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Mineral dust and marine sediment resuspension are generally considered the primary sources of the nutrient iron to the oceans. Numerical model results suggest that iron released by hydrothermal activity is also an important source of dissolved iron, particularly in the Southern Ocean.

The chemokine CXCL10 is associated with pathogenesis of cerebral malaria in Plasmodium falciparum infection. Here the authors show that P. falciparum produces extracellular vesicles laden with RNAs that are taken up by monocytes resulting in a RIG-I and HUR-1 mediated mechanism of inhibition of CXCL10 protein translation.

Genomic and functional analysis of intratumor heterogeneity in pediatric glioma uncovers early clonal divergence and stable spontaneous cooperation between subclonal populations throughout tumor evolution.

Foreign nucleic acids trigger innate immune sensors. Bowie and colleagues identify the PYHIN protein IFI16 as an innate duplex DNA sensor that triggers IFN-β production in a STING-TBK1-IRF3 signaling pathway.

Vaccinia virus protein F14 mimics the transactivation domain of the p65 subunit of NF-κB to evade host immunity.

In this Review, Luke O'Neill and Andrew Bowie discuss the role of the five adaptor proteins that are involved in Toll-like receptor (TLR) signalling, and provide a detailed molecular description of the earliest phase of TLR signal transduction.

Multi-omics profiling of monkeypox virus infected human primary cells was used to characterize the infection process and to prioritize potential antiviral drug targets.

Nitrate observations over 11 years from autonomous biogeochemical ocean profiling combined with a Southern Hemisphere dust simulation find that iron supplied by dust supports about 30% of Southern Ocean productivity.

The interferon response is a critical component of the innate immune response. Here the authors implicate MNDA in the regulation of type I interferon responses to pathogen infection.

STING is an intracellular DNA sensor that can alter response to infection, but in the case of malaria it is unclear how parasite DNA in red blood cells (RBCs) reaches DNA sensors in immune cells. Here the authors show that STING in human monocytes can sense P. falciparum nucleic acids transported from infected RBCs via parasite extracellular vesicles.

Experimental deletion of the furin cleavage site of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein highlights an important role for this site in infection and the need to consider this site when evaluating the neutralization activities of antibodies.

The role of IFI16 as a DNA sensor is highly controversial. With support from aNature Communications back-to-back publication from Jønsson et al., the authors here provide functional evidence that IFI16 is involved in DNA sensing via the cGAS-STING pathway in human keratinocytes.

Oceanic deposition of wildfire aerosols can enhance marine productivity, as supported here by satellite and in situ profiling floats data showing that emissions from the 2019–2020 Australian wildfires fuelled phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean.

Iron is crucial for marine photosynthesis, but observational constraints on the magnitude of key iron cycle processes are lacking. Here the authors use a range of observational data sets to demonstrate that the balance between iron re-supply and removal in the subsurface controls upper ocean iron limitation.

The DNA-damage sensor Rad50 couples the sensing of cytosolic DNA to the innate immunological adaptor CARD9 to stimulate DNA-dependent activation of the transcription factor NF-κB. This facilitates DNA virus–stimulated production of the cytokine IL-1β.

Activation of the transcription factor NF-κB by Toll-like receptors must be controlled to avoid excessive inflammation. The tripartite-motif protein family member TRIM30α has now been shown to mediate a negative regulatory feedback mechanism curtailing such responses.

Bacterial cyclic dinucleotides are recognized by the innate immune system, and this leads to the induction of type I interferons. The mammalian helicase DDX41 directly binds cyclic dinucleotides and mediates the signaling pathway to the induction of type I interferons.

Here the authors describe how multiple pattern recognition receptors, at the host cell surface, in endosomes and in the cytoplasm, are involved in detecting herpesviruses. How do they each contribute to immune defence against the virus, and how does the virus evade this detection and persist in the host?

The past 15 years have seen a breakthrough in the field of innate immunity. In this Timeline article, the authors discuss the early events that led to the identification of Toll-like receptors as the prototype pattern-recognition receptors that link innate and adaptive immune responses.

microbeMASST is a tool to associate known and unknown metabolites to microbial producers leveraging untargeted metabolomics data.

Low levels of iron limit primary productivity across much of the Southern Ocean. Measurements of dissolved iron levels combined with hydrographic data suggest that much of the iron in the surface waters of the Southern Ocean is supplied by deep mixing during winter.

This Review highlights how understanding the mechanisms by which viruses evade and subvert host signalling by pattern-recognition receptors has provided insights into the function of these signalling pathways, the host proteins that are involved and ways in which the pathways might be manipulated therapeutically.

Hydrogen bonds have been widely assumed to be strongly stabilizing in membrane proteins. But in this work, interaction free energies were measured between eight hydrogen bonded side chains in bacteriorhodopsin and it was found that most make only modest stabilizing contributions. This suggests that views of membrane protein folding, evolution and function should reflect such weak polar side chain interactions.

A new ‘alarm mechanism’ of the innate immune system that signals the presence of nuclear viruses involves the sensing of host 5S rRNA by RIG-I.

A systems approach provides a global perspective of the different strategies that viruses use to modulate the cellular innate immune response; this may be useful in the design of future viral intervention strategies.

The thiol-ene coupling between an alkene and a thiol can be exploited for selective labelling of cysteine residues in protein profiling applications, however, the labelling of complex cell lysate mixtures is underexplored. Here, the authors explore thiol-ene activation in systems from chemical models to complex cellular milieus, using UV, visible wavelength and redox initiators.