Category Archives: Publications

Publications

Nature Milestones in Cytoskeleton

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Published on 1 December, Nature Milestones in Cytoskeleton is a collaboration from Nature, Nature Cell Biology and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, focusing on ground-breaking advances in cytoskeleton research. Developments in the past 60 years range from the discovery of actomyosin to the identification of molecular motors, and from fluorescence analogue cytochemistry and differential interference contrast microscopy to single-molecule in vitro assays and optical traps.

Milestones are a series of specially written articles, which highlight the most influential discoveries in the field of cytoskeleton over the past 60 years, as described in an Editorial. Nature Milestones in Cytoskeleton also comprises a collection of selected review articles, a timeline of key discoveries, and an online-only library of recent research papers and review-type articles from Nature Publishing Group.

Free print copies of the Milestones in Cytoskeleton suppliement are available to order (the supplement is being distributed with the December 2008 issues of Nature Cell Biology and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, so subscribers of these journals do not need to request a copy).

See also Nature’s web focus on the 50th anniversary of the first report of muscle crossbridges, published online in 2004. A few print copies of the reprint of the two 1954 papers are available: if you would like one, please leave your name and mailing address in the comments field to this post, or send an email to authors@nature.com.

Signaling Gateway publishes 500th molecule page

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The UCSD-Nature Signaling Gateway has recently published HB-EGF, its 500th Molecule Page. Each week, the gateway publishes several of these concise, free review articles on a diverse range of signalling molecules, from transcription factors to membrane receptors. In addition to these published pages, the Molecule Pages database also includes key information about the biological, biochemical and functional activities of thousands of signalling molecules. There is now a new ‘getting started guide’ for a quick overview of the anatomy of a Molecule Page.

Sign up for the Signaling Update e-alert, a one-stop overview of current cell signalling research for specialists and interested non-specialists.

All published Molecule Pages.

Archive by date of Signaling Updates.

Signaling Gateway research library (organized by subject).

Nature celebrates Darwin and his work

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Next year will be the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin, perhaps the most influential scientist of modern times. In this week’s issue (20 November), Nature presents a special collection of news, features, research and analysis of Darwin, his life, his science and his legacy. This special will be updated throughout 2009 with essays, podcasts and free educational resources, as well as news from the Darwin200 consortium of organizations celebrating this landmark event. The first installment is here. From the current issue (20 November 2008), all of which can be accessed from Nature‘s Darwin main page:

Editorial: Beyond the origin (free to access online). As Nature anticipates next year’s bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, we begin our coverage with a look 50 years into the future.

News features:

The needs of the many (free to access online this week). The idea that natural selection acts on groups, as well as individuals, is a source of unending debate. Marek Kohn reports on what the two sides disagree about — and why it matters to them.

Systems biology: Beneath the surface Biologists see living systems like mechanical clocks: optimally tuned and prone to failure if one component goes wrong. But, as Tanguy Chouard reveals, this is not what happens in the real world.

Let’s make a mammoth (free to access online for one month from pubication date). Evolution assumes that extinction is forever. Maybe not. Henry Nicholls asks what it would take to bring the woolly mammoth back from the dead.

Online slideshow: An eye for the eye. Darwin knew that the eye — so brilliantly ‘designed’ — might represent an obstacle to the acceptance of natural selection. We now know that the eye is one of evolution’s crowning glories.

Commentary: Great expectations. A new path for evolution? A truce in the culture wars? Here’s what a selection of readers told Nature they expect from Darwin 200. Add your own suggestions at Nature Network’s online discussion forum.

Events: Darwin: Heading to a town near you (free to access online for one month). The theory of evolution challenges artists and philosophers as much as scientists. Joanne Baker rounds up the many forthcoming events worldwide that examine Darwin’s life, his work and reactions to it.

Books in brief: A Down House bookshelf. An archipelago of books to celebrate Darwin’s anniversaries is about to hit the shelves. On the Origin of Species will be reissued, and new biographies and analyses will examine the man behind the ideas. Joanne Baker reports.

Essay: Birthdays to remember. Anniversaries of Charles Darwin’s life and work have been used to rewrite and re-energize his theory of natural selection. Janet Browne tracks a century of Darwinian celebrations.

Podcast: The next 50 years (free). Simon Ings and Gáspár Jékely on the evolving eye, and Marek Kohn on group selection. Henry Nicholls and Stephan Schuster discuss making mammoths — and the online trade in mammoth hair. Presenters: Adam Rutherford and Charlotte Stoddart.

Among the other articles and research in the Darwin special is the Letter Sequencing the nuclear genome of the extinct woolly mammoth by Webb Miller et al.. This Letter is free to access online.

See here for the full list of articles and features in the Darwin special collection, and find direct online links to all material.

Nature Methods, looking back and moving forward

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The fourth anniversary of Nature Methods’ arrival on the publishing scene and a change in leadership offer an opportunity for reflection and editorial fine-tuning, as described in the journal’s November Editorial (5, 911; 2008).

From the Editorial: “When Nature Methods made its debut in October 2004, just over 4 years ago, it was an anxious but exciting time for our founding chief editor Veronique Kiermer and manuscript editors Nicole Rusk and Daniel Evanko. We were all novices at scientific publishing and more comfortable calibrating a pipette than editing a fledgling journal.” The Editorial goes on to outline developments and other changes at the journal since then. Veronique is taking on the role of publisher for Nature Methods and Nature Protocols, and Daniel is taking over as Chief Editor of Nature Methods. Reviews, Perspectives and Research Highlights are to be expanded, while the Protocols section is closing. (Authors are encouraged to submit their protocols to the online publication Nature Protocols.) The Editorial concludes: “We hope that our journal has helped dispel the notion that methods are less important than results and deserving only of small print at the end of a paper. Debunking this myth has been and will continue to be our main mission. We will persist in our efforts to bring you, every month, a journal that allows methods to be featured prominently in their own right—as the cornerstones upon which results are based.”

Nature Methods guide to authors.

How to submit to Nature Methods.

Aims and scope of the journal.

Methagora, the Nature Methods blog.

Metabolic syndrome: free web focus

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Nature Publishing Group has created a web focus ‘Metabolic Syndrome 2008’ — showcasing a collection of original research articles from our academic and clinical practice journals that provide further insight into this global disease. Metabolic syndrome affects nearly 50 million Americans — almost one in four American adults. Approximately seven per cent of adults in their 20s and about 40 per cent of adults over the age of 40 meet the criteria for the syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that occur together and increase the risk for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Having just one of these conditions — increased blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, excess body fat around the waist or abnormal cholesterol levels — contributes to the risk of serious disease and in combination, the risk is even greater. There is no accepted or official definition of metabolic syndrome. Whether these risk factors actually can be referred to as a syndrome, they represent a growing medical condition involving multiple medical specialties. This free collection provides valuable insight into this emerging medical and public health epidemic.

‘Metabolic Syndrome 2008’ features content from the following journals:

• American Journal of Hypertension

• European Journal of Clinical Nutrition

• The International Journal of Impotence Research: The Journal of Sexual Medicine

• International Journal of Obesity

• Journal of Human Hypertension

• Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine

• Nature Clinical Practice Endocrinology & Metabolism

• Obesity

Launch of Protein Structure Initiative-Nature Structural Genomics Knowledgebase

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Last week, Matt Day announced Nature Publishing Group (NPG)‘s latest website: the Protein Structure Initiative (PSI)-Nature Structural Genomics Knowledgebase. Matt writes that the new addition to NPG’s existing collection of gateways and databases is “a collaboration with the Protein Structure Initiative, a large scale NIH-funded consortium to develop and apply high-throughput techniques for protein structure determination. They’ve been highly successful in generating new technologies that are available for others to use, and they’ve shown that structure determination work can be scaled up significantly.

Now that the site is launched, we’ll be providing monthly editorial updates that put developments in structural work into context for a wide range of biomedical researchers….The website is hosted at Rutgers University by the same team that hosts one of most significant and long-established databases, the Protein Data Bank”.

The Structural Genomics Knowledgebase (SGKB) offers researchers and others an easy way of keeping abreast of developments both by the PSI and more generally in the fields of structural genomics and structural biology. It is a regularly updated portal to research data and other resources from the PSI, with NPG providing a monthly update with synopses of important research advances, recent additions to a categorized library of research articles, as well as news and events in structural biology. You can register to receive a monthly email newsletter and subscribe to RSS feeds. NPG resources and publications relevant to the Protein Structure Initiative can be accessed here.

Register for Nature Chemistry e-alerts

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Stay informed about plans for Nature Chemistry, the newest journal from Nature Publishing Group, whcih will be launched in early 2009, by signing up to the journal’s email alert. Register to receive both the chemistry@nature e-alert, and when the journal is published, the monthly Nature Chemistry table of contents e-alert.

Nature Chemistry is now accepting submissions through the journal’s online submission and tracking system. The first print issue will be published in mid-March 2009, though some papers will probably be published online in advance of print early in 2009.

Nature Chemistry is dedicated to publishing high-quality papers that describe the most significant and cutting-edge research in all areas of chemistry, as well as covering the impact of chemistry beyond the laboratory. See here for more details of the aims and scope of the journal.

See here for the Nature Chemistry guide to authors.

Content types.

How to submit.

The editorial process.

About the editors.

Video journal to be indexed in Medline and PubMed

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The Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) has announced that its online video protocols will be indexed in the popular US National Library of Medicine repositories MEDLINE and PubMed.

Founder and chief executive Moshe Pritsker views the MEDLINE–PubMed listing as a sign that the scientific community has accepted video-based publications. “It was a very important decision for us, and for scientific publishing,” he says.

Since JoVE was founded in 2006 with support from an angel investor, the journal has published more than 200 videos, most produced by professional videographers. It aims to improve the reproducibility of scientific results by using videos to clarify subtle experimental details. The journal was itself an experiment in video publishing and remains the only video-based scientific journal.

From Nature 455, 13 (2008).

Announcing Nature Climate Change

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Nature Publishing Group (NPG) will launch a new primary research journal, Nature Climate Change, in October 2009.

Climate change is one of the key issues of the twenty-first century. Nature Climate Change will bring together scientific observation and models with work reporting on our understanding of how human society affects climate change, and vice versa. The journal’s coverage will extend into socio-economic research as well as the natural sciences, with the aim of putting the research it publishes into a wider scientific, economic and political context.

Like its sister titles, Nature Climate Change will seek to publish the best research from around the world and will have a strong online component. The journal will provide in-depth coverage of all aspects of the Earth’s changing climate, including studies of the impacts of climate change as well as climate change itself.

Publishing Director David Swinbanks said that the journal “will for the first time extend the reach of a Nature-branded journal into the social as well as natural sciences and provide authoritative, much needed, information on climate change to a broad public audience as well as to the many research communities studying climate change and its impact".

Nature Climate Change will be the newest journal in physical-sciences titles launched by NPG over the past five years. Nature Geoscience, which launched in January 2008, covers the entire spectrum of the Earth Sciences, and will continue to include research on understanding the complex scientific mechanisms behind a planet’s changing climate.

The Nature physical-science journals, like their sister titles in life sciences and medicine, provide a home for high quality research and commentary, many in fast-growing fields such as climate change and nanotechnology.

NPG is currently recruiting for a Chief Editor for Nature Climate Change and will announce further information about the journal before the end of the year.

Horizons: Life, logic and information

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In the latest article in Nature‘s Horizons series, which are visions of the scientific future, Nobel laureate Paul Nurse explores the agenda for treating organisms, at any level, as information machines (Nature 454, 424-426; 2008). It’s his belief that one great challenge for biology is to isolate, in particular within cells, the modules by which information of many types – whether genetic or environmental in ultimate origin – is coded, propagated and interpreted, and how cells are organized so as to process such information. To read this article and the other Horizons, visit the Horizons web focus.

Horizons articles present experts’ visions of the foreseeable future of a research theme. The articles are commissioned by Nature‘s editors, and usually published without peer review, given Nature’s intention of capturing a respected individual perspective. The articles are intended to anticipate the future, but also to influence it.

Previously published Horizons:

A systematic look at an old problem

Thomas B. L. Kirkwood

Chemistry for everyone

Peter Murray-Rust

Building better batteries

M. Armand & J.-M. Tarascon

Evolution of anatomy and gene control

Georgy Koentges

Wiring up quantum systems

R. J. Schoelkopf & S. M. Girvin