Unique mutation lets octopuses make proteins with precision

Hello Nature readers,
Today we learn that certain octopuses are experts at making proteins, hear that a Nobel-prizewinner has left the United States for China and investigate the effects of microgravity on the brain.

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Octopuses make near-flawless proteins

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 E. 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.

Nobel laureate leaves the US for China

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.

Scientists see the seafloor burst at the seams

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.

Your brain in microgravity

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.

Does all life have ‘agency’?

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.

The travelling microbiome collectors

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 — has revealed that there’s no such thing as a ‘normal’ microbiome.