Careers

Specials

Research

About the cover

Viscosity field and surface of a convection model of Earth: low viscosity zones in red are plate boundaries and high viscosity zones in dark blue are continents. The interior shows hotspots in red and subduction zones blue. The subsurface layers of Earth appear as an interlocking network of tectonic or lithospheric plates of various sizes and shapes. The nature of the link between mantle flow and tectonics, and the origin of the layout of the plates remain largely unknown. Claire Mallard et al . have developed computer models of mantle convection with plate-like behaviour and use them to produce a series of ‘;virtual Earths’ that project the network of plate boundaries through time. The models suggest that the layout of large plates is controlled by the spacing between subducting slabs, and that stresses caused by the bending of trenches break plates into smaller fragments, explaining why rapid evolution in small back-arc plates reflects the dramatic changes in plate motions during times of major plate-tectonic reorganizations. Cover C. Mallard et al .

Writing a PhD thesis is a personal and professional milestone for many researchers. But the process needs to change with the times.

US regulators must regain the upper hand in the approval system.

The high-profile of the virus can kick-start work on long-standing problems.

The Biological Weapons Convention needs to take the assessment of emerging scientific dangers more seriously, argues Malcolm Dando.

• Huayu Ding
• Robert G. Smith
• Alon Poleg-Polsky
• Jeffrey S. Diamond
• Kevin L. Briggman

Directional selectivity in the detection of moving visual stimuli critically depends on starburst amacrine cells, which have been studied primarily in rabbit retina; a large-scale reconstruction of the mouse retina at a single-synapse level, along with experimental and theoretical analysis, shows that mouse retinal circuitry is adapted to the smaller eye size of mice.

The N-terminal domains of gasdermin proteins cause pyroptotic cell death by oligomerizing to form membrane pores.

X-ray observations of the core of the Perseus cluster reveal a remarkably quiescent atmosphere in which the gas has a line-of-sight velocity dispersion of about 164 kilometres per second in the region 30–60 kiloparsecs from the central nucleus; turbulent pressure support in the gas is four per cent of the thermodynamic pressure, necessitating only a small correction to the total cluster mass determined from hydrostatic equilibrium.

The photodissociation of 88 Sr2 molecules is examined at ultracold temperatures with a high degree of control, and a wealth of quantum effects such as barrier tunnelling, matter—wave interference of reaction products and forbidden pathways are observed

• Rohit Chikkaraddy
• Bart de Nijs
• Felix Benz
• Steven J. Barrow
• Oren A. Scherman
• Edina Rosta
• Angela Demetriadou
• Peter Fox
• Ortwin Hess
• Jeremy J. Baumberg

Placing a light emitter in an ultra-small optical cavity results in coupling between matter and light, generating new forms of emission that can be exploited in practical or fundamental applications; here, a system is described in which strong light–matter coupling occurs at room temperature and in ambient conditions by aligning single dye molecules in the optical cavities between gold nanoparticles and surfaces.

• Kyoungsoo Kim
• Taekyoung Lee
• Yonghyun Kwon
• Yongbeom Seo
• Jongchan Song
• Jung Ki Park
• Hyunsoo Lee
• Jeong Young Park
• Hyotcherl Ihee
• Sung June Cho
• Ryong Ryoo

A long-sought three-dimensional graphene-like carbon structure that resembles periodically networked carbon nanotubes is now readily available through lanthanum-catalysed carbon synthesis using a zeolite template.

• Yang Hsia
• Jacob B. Bale
• Shane Gonen
• Dan Shi
• William Sheffler
• Kimberly K. Fong
• Una Nattermann
• Chunfu Xu
• Po-Ssu Huang
• Rashmi Ravichandran
• Sue Yi
• Trisha N. Davis
• Tamir Gonen
• Neil P. King
• David Baker

The computational design of an extremely stable icosahedral self-assembling protein nanocage is presented; the icosahedron should be useful for applications ranging from calibrating fluorescence microscopy to drug delivery.

• Claire Mallard
• Nicolas Coltice
• Maria Seton
• R. Dietmar Müller
• Paul J. Tackley

Computer models of mantle convection with plate-like behaviour are used to demonstrate that the size–frequency distribution of tectonic plates on Earth is controlled by subduction geometry—the spacing between subducting slabs controls the layout of large plates, and the stresses caused by the bending of trenches break plates into smaller fragments.

• Jos Barlow
• Gareth D. Lennox
• Joice Ferreira
• Erika Berenguer
• Alexander C. Lees
• Ralph Mac Nally
• James R. Thomson
• Silvio Frosini de Barros Ferraz
• Julio Louzada
• Victor Hugo Fonseca Oliveira
• Luke Parry
• Ricardo Ribeiro de Castro Solar
• Ima C. G. Vieira
• Luiz E. O. C. Aragão
• Rodrigo Anzolin Begotti
• Rodrigo F. Braga
• Thiago Moreira Cardoso
• Raimundo Cosme de Oliveira Jr
• Carlos M. Souza Jr
• Nárgila G. Moura
• Sâmia Serra Nunes
• João Victor Siqueira
• Renata Pardini
• Juliana M. Silveira
• Fernando Z. Vaz-de-Mello
• Ruan Carlo Stulpen Veiga
• Adriano Venturieri
• Toby A. Gardner

Evaluation of the primary forests in the Brazilian state of Pará shows that anthropogenic disturbance can more than double the loss of biodiversity expected from deforestation.

• Ying-Nan P. Chen
• Matthew J. LaMarche
• Ho Man Chan
• Peter Fekkes
• Jorge Garcia-Fortanet
• Michael G. Acker
• Brandon Antonakos
• Christine Hiu-Tung Chen
• Zhouliang Chen
• Vesselina G. Cooke
• Jason R. Dobson
• Zhan Deng
• Feng Fei
• Brant Firestone
• Michelle Fodor
• Cary Fridrich
• Hui Gao
• Denise Grunenfelder
• Huai-Xiang Hao
• Jaison Jacob
• Samuel Ho
• Kathy Hsiao
• Zhao B. Kang
• Rajesh Karki
• Mitsunori Kato
• Jay Larrow
• Laura R. La Bonte
• Francois Lenoir
• Gang Liu
• Shumei Liu
• Dyuti Majumdar
• Matthew J. Meyer
• Mark Palermo
• Lawrence Perez
• Minying Pu
• Edmund Price
• Christopher Quinn
• Subarna Shakya
• Michael D. Shultz
• Joanna Slisz
• Kavitha Venkatesan
• Ping Wang
• Markus Warmuth
• Sarah Williams
• Guizhi Yang
• Jing Yuan
• Ji-Hu Zhang
• Ping Zhu
• Timothy Ramsey
• Nicholas J. Keen
• William R. Sellers
• Travis Stams
• Pascal D. Fortin

SHP099, a selective inhibitor of signalling meditator SHP2 with drug-like properties, has an allosteric mechanism of action whereby it stabilizes SHP2 in an auto-inhibited conformation, and suppresses RAS–ERK signalling and proliferation in receptor-tyrosine-kinase-driven cancer cell lines and mouse tumour xenograft models.

• Xing Liu
• Zhibin Zhang
• Jianbin Ruan
• Youdong Pan
• Venkat Giri Magupalli
• Hao Wu
• Judy Lieberman

Caspase-mediated cleavage of gasdermin D, previously shown to mediate pyroptosis, acts by inducing oligomerization and pore formation in cell membranes.

• Caleb D. Marceau
• Andreas S. Puschnik
• Karim Majzoub
• Yaw Shin Ooi
• Susan M. Brewer
• Gabriele Fuchs
• Kavya Swaminathan
• Miguel A. Mata
• Joshua E. Elias
• Peter Sarnow
• Jan E. Carette

A CRISPR screening approach shows that endoplasmic-reticulum (ER)-associated protein complexes, including the oligosaccharyltransferase (OST) protein complex, are important for infection by dengue virus and other related mosquito-borne flaviviruses, whereas hepatitis C virus is dependent on distinct entry factors, RNA binding proteins and FAD biosynthesis.

• Rong Zhang
• Jonathan J. Miner
• Matthew J. Gorman
• Keiko Rausch
• Holly Ramage
• James P. White
• Adam Zuiani
• Ping Zhang
• Estefania Fernandez
• Qiang Zhang
• Kimberly A. Dowd
• Theodore C. Pierson
• Sara Cherry
• Michael S. Diamond

The endoplasmic-reticulum-associated signal peptidase complex is required for infection by numerous flaviviruses, including West Nile, Dengue and Zika viruses, but is not required for infection by other types of virus or for host protein synthesis.

• Yuguang Zhao
• Jingshan Ren
• Karl Harlos
• Daniel M. Jones
• Antra Zeltina
• Thomas A. Bowden
• Sergi Padilla-Parra
• Elizabeth E. Fry
• David I. Stuart

High-resolution structures of the unliganded Ebola virus glycoprotein (GP) and of GP bound to the drugs toremifene and ibuprofen are presented, providing insights into how the drugs inhibit viral fusion with the endosomal membrane.

• Daphne C. Avgousti
• Christin Herrmann
• Katarzyna Kulej
• Neha J. Pancholi
• Nikolina Sekulic
• Joana Petrescu
• Rosalynn C. Molden
• Daniel Blumenthal
• Andrew J. Paris
• Emigdio D. Reyes
• Philomena Ostapchuk
• Patrick Hearing
• Steven H. Seeholzer
• G. Scott Worthen
• Ben E. Black
• Benjamin A. Garcia
• Matthew D. Weitzman

Here, a small core protein of human adenoviruses is shown to associate with histones, sequestering proteins on host chromatin and preventing inflammatory proteins from being released and triggering inflammation.

• T. Sabari Sankar
• Brigitta D. Wastuwidyaningtyas
• Yuexin Dong
• Sarah A. Lewis
• Jue D. Wang

When transcription and replication machineries collide on DNA, they can cause mutations to occur in the area near the collision; these mutations are now shown to include two types—duplications/deletions within the transcription unit and base substitutions in the cis -regulatory element of gene expression.

• Brian T. DeVree
• Jacob P. Mahoney
• Gisselle A. Vélez-Ruiz
• Soren G. F. Rasmussen
• Adam J. Kuszak
• Elin Edwald
• Juan-Jose Fung
• Aashish Manglik
• Matthieu Masureel
• Yang Du
• Rachel A. Matt
• Els Pardon
• Jan Steyaert
• Brian K. Kobilka
• Roger K. Sunahara

Here, pharmacological and biochemical evidence is provided that shows that G-protein coupling to the β2 -adrenergic receptor stabilizes a ‘closed’ conformation of the G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) and that that the effects of the G protein on the ligand-binding site of the GPCR are observed even in the absence of a bound agonist.

Careers

Specials

Research

About the cover

Viscosity field and surface of a convection model of Earth: low viscosity zones in red are plate boundaries and high viscosity zones in dark blue are continents. The interior shows hotspots in red and subduction zones blue. The subsurface layers of Earth appear as an interlocking network of tectonic or lithospheric plates of various sizes and shapes. The nature of the link between mantle flow and tectonics, and the origin of the layout of the plates remain largely unknown. Claire Mallard et al . have developed computer models of mantle convection with plate-like behaviour and use them to produce a series of ‘;virtual Earths’ that project the network of plate boundaries through time. The models suggest that the layout of large plates is controlled by the spacing between subducting slabs, and that stresses caused by the bending of trenches break plates into smaller fragments, explaining why rapid evolution in small back-arc plates reflects the dramatic changes in plate motions during times of major plate-tectonic reorganizations. Cover C. Mallard et al .

Writing a PhD thesis is a personal and professional milestone for many researchers. But the process needs to change with the times.

US regulators must regain the upper hand in the approval system.

The high-profile of the virus can kick-start work on long-standing problems.

The Biological Weapons Convention needs to take the assessment of emerging scientific dangers more seriously, argues Malcolm Dando.

• Huayu Ding
• Robert G. Smith
• Alon Poleg-Polsky
• Jeffrey S. Diamond
• Kevin L. Briggman

Directional selectivity in the detection of moving visual stimuli critically depends on starburst amacrine cells, which have been studied primarily in rabbit retina; a large-scale reconstruction of the mouse retina at a single-synapse level, along with experimental and theoretical analysis, shows that mouse retinal circuitry is adapted to the smaller eye size of mice.

The N-terminal domains of gasdermin proteins cause pyroptotic cell death by oligomerizing to form membrane pores.

X-ray observations of the core of the Perseus cluster reveal a remarkably quiescent atmosphere in which the gas has a line-of-sight velocity dispersion of about 164 kilometres per second in the region 30–60 kiloparsecs from the central nucleus; turbulent pressure support in the gas is four per cent of the thermodynamic pressure, necessitating only a small correction to the total cluster mass determined from hydrostatic equilibrium.

The photodissociation of 88 Sr2 molecules is examined at ultracold temperatures with a high degree of control, and a wealth of quantum effects such as barrier tunnelling, matter—wave interference of reaction products and forbidden pathways are observed

• Rohit Chikkaraddy
• Bart de Nijs
• Felix Benz
• Steven J. Barrow
• Oren A. Scherman
• Edina Rosta
• Angela Demetriadou
• Peter Fox
• Ortwin Hess
• Jeremy J. Baumberg

Placing a light emitter in an ultra-small optical cavity results in coupling between matter and light, generating new forms of emission that can be exploited in practical or fundamental applications; here, a system is described in which strong light–matter coupling occurs at room temperature and in ambient conditions by aligning single dye molecules in the optical cavities between gold nanoparticles and surfaces.

• Kyoungsoo Kim
• Taekyoung Lee
• Yonghyun Kwon
• Yongbeom Seo
• Jongchan Song
• Jung Ki Park
• Hyunsoo Lee
• Jeong Young Park
• Hyotcherl Ihee
• Sung June Cho
• Ryong Ryoo

A long-sought three-dimensional graphene-like carbon structure that resembles periodically networked carbon nanotubes is now readily available through lanthanum-catalysed carbon synthesis using a zeolite template.

• Yang Hsia
• Jacob B. Bale
• Shane Gonen
• Dan Shi
• William Sheffler
• Kimberly K. Fong
• Una Nattermann
• Chunfu Xu
• Po-Ssu Huang
• Rashmi Ravichandran
• Sue Yi
• Trisha N. Davis
• Tamir Gonen
• Neil P. King
• David Baker

The computational design of an extremely stable icosahedral self-assembling protein nanocage is presented; the icosahedron should be useful for applications ranging from calibrating fluorescence microscopy to drug delivery.

• Claire Mallard
• Nicolas Coltice
• Maria Seton
• R. Dietmar Müller
• Paul J. Tackley

Computer models of mantle convection with plate-like behaviour are used to demonstrate that the size–frequency distribution of tectonic plates on Earth is controlled by subduction geometry—the spacing between subducting slabs controls the layout of large plates, and the stresses caused by the bending of trenches break plates into smaller fragments.

• Jos Barlow
• Gareth D. Lennox
• Joice Ferreira
• Erika Berenguer
• Alexander C. Lees
• Ralph Mac Nally
• James R. Thomson
• Silvio Frosini de Barros Ferraz
• Julio Louzada
• Victor Hugo Fonseca Oliveira
• Luke Parry
• Ricardo Ribeiro de Castro Solar
• Ima C. G. Vieira
• Luiz E. O. C. Aragão
• Rodrigo Anzolin Begotti
• Rodrigo F. Braga
• Thiago Moreira Cardoso
• Raimundo Cosme de Oliveira Jr
• Carlos M. Souza Jr
• Nárgila G. Moura
• Sâmia Serra Nunes
• João Victor Siqueira
• Renata Pardini
• Juliana M. Silveira
• Fernando Z. Vaz-de-Mello
• Ruan Carlo Stulpen Veiga
• Adriano Venturieri
• Toby A. Gardner

Evaluation of the primary forests in the Brazilian state of Pará shows that anthropogenic disturbance can more than double the loss of biodiversity expected from deforestation.

• Ying-Nan P. Chen
• Matthew J. LaMarche
• Ho Man Chan
• Peter Fekkes
• Jorge Garcia-Fortanet
• Michael G. Acker
• Brandon Antonakos
• Christine Hiu-Tung Chen
• Zhouliang Chen
• Vesselina G. Cooke
• Jason R. Dobson
• Zhan Deng
• Feng Fei
• Brant Firestone
• Michelle Fodor
• Cary Fridrich
• Hui Gao
• Denise Grunenfelder
• Huai-Xiang Hao
• Jaison Jacob
• Samuel Ho
• Kathy Hsiao
• Zhao B. Kang
• Rajesh Karki
• Mitsunori Kato
• Jay Larrow
• Laura R. La Bonte
• Francois Lenoir
• Gang Liu
• Shumei Liu
• Dyuti Majumdar
• Matthew J. Meyer
• Mark Palermo
• Lawrence Perez
• Minying Pu
• Edmund Price
• Christopher Quinn
• Subarna Shakya
• Michael D. Shultz
• Joanna Slisz
• Kavitha Venkatesan
• Ping Wang
• Markus Warmuth
• Sarah Williams
• Guizhi Yang
• Jing Yuan
• Ji-Hu Zhang
• Ping Zhu
• Timothy Ramsey
• Nicholas J. Keen
• William R. Sellers
• Travis Stams
• Pascal D. Fortin

SHP099, a selective inhibitor of signalling meditator SHP2 with drug-like properties, has an allosteric mechanism of action whereby it stabilizes SHP2 in an auto-inhibited conformation, and suppresses RAS–ERK signalling and proliferation in receptor-tyrosine-kinase-driven cancer cell lines and mouse tumour xenograft models.

• Xing Liu
• Zhibin Zhang
• Jianbin Ruan
• Youdong Pan
• Venkat Giri Magupalli
• Hao Wu
• Judy Lieberman

Caspase-mediated cleavage of gasdermin D, previously shown to mediate pyroptosis, acts by inducing oligomerization and pore formation in cell membranes.

• Caleb D. Marceau
• Andreas S. Puschnik
• Karim Majzoub
• Yaw Shin Ooi
• Susan M. Brewer
• Gabriele Fuchs
• Kavya Swaminathan
• Miguel A. Mata
• Joshua E. Elias
• Peter Sarnow
• Jan E. Carette

A CRISPR screening approach shows that endoplasmic-reticulum (ER)-associated protein complexes, including the oligosaccharyltransferase (OST) protein complex, are important for infection by dengue virus and other related mosquito-borne flaviviruses, whereas hepatitis C virus is dependent on distinct entry factors, RNA binding proteins and FAD biosynthesis.

• Rong Zhang
• Jonathan J. Miner
• Matthew J. Gorman
• Keiko Rausch
• Holly Ramage
• James P. White
• Adam Zuiani
• Ping Zhang
• Estefania Fernandez
• Qiang Zhang
• Kimberly A. Dowd
• Theodore C. Pierson
• Sara Cherry
• Michael S. Diamond

The endoplasmic-reticulum-associated signal peptidase complex is required for infection by numerous flaviviruses, including West Nile, Dengue and Zika viruses, but is not required for infection by other types of virus or for host protein synthesis.

• Yuguang Zhao
• Jingshan Ren
• Karl Harlos
• Daniel M. Jones
• Antra Zeltina
• Thomas A. Bowden
• Sergi Padilla-Parra
• Elizabeth E. Fry
• David I. Stuart

High-resolution structures of the unliganded Ebola virus glycoprotein (GP) and of GP bound to the drugs toremifene and ibuprofen are presented, providing insights into how the drugs inhibit viral fusion with the endosomal membrane.

• Daphne C. Avgousti
• Christin Herrmann
• Katarzyna Kulej
• Neha J. Pancholi
• Nikolina Sekulic
• Joana Petrescu
• Rosalynn C. Molden
• Daniel Blumenthal
• Andrew J. Paris
• Emigdio D. Reyes
• Philomena Ostapchuk
• Patrick Hearing
• Steven H. Seeholzer
• G. Scott Worthen
• Ben E. Black
• Benjamin A. Garcia
• Matthew D. Weitzman

Here, a small core protein of human adenoviruses is shown to associate with histones, sequestering proteins on host chromatin and preventing inflammatory proteins from being released and triggering inflammation.

• T. Sabari Sankar
• Brigitta D. Wastuwidyaningtyas
• Yuexin Dong
• Sarah A. Lewis
• Jue D. Wang

When transcription and replication machineries collide on DNA, they can cause mutations to occur in the area near the collision; these mutations are now shown to include two types—duplications/deletions within the transcription unit and base substitutions in the cis -regulatory element of gene expression.

• Brian T. DeVree
• Jacob P. Mahoney
• Gisselle A. Vélez-Ruiz
• Soren G. F. Rasmussen
• Adam J. Kuszak
• Elin Edwald
• Juan-Jose Fung
• Aashish Manglik
• Matthieu Masureel
• Yang Du
• Rachel A. Matt
• Els Pardon
• Jan Steyaert
• Brian K. Kobilka
• Roger K. Sunahara

Here, pharmacological and biochemical evidence is provided that shows that G-protein coupling to the β2 -adrenergic receptor stabilizes a ‘closed’ conformation of the G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) and that that the effects of the G protein on the ligand-binding site of the GPCR are observed even in the absence of a bound agonist.