In a paper published online in advance in Nature this week, researchers in Japan and Spain show that expression of the rice FLOWERING LOCUS T ortholog Hd3a "induces strict short-day potato types to tuberize in long days." Further, the team shows that "potato floral and tuberization transitions are controlled by two different FT-like paralogs," StSP3D and StSP6A, which respond to independent environmental cues.
Over in Nature Genetics, Yale University's Vincent Lynch and his colleagues report their use of comparative RNA-seq to identify 1,532 genes "recruited into endometrial expression in placental mammals, indicating that the evolution of pregnancy was associated with a large-scale rewiring of the gene regulatory network," they say. Lynch et al. add that around 13 percent of those genes "are within 200 kb of a Eutherian-specific transposable element" — transposons that "directly bind transcription factors essential for pregnancy and coordinately regulate gene expression in response to progesterone and cAMP."
In a news feature appearing in this week's issue, Nature's Heidi Ledford proposes "four ways to fix the clinical trial," including recruiting patients early on, utilizing phase 0 testing, improving preclinical models, and performing more adaptive trials. The University of Chicago's Richard Schilsky tells Nature that "there's not going to be a single solution because it's a multifactorial process." He adds that "everybody who is a stakeholder in the clinical-trial process has to contribute to the solutions."
Elsewhere in the issue, Nature says in an editorial that Canada's practice of protecting the names of scientists who are found guilty of midconduct takes "privacy concerns too far." The journal adds: