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Improving neuraminidase content of influenza vaccines is a major focus of vaccine development. Here the authors present safety and immunogenicity of seasonal influenza mRNA vaccine candidates simultaneously encoding hemagglutinin and neuraminidase antigens in a first in-human study.

A study reports whole-genome sequences for 490,640 participants from the UK Biobank and combines these data with phenotypic data to provide new insights into the relationship between human variation and sequence variation.

Tilt-corrected bright-field scanning transmission electron microscopy offers enhanced cryogenic electron microscopy contrast and substantial improvement in dose efficiency for thick samples such as bacterial cells and large organelles, while still being able to perform single-particle analysis.

Impaired musical rhythm abilities and developmental speech-language related disorders are biologically and clinically intertwined. Here, the authors explore the correlation between the two traits, finding evidence of epidemiological associations and genetic overlap.

A fresh approach to protein design that incorporates excited intermediate states enables precise control over the lifetime of protein interactions, with potential applications in cell-signalling modulation and in biosensors and synthetic circuits.

War has myriad recognized impacts on cities and the environment. This study adds insult to injury, providing spaceborne evidence that the destruction of warfare triggers rapid and substantial increases in urban methane emissions.

The dietary fibre inulin is shown to promote fructose catabolism by the small intestinal microbiome, thereby mitigating fructose-induced hepatic lipogenesis and steatosis.

Two types of on-chip silicon device utilizing silicon T centres are developed: an O-band light-emitting diode and an electrically triggered single-photon source. Further, a new method of spin initialization with electrical excitation is demonstrated.

The ribosomal decoding center monitors accurate translation of 3-base mRNA codons. Here, the authors use cryo-EM to show how one of the monitoring bases of the ribosome enables a frameshift-inducing tRNA to instead read a 2-base codon.

The authors show that alternative splicing is an important layer of macrophage response to environmental stimuli. Genetic determinants of this response, often targeting low-usage splicing events, are linked to several immune-mediated diseases.

Al-Hilal, Chrysovergi et al. identify a role for durotaxis in lung fibrosis and metastatic pancreatic cancer, mediated by the FAK–paxillin mechanosensor complex, and demonstrate therapeutic targeting of this pathway using the small molecule JP-153.

Electron hopping in geometrically frustrated lattices can result in a rich variety of unusual behaviours. Now, the orbital arrangement in a van der Waals metal with a non-frustrated, primitive lattice is found to show similar effects.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

A large brain imaging study of over 2000 people worldwide shows that fear conditioning engages brain regions linked to emotion and attention, with differences in individuals with anxiety or depression and strong influences from task design.

A rhynchocephalian skeleton around 3–7 million years older than the oldest currently known lepidosaur fossil provides important insight into the origin of lizards and snakes.

CLEM-Reg automates the three-dimensional alignment of volume correlative light and electron microscopy datasets by leveraging probabilistic point cloud registration techniques for fast and accurate results across diverse datasets.

CD123 expression on leukemic stem and progenitor cells (LSPCs) and leukemic blasts representing a promising therapeutic target. However previous CD123-targeting approaches had limited efficacy and safety concerns. The authors here evaluate the bispecific CD123/CD16A innate cell engager AFM28 and manifest its efficacy both in vitro and in vivo, which is mediated by NK cells.

Solid-state NMR reveals that lignin-carbohydrate contact patterns, rather than lignin amount, shape the structure and property of plant cell walls, highlighting distinct roles of lignin and carbohydrate units during wall formation.

Aminoacyl-thiols reacting selectively with RNA diols over amine nucleophiles and demonstration of chemically controlled formation of peptidyl-RNA in water at neutral pH suggest an important role for thiol cofactors before the evolution of enzymes.

Cell-cell fusion is fundamental to physiological processes such as muscle formation and viral infection. Here, the authors show that the proteins embedded on the plasma membrane present a biophysical barrier that can regulate cell-cell fusion.

John Perry and colleagues report the results of a large genome-wide association study meta-analysis to identify variants influencing age at natural menopause. They identify 54 independent signals and find enrichment near genes involved in delayed puberty and DNA damage response.

Iceberg calving can act as a submarine melt amplifier through excitation of transient internal waves.

In this work, authors utilise a prefractionation natural product extract screening platform, which uncovers coniotins, lipopeptaibiotics with broad antifungal activity and a mechanism of action that targets fungal cell wall β-glucan.

Mepolizumab (anti-IL-5 therapy) has been shown to reduce type 2 inflammation in asthma. Here the authors use bulk transcriptomics from nasal samples before and after mepolizumab treatment to assess the changes and associations with treatment outcomes.

The authors study the widespread transcriptomic response of macrophages to a variety of environmental stimuli. They show that genetic determinants of this response are overrepresented among those linked to immune-mediated diseases.

Changes in ECM are of predictive value in pancreatic and colorectal cancer prognosis. Here, the authors perform a pan-cancer analysis and find a subset of ECM genes that is linked to TGF-β signalling signature and is correlated with immunotherapy failure.

A survey across 90 societies reveals that variation and change in everyday norms are explained by a single value dimension: the priority societies place on individualizing versus binding moral concerns.

An analysis of the EPIC study demonstrates that dietary plant biodiversity presents benefits for human and planetary health, but adverse environmental impacts are associated with dietary animal species richness.

The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task in mice.

Despite their differences, the rarer sarcoma CIC::DUX4 sarcoma (CDS) is typically treated with therapies developed for Ewing Sarcoma (EwS) with limited success. Here, the authors develop a co-clinical drug response profiling platform to establish patient-derived CDS and EwS tumoroids, identifying MCL1 inhibition as a promising therapeutic approach in CDS.

In mammals, the enzyme TGDS produces UDP-4-keto-6-deoxyglucose, which binds to the catalytic pocket of UDP-xylose synthase, thereby regenerating the essential NAD⁺ cofactor of UDP-xylose synthase in conditions of low NAD⁺.

The RalGAP complex is an important tumor suppressor that counteracts oncogenic Ras signaling. Here, Rasche, Klink and colleagues present the cryo-EM structure of RalGAP and provides insight into its mechanism and molecular function.

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.

Like conventional antennas, optical nanoantennas can transmit and receive signals but on much smaller length scales. Dregely et al.measure the optical power transmitted and received in the far-field by plasmonic nanoantennas and show that they can control the direction of transmission over a broad range.

Understanding molecule-surface interactions is key to neat on-surface synthesis of functional nanomaterials. Here, the authors measure interactions of metal surface atoms with CO-terminated tips to reveal their nature and reliable adsorption sites.

Integrated multi-omic analyses using samples from the TRACERx study highlight cross-talk between DNA hypermethylation and genomic lesions in non-small cell lung cancer.

Mast cells are shown to function as sensor cells linking antigen recognition in type 2 immunity to antigen-specific avoidance behaviour, preventing immune activation and inflammation.

Loss-of-function variants of ABCA7, associated with Alzheimer’s disease, result in disrupted lipid metabolism, mitochondrial function, DNA repair and synaptic signalling pathways in the human brain.