Curated News: Nature (journal)

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A team of researchers have discovered that a mutation in a ribosomal protein found specifically in heart and skeletal muscle leads to impaired cardiac contractility in mice.

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Florida State University researchers have analyzed the carbon exported from surface waters of the California Current Ecosystem — the first-ever study to quantify the total carbon sequestration for a region of the ocean.

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A team of conservationists led by the Wildlife Conservation Society say that providing a “Conservation Basic Income” (CBI) – of $5.50 per day to all residents of protected areas in low- and middle-income countries would cost less than annual subsidies given to fossil fuels.

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Polygenic scores – estimates of an individual’s predisposition for complex traits and diseases – hold promise for identifying patients at risk of disease and guiding early, personalized treatments, but UCLA experts found the scores fail to account for the wide range of genetic diversity across individuals in all ancestries.

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Biologists from Washington University in St. Louis collaborated with a large number of butterfly and plant specialists to reconstruct the origin and global spread of butterflies. Working with researchers from dozens of countries, Michael Landis and Mariana P. Braga in Arts & Sciences helped create the world’s largest butterfly tree of life, assembled with DNA from more than 2,000 species representing all butterfly families.

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A large international team led by astronomers at the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets at Université de Montréal (UdeM) today announced in the journal Nature the discovery of a new temperate world around a nearby small star.

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Through a novel pairing of epidemiology and toxicity screening, UCLA and Harvard researchers were able to identify 10 pesticides that were directly toxic to key neurons.

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Researchers at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center have discovered a new nutrient source that pancreatic cancer cells use to grow. The molecule, uridine, offers insight into both biochemical processes and possible therapeutic pathways. The findings, published in Nature, show that cancer cells can adapt when they don’t have access to glucose.

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Common inflammatory disorders such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease can be diagnosed or monitored by measuring the protein calprotectin in stool samples, while serum levels of calprotectin could be used to monitor the inflammation status in rheumatoid arthritis.

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At a glance: Researchers trace the origin of certain breast cancers to genomic reshuffling — rearrangement of chromosomes — that activates cancer genes and ignites disease. The finding offers a long-missing explanation for many cases of the disease that remain unexplained by the classical model of breast cancer development. The study shows the sex hormone estrogen — thus far thought to be only a fuel for breast cancer growth — can directly cause tumor-driving genomic rearrangements.

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A new international study published in and presented as a late-breaking abstract at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) annual conference, shows great promise for patients with glioblastoma. Drs. Farshad Nassiri and Gelareh Zadeh, neurosurgeons and scientists at the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, published the results of a Phase 1/2 clinical trial investigating the safety and effectiveness of a novel therapy which combines the injection of an oncolytic virus – a virus that targets and kills cancer cells – directly into the tumour, with intravenous immunotherapy.

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New University of Colorado Boulder research shows the number of farms globally will shrink in half as the size of the average existing farms doubles by the end of the 21st century, posing significant risks to the world’s food systems.

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Approximately 700,000 years ago, a “warm ice age” permanently changed the climate cycles on Earth. Contemporaneous with this exceptionally warm and moist period, the polar glaciers greatly expanded.

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No one will ever be able to see a purely mathematical construct such as a perfect sphere. But now, scientists using supercomputer simulations and atomic resolution microscopes have imaged the signatures of electron orbitals, which are defined by mathematical equations of quantum mechanics and predict where an atom’s electron is most likely to be.

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In a cryo-ET experiment, scientists use a transmission electron microscope to obtain 3D images, called tomograms, of the cellular volume containing complex biomolecules.

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The light pollution caused by coastal cities can trick coral reefs into spawning outside of the optimum times when they would normally reproduce, a new study has found.

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A recent study published in Nature Neuroscience indicates that, contrary to common belief, the immune cells of the brain, known as microglia, are not all the same.

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Solar system scientists took NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on a treasure hunt in the asteroid belt, and what they didn’t find turned out to be as significant as what they did.

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Researchers from Sanford Burnham Prebys and the Chinese University of Hong Kong have developed a computational approach to predict whether a person with type 2 diabetes will develop kidney disease. The findings could help doctors prevent or better manage kidney disease in people with type 2 diabetes.

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Corticospinal activity is temporally coded with precise prehension movements in mice. Disrupting this patterned activity impairs movements, highlighting the critical role of corticospinal network modulation in the execution of precision movements.

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UNLV study pinpoints 10 bacterial groups associated with Alzheimer’s disease, provides new insights into the relationship between gut makeup and dementia.

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How malaria parasites evolved to evade a major antimalarial drug has long been thought to involve only one key gene. Now, thanks to a combination of field and lab studies, an international research team has shown a second key gene is also involved in malaria’s resistance to the drug chloroquine.

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The goal of every dividing cell is to accurately segregate its genome into two genetically identical daughter cells. However, this process often goes awry and may be responsible for a new class of chromosomal abnormalities found in cancers and congenital disorders, UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists report in a new study. The discovery, published in Nature, sheds light on how cancer cells rapidly evolve genomic changes that fuel their proliferation.

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A new method for analyzing protein crystals – developed by Cornell researchers and given a funky two-part name – could open up applications for new drug discovery and other areas of biotechnology and biochemistry.

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UCLA researchers have developed an “all-in-one,” next-generation statistical simulator capable of assimilating a wide range of information to generate realistic synthetic data and provide a benchmarking tool for medical and biological researchers who use advanced technologies to study diseases and potential therapies.

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A menudo se pensaba que la velocidad de la información trasmitida de una región a otra del cerebro se estabilizaba durante la primera etapa de la adolescencia.

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Era comum pensar que a velocidade das informações transmitidas entre as regiões do cérebro se estabilizava durante o início da adolescência.

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A research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Science, led by Professor Liu Xiaogang from the Department of Chemistry, has developed a 3D imaging sensor that has an extremely high angular resolution, which is the capacity of an optical instrument to distinguish points of an object separated by a small angular distance. This allows the novel sensor to capture 3D images at higher depth resolution.

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The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Research Highlights showcases the latest breakthroughs in cancer care, research and prevention. These advances are made possible through seamless collaboration between MD Anderson’s world-leading clinicians and scientists, bringing discoveries from the lab to the clinic and back.

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Over 3,000 generations of laboratory evolution, Georgia Tech researchers watched as their model organism, “snowflake yeast,” began to adapt as multicellular individuals. In new research, the team shows how snowflake yeast evolved to be physically stronger and more than 20,000 times larger than their ancestor. Their study is the first major report on the ongoing Multicellularity Long-Term Evolution Experiment (MuLTEE), which the team hopes to run for decades.

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Eimear Kenny, PhD, had just completed undergrad and was working in her first computational genomics job more than 20 years ago when scientists announced the first (nearly) complete sequencing of the human genome—what was considered at the time to be the fundamental blueprint for all humans. The Human Genome Project aimed to map the entire genome in an effort to accelerate the diagnosis and eventual treatment of common and rare diseases.

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Columbia synthetic biologists have developed a new method that uses engineered bacteria and AI to sense and record environmental signals. They are the first to engineer bacterial swarm patterns to visibly record their environment and use deep learning to decode patterns. This work could lead to applications ranging from monitoring environmental pollution to building living materials.

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Researchers from the University of California, Irvine have developed a DNA enzyme – or DNAzyme – that can distinguish between two RNA strands inside a cell and cut the disease-associated strand while leaving the healthy strand intact. This breakthrough “gene silencing” technology could revolutionize the development of DNAzymes for treating cancer, infectious diseases and neurological disorders.

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Astronomers have revealed new evidence about the properties of the giant bubbles of high-energy gas that extend far above and below the Milky Way galaxy’s center.

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A new study provides the first observational evidence of the stabilization of the anti-cyclonic Beaufort Gyre, which is the dominant circulation of the Canada Basin and the largest freshwater reservoir in the Arctic Ocean.

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Researchers have developed a zebrafish model that provides new insight into how the brain acquires essential omega-3 fatty acids, including docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and linolenic acid (ALA), creating the potential to improve understanding of lipid transport across the blood-brain barrier.

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Humans inherited genetic material from Neanderthals that affects the shape of our noses, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

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A new Webb Space Telescope image of the bright, nearby star Fomalhaut reveals its planetary system with details never seen before, including nested concentric rings of dust. These belts most likely are carved by the gravitational forces produced by embedded, unseen planets. Similarly, inside our solar system Jupiter corrals the asteroid belt of leftover debris that lies between us and the giant planet. Astronomers first discovered Fomalhaut’s disk in 1983. But there has never been a view as spectacular – or as revealing – as Webb’s.