Biological sciences articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article |

    The detection of subclonal variants in heterogeneous cancer specimens is a challenge due to errors that occur during sequencing. In this study, a statistical algorithm and a sequencing strategy are reported that circumvent this issue and can accurately detect variants at a frequency as low as 1/10,000.

    • Moritz Gerstung
    • , Christian Beisel
    •  & Niko Beerenwinkel

  • Article |

    Adars are adenosine deaminases that act on RNAs, including those encoding proteins involved in neuronal transmission and also Adar RNA. Here, Savvaet al. engineered knock-in Drosophila mutants with altered Adar autoediting and found that this changed the spectrum of adenosine deamination and Drosophilabehaviour.

    • Yiannis A. Savva
    • , James E.C Jepson
    •  & Robert A. Reenan

  • Article |

    An understanding of the genetic network that controls the flower-bearing structure—the inflorescence—in plants helps to explain the diversity seen in plant forms. This work identifies a new mechanism for the generation of inflorescence complexity in legumes, which is based on the function of theVEG1gene.

    • Ana Berbel
    • , Cristina Ferrándiz
    •  & Francisco Madueño

  • Article |

    Studying the effects of extracellular matrix stiffening has been impeded because mostin vitromodels are static. Here, dynamic hydrogels are developed that stiffen in the presence of cells and are used to investigate the short-term (minutes-to-hours) and long-term (days-to-weeks) cellular responses to dynamic stiffening.

    • Murat Guvendiren
    •  & Jason A. Burdick

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The large virus family,Paramyxoviridae, includes several human and livestock viruses. This study, testing 119 bat and rodent species distributed globally, identifies novel putative paramyxovirus species, providing data with potential uses in predictions of the emergence of novel paramyxoviruses in humans and livestock.

    • Jan Felix Drexler
    • , Victor Max Corman
    •  & Christian Drosten

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phage display screening can unravel protein–protein interactions, but its application has been mainly restricted to the cell surface. Here, a phage-based reagent is introduced that allows the targeting of combinatorial peptides to cell organelles, providing a tool for the discovery of intracellular ligand-receptors.

    • Roberto Rangel
    • , Liliana Guzman-Rojas
    •  & Wadih Arap

  • Article |

    Abnormal mitochondrial fission leads to apoptosis and disease. Li and colleagues reveal the mechanism with which the transcription factor Foxo3a suppresses Fis1-mediated mitochondrial fission and apoptosis in cardiomyocytes and adrenocortical cancer cells, which involves miR-484 inhibition of Fis1 translation.

    • Kun Wang
    • , Bo Long
    •  & Pei-Feng Li

  • Article |

    Fanconi's anaemia is characterized by an inability to repair DNA damage and is associated with mutations in the Fanconi anaemia nuclear complex, which includes the protein FANCM. This study reports the crystal structures of a fragment of FANCM bound to the histone-fold-containing protein complex, MHF1–MHF2.

    • Yuyong Tao
    • , Changjiang Jin
    •  & Maikun Teng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bioengineered hair follicles can be produced from embryonic follicle germ cells, but whether these follicles can interact with the surrounding tissue and function normally is unknown. Here, bioengineered hair follicles transplanted into mouse dermis make connections with the surrounding tissue and show normal hair cycles.

    • Koh-ei Toyoshima
    • , Kyosuke Asakawa
    •  & Takashi Tsuji

  • Article |

    Lamivudine treatment of hepatitis B is associated with drug-resistance mutations in the virus’ DNA polymerase. In this study, 11 patients with drug resistance are investigated and the primary mutation in the DNA polymerase shown to be essential but not sufficient for establishing drug resistance.

    • Hong Thai
    • , David S. Campo
    •  & Yury Khudyakov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Radiotherapy is used to treat many cancers but radiation-resistant cells can result in recurrence of the tumour. Here, Harada and colleagues develop a method to track cells that persist after radiation treatment and show that the cells acquire transcriptional activity of HIF-1 and move towards blood vessels.

    • Hiroshi Harada
    • , Masahiro Inoue
    •  & Masahiro Hiraoka

  • Article |

    Bats use a process known as echolocation to measure the distance of an object by echo delay. Here, studies in newborn bats reveal that echo delay tuning of neurons in the auditory cortex is present at birth rather than acquired as a result of echolocation experience.

    • Manfred Kössl
    • , Cornelia Voss
    •  & Marianne Vater

  • Article |

    Calcium nanodomains arise from the cytoplasmic mouth of calcium channels but have not been directly visualized. In this study, the nanodomain of the CaV2.2 calcium channel is imaged using total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy and a genetically encoded calcium sensor attached to the carboxy terminus.

    • Lai Hock Tay
    • , Ivy E. Dick
    •  & David T. Yue

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lung injury initiates a series of wound-healing responses, which if unregulated, can lead to fibrosis. Liet al. show that the deubquitinase CYLD has a key role in the prevention of fibrosis by inhibiting transforming growth factor β-signalling through the direct deubiquitination of the protein kinase Akt.

    • Jae Hyang Lim
    • , Hirofumi Jono
    •  & Jian-Dong Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The amyloid-β-peptide is pivotal to the pathology of Alzheimer's disease, but its mechanism of action remains uncertain. This study utilizesin vivotwo-photon calcium imaging to investigate the effects of this peptide on single cortical neurons of the visual cortex in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease.

    • Christine Grienberger
    • , Nathalie L. Rochefort
    •  & Arthur Konnerth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Class switch recombination diversifies antibody effector functions and requires expression of activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID). In this study, ligation of the B-cell receptor and Toll-like receptors synergize to induce non-canonical NF-κB activation, AID expression and class switching recombination.

    • Egest J. Pone
    • , Jinsong Zhang
    •  & Paolo Casali

  • Article |

    Stem cells are thought to be tethered in their niche via adhesion molecules and the inhibition of cell differentiation. Here, the authors screened for genes required for maintainingDrosophilaovarian follicle stem cells and found their function to depend on cell proliferation, mitochondrial function and niche adhesion.

    • Zhu A. Wang
    • , Jianhua Huang
    •  & Daniel Kalderon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hyperuricemia, or gout, is thought to arise either from urate overproduction or from decreased renal excretion of urate. Ichidaet al. show that the extra-renal excretion of urate also has a role in the pathogenesis of hyperuricemia, and propose a new classification for patients with this disease.

    • Kimiyoshi Ichida
    • , Hirotaka Matsuo
    •  & Hiroshi Suzuki

  • Article |

    Microbial metabolism is usually considered to be phototrophic or chemotrophic. By showing that light-induced photoelectrons from metal oxide and metal sulfides can stimulate the growth of chemoautotrophic and heterotrophic bacteria, this study indicates that light may be involved in non-phototrophic microbial activity.

    • Anhuai Lu
    • , Yan Li
    •  & Hailiang Dong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Jurors can be influenced by mitigating circumstances when deciding on sentences for committed crimes. Yamadaet al. show that feelings of sympathy created by mitigating circumstances activate moral conflict regions of the brain that predict individual differences in the severity of the sentence.

    • Makiko Yamada
    • , Colin F. Camerer
    •  & Hidehiko Takahashi

  • Article |

    Endosomes contain hydrolytic enzymes, and recent reports have suggested that the endosomal membrane can be damaged by wear particles, resulting in the release of their contents and an inflammatory response. In this study, a role for annexin II in the repair of the damaged endosome membrane is reported.

    • Brian Scharf
    • , Cristina C. Clement
    •  & Laura Santambrogio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lysine-specific demethylase 1 (LSD1) removes methyl groups from mono-methylated and dimethylated lysine 4 of histone H3 and represses transcription. In this study, a role for LSD1 in the regulation of genes involved in energy expenditure in adipocytes is reportedin vitroand in mice fed on a high-fat diet.

    • Shinjiro Hino
    • , Akihisa Sakamoto
    •  & Mitsuyoshi Nakao

  • Article |

    Drosophilagermline stem cells are anchored to their niche via DE-cadherin. In this study, poly(ADP-ribose) is shown to regulate the expression of DE-cadherin via the heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein, hnRNPA1, and defects in poly(ADP-ribose) catabolism or hnRNPA1 deficiency lead to the loss of germline stem cells.

    • Yingbiao Ji
    •  & Alexei V. Tulin

  • Article |

    Graphene is characterized by unique physical properties that offer substantial promise, most notably for electronic applications. Mannooret al. present a wireless graphene-based sensor for detecting bacteria on a range of biological tissues.

    • Manu S. Mannoor
    • , Hu Tao
    •  & Michael C. McAlpine

  • Article |

    Kinesin-1 is a motor protein that transports cargo along microtubules and defects in this process can result in neurodegeneration. In this study, a role for casein kinase 2 in regulating the activity of Kinesin-1 is reported, suggesting that signalling molecules can modulate this transport process.

    • Jing Xu
    • , Babu J. N. Reddy
    •  & Steven P. Gross

  • Article
    | Open Access

    MONOCULM1 is a transcriptional regulator that controls rice tillering and therefore grain yield. In this study the authors demonstrate that MONOCULM1 interacts with TAD1, forming a complex which activates APC and targets MONOCULM1 for degradation.

    • Cao Xu
    • , Yonghong Wang
    •  & Jiayang Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The protein complex APC/C is an E3 ubiquitin ligase and its subunit Cdh1 determines substrate recognition. Linet al. show that the transcriptional regulator MONOCULM1 is a substrate of the rice homologue of Cdh1 and that APC/C-mediated degradation of MONOCULM1 controls rice tillering, a determinant of grain yield.

    • Qibing Lin
    • , Dan Wang
    •  & Jianmin Wan

  • Article |

    The treatment ofMycobacterium tuberculosis with drugs such as isoniazid often results in drug resistance, but the mechanisms leading to the resistance are not fully known. In this study, an M. tuberculosisstrain lacking the sigma factor I is shown to be resistant to isoniazid.

    • Jong-Hee Lee
    • , Nicole C. Ammerman
    •  & William R. Bishai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tyrosyl DNA phosphodiesterase 1 (TDP1) repairs DNA breaks and is mutated in the disease Spinocerebellar Ataxia with Axonal Neuropathy. Here TDP1 is shown to be post-translationally modified by sumoylation of lysine 111, and cells carrying a mutation at this residue are inefficient at single-strand DNA break repair.

    • Jessica J.R. Hudson
    • , Shih-Chieh Chiang
    •  & Sherif F. El-Khamisy

  • Article |

    Bioassays are the standard way to measure prion infectivity titres, but can be time-consuming. In this study, bioassays are compared with a modified version of the protein misfolding cyclic amplification technique with beads (PMCAb), demonstrating that PMCAb can be more precise and faster than bioassays.

    • Natallia Makarava
    • , Regina Savtchenko
    •  & Ilia V. Baskakov

  • Article |

    Whether plants can remember their transcriptional response to stress is unknown. By repeatedly exposingArabidopsisto drought, we show that the plants remember their transcriptional response to stress and that the altered genes retain the epigenetic mark H3K4me3 and stalled phosphorylated polymerase II.

    • Yong Ding
    • , Michael Fromm
    •  & Zoya Avramova

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Aberrant activation of the TGF-β pathway leads to fibrotic disease. Distler and colleagues show that TGF-β-mediated fibrosis requires the decrease of Dickkopf-1, an antagonist of canonical Wnt signalling, suggesting that the two pathways interact for the manifestation of this disease.

    • Alfiya Akhmetshina
    • , Katrin Palumbo
    •  & Jörg H.W. Distler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pulsed infrared laser light can directly stimulate nerves and muscles, but the underlying biophysical mechanism has remained enigmatic. This study reveals that infrared pulses depolarize target cells by reversibly altering the electrical capacitance of the plasma membrane.

    • Mikhail G. Shapiro
    • , Kazuaki Homma
    •  & Francisco Bezanilla

  • Article |

    Some animals find the same odorant attractive at low concentrations and repulsive at high concentrations, but how this discrimination occurs is unclear. UsingCaenorhabditis elegans as a model system, Yoshida et al. show that different sets of sensory neurons respond to low and high concentrations of odours.

    • Kazushi Yoshida
    • , Takaaki Hirotsu
    •  & Takeshi Ishihara

  • Article |

    How the sensitivity of biological and pharmacological signalling responses is controlled is poorly understood. Here, computational analyses and cellular experiments show that the sensitivity of a simple biochemical reaction to activators and inhibitors is controlled by negative regulation of cellular signalling.

    • Yu Toyoshima
    • , Hiroaki Kakuda
    •  & Shinya Kuroda

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The pentameric ligand gated ion channel fromErwinia chrysanthemi(ELIC) is similar in structure to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, a member of the Cys-loop receptor family. This study reports the crystal structure of ELIC bound to acetylcholine and shows that acetylcholine is a competitive antagonist of ELIC.

    • Jianjun Pan
    • , Qiang Chen
    •  & Pei Tang

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Biological sciences across other nature.com journals