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Ask a dozen researchers about how to group similar cells together and you’ll get as many different answers. Its function, response to its environment and which genes it switches on have all been suggested as the criteria we should use to categorise the basic unit of life. And the further we delve into cells of the same type, the more differences begin to appear between them. So, what exactly is a cell type? As biologist Barbara Treutlein puts it, “there’s a general consensus that it is extremely complicated”.
Three years after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, women are locked out of post-primary education, banned from most jobs (including nearly all forms of research and teaching) and forbidden from even speaking or singing in public. The Taliban are not recognized as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, but relations are thawing — without the participation of women’s organizations or discussions of education. “Where is the outrage?” demands a Nature editorial. “This cannot continue. If it does, the international community will be complicit in gender apartheid.”
Dinosaur taxonomy is tough: only a tiny fraction of animals are preserved as fossils and there is little genetic data to guide taxonomic discussions. Researchers have “barely have enough species to work with to allow a lot of our analyses to even run,” says palaeobiologist Emma Dunne. This makes it hard to know for sure how biodiversity has changed over time. “The actual numbers of species lost in previous environmental catastrophes are probably always worse than we currently record because we’re probably lumping more than one species under one name,” says palaeontologist Tom Holtz.
You can keep your fancy AIs and supercomputers — I’m entranced by the slime-mould algorithm. Physarum polycephalum, despite having no neurons, brain or subscription to Nature, has already proven itself to be a dab hand at coming up with efficient Tokyo subway networks and helping run a heart-rate-sensing smartwatch. Now an algorithm based on the brilliant blob has been used to simulate how the cosmic web of matter forms over unimaginable aeons.
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Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing
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