Research articles

Measurements show that monolayers of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride are unexpectedly highly permeable to thermal protons and that their conductivity rapidly increases with temperature, but that no proton transport is detected for few-layer crystals.

A new mechanism is identified for correct placement of the division machinery in Streptococcus pneumoniae that relies on the novel factor MapZ to form ring structures at the cell equator; these structures move apart as the cell elongates, acting as permanent markers of division sites.

Two-dimensional titanium carbide has been produced by etching out aluminium in a lithium fluoride and hydrochloric acid mixture; it is hydrophilic and mouldable like clay and has excellent volumetric capacitance and cyclability, properties that are desirable for portable electronics.

The results of a clinical phase I study in metastatic urothelial bladder cancer treated with the MPDL3280A antibody show that expression of PD-L1 on tumour-infiltrating immune cells is relevant for the therapeutic response.

A distance measurement based on observations of the hot-dust emitting region of the active galaxy NGC 4151 yields a value of 19 megaparsecs, implying a 1.4-fold increase in the dynamical mass of the galaxy’s central black hole and a corresponding correction to emission line reverberation masses of black holes in other active galactic nuclei if calibrated against NGC 4151′s dynamical mass.

A carcinogen-induced mouse tumour model is used here to show that mutant tumour-specific antigens are targets for CD8⁺ T-cell responses, mediating tumour regression after checkpoint blockade immunotherapy, and that these antigens can be used effectively in therapeutic vaccines; this advance potentially opens the door to personalized cancer vaccines.

Documented cases of horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to eukaryotes are rare, but now, not only is a new class of transferred genes identified, the function of one representative is also demonstrated in its new setting, where it controls bacterial growth.

Using a model of tuberculosis in zebrafish, granuloma formation is shown to coincide with hypoxia and angiogenesis; furthermore, the pharmacological inhibition of the pro-angiogenic VEGF pathway reduces infection burden, suggesting a possible treatment strategy in patients with the disease.

DEAD-box RNA helicase DDX21 is involved in both the transcription and RNA processing of ribosomal genes in human cells, sensing the transcriptional status of both RNA polymerase I and RNA polymerase II and associating with non-coding RNAs involved in ribonucleoprotein formation, possibly allowing for coordinated regulation of protein synthesis.

The RING finger protein TRIM37 is encoded by a gene that is amplified in certain breast cancers, but its function is unknown; here, it is shown to mono-ubiquitinate histone H2A and repress gene expression, and to function as a breast cancer oncoprotein.

According to popular opinion, unethical business practices are common in the financial industry; here, the employees of a large, international bank are shown to behave, on average, honestly in a laboratory game to reveal dishonest behaviour, but when their professional identity as bank employees was rendered salient, the prevalence of dishonest behaviour increased.

Flash memories are essential for modern electronics; here a selenium-templated polyoxometalate is used to engineer new metal–oxide–semiconductor devices.

As part of the mouse ENCODE project, genome-wide transcription factor (TF) occupancy repertoires and co-association patterns in mice and humans are studied; many aspects are conserved but the extent to which orthologous DNA segments are bound by TFs in mice and humans varies both among TFs and genomic location, and TF-occupied sequences whose occupancy is conserved tend to be pleiotropic and enriched for single nucleotide variants with known regulatory potential.

Commensal bacteria are known to have an important role in keeping the host healthy, but the role of eukaryotic viruses has been unknown; now, persistent infection in mice with various strains of enteric norovirus is shown to provide similar host protection.

Atomic resolution crystal structures of influenza A and B polymerases are presented; comparison of these structures provides mechanistic insight into influenza polymerase functions, explaining the processes of cap-snatching and cap-dependent priming, which are unique to segmented negative-strand RNA viruses.

The increase in amplitude of the atmospheric carbon dioxide cycle over the past fifty years can be attributed in part to the intensification of agriculture in the Northern Hemisphere.

Blazars are quasars with a jet pointing towards Earth; analysis of archival observations of a sample of blazars reveals that jet power is larger than, and correlates with, the accretion luminosity, in agreement with numerical simulations.

Mouse genomic footprinting reveals conservation of transcription factor (TF) recognition repertoires and trans-regulatory circuitry despite massive turnover of DNA elements that contact TFs in vivo.

A study of DNA replication timing in mouse and human cells reveals that replication domains (domains of the genome which replicate at the same time) share a correlation with topologically associating domains; these results reconcile cell-type-specific sub-nuclear compartmentalization with developmentally stable chromosome domains and offer a unified model for large scale chromosome structure and function.

The Mouse ENCODE Consortium has mapped transcription, DNase I hypersensitivity, transcription factor binding, chromatin modifications and replication domains throughout the mouse genome in diverse cell and tissue types; these data were compared with those from human to confirm substantial conservation in the newly annotated potential functional sequences and to reveal pronounced divergence of other sequences involved in transcriptional regulation, chromatin state and higher order chromatin organization.