Mutation lets octopuses make proteins with precision

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Certain species of shallow-water octopuses have a unique mutation that makes them extremely accurate protein builders. Researchers found that this mutation causes a break in an RNA strand in the core of the octopus’s protein-making machinery. When they engineered a similar break into Escherichia coli, the bacteria made around 50% fewer mistakes when building proteins than did bacteria without the mutation. This quirk means that proteins in these octopuses are less likely to misfold and form toxic clumps.

Science | 5 min read

Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not peer reviewed)

Nobel-prize-winning chemist Omar Yaghi has left the United States for a full-time position at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he will lead a new artificial-intelligence-assisted materials discovery institute. Born in Jordan to Palestinian-refugee parents, Yaghi came to the US as a child and did his Nobel-winning work on metal-organic framework compounds there. The current state of US science is “not so encouraging”, Yaghi said recently, “because of the cutting back on grants”. In light of these cuts by the administration of President Donald Trump, China has been trying to lure US talent with the promise of money and support.

Nature | 6 min read

For the first time, geophysicists have caught the ocean floor splitting apart at its seams. Using an array of measuring stations laid across an 100-kilometre-long region of the Indian Ocean, the team witnessed a seismic event that shifted two sections of the oceanic crust apart by at least 2 metres in a matter of days, spewing around 160 million cubic metres of lava onto the sea floor as it did so.

Nature | 4 min read

Reference: Nature paper

Features & opinion

The effects of living in microgravity on our bodies are well documented. The impact of spaceflight on the brain is more of a mystery, and finding out is crucial to knowing whether long-haul space missions are feasible. Now, researchers have pulled together data from studies of astronauts and spaceflight simulation experiments to glean how the absence of gravity physically affects the human brain. “It’s a beautiful neuroplasticity — we found that there are both structural and functional alterations,” says cognitive neuroscientist and study co-author Elisa Raffaella Ferrè.

BBC Future | 7 min read

Reference: Frontiers in Psychology paper

In an attempt to pin down the je ne sais quoi that defines life, some scientists have suggested that living things have ‘agency’, that being an ability to pursue a goal. But the term is contentious in biology, not least because there’s no agreed upon definition of agency, either. Some researchers argue that goal-directed behaviour is often just a response to a stimulus, with little or no active choice involved. Others suggest that genes can only provide so many instructions, and that at some point, the organism must take the wheel.

Quanta | 12 min read

Over the past decade, biologists Mathilde Poyet and Mathieu Groussin have been travelling the world to collect microbiome samples from as diverse a range of people as possible. On their travels, the pair also interviewed donors about factors such as diet and lifestyle that might impact the bacteria that live on and in their bodies. Their data — housed in the Global Microbiome Conservancy, one of the biggest repositories of live bacteria in the world — have revealed that there’s no such thing as a ‘normal’ microbiome.

The New York Times Magazine | 20 min read

Today I’m wowed by a feat of engineering. A group of students at the University of Pisa have broken the Guinness World Record for the largest paper airplane ever assembled. Their creation has a wingspan of almost 20 metres and travelled around 60 metres in a single glide.

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Jacob Smith, associate editor, Nature Briefing

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