the initial proliferative response were unclear; now, a secreted protein has been identified that induces the initial cell cycle response after injury.

A male cell-surface receptor-like kinase that responds to the female chemoattractant LURE1 on the pollen tube of Arabidopsis thaliana is identified; LURE1 triggers dimerization of the receptor components and activation of the kinase activity, and the transformation of a component of the A. thaliana receptor to the Capsella rubella species partially breaks down the reproductive isolation barrier.

Pollen-specific receptor-like kinase 6 (PRK6), which signals through the guanine nucleotide-exchange factors ROPGEFs, is required for sensing of the LURE1 attractant peptide in Arabidopsis thaliana, and functions together with other PRK family kinases; when introduced into the pollen tubes of the related species Capsella rubella, PRK6 could confer responsiveness to AtLURE1.

MIMIVIRE is a novel nucleic-acid-based immune system against virophage infection in the giant virus mimivirus.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is shown to promote hepatocellular carcinoma through the generation of linoleic acid, disruption of mitochondrial function and selective loss of CD4⁺ T cells, leading to impaired anti-tumour immunity.

The X-ray crystal structure of a two-pore channel from Arabidopsis thaliana is reported, revealing the mechanisms of ion permeation, inhibition channel activation, and location of regulatory sites and voltage-sensing domains.

The make-up of a lab is crucial to success in publishing its research — and now, scientists are exploring how to compose the best research group possible.

David Smith promotes chemistry, and networking opportunities for LGBT scientists.

A fresh connection.