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The origin and expansion of biological diversity is regulated by both developmental trajectories and limits on available ecological niches. As lineages diversify, an early and often rapid phase of species and trait proliferation gives way to evolutionary slow-downs as new species pack into ever more densely occupied regions of ecological niche space. Small clades such as Darwin's finches demonstrate that natural selection is the driving force of adaptive radiations, but how microevolutionary processes scale up to shape the expansion of phenotypic diversity over much longer evolutionary timescales is unclear. Here we address this problem on a global scale by analysing a crowdsourced dataset of three-dimensional scanned bill morphology from more than 2,000 species. We find that bill diversity expanded early in extant avian evolutionary history, before transitioning to a phase dominated by packing of morphological space. However, this early phenotypic diversification is decoupled from temporal variation in evolutionary rate: rates of bill evolution vary among lineages but are comparatively stable through time. We find that rare, but major, discontinuities in phenotype emerge from rapid increases in rate along single branches, sometimes leading to depauperate clades with unusual bill morphologies. Despite these jumps between groups, the major axes of within-group bill-shape evolution are remarkably consistent across birds. We reveal that macroevolutionary processes underlying global-scale adaptive radiations support Darwinian and Simpsonian ideas of microevolution within adaptive zones and accelerated evolution between distinct adaptive peaks.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline synthetic porous materials formed by binding organic linkers to metal nodes: they can be either rigid

Nature 542, 344–347 (2017); doi:10.1038/nature21074 In this Letter, two files were inadvertently omitted from the Supplementary Information. The two files (‘Prum_merge_taxonomy_CRC_v2.csv’ and ‘PrumTreeMerge_CRC_v1.csv’) are needed to replicate the alternative phylogeny of Prum et al. (ref. 43) presented in Extended Data Figure 4.

The comparison of the genomes of two very closely related human mucosal pathogens, Mycoplasma genitalium and Mycoplasma pneumoniae, has helped define the essential functions of a self-replicating minimal cell, as well as what constitutes a mycoplasma. Here we report the complete sequence of a more distant phylogenetic relative of those bacteria, Ureaplasma urealyticum (parvum biovar), which is also a mucosal pathogen of humans. It is the third mycoplasma to be sequenced, and has the smallest sequenced prokaryotic genome except for M. genitalium. Although the U. urealyticum genome is similar to the two sequenced mycoplasma genomes1,2, features make this organism unique among mycoplasmas and all bacteria. Almost all ATP synthesis is the result of urea hydrolysis, which generates an energy-producing electrochemical gradient. Some highly conserved eubacterial enzymes appear not to be encoded by U. urealyticum, including the cell-division protein FtsZ, chaperonins GroES and GroEL, and ribonucleoside-diphosphate reductase. U. urealyticum has six closely related iron transporters, which apparently arose through gene duplication, suggesting that it has a kind of respiration system not present in other small genome bacteria The genome is only 25.5% G+C in nucleotide content, and the G+C content of individual genes may predict how essential those genes are to ureaplasma survival.

Enhancers are cis-act ing elements that activate transcription in higher eukaryotes independently of their position or orientation relative to the promoter that they activate1. The mechanisms by which enhancers activate transcription are poorly understood, in part because, with the exception of the glucocorticoid receptor2, the proteins that directly interact with enhancers have not been purified, nor have the genes encoding them been cloned3–5. The upstream regulatory region (URR) that immediately precedes the early genes of the bovine papillomavirus type 1 genome (BPV) has enhancer activity when it is activated by a trans-acting gene product of the BPV E2 open reading frame (ORF) (Fig. 1)6. It is not known whether this enhancement represents a direct or indirect effect of E2 on the URR. We have used an E2 peptide expressed in bacteria and a DNA-protein complex immunoprecipitation assay to study E2-mediated enhancement of transcription by the URR. We show here that this peptide directly binds to four specific sites in the BPV URR, and to one site in the human papillomavirus (H)PV16 URR. All the binding sites contain a related sequence of nucleotides; a 23 base pair (bp) fragment containing this sequence can specifically prevent binding of the E2 protein to the BPV URR. The BPV E2–URR enhancer interaction may therefore represent a useful model system for studying the mechanism of transcriptional enhancement, as both an effector protein and its target enhancer can be purified and genetically manipulated.

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline synthetic porous materials formed by binding organic linkers to metal nodes: they can be either rigid1,2 or flexible3. Zeolites and rigid MOFs have widespread applications in sorption, separation and catalysis that arise from their ability to control the arrangement and chemistry of guest molecules in their pores via the shape and functionality of their internal surface, defined by their chemistry and structure4,5. Their structures correspond to an energy landscape with a single, albeit highly functional, energy minimum. By contrast, proteins function by navigating between multiple metastable structures using bond rotations of the polypeptide6,7, where each structure lies in one of the minima of a conformational energy landscape and can be selected according to the chemistry of the molecules that interact with the protein. These structural changes are realized through the mechanisms of conformational selection (where a higher-energy minimum characteristic of the protein is stabilized by small-molecule binding) and induced fit (where a small molecule imposes a structure on the protein that is not a minimum in the absence of that molecule)8. Here we show that rotation about covalent bonds in a peptide linker can change a flexible MOF to afford nine distinct crystal structures, revealing a conformational energy landscape that is characterized by multiple structural minima. The uptake of small-molecule guests by the MOF can be chemically triggered by inducing peptide conformational change. This change transforms the material from a minimum on the landscape that is inactive for guest sorption to an active one. Chemical control of the conformation of a flexible organic linker offers a route to modifying the pore geometry and internal surface chemistry and thus the function of open-framework materials.

A description is given of the observation of five brief occultations of the star SAO 158687 which occurred both before and after its occultation by Uranus on March 10, 1977. The events were observed with a three-channel occultation photometer, attached to a 91-cm telescope. The observations indicate that at least five rings encircle the planet Uranus. Possible reasons for the narrowness of the Uranus rings are discussed.