Medical research articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Seizure activity in the brain is characterized by the recruitment of cortical neuronal activity. Schevon and colleagues study seizure activity in human subjects and find that the recruitment of neurons is hypersynchronous and that there is an intrinsic restraint on the propagation of this activity.

    • Catherine A. Schevon
    • , Shennan A. Weiss
    •  & Andrew J. Trevelyan

  • 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
    | Open Access

    Spatial epidemiology studies identify malaria hotspots, which sustain transmission and so could be targeted by control programmes. This study uses spatial data on larval sites and malaria episodes to show that transmission can be disrupted by targeting vector breeding sites close to and downwind of malaria hotspots.

    • Janet T. Midega
    • , Dave L. Smith
    •  & Philip Bejon

  • Article |

    Osteoblast maturation is regulated by c-Src and IL-6, but how these signalling pathways are integrated is not known. Here c-Src is shown to induce 1GFBP5 in immature osteoblasts in a STAT3 and IL-6-dependent manner, in mature osteoblasts, which express lower levels of c-Src, this signalling is lost.

    • Barbara Peruzzi
    • , Alfredo Cappariello
    •  & Anna Teti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Membrane repair of myocytes is important to prevent such disease as muscular dystrophy but the properties of this repair are not well characterised. In this study, vitamin E is shown to be important in the repair of myocyte cell membranes in cultured cells and in intact muscle.

    • Amber C. Howard
    • , Anna K. McNeil
    •  & Paul L. McNeil

  • Article
    | Open Access

    New approaches are required to combatPlasmodium falciparuminfection. In this proteome-wide study, 1305 phosphorylation sites are identified and 36 kinases are shown to have crucial roles in parasite survival, providing new insights into parasite biology and potential new drug targets for anti-malarial chemotherapy.

    • Lev Solyakov
    • , Jean Halbert
    •  & Christian Doerig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The risk factors associated with both ischemic and haemorrhagic stroke are not fully understood. Here a certain strain of the bacteria,Streptococcus mutans, which expresses a collagen-binding protein, is shown to be associated with haemorrhagic stroke in both animal models and human patients.

    • Kazuhiko Nakano
    • , Kazuya Hokamura
    •  & Takashi Ooshima

  • Article |

    Recent technological advances have allowed the expansion of spermatogonial stem cellsin vitro; however, in vivo conditions are required for the full differentiation of the cells. In this study, an in vitroorgan culture system is developed that allows the differentiation of the germ cells in the laboratory.

    • Takuya Sato
    • , Kumiko Katagiri
    •  & Takehiko Ogawa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pluripotent stem cells can be generated from the somatic cells of humans and are a useful model to study disease. Here, pluripotent stem cells are made from a patient with familial Parkinson's disease, and the resulting neurons exhibit elevated levels of α-synuclein, recapitulating the molecular features of the patient's disease.

    • Michael J. Devine
    • , Mina Ryten
    •  & Tilo Kunath

  • Article |

    MITF is a transcription factor required for melanocyte development, which is activated in some melanomas. Zhao and colleagues show that USP13 removes ubiquitin from MITF, stabilizes MITF protein levels and enhances colony formation, suggesting that USP13 may be a therapeutic target in melanoma.

    • Xiansi Zhao
    • , Brian Fiske
    •  & David E Fisher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chk2 is a kinase that is a potential chemotherapeutic target. Here, Chk2 and the kinase ERK are shown to functionally interact, and are elevated in expression in human diffuse B-cell lymphomas. Combinatorial inhibition of the kinases was also shown to block tumour growth in anin vivomouse model.

    • Bojie Dai
    • , X. Frank Zhao
    •  & Ronald B. Gartenhaus

  • Article |

    Class I anti-arrhythmic drugs act at cardiac sodium channels and are subdivided into classes Ia-c based on their effects on the electrocardiogram. Here, class Ib drugs are found to rely on cation–pi interactions for their activity, whereas class Ib and Ic drugs rely significantly less on this interaction.

    • Stephan A. Pless
    • , Jason D. Galpin
    •  & Christopher A. Ahern

  • Article |

    Phylogenetic analysis is used to identify transmission chains, but no software is available for the automated partition of large phylogenies. Prosperiet al. apply a new search algorithm to identify transmission clusters within the phylogeny of HIV-1gene sequences linking molecular and epidemiological data.

    • Mattia C.F. Prosperi
    • , Massimo Ciccozzi
    •  & Andrea De Luca

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The molecular mechanisms that regulate TH17 cell diversity are poorly understood. Ouyang et al. show that the transcription factor interferon regulatory factor-8 is required for TH17-cell differentiation and that its absence increases the severity of an experimental model of colitis.

    • Xinshou Ouyang
    • , Ruihua Zhang
    •  & Huabao Xiong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Duchenne muscular dystrophy is caused by a loss of thedystrophin gene, and control of dystrophin mRNA splicing could aid treatment of the disease. Nishida et al. show that a small molecule promotes skipping of exon 31 and increases production of a functional dystrophin protein in a patient.

    • Atsushi Nishida
    • , Naoyuki Kataoka
    •  & Masafumi Matsuo

  • Article |

    PTEN is a phosphatase that regulates the phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase signalling pathway and is inactivated in many tumour types. Heet al.show that a mannosidase, α-mannosidase 2C1, can inactivate PTEN in prostate cancer cells, and that PTEN-positive human prostate tumours overexpress α-mannosidase 2C1.

    • Lizhi He
    • , Catherine Fan
    •  & Damu Tang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The global prevalence of the Duffy blood group variants is important due to the resistance that the Duffy-negative phenotype generally confers uponPlasmodium vivax infection. Hay et al.generate global frequency maps of the common Duffy alleles to show transmission patterns of the malaria parasite.

    • Rosalind E. Howes
    • , Anand P. Patil
    •  & Simon I. Hay

  • Article |

    When cultured as single cells, embryonic stem cells have low viability. Here, blebbistatin, a non-muscle myosin II inhibitor, is shown to enhance the cloning efficiency, viability and adhesion of both human embryonic stem cells and human induced pluripotent stem cellsin vitro.

    • Andrea Walker
    • , Hua Su
    •  & Noboru Sato

  • Article |

    Pseudogenes are prevalent in the human genome; however, their biological function is relatively unknown. In this study, the high mobility group A1 (HMGA1) pseudogene is shown to destabilizeHMGA1 mRNA. These findings have implications for diabetes, as two patients are reported to express high levels of the HMGA1pseudogene.

    • Eusebio Chiefari
    • , Stefania Iiritano
    •  & Antonio Brunetti

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