Health sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    Epithelial cells in the colon mainly use microbial fermentation products as energy sources. Here Okada et al. find that lactate produced by commensal Lactobacillus murinusregulates colonic epithelial cell proliferation and show that mice are more susceptible to carcinogens when refed after a period of starvation.

    • Toshihiko Okada
    • , Shinji Fukuda
    •  & Taeko Dohi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mouse models of arthritis generally do not result in both chronic disease and autoantibody production—two key features of the human disease. Here the authors obtain both features by combining two common protocols, and find that disease severity is associated with the presence of a previously unidentified lymph node.

    • Uta Baddack
    • , Sven Hartmann
    •  & Gerd Müller

  • Article |

    The gasotransmitter hydrogen sulfide signals by sulfide modification of target proteins. Vandiver and colleagues study the sulfhydration of parkin by hydrogen sulfide and find that sulfhydration stimulates its activity, and that this activity is reduced in patients with Parkinson’s disease.

    • M. Scott Vandiver
    • , Bindu D. Paul
    •  & Solomon H. Snyder

  • Article |

    The number of human infections caused by the primate malaria parasite P. knowlesi is increasing. Lim et al. demonstrate that host specificity is due to the preference of the parasite for young blood cells, and that the parasite can adapt to proliferate in human blood containing a range of differently aged cells.

    • Caeul Lim
    • , Elsa Hansen
    •  & Manoj T. Duraisingh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Telomere shortening as a result of cell proliferation has been implicated in human ageing. Here, Daniali and colleagues show that telomere length and the rate of age-dependent shortening vary between adults but are similar within tissues of the same individual.

    • Lily Daniali
    • , Athanase Benetos
    •  & Abraham Aviv

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Exposure to malaria during pregnancy can result in its spread to the placenta; however, the risk of placental infection decreases with subsequent pregnancies. By constructing a mathematical model, the authors find that this is likely due to a reduction in the duration of infection rather than a reduced risk of transfer.

    • Patrick G. T. Walker
    • , Jamie T. Griffin
    •  & Azra C. Ghani

  • Article |

    Bacterial type III secretion systems (T3SS) improve the delivery of vaccine antigens and antigen-specific immune responses but require the use of live vaccines. Carleton et al. report the assembly of a functional T3SS in replication-incompetent bacterial minicells that can deliver vaccine antigens in vitro and in vivo.

    • Heather A. Carleton
    • , María Lara-Tejero
    •  & Jorge E. Galán

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reorganization of the sensorimotor cortex due to loss of sensory input is implicated in phantom pain. Makin and colleagues use functional MRI to show that phantom pain experience is instead associated with maintained local functional and structural cortical representations but disrupted inter-regional connectivity.

    • Tamar R. Makin
    • , Jan Scholz
    •  & Heidi Johansen-Berg

  • Article |

    The skin cancer treatment Aldara generates psoriasis-like symptoms in mice, which are thought to be due to stimulation of TLR7 by the active ingredient imiquimod. The authors show that some of these inflammatory effects are independent of both imiquimod and TLR7, implicating an unexpected role for the vehicle.

    • Anne Walter
    • , Matthias Schäfer
    •  & Maries van den Broek

  • Article |

    A debilitating side effect of radiotherapy in patients with head and neck cancers is xerostomia as a result of salivary gland dysfunction. Here Liu et al. show that activation of the calcium channel TRPM2 in salivary gland cells contributes to irradiation-induced loss of salivary fluid secretion.

    • Xibao Liu
    • , Ana Cotrim
    •  & Indu Ambudkar

  • Article |

    Photo-stimulation can be used to control neuronal circuits, but current strategies lack optimal precision and resolution. Reutsky-Gefen et al. demonstrate a potential approach for vision restoration via holographically patterned, optogenetic stimulation of retinal ganglion cells, with temporal precision.

    • Inna Reutsky-Gefen
    • , Lior Golan
    •  & Shy Shoham

  • Article |

    Changes in the biosynthesis of fatty acids can influence tissue insulin sensitivity and the development of metabolic diseases. Eissing and colleagues show that de novolipogenesis in liver and adipose tissue is linked to metabolic health in humans and can be modulated by bariatric surgery.

    • Leah Eissing
    • , Thomas Scherer
    •  & Ludger Scheja

  • Article |

    Irradiation treatment for cancer therapy often causes irreparable damage to adult organs. Knox and colleagues study irradiated mouse submandibular salivary glands and find that restoring parasympathetic nerve function with the neurotrophic factor neurturin improves regeneration.

    • Sarah M. Knox
    • , Isabelle M. A. Lombaert
    •  & Matthew P. Hoffman

  • Article |

    A link between smoking and the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease has been implicated in humans. In this study, transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease exposed to cigarette smoke display increased disease abnormalities in the brain, such as amyloidogenesis, neuroinflammation and tau phosphorylation.

    • Ines Moreno-Gonzalez
    • , Lisbell D. Estrada
    •  & Claudio Soto

  • Article |

    Large-scale screening of animal phenotypes requires automated detection and analysis of complex morphological information. Here, Yanik and colleagues present an imaging system based on optical projection tomography that generates micrometre-resolution 3D images of zebrafish larvae with within tens of seconds per animal.

    • Carlos Pardo-Martin
    • , Amin Allalou
    •  & Mehmet Fatih Yanik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Chinese tree shrew, Tupaia belangeri chinensis, has been proposed as a potential animal model in biomedical research and drug safety testing. This study presents the full genome of the Chinese tree shrew, identifying common features between the tree shrew and primates.

    • Yu Fan
    • , Zhi-Yong Huang
    •  & Yong-Gang Yao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A variant in the IFITM3gene increases the risk of severe influenza, but homozygosity is rare in Caucasians. The authors show that the variant gene is homozygous in 25% of healthy Chinese people, and 69% of those with severe pandemic influenza, suggesting that this gene influences the epidemiology of influenza in South-East Asia.

    • Yong-Hong Zhang
    • , Yan Zhao
    •  & Tao Dong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Artificially engineered tissues may have many therapeutic applications but complex tissues are hard to create in vitro. Here, Okano and colleagues report the production of functional cardiac tissue sheets with perfusable blood vessels, which increase the thickness and survival of transplanted tissue.

    • Hidekazu Sekine
    • , Tatsuya Shimizu
    •  & Teruo Okano

  • Article
    | Open Access

    During red blood cell infection, malaria parasites export hundreds of proteins that remodel the host cell surface. Cowman and colleagues identify a putative protein translocator complex spatially associated with exported proteins, revealing the cellular domains involved in protein export.

    • David T. Riglar
    • , Kelly L. Rogers
    •  & Alan F. Cowman

  • Article |

    Hydrogen sulphide is a signalling molecule with cytoprotective activity in mammals. Here, Kimura and colleagues identify a new biosynthetic pathway for the production of hydrogen sulphide from D-cysteine, which is shown to protect mouse kidneys from oxidative stress after ischaemia/reperfusion injury.

    • Norihiro Shibuya
    • , Shin Koike
    •  & Hideo Kimura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Temporal lobe epilepsy in adults does not always respond to treatment. Krook-Magnuson and colleagues use optogenetics to inhibit and activate excitatory and inhibitory neurons, respectively, in a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy, and find that they can stop seizures on a moment-to-moment basis.

    • Esther Krook-Magnuson
    • , Caren Armstrong
    •  & Ivan Soltesz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Selected reaction monitoring mass spectrometry (SRM-MS) can quantify dynamic changes in protein expression with high sensitivity. Karlsson et al. define optimal detection parameters for 10,412 distinct group A Streptococcus pyogenespeptides, which facilitates proteome-wide SRM-MS studies in this bacterium.

    • Christofer Karlsson
    • , Lars Malmström
    •  & Johan Malmström

  • Article |

    Tumorigenesis has been likened to a form of cellular reversion to the embryonic state. Ma et al.identify a foetal miRNA as an oncogenic activator of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway in colorectal cancer, whose expression is negatively correlated with survival but is positively correlated with response to adjuvant chemotherapy.

    • Yanlei Ma
    • , Peng Zhang
    •  & Huanlong Qin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Diagnostic microfluidic devices often require complicated optical systems and computers to quantify results. Here, Qin and colleagues link enzymatic biomarker detection with the displacement of ink, resulting in a device that displays quantitative results as bar graphs directly on the device.

    • Yujun Song
    • , Yuanqing Zhang
    •  & Lidong Qin

  • Article |

    The mislocalization and downregulation of the proteins TDP-43 and ADAR2, respectively, are implicated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis pathology. Yamashita et al. find that downregulation of ADAR2 results in calcium-permeable AMPA receptor-mediated calpain activation and subsequent aberrant cleavage of TDP-43.

    • Takenari Yamashita
    • , Takuto Hideyama
    •  & Shin Kwak

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The gut microbiota has emerged as an environmental factor that can influence the development of obesity and diabetes. Here, Karlsson et al. report compositional and functional alterations of the gut metagenome in patients with symptomatic atherosclerosis.

    • Fredrik H. Karlsson
    • , Frida Fåk
    •  & Jens Nielsen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Malaria can persist at levels that escape detection by standard microscopy, but can be detected by PCR. Okell et al.now show that rates of submicroscopic infection can be predicted using more widely available microscopy data, and are most epidemiologically significant in areas with low malaria transmission.

    • Lucy C. Okell
    • , Teun Bousema
    •  & Chris J. Drakeley

  • Article |

    Polycystic kidney disease family proteins form heteromeric complexes with transient receptor potential channel subunits of the TRPP subfamily. Yu and colleagues find that the polycystic kidney disease protein, PKD1L3, is an ion channel pore-forming subunit in the acid-sensing PKD1L3/TRPP3 complex.

    • Yong Yu
    • , Maximilian H. Ulbrich
    •  & Jian Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multiple sclerosis is characterized by the activation of microglia cells. Davalos et al. investigate the early stages of neuroinflammation in mice and reveal that the plasma protein fibrinogen induces microglial clustering around the brain vasculature, which facilitates lesion formation and focal axonal damage.

    • Dimitrios Davalos
    • , Jae Kyu Ryu
    •  & Katerina Akassoglou

  • Article |

    Humans tend to adopt one of a limited number of different bacterial community structures in the gut, known as enterotypes. Moeller et al.now show that these microbial fingerprints are conserved in chimpanzees, and that individuals can switch between enterotypes over periods of several years.

    • Andrew H. Moeller
    • , Patrick H. Degnan
    •  & Howard Ochman

  • Article |

    Multifunctional S100 proteins are upregulated in brain injury, but their role in neurodegeneration is not clear. Dmytriyeva and colleagues study in vivomodels of brain trauma and find that the S100A4 protein and its peptide mimetics protect neurons via the interleukin-10 receptor and the Janus kinase (JAK)/STAT pathway.

    • Oksana Dmytriyeva
    • , Stanislava Pankratova
    •  & Darya Kiryushko

  • Article |

    The temporal opening and closing of cell–cell junctions at the blood–testis barrier allows the passage of immature germ cells during spermatogenesis. Su and colleagues identify a peptide fragment of the laminin-γ3 chain that disrupts the blood–testis barrier and reversibly impairs spermatogenesis in rats.

    • Linlin Su
    • , Dolores D. Mruk
    •  & C. Yan Cheng

  • Article |

    The ras family of oncogenes consists of H-ras, K-ras and N-ras, and usually only one of these genes is mutated in a given tumour type. In this study, K-ras is found to promote the activation of wild-type H-ras and N-ras in a manner dependent on the Ras guanine nucleotide exchange factor Son of sevenless.

    • Hao-Hsuan Jeng
    • , Laura J Taylor
    •  & Dafna Bar-Sagi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Prion proteins are implicated in a range of neurodegenerative diseases, which are, in part, due to a disruption of metal homeostasis. Wattet al.use selective antagonists to show that prion proteins mediate zinc uptake by interacting with GluA2-lacking, GluA1-containing AMPA receptors.

    • Nicole T. Watt
    • , David R. Taylor
    •  & Nigel M. Hooper

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