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The Middle Palaeolithic of southwest Asia witnessed interactions and knowledge sharing between archaic and modern humans ~130,000–80,000 years ago. These interactions led to increased behavioural complexity and consolidation of a uniform behavioural set across Homo groups in the region.

Fibroblasts play critical roles in tissue homeostasis, but in pathologic states they can drive fibrosis, inflammation, and tissue destruction. Here, Faust et al. find that healthy human synovial fibroblasts under the influence of adjacent adipocytes have altered lipid metabolism driven by cortisol signaling. Both adipocytes and these characteristics are lost in inflammatory arthritis.

Natural killer (NK) cells are assessed for various therapies, but sub-optimal cryopreservation dampens their clinical feasibility. Here the authors show that pretreating human NK cells with IL-15/IL-18 prior to cryopreservation improves NK cell post-thaw viability and functions, potentially via anti-apoptosis gene induction and granzyme B degranulation.

Antibody responses against Mycobacteria infection have been reported, but whether and how they impact anti-bacteria immunity in the host is unclear. Here the authors characterize human anti-Mycobacteria antibodies to find them targeting a Mycobacteria transporter protein, PstS1, show distinct interaction modes in crystal structure, and mediate protection in vitro.

Here, the authors developed a novel high-throughput, DNA barcoded overexpression platform, BOBA-seq, to uncover new gene functions among gut anaerobes involved in carbon utilization and stress tolerance.

Lynch, Brenner and colleagues find that tissue-resident γδ T cells reside in adipose tissues in both mice and humans. These cells play essential roles in regulating thermogenesis and supporting age-dependent increases in adipose-tissue regulatory T cell populations.

Contractile forces are key to sorting the embryonic inner cell mass from the extraembryonic trophectoderm. Here they show that Lamin-A links changes in mechanical forces to cell fate specification, enabling Yap-Cdx2 signaling in outer, but not inner cells.

Exocytosis is a fundamental cellular process. Here, the authors report an unusual exocytosis mechanism in the silicified cell wall of diatoms, in which membrane patches are discarded.

Edge conductance plays a central role in the electronic transport properties of graphitic interfaces. Here, the authors present a method to distinguish edge from bulk transport in twisted graphitic junctions and show that their relative contribution depends on the stacking configuration and the potential drop across the interface.

The histone variant mutation H3.3-G34W occurs in the majority of giant cell tumor of bone (GCTB). By profiling patient-derived GCTB tumor cells, the authors show that this mutation associates with epigenetic alterations in heterochromatic and bivalent regions that contribute to an impaired osteogenic differentiation and the osteolytic phenotype of GCTB.

Here the authors build different regulatory landscapes in an inactive chromatin environment and observe that enhancers can both carry out their classic role of stimulating transcription initiation and elongation at target gene promoters and recruit cohesin to create contact domains, engage CTCF sites and activate distant genes.

Pomp et al. show that specification of inner cell mass versus trophectoderm depends on a monoastral spindle that drives asymmetric cell division patterns, arguing against a stochastic inner–outer lineage segregation in the mouse embryo.

Here the authors show a function of RBM42 in regulating splicing and translation of the p53-target gene CDKN1A/p21. This makes RBM42 an RNA-binding protein that links splicing and translation to fine-tune gene expression during DNA damage.

Palaeogenomic data from four Late Pleistocene cave bears reveals that cave bears admixed with brown bears in the Pleistocene epoch, and despite cave bears going extinct during the Last Glacial Maximum, extant brown bears maintain a genomic contribution from cave bears.

Hypermutation and microsatellite burden determine responses and long-term survival following PD-1 blockade in children and young adults with refractory cancers resulting from germline DNA replication repair deficiency.

Magnetic effects can emerge due to structural variations when the size of materials is reduced towards the nanoscale. Here, Chakrabarti et al demonstrates the opposite effect, showing that the interatomic distance in atomic wires changes by up to 20% depending on the orientation of an applied magnetic field.

In this study, Omry Koren, Samuli Rautava and colleagues report a sex-specific association between neonatal antibiotic exposure and weight and height gain during the first six years of life and showing that boys but not girls exposed to neonatal antibiotics exhibit impaired weight and height development.

Differentiating neutrophil functional states is difficult. Here the authors show, using single cell RNA-sequencing and trajectory analyses, that mouse neutrophils can be presented as a transcriptome continuum rather than discrete subsets, but are affected by inflammation to express distinct transcriptional states.

Helper T cell subsets are characterized functionally by the cytokines they produce. Benoist and colleagues demonstrate that in vivo helper T cells do not manifest as discrete helper subsets but rather form a continuum shaped by microbial exposure.

Adenosine deaminase acting on RNA 1 (ADAR1) edits adenosine to inosine. Here the authors, using parallel analysis of RNA secondary structure sequencing, provide evidence that ADAR1 induces sequence-context-dependent RNA secondary structures changes, often leading to stabilization of the RNA duplex.

Sexual dimorphism is observed frequently in immune disorders, but the underlying insights are still unclear. Here the authors analyze transcriptome and epigenome changes induced by interferon in various mouse immune cell types, and find only a restricted set of sexual dimorphism genes in innate immunity and macrophages.

Use of an electron beam at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) to drive a plasma wakefield accelerator resulted in energy doubling of a small fraction of the injected electrons over a distance of less than a metre. This is an important step toward demonstrating the viability of plasma accelerators for high-energy physics applications.

T cell activation is critically controlled by T cell receptor (TCR) signalling. Here the authors show, using live cell imaging, atomic force microscopy and modelling simulation, a prompt separation of TCR and CD45 that negatively correlates with TCR activation, supporting a refined kinetic segregation model of TCR signalling.

Here the m¹A modification is discovered in messenger RNA and mapped at the transcriptome-wide level; the modification is conserved, dynamic, accumulates in structured regions around translation initiation sites upstream of the first splice site, and correlates with higher protein expression.

The ATM checkpoint kinase and the tumour suppressor ARF are thought to act separately to counteract tumorigenesis. Bartek, Gorgoulis and colleagues find that in transformed cells, ATM negatively regulates the levels and activity of ARF. In cell culture and mouse xenograft experiments, ATM inhibition promotes ARF-mediated tumour suppression, demonstrating an interplay between these pathways.

Indoor photovoltaics can meet the power demands of the rapidly increasing number of Internet-of-Things devices and reduce the reliance on batteries. This Review describes materials best suited for indoor photovoltaics, and analyses potential routes to scalability and sustainability.

At very low glucose levels, the cognitive function of patients with diabetes mellitus and recurrent iatrogenic hypoglycaemia is often better than that of hypoglycaemia-naive individuals. A new study shows that the brain adapts to recurrent hypoglycaemia by increasing uptake of glucose and lactate, with preferential shuttling of glucose to neurons.