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Dissolved organic matter becomes highly labile in dark anoxic groundwater environments, suggesting that groundwater extraction and subterranean groundwater discharge could be significant sources of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Conserving biodiversity for its own sake and conserving it to safeguard ecosystem services are distinct goals that cannot both be achieved through a single target analogous to climate’s 1.5 °C, argues Andy Purvis.

Opioids modulate pain, anxiety and stress by activating four subtypes of opioid receptors. The authors show that atypical chemokine receptor 3 (ACKR3) is a scavenger for various endogenous opioid peptides regulating their availability without activating downstream signaling.

Soil-transmitted helminths (STHs) are major pathogens. Here the authors screen 480 structural families of natural products to find compounds that kill Caenorhabditis elegans specifically when they require rhodoquinone (RQ)-dependent metabolism: they identify several classes of compounds and show some compounds kill adult STHs.

Microfluidic chain reactions encode programs structurally in situ, and can form a frugal, versatile, bona fide lab-on-a-chip with wide-ranging applications in liquid handling and point-of-care diagnostics

Anaerobic methanotrophic archaea play crucial roles in the methane cycle. Here, Zhang et al. provide experimental evidence supporting that multi-heme cytochromes mediate extracellular electron transfer for the reduction of metals and electrodes in these microorganisms.

A closed-loop and wireless 128-channel neuromodulation device enables electrical stimulation as well as artefact-free long-term recording of local field potentials in the brain of an untethered non-human primate.

The mechanisms that control the presynaptic abundance of GABAB receptors (GBRs) remains unclear. This study shows that sequence-related epitopes in APP, AJAP-1 and PIANP bind with nanomolar affinities to the N-terminal sushi-domain of presynaptic GBRs, and that selective loss of APP impaired GBR-mediated presynaptic inhibition and axonal GBR expression

How We Feel is a web and mobile-phone application for collecting de-identified self-reported COVID-19-related data. These data are used to map a diverse set of symptomatic, demographic, exposure and behavioural factors relevant to the ongoing pandemic.

A single-cell transcriptomic analysis of 63 patients with colorectal cancer classifies tumor cells into two epithelial subtypes. An improved tumor classification based on epithelial subtype, microsatellite stability and fibrosis reveals differences in pathway activation and metastasis.

A deep learning approach bypasses iterative trials associated with sensorless adaptive optics to compensate for wavefront deformations when imaging biological specimens, enabling improved deep tissue localization microscopy.

Reconstructing imagined speech from neural activity holds great promises for people with severe speech production deficits. Here, the authors demonstrate using human intracranial recordings that both low- and higher-frequency power and local cross-frequency contribute to imagined speech decoding.

The binding of cytoplasmic Ca²⁺ to the anion-selective channel TMEM16A triggers a conformational change around its binding site that is coupled to the release of a gate at the constricted neck. Here authors use cryo-EM and electrophysiology to identify three hydrophobic residues at the intracellular entrance of the neck as constituents of this gate.

Archaeogenetic study of ancient DNA from medieval northwestern Europeans reveals substantial increase of continental northern European ancestry in Britain, suggesting mass migration across the North Sea during the Early Middle Ages.

Offline cortical reactivations predict the gradual drift and separation in sensory cortical response patterns and may enhance sensory discrimination.

A computational system termed MetaWIBELE (workflow to identify novel bioactive elements in the microbiome) is used to identify microbial gene products that are potentially bioactive and have a functional role in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease.

Mammalians rely on brown adipocytes to generate heat under cold exposure, this thermogenic function requires dynamic remodeling of the mitochondria. Here the authors identify a protein called FAM210A as a key regulator of cold-induced mitochondrial remodeling in brown adipocytes.

In a prespecified interim analysis of a pivotal phase 2 trial, tisagenlecleucel, an autologous CD19-targeting CAR-T cell therapy, produced a high rate of complete responses with a manageable safety profile in adults with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma

XylE is a bacterial xylose transporter and homologue of human glucose transporters GLUTs 1-4. HDX-MS, mutagenesis and MD simulations suggest that protonation of a conserved aspartate triggers conformational transition from outward- to inward facing state only in the presence of substrate xylose. In contrast, inhibitor glucose locks the transporter in the outward facing state.

Staphylococcus aureuscan both cause disease in humans and be present with no discernible effect. Here, the authors look in detail at the memory immune response against a protein involved in iron acquisition.

To succeed, the REDD initiative needs a dose of 'GREEN' to restore degraded forests and help boost economic development, argues Andy White.

Fiorina and colleagues document alterations in glucose metabolism in patients with COVID-19 and use continuous glucose monitoring to show that glycaemic abnormalities could still be detected 2 months after disease onset in patients who had recovered.

Cross-linking mass spectrometry (XLMS) allows mapping of protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions, but the analysis of protein-DNA complexes remains challenging. Here, the authors develop a UV light-based XLMS workflow to determine protein-DNA interfaces in reconstituted chromatin and isolated nuclei.

The authors introduce an agile, all-fiber laser source with three frequency combs. Three EOM combs from a single laser are expanded in a tri-core nonlinear fiber, maintaining high mutual coherence. This system’s performance is showcased through a 2D four-wave mixing spectroscopy experiment.

The skin of zebrafish is patterned by alternating blue stripes and yellow interstripes which arises from guanine crystal-containing cells called iridophores that reflect light. Here the authors track iridophores and see that they do not migrate between stripes and interstripes, but instead differentiate and proliferate in place based on their micro-environment.

Structural variants (SV) can accumulate in repeat-rich parts of the genome and transform them in unexpected ways. Here, with their new assembly-based genotyper (NAHRwhals), the authors verify multi-step SVs in 37 human loci and identify alleles at risk for copy-number variation.

Pleuromutilin derivatives are potent antibacterial drugs obtained from Basidiomycete fungi. Here, the authors report the genetic characterisation of the steps involved in pleuromutilin biosynthesis through heterologous expression and generate a semi-synthetic pleuromutilin derivative with enhanced antibiotic activity.

While multiple resistance-to-Phytophthora sojae loci/alleles have been mapped in soybean, many of them have become ineffective to newly evolved isolates. Here, the authors show that a 27.7-kb nucleotide-binding site-leucine-rich repeat gene confers broad-spectrum resistance to P. sojae in soybean.

Urban development in China has led to cropland loss and displacement over the past decades. This study uses a model-based approach to estimate spatial flows of grain, disaggregated by transport modal choices and routes, to explore the increase in carbon emission associated with the transport of cereals, tubers and soybean in China over 1990–2015.

Influenza A infection results in γδ T cell influx and production of IL-17 in the lungs. Here, the authors show that this effect is primed by CD1-restricted ligands that are released by infected cells and presented by B1a cells in the lungs.

A noise-resilient protocol implemented in a cavity resonator coupled to a qubit demonstrates that large nonlinear couplings are not a necessary requirement for the fast universal control and state preparation of engineered quantum systems.

Fabry and colleagues show that cribriform plate-resident lymphatic endothelial cells respond to neuroinflammatory signals by inducing functional changes that enhance antigen capture and presentation from the cerebrospinal fluid and promote leukocyte interactions within the central nervous system.

Bacteria represent an unexploited reservoir of biosensing proteins. Here the authors use genomic screens and functional assays to isolate a progesterone sensing allosteric transcription factor and use a FRET-based method to develop an optical progesterone sensor.

HitRS is a two-component system that responds to cell envelope damage in the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Here, the authors identify an RNA-binding protein that regulates HitRS function by modulating the stability of the hitRS mRNA. In addition, the protein binds to over 70 RNAs and affects the expression of genes involved in multiple cellular processes.

High-grade gliomas functionally remodel neural circuits in the human brain, promoting tumour progression and impairing cognition.

Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in sea water are driving a progressive acidification of the ocean, with as yet unclear impacts on marine calcifying organisms. Simulations with an Earth system model suggest that future changes in the marine environment could be more severe than those experienced during the Palaeocene–Eocene thermal maximum, both in the deep ocean and near the surface.

Wansheng Jiang studies the endangered Chinese giant salamander to better protect its habitat.

The authors test for temperature dependency of ecosystem respiration rates across globally distributed eddy covariance sites, revealing consistent temperature thresholds where ecosystem metabolism changes.

Embryos at the 2-cell (2C) stage are totipotent, and overexpression of Dux transcription factor convert embryonic stem cells (ESCs) to a 2C-like state. Here the authors show that DUX-mediated 2C-like reprogramming is associated with DNA damage at CTCF sites and CTCF depletion promotes 2Clike conversion.

A selective inhibitor of Sec61 blocks protein entry into the secretory pathway and has therapeutic efficacy in rheumatoid arthritis. A cryo-EM structure of the inhibited Sec61 provides a model for client-selective protein translocation inhibition.

A high-quality bonobo genome assembly provides insights into incomplete lineage sorting in hominids and its relevance to gene evolution and the genetic relationship among living hominids.

Adipose tissue-resident regulatory T (T_reg) cells are important for maintaining normal metabolic function and adiposity. Li and colleagues demonstrate that insulin signaling directly controls adipose T_reg cell development and functionality

Nail-patella syndrome (NPS) is characterized by nail dysplasia, absent/hypoplastic patellae, chronic kidney disease, and glaucoma and can be caused by haploinsufficiency of LMX1B; however, not all patients harbor pathogenic LMX1B mutations. Here the authors show that loss-of-function variations in upstream enhancer sequences are responsible for a limb specific form of human NPS.