Search

The social exposome—lifelong social and economic adversity—can shape brain health and dementia risk. Here, the authors show that an adverse social exposome is linked to poorer clinical, cognitive, and brain changes in Latin American older adults.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

Analysing >1,700 inventory plots from the Amazon Tree Diversity Network, the authors show that the majority of Amazon tree species can occupy floodplains and that patterns of species turnover are closely linked to regional flood patterns.

The quark structure of the f₀(980) hadron is still unknown after 50 years of its discovery. Here, the CMS Collaboration reports a measurement of the elliptic flow of the f₀(980) state in proton-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 8.16 TeV, providing strong evidence that the state is an ordinary meson.

Managing power exhaust in fusion reactors is a key challenge, especially in compact designs for cost-effective commercial energy. This study shows how alternative divertor configurations improve exhaust control, enhance stability, absorb transients and enable independent plasma regulation.

The JAK inhibitor ruxolitinib has been used for treatment of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) and its association with clonal evolution requires further investigation. Here the authors report accumulation of RAS pathway mutations in ruxolitinib-treated myelofibrosis patients, stemming from RAS clonal selection induced by JAK2 inhibition.

Inventory data from more than 1 million trees across African, Amazonian and Southeast Asian tropical forests suggests that, despite their high diversity, just 1,053 species, representing a consistent ~2.2% of tropical tree species in each region, constitute half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees.

Data from a variety of sources—including satellite, climate and soil data, as well as field-collected information on plant traits—are pooled and analysed to map the functional diversity of tropical forest canopies globally.

Zika virus (ZIKV) infection can cause congenital Zika syndrome (CZS), but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, the authors generate neural progenitor cells from dizygotic twins with a discordant phenotype regarding CZS and study their response to ZIKV infection.

Here, the authors present results of the ZiBRA-2 project (https://www.zibra2project.org) which is an arbovirus surveillance project, across the Midwest of Brazil using a mobile genomics laboratory, combined with a genomic surveillance training program that targeted post-graduate students, laboratory technicians, and health practitioners in universities and laboratories.

Unlike most eukaryotes, Luzula sylvatica assembles holocentromeres along the entire chromosome length. Here, the authors combine genome assembly, epigenetic and cytogenetic analyses to reveal holocentricity involves the fusion of small monocentric chromosomes and the expansion of CENH3-interacting satellite DNA repeats.

The authors analyse tree responses to an extreme heat and drought event across South America to understand long-term climate resistance. While no more sensitive to this than previous lesser events, forests in drier climates showed the greatest impacts and thus vulnerability to climate extremes.

Moreno-Loaiza et al. found that interleukin-1β, acting upon cardiac resident macrophages, promotes atrial fibrillation in mice, and this mechanism may represent a common pathway connecting various risk factors to this arrhythmia.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

Springtails are omnipresent soil arthropods, vital for ecosystems. In the first global assessment of springtails, this study shows a 20-fold biomass difference between the tundra and the tropics, with distinct temperature-related patterns for diversity and metabolism that suggest climate change may restructure the functioning of soil biodiversity.

Industrial bioethanol production is driven by ecological interactions within the microbial community rather than the interactions within yeast population. Here, the authors identify bacteria affecting ethanol production and reveal temperature as the major driving force for strain-level dynamics.

Using screening data on intrinsic capacity (IC) from real-world implementation in primary care of the WHO ICOPE program, de Souto Barreto and Lu et al. developed clinically friendly IC scores and centile values to monitor functional health during aging.

The host transcription factor, Bach1, promotes Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogenesis by inhibiting protective glutathione metabolism and antioxidant responses that prevent ferroptosis.

Oxygen sensitivity hampers applications of metal-dependent CO₂ reductases. Here, Oliveira et al. describe how an allosteric disulfide bond controls the activity of a CO₂ reductase, preventing its physiological reduction during transient O₂ exposure and allowing aerobic handling of the enzyme.

Using 13 functional traits we characterize the Amazonian trees and the communities they form. Amazonian tree communities are distributed along a fast-slow-spectrum. This results in clear differences in traits among these forests, as well as their biomass and biomass productivity.

Here the authors develop a neonatal mouse model for SARS-CoV-2 transmission, characterize differences in viral replication and shedding of variants of concerns, and show that deletion of ORF8 shifts viral replication to the lower respiratory tract and delays transmission.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

From 1980 to 2018, the levels of total and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol increased in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreased in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe.

Protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection involves T cell and B cell responses but only studying one or the other has proved difficult. Here the authors immunise with a fusion protein construct of N and RBD proteins from SARS-CoV-2 and find that this promotes protection in animal models preferentially via T cells.

Tree species turnover across Amazonian forests unveils sharp floristic transitional zones, that are linked with changes in soil fertility and climate.

The authors find that structural economic inequality is linked to reduced brain volume and connectivity in middle-aged and older adults across the Americas, more so in Alzheimer’s disease than in frontotemporal dementia. The findings emphasize the biological embedding of inequality in aging and dementia.

Analyses of neuroimaging datasets from 5,306 participants across 15 countries found generally larger brain-age gaps in Latin American compared with non-Latin American populations, which were influenced by disparities in socioeconomic and health-related factors.

Mutations in amyloid precursor protein (APP) and presenilin 1 (PSEN1) cause autosomal dominant AD (ADAD). Here, the authors perform single-nucleus RNA-sequencing of ADAD and other disease risk modifying variant carriers and report altered expression states of specific brain cell types.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

The Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE) program was developed to promote a function-centered and individualized approach to healthy aging, but it is not yet widely implemented. In this study, de Souto Barreto et al. used early-stage ICOPE data collected in primary healthcare from more than 20,000 older adults to characterize patterns of intrinsic capacity impairment and associated odds of frailty and disability.

Ten years after the discovery of the Higgs boson, the ATLAS  experiment at CERN probes its kinematic properties with a significantly larger dataset from 2015–2018 and provides further insights on its interaction with other known particles.

Nociceptin is an opioid peptide regulating important brain functions, including motivation and 2stress responses. Here, the authors develop and validate a genetically encoded sensor as a tool for high-resolution detection of endogenous nociceptin in living animals.

The ATLAS Collaboration reports the observation of the electroweak production of two jets and a Z-boson pair. This process is related to vector-boson scattering and allows the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking to be probed.

Martin Zenker, Marco Tartaglia, Reza Ahmadian and colleagues report the identification of a restricted spectrum of NRAS mutations in individuals with Noonan syndrome. Functional testing revealed that the mutations confer enhanced stimulus-dependent MAPK activation.

Authors explore the utility of CD5L for treating experimental sepsis. CD5L deficiency exacerbates experimental sepsis. Conversely, administration of recombinant CD5L in WT mice augments neutrophil function, enhances bacterial control, and mitigates inflammation, leading to substantial improvements in disease outcomes.

The CMS Collaboration reports the study of three simultaneous hard interactions between quarks and gluons in proton–proton collisions. This manifests through the concurrent production of three J/ψ mesons, which consist of a charm-quark–antiquark pair.

The most up-to-date combination of results on the properties of the Higgs boson is reported, which indicate that its properties are consistent with the standard model predictions, within the precision achieved to date.

Structural and functional characterization of an NF-κB-targeting bacterial toxin reveals an unconventional structure and mechanisms of membrane interaction and translocation.

Researchers demonstrate a laser-plasma accelerator-driven free-electron laser in a seeded configuration, where control over the radiation wavelength and longitudinal coherence are achieved.

Emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 raise concerns about vaccine efficiency. Here, the authors present a post-hoc analysis for the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine trial in Brazil and provide efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 caused by the Zeta (P.2) and other variants.

The CMS Collaboration reports evidence for off-shell Higgs boson contributions in the production of Z boson pairs, and measures the width of the Higgs boson, which is inversely related to its lifetime.

Here, the authors use a double-reporter system to tag IFNγ-producing versus IL-17A-producing γδ T cells to compile a trancriptomic resource of these cell subsets in mice at steady state and in response to cerebral malaria or multiple sclerosis.