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This study finds that native tree extinctions and alien naturalizations are pushing forests towards fast-growing, resource-demanding species. This global shift could affect carbon storage and ecosystem stability, highlighting the need to protect slow-growing trees.

A comprehensive atlas platform integrating transcriptional and epigenetic data enables more precise engineering of T cell states, accelerating the rational design of more effective cellular immunotherapies.

Peanut is an important oil and protein crop. Here, the authors presents a population-specific pangenome for the PeanutMAGIC multiparent population and identify a third recessive AhFAD2C gene that can independently segregate and influence oleic acid content in peanut.

Genomic analyses applied to 14 childhood- and adult-onset psychiatric disorders identifies five underlying genomic factors that explain the majority of the genetic variance of the individual disorders.

Directional Solvent Extraction is an emerging non-membrane desalination technology for sea water desalination but is limited by throughput and energy efficiency. Here, the authors demonstrate that the production rate and energy efficiency can be increased by using ionic liquids as directional solvent.

Geospatial estimates of the prevalence of anemia in women of reproductive age across 82 low-income and middle-income countries reveals considerable heterogeneity and inequality at national and subnational levels, with few countries on track to meet the WHO Global Nutrition Targets by 2030.

The ‘Pf’ bacteriophages of Pseudomonas aeruginosa play roles in biofilm formation and virulence. Here, the authors identify a prophage regulatory module, KKP (kinase-kinase-phosphatase), that controls virion production of co-resident Pf prophages and mediates host defense against diverse lytic phages.

A pangenome analysis of 76 wild and domesticated barley accessions in combination with short-read sequence data of 1,315 barley genotypes indicates that allelic diversity at structurally complex loci may have helped crop plants to adapt to agricultural ecosystems.

Astrocyte diversity is greatly influenced by local environmental modulation. Wang et al. report a critical role for astrocytic primary cilia in transmitting local cues that drive the region-specific diversification of astrocytes within the developing mouse brain.

Most expression QTLs (eQTLs) co-occur with a DNA methylation QTL (meQTL), suggesting a common causal variant. Here the authors analyse DNA and RNA from blood and identify eQTL-meQTL pairs likely to share a causal variant, finding that expression and methylation are often genetically co-regulated.

A high-resolution, global atlas of mortality of children under five years of age between 2000 and 2017 highlights subnational geographical inequalities in the distribution, rates and absolute counts of child deaths by age.

A high-bandwidth neuromotor interface offers performant out-of-the-box generalization across people.

Here the authors made lipid-based CCR5-receptor targeted nanoparticles to facilitate cell-based delivery of the antiretroviral drug rilpivirine, improving HIV-1 suppression in cell and tissue reservoirs. Focused ultrasound facilitates penetrance of the nanoparticles across the blood-brain barrier where they enter myeloid cells in humanized mice.

Layered boron compounds attract enormous interest in applications. This work reports first-principles calculations coupled with global optimization to show that the outer boron surface in MgB₂ nanosheets undergo disordering and clustering, which is experimentally confirmed in synthesized MgB₂ nanosheets.

A double-transgenic mouse model that enables monitoring or manipulation of dopamine and serotonin simultaneously in the brain’s nucleus accumbens shows that these neuromodulators have opponent roles in reward learning.

The goals, resources and design of the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) programme are described, and analyses of rare variants detected in the first 53,831 samples provide insights into mutational processes and recent human evolutionary history.

Rapamycin and FK506 are macrocycles that contain an FKBP-binding domain and an effector domain responsible for interacting with their respective targets, mTOR and calcineurin. Now, a 45,000-compound macrocycle library has been synthesized by fusing oligopeptides with synthetic FKBP-binding domains. Screening and subsequent optimization yielded a highly potent FKBP-dependent inhibitor of hENT1.

Fibrin drives inflammation and neuropathology in SARS-CoV-2 infection, and fibrin-targeting immunotherapy may represent a therapeutic intervention for patients with long COVID.

Widespread shallow-water hydrothermal venting in the North Atlantic, probably a source of methane, coincided with the onset of the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, according to borehole proxy records and seismic imaging.

Bhattacharjee and Schaeffer et al. map exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) in 94 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), finding increased EBF practice and reduced subnational variation across the majority of LMICs from 2000 to 2018. However, only six LMICs will meet WHO’s target of ≥70% EBF by 2030 nationally, and only three will achieve this in all districts.

The authors summarize the data produced by phase III of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, a resource for better understanding of the human and mouse genomes.

Although progress in the coverage of routine measles vaccination in children in low- and middle-income countries was made during 2000–2019, many countries remain far from the goal of 80% coverage in all districts by 2019.

Fine-scale geospatial mapping of overweight and wasting (two components of the double burden of malnutrition) in 105 LMICs shows that overweight has increased from 5.2% in 2000 to 6.0% in children under 5 in 2017. Although overall wasting decreased over the same period, most countries are not on track to meet the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025.

A portable device enables the automated manufacturing of therapeutic-grade biologics in a few hours and under current good-manufacturing-practice conditions.

A polymer patch that rapidly and robustly adheres to diabetic wounds and contracts in a pre-programmed manner promotes wound closure and re-epithelialization, as shown in mouse and human skin, in mini-pigs and in humanized mice.

GvpU regulates spatial organization of gas vesicles in the bacterial cytosol through tunable interactions with the core gas vesicle shell protein and phase transition, enabling future opportunities for engineering of cellular buoyancy.

High-resolution subnational mapping of child growth failure indicators for 105 low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017 shows that, despite considerable progress, substantial geographical inequalities still exist in some countries.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) can be depolymerized by the Ideonella sakaiensis PETase enzyme, however, questions remain about the precise catalytic mechanism. Here, the authors use unbiased QM/MM MD simulations to determine optimal mechanistic descriptions of the acylation and deacylation reactions, revealing the rate-limiting step and key interactions within the catalytic triad and Trp185 conformation.

Using 1,578 resequenced genomes representing the diversity of cultivated and wild rice, this study reveals that the domestication alleles of the 993 selected genes stemmed from both O. rufipogon and O. nivara, demonstrating multiple domestications of rice.

The miniaturization of antennas beyond a wavelength is limited by designs which rely on electromagnetic resonances. Here, Nan et al. have developed acoustically actuated antennas that couple the acoustic resonance of the antenna with the electromagnetic wave, reducing the antenna footprint by up to 100.

A genetic study identifies hundreds of loci associated with risk tolerance and risky behaviors, finds evidence of substantial shared genetic influences across these phenotypes, and implicates genes involved in neurotransmission.

In a multicenter research program coordinated by the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, Spielmann et al. analyze the cardiac function and structure in ~4,000 monogenic mutant mice and identify 705 mouse genes involved in cardiac function, 75% of which have not been previously linked to cardiac heritable disease in humans. Using the UK Biobank human data, the authors validate the link between cardiovascular disease and some of the newly identified genes to illustrate the resource value and potential of their mutant mouse collection.

A randomized trial in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 showed no benefit and potentially increased harm associated with the use of convalescent plasma, with subgroup analyses suggesting that the antibody profile in donor plasma is critical in determining clinical outcomes.

Here we describe an open collaborative effort termed the ‘Ruminant T2T Consortium’. It aims to generate complete diploid assemblies for many species of ruminants to examine chromosomal evolution in the context of natural selection and domestication.

Iterative Synthetically Phosphorylated Isomers (iSPI) is a proteome-scale library of human-derived phosphoserine-containing phosphopeptides with precisely known positions of phosphorylation. This multi-purpose resource is available for optimization, standardization, and benchmarking of key steps in phosphoproteomics workflows.

The Microarray Quality Control consortium pitted 36 teams against each other to evaluate methods for creating genomic classifiers, computational tools for interpreting gene expression profiles. The performance of the classifiers on blinded validation data—and metadata on the analytic methods—reveal the challenges facing the field.

Detlef Weigel and colleagues report the genome sequence of Arabidopsis lyrata. In comparison with the much smaller genome of A. thaliana, from which A. lyrata diverged about 10 million years ago, they find that the reduction in genome size is attributed to a large number of deletions across the genome.

Stephen Wright, Detlef Weigel and colleagues report the whole-genome sequence of Capsella rubella, a highly selfing crucifer found throughout much of southern and western Europe. They compare mixed-stage flower bud transcriptomes from C. rubella and C. grandiflora, finding a shift in expression of genes associated with flowering phenotypes and providing insights into the transition to selfing.

The Impact of Genomic Variation on Function Consortium is combining single-cell mapping, genomic perturbations and predictive modelling to investigate relationships between human genomic variation, genome function and phenotypes and will provide an open resource to the community.

This paper reports the genome sequence of domesticated tomato, a major crop plant, and a draft sequence for its closest wild relative; comparative genomics reveal very little divergence between the two genomes but some important differences with the potato genome, another important food crop in the genus Solanum.

The authors summarize the history of the ENCODE Project, the achievements of ENCODE 1 and ENCODE 2, and how the new data generated and analysed in ENCODE 3 complement the previous phases.

Cataloging microbial genomes from Earth’s environments expands the known phylogenetic diversity of bacteria and archaea.