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A computer generated illustration of a simulated cell in the early stages of division. Credit: Zane Thornburg
Researchers have created a 3D simulation that models DNA replication, cell division and nearly every chemical reaction in a living bacterial cell. This ‘virtual cell’ isn’t a totally faithful recreation of the organism — the team used placeholders for some genes with unknown functions, for example. But it could help researchers understand how the mix of molecules in a cell gives rise to actual life, says computational biophysicist and study co-author Zane Thornburg.
The Chinese government has announced plans to increase two of its key science budgets at the country’s biggest political meeting.The government proposes to increase its science and technology budget by 10% this year, and its overall research and development expenditure by at least 7% per year over the next five years — a boost that translates to billions of extra dollars each year. The latter target was set as part of China’s next five-year plan, which will serve as an overarching blueprint for the country’s policies from 2026 to 2030.
Researchers have, for the first time, cryogenically frozen and then revived mouse brains with some of the brain functionality intact. The team used an ice-free method called vitrification, which preserves tissue in a glass-like state, and a thawing process that preserves living tissue. After the brains were warmed up, wafer-thin slices from the hippocampus showed signs that the structures that support learning and memory had survived. Researchers are looking to test the method for human brains and organs, but observers note that the success rate was low for mice and the results might not translate to larger body parts.
Some in the research community are trying to change the stigma that is attached to retracting your own paper. This week, the Ctrl-Z Award — a reference to the ‘undo’ command on a keyboard — was launched by the Center for Scientific Integrity for authors who go out of their way to correct the scientific record. And scientists who have been down the retraction road tell Nature that it’s not all bad: when palaeontologist Christine Sosiak took to social media to openly share her self-correction, she received an outpouring of support from her peers, and many of them even shared similar retraction stories.
Features & opinion
“Both a cadaver and a thinking, feeling, living person are made up of molecules, cells, tissues and organs — the fundamental distinguishing factor is energy flow,” write mitochondrial psychobiologist Martin Picard and theoretical biophysicist Christopher Kempes. Every biological process requires energy, whether chemical, thermal, mechanical or electromagnetic, yet much of biomedical research focuses on genes, proteins and molecular mechanisms. Where this approach has not led to effective treatments — including for Alzheimer’s disease, mental-health conditions and some cancer types — researchers should start asking key questions about the energy trade-offs that might be involved, argue the authors.
Researchers have used Gauss, a language model developed to formalize mathematics proofs, to create an algorithmically checkable version of Maryna Viazovska’s Fields Medal-winning work on sphere-packing. The tool took just three weeks to verify the result in 8 and 24 dimensions — a process that “until very recently, required years”, according to Math, Inc., the AI company that developed Gauss. “When they reached out to us in late January saying that they finished it, to put it very mildly, we were very surprised,” says Sidharth Hariharan, who works with a formalization collaboration that provided much of the foundation for the Gauss project. “But at the end of the day, this is technology that we’re very excited about.”
Read more: ‘Mathematics is an unknown land’: meet Fields Medal winner Maryna Viazovska (Nature | 7 min read, form July)
Reference: Math, Inc press release
“Official statistics are like the backbone of a nation’s data infrastructure,” says Steve Pierson, director of science policy at the American Statistical Association. “Just like any other infrastructure — roads, bridges and highways — they cannot fail.” But some researchers are sounding the alarm over the official data sets that track crucial aspects of life in the United States, Argentina, the United Kingdom and India. The crisis is unprecedented, they say, driven by overlapping factors such as falling response rates to national surveys, cuts to funding and, in some cases, government interference.
Superluminous supernovae are 10 to 100 times brighter than expected, and while different theories exist, no one is quite sure how that’s possible. Now the wobbling signal from one of these super bright explosions has provided a possible answer.
Today I’m enjoying what the Rubin Observatory team is calling “the largest spot-the-difference effort EVER”. And no, it’s not a search for Leif Penguinson. The telescope has a new near-real-time alert system that’s expected to eventually issue seven million alerts per night documenting astronomical events from new asteroids to exploding stars. The alerts signal when a new observation of a region of the sky — captured every 40 seconds during the night — differs from previous images of the same area.
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