Indian ASTROSAT telescope set for global stardom

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/525438a

Author: T. V. Padma

Observatory will extend the capabilities of existing US and European facilities, and boost Indian research.

Researchers wrestle with a privacy problem

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/525440a

Author: Erika Check Hayden

The data contained in tax returns, health and welfare records could be a gold mine for scientists — but only if they can protect people's identities.

Climate policy: Democracy is not an inconvenience

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). doi:10.1038/525449a

Author: Nico Stehr

Climate scientists are tiring of governance that does not lead to action. But democracy must not be weakened in the fight against global warming, warns Nico Stehr.

Corrections

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/525439a

CorrectionsThe Editorial ‘Too close for comfort?’ (Nature525, 289; 2015) incorrectly stated: “In his defence, Folta argued that the money supported only travel and outreach, not research, and he was therefore under no obligation to disclose it”. Folta did not say

A call to deal with the data deluge

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). doi:10.1038/525429f

Author: Chris Woolston

Researchers debate whether an ‘overflow’ of data is straining biomedical science.

Scripps Research Institute appoints leadership duo

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature.2015.18391

Author: Erika Check Hayden

Pair will focus on resolving financial issues after controversial failed merger.

Canadian election spotlights scientists' frustrations

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature.2015.18381

Author: Nicola Jones

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has cut funding and limited researchers' influence over policy.

Immunology: Caspase target drives pyroptosis

Nature 526, 7575 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature15632

Authors: Petr Broz

Inflammatory caspase proteins help to control pathogen replication by triggering pyroptotic cell death. It now emerges that cleavage of the caspase substrate gasdermin D is sufficient to induce pyroptosis. See Articles p.660 & p.666

Cleavage of GSDMD by inflammatory caspases determines pyroptotic cell death

Nature 526, 7575 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature15514

Authors: Jianjin Shi, Yue Zhao, Kun Wang, Xuyan Shi, Yue Wang, Huanwei Huang, Yinghua Zhuang, Tao Cai, Fengchao Wang & Feng Shao

Inflammatory caspases (caspase-1, -4, -5 and -11) are critical for innate defences. Caspase-1 is activated by ligands of various canonical inflammasomes, and caspase-4, -5 and -11 directly recognize bacterial lipopolysaccharide, both of which trigger pyroptosis. Despite the crucial role in immunity and endotoxic shock, the

Caspase-11 cleaves gasdermin D for non-canonical inflammasome signalling

Nature 526, 7575 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature15541

Authors: Nobuhiko Kayagaki, Irma B. Stowe, Bettina L. Lee, Karen O’Rourke, Keith Anderson, Søren Warming, Trinna Cuellar, Benjamin Haley, Merone Roose-Girma, Qui T. Phung, Peter S. Liu, Jennie R. Lill, Hong Li, Jiansheng Wu, Sarah Kummerfeld, Juan Zhang, Wyne P. Lee, Scott J. Snipas, Guy S. Salvesen, Lucy X. Morris, Linda Fitzgerald, Yafei Zhang, Edward M. Bertram, Christopher C. Goodnow & Vishva M. Dixit

Intracellular lipopolysaccharide from Gram-negative bacteria including Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, Shigella flexneri, and Burkholderia thailandensis activates mouse caspase-11, causing pyroptotic cell death, interleukin-1β processing, and lethal septic shock. How caspase-11 executes these downstream signalling events is largely unknown. Here we show

Single cell activity reveals direct electron transfer in methanotrophic consortia

Nature 526, 7574 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature15512

Authors: Shawn E. McGlynn, Grayson L. Chadwick, Christopher P. Kempes & Victoria J. Orphan

Multicellular assemblages of microorganisms are ubiquitous in nature, and the proximity afforded by aggregation is thought to permit intercellular metabolic coupling that can accommodate otherwise unfavourable reactions. Consortia of methane-oxidizing archaea and sulphate-reducing bacteria are a well-known environmental example of microbial co-aggregation; however, the coupling

Erratum: Evidence for human transmission of amyloid-β pathology and cerebral amyloid angiopathy

Nature 526, 7574 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature15704

Authors: Zane Jaunmuktane, Simon Mead, Matthew Ellis, Jonathan D. F. Wadsworth, Andrew J. Nicoll, Joanna Kenny, Francesca Launchbury, Jacqueline Linehan, Angela Richard-Loendt, A. Sarah Walker, Peter Rudge, John Collinge & Sebastian Brandner

Nature525, 247–250 (2015); doi:10.1038/nature15369In this Letter, an administrative error led to the publication of an incorrect version of the Competing Financial Interests (CFI) statement. Although the published CFI statement did reference the authors’ affiliation with D-Gen,

Corrigendum: Selective killing of cancer cells by a small molecule targeting the stress response to ROS

Nature 526, 7574 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature15370

Authors: Lakshmi Raj, Takao Ide, Aditi U. Gurkar, Michael Foley, Monica Schenone, Xiaoyu Li, Nicola J. Tolliday, Todd R. Golub, Steven A. Carr, Alykhan F. Shamji, Andrew M. Stern, Anna Mandinova, Stuart L. Schreiber & Sam W. Lee

Nature475, 231–234 (2011); doi:10.1038/nature10167corrigendum Nature481, 534 (2012); doi:10.1038/nature10789In this Letter, we presented findings from experiments using the EJ bladder xenograft cancer model, in which some tumours on some of

Cardiac biology: A protein for healing infarcted hearts

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature15217

Authors: Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic

Human heart tissue has minimal ability to regenerate following injury. But the protein Fstl1, which is normally expressed in the heart's epicardial region, has now been shown to induce regeneration following heart attack. See Article p.479

Epicardial FSTL1 reconstitution regenerates the adult mammalian heart

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature15372

Authors: Ke Wei, Vahid Serpooshan, Cecilia Hurtado, Marta Diez-Cuñado, Mingming Zhao, Sonomi Maruyama, Wenhong Zhu, Giovanni Fajardo, Michela Noseda, Kazuto Nakamura, Xueying Tian, Qiaozhen Liu, Andrew Wang, Yuka Matsuura, Paul Bushway, Wenqing Cai, Alex Savchenko, Morteza Mahmoudi, Michael D. Schneider, Maurice J. B. van den Hoff, Manish J. Butte, Phillip C. Yang, Kenneth Walsh, Bin Zhou, Daniel Bernstein, Mark Mercola & Pilar Ruiz-Lozano

The elucidation of factors that activate the regeneration of the adult mammalian heart is of major scientific and therapeutic importance. Here we found that epicardial cells contain a potent cardiogenic activity identified as follistatin-like 1 (Fstl1). Epicardial Fstl1 declines following myocardial infarction and is replaced

A concise synthesis of (+)-batzelladine B from simple pyrrole-based starting materials

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature14902

Authors: Brendan T. Parr, Christos Economou & Seth B. Herzon

Alkaloids, secondary metabolites that contain basic nitrogen atoms, are some of the most well-known biologically active natural products in chemistry and medicine. Although efficient laboratory synthesis of alkaloids would enable the study and optimization of their biological properties, their preparation is often complicated by the basicity and nucleophilicity of nitrogen, its susceptibility to oxidation, and its ability to alter reaction outcomes in unexpected ways—for example, through stereochemical instability and neighbouring group participation. Efforts to address these issues have led to the invention of a large number of protecting groups that temper the reactivity of nitrogen; however, the use of protecting groups typically introduces additional steps and obstacles into the synthetic route. Alternatively, the use of aromatic nitrogen heterocycles as synthetic precursors can attenuate the reactivity of nitrogen and streamline synthetic strategies. Here we use such an approach to achieve a synthesis of the complex anti-HIV alkaloid (+)-batzelladine B in nine steps (longest linear sequence) from simple pyrrole-based starting materials. The route uses several key transformations that would be challenging or impossible to implement using saturated nitrogen heterocycles and highlights some of the advantages of beginning with aromatic reagents.

Novel competitors shape species’ responses to climate change

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature14952

Authors: Jake M. Alexander, Jeffrey M. Diez & Jonathan M. Levine

Understanding how species respond to climate change is critical for forecasting the future dynamics and distribution of pests, diseases and biological diversity. Although ecologists have long acknowledged species’ direct physiological and demographic responses to climate, more recent work suggests that these direct responses can be overwhelmed by indirect effects mediated via other interacting community members. Theory suggests that some of the most dramatic impacts of community change will probably arise through the assembly of novel species combinations after asynchronous migrations with climate. Empirical tests of this prediction are rare, as existing work focuses on the effects of changing interactions between competitors that co-occur today. To explore how species’ responses to climate warming depend on how their competitors migrate to track climate, we transplanted alpine plant species and intact plant communities along a climate gradient in the Swiss Alps. Here we show that when alpine plants were transplanted to warmer climates to simulate a migration failure, their performance was strongly reduced by novel competitors that could migrate upwards from lower elevation; these effects generally exceeded the impact of warming on competition with current competitors. In contrast, when we grew the focal plants under their current climate to simulate climate tracking, a shift in the competitive environment to novel high-elevation competitors had little to no effect. This asymmetry in the importance of changing competitor identity at the leading versus trailing range edges is best explained by the degree of functional similarity between current and novel competitors. We conclude that accounting for novel competitive interactions may be essential to predict species’ responses to climate change accurately.

A sexually dimorphic hypothalamic circuit controls maternal care and oxytocin secretion

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature15378

Authors: Niv Scott, Matthias Prigge, Ofer Yizhar & Tali Kimchi

It is commonly assumed, but has rarely been demonstrated, that sex differences in behaviour arise from sexual dimorphism in the underlying neural circuits. Parental care is a complex stereotypic behaviour towards offspring that is shared by numerous species. Mice display profound sex differences in offspring-directed behaviours. At their first encounter, virgin females behave maternally towards alien pups while males will usually ignore the pups or attack them. Here we show that tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-expressing neurons in the anteroventral periventricular nucleus (AVPV) of the mouse hypothalamus are more numerous in mothers than in virgin females and males, and govern parental behaviours in a sex-specific manner. In females, ablating the AVPV TH+ neurons impairs maternal behaviour whereas optogenetic stimulation or increased TH expression in these cells enhance maternal care. In males, however, this same neuronal cluster has no effect on parental care but rather suppresses inter-male aggression. Furthermore, optogenetic activation or increased TH expression in the AVPV TH+ neurons of female mice increases circulating oxytocin, whereas their ablation reduces oxytocin levels. Finally, we show that AVPV TH+ neurons relay a monosynaptic input to oxytocin-expressing neurons in the paraventricular nucleus. Our findings uncover a previously unknown role for this neuronal population in the control of maternal care and oxytocin secretion, and provide evidence for a causal relationship between sexual dimorphism in the adult brain and sex differences in parental behaviour.

Neutrophil ageing is regulated by the microbiome

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature15367

Authors: Dachuan Zhang, Grace Chen, Deepa Manwani, Arthur Mortha, Chunliang Xu, Jeremiah J. Faith, Robert D. Burk, Yuya Kunisaki, Jung-Eun Jang, Christoph Scheiermann, Miriam Merad & Paul S. Frenette

Blood polymorphonuclear neutrophils provide immune protection against pathogens, but may also promote tissue injury in inflammatory diseases. Although neutrophils are generally considered to be a relatively homogeneous population, evidence for heterogeneity is emerging. Under steady-state conditions, neutrophil heterogeneity may arise from ageing and replenishment by newly released neutrophils from the bone marrow. Aged neutrophils upregulate CXCR4, a receptor allowing their clearance in the bone marrow, with feedback inhibition of neutrophil production via the IL-17/G-CSF axis, and rhythmic modulation of the haematopoietic stem-cell niche. The aged subset also expresses low levels of L-selectin. Previous studies have suggested that in vitro-aged neutrophils exhibit impaired migration and reduced pro-inflammatory properties. Here, using in vivo ageing analyses in mice, we show that neutrophil pro-inflammatory activity correlates positively with their ageing whilst in circulation. Aged neutrophils represent an overly active subset exhibiting enhanced αMβ2 integrin activation and neutrophil extracellular trap formation under inflammatory conditions. Neutrophil ageing is driven by the microbiota via Toll-like receptor and myeloid differentiation factor 88-mediated signalling pathways. Depletion of the microbiota significantly reduces the number of circulating aged neutrophils and dramatically improves the pathogenesis and inflammation-related organ damage in models of sickle-cell disease or endotoxin-induced septic shock. These results identify a role for the microbiota in regulating a disease-promoting neutrophil subset.

Lithospheric controls on magma composition along Earth’s longest continental hotspot track

Nature 525, 7570 (2015). doi:10.1038/nature14903

Authors: D. R. Davies, N. Rawlinson, G. Iaffaldano & I. H. Campbell

Hotspots are anomalous regions of volcanism at Earth’s surface that show no obvious association with tectonic plate boundaries. Classic examples include the Hawaiian–Emperor chain and the Yellowstone–Snake River Plain province. The majority are believed to form as Earth’s tectonic plates move over long-lived mantle plumes: buoyant upwellings that bring hot material from Earth’s deep mantle to its surface. It has long been recognized that lithospheric thickness limits the rise height of plumes and, thereby, their minimum melting pressure. It should, therefore, have a controlling influence on the geochemistry of plume-related magmas, although unambiguous evidence of this has, so far, been lacking. Here we integrate observational constraints from surface geology, geochronology, plate-motion reconstructions, geochemistry and seismology to ascertain plume melting depths beneath Earth’s longest continental hotspot track, a 2,000-kilometre-long track in eastern Australia that displays a record of volcanic activity between 33 and 9 million years ago, which we call the Cosgrove track. Our analyses highlight a strong correlation between lithospheric thickness and magma composition along this track, with: (1) standard basaltic compositions in regions where lithospheric thickness is less than 110 kilometres; (2) volcanic gaps in regions where lithospheric thickness exceeds 150 kilometres; and (3) low-volume, leucitite-bearing volcanism in regions of intermediate lithospheric thickness. Trace-element concentrations from samples along this track support the notion that these compositional variations result from different degrees of partial melting, which is controlled by the thickness of overlying lithosphere. Our results place the first observational constraints on the sub-continental melting depth of mantle plumes and provide direct evidence that lithospheric thickness has a dominant influence on the volume and chemical composition of plume-derived magmas.