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Lowering the levels of coagulation factor XII may prevent thrombosis without increasing the risk of bleeding. Here, Haj et al. use a large human dataset to show that this is the case for people carrying mutations that lower the levels of factor XII.

Phase transitions are often revealed by a discontinuous behaviour of thermodynamic quantities. Here, the authors study the thermodynamic behaviour of a trapped 2D photon gas, revealing critical behaviour at the phase transition through a cusp singularity of the specific heat.

Cooling materials using interaction with light has come a long way in the past 20 years. Researchers at the recent 2013 Photonics West showed that they can cool new types of materials and more can be expected in the future using new approaches.

The mechanical stresses within and between cells inside an advancing cellular monolayer are mapped experimentally. Cellular migration is found to be oriented in the direction of maximum principal stress indicating that cells collectively migrate to maintain minimal local intercellular shear stress.

Experiments and computations show that the organization and dynamics of molecules within and at interfaces of biomolecular condensates are governed by differential interaction strengths leading to the classification of adsorbents versus scaffolds.

High-throughput profiling of the transcriptomes of individual synapses shows molecular heterogeneity.

This study shows that a multitrophic community model jointly recapitulates diel rhythms in abundances of Prochlorococcus picocyanobacteria, as well as viral infection, viral abundances and grazer abundances. Model-data integration implies that grazing predominantly controls Prochlorococcus abundances in surface waters of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, despite high viral densities.

This isoform-centric microglia genomic atlas includes 35,879 novel human microglia isoforms identified by long-read RNA sequencing. A multi-ancestry quantitative trait locus meta-analysis of known and novel isoforms in 555 samples from 391 donors finds associations with genetic risk loci in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

This Perspective presents recent insights into vimentin filament structure and function and discusses emerging findings that point to a role in tumour invasion in mesenchymal cells analogous to embryonic development and wound healing.

Population level transcriptomics measurements miss bacterial heterogeneity. Here the authors report smRandom-seq, a droplet-based high-throughput single-microbe RNA-seq assay, using random primers for in situ cDNA generation, droplets for single-microbe barcoding, and CRISPR-based rRNA depletion.

Dark-field momentum microscopy makes it possible to spatio-temporally and spatio-spectrally resolve the dark-exciton dynamics in a twisted transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructure.

Biomolecular condensates can contain multiple phases. The number of droplets of each phase and their location give the condensate a certain architecture. Here the authors present a method to create a range of transient architectures in biomolecular condensates, making the architecture or interfacial area controllable design variables in experiments.

Strong genomics record bodes well but a shortage of doctors could pose a hurdle.

Serological testing remains a passive component of the current public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a mathematical model, the authors examine how testing for antibodies could have enabled policies in which seropositive individuals increased their relative levels of social interaction while offsetting transmission risks

Long-term experimental evolution and modelling show the evolution of small and large cluster-forming lineages of snowflake yeast that coexist over generations due to a trade-off between organismal size and competitiveness for dissolved oxygen.

Microdroplets are used as chemical and biological reactors; however, stability and inter-droplet transfer are major issues. Here, the authors report on the development of dendritic glycerol-based surfactants for the creation of stable microdroplets and demonstrate application for PCR, minimal emulsion, and cell encapsulation.

The potential control over the properties of colloidal crystals makes them interesting for applications in optical devices as photonic crystals. Here, Kim et al. demonstrate that the optical properties of rubber capsules in a microfluidic device can be tuned via osmotic pressure.

Bioelectronic interfacing with living tissues should match the biomechanical properties of biological materials to reduce damage to the tissues. Here, the authors present a fully viscoelastic microelectrode array composed of an alginate matrix and carbon-based nanomaterials encapsulated in a viscoelastic hydrogel for electrical stimulation and signal recording of heart and brain activities in vivo.

Viscoelasticity is a universal mechanical feature of the extracellular matrix. Here the authors show that the extracellular matrix viscoelasticity guides tissue growth and symmetry breaking, a fundamental process in morphogenesis and oncogenesis.

The Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues Network aims to create a reference catalogue of somatic mosaicism across different tissues and cells within individuals.

Deformation of soft colloidal crystals lead to work hardening, similar to that seen in the deformation of metals.

Phase transitions in quantum matter are related to correlation effects and they can change the ordering of material. Here the authors measure the first-order spatial correlation and the de Broglie wavelength for both thermal and condensed form of a photonic Bose gas in a dye-filled optical microcavity.

A metafluid with programmable compressibility, optical behaviour and viscosity is realized by mixing deformable spherical shells that undergo buckling within an incompressible fluid; the versatility of these metafluids opens up numerous opportunities for functionality.

Biomolecular condensates with internal structure allow cells to further organise their processes. In this work the authors investigate how condensates can obtain an internal structure with droplets of dilute phase inside via kinetic, rather than purely thermodynamic driving forces.

Glasses can be divided into fragile or strong, depending on whether they show a marked dependence of their relaxation time with temperature when approaching the glass transition. Although colloidal particles have previously been found to produce only fragile glasses, here it is shown that deformable colloidal particles exhibit the same variation in fragility as that observed in molecular liquids. Colloids are easy to study, so this model should provide new insight into glass formation in molecular systems.

Mechanical properties of materials are governed by dislocations, yet it remains a challenge to resolve their evolution on the atomic scale. Svetlizky et al. use colloidal crystals to investigate, in three dimensions, how dislocations enable plastic relaxation and the formation of networks.

Living cells can precisely assemble to build 3D functional architectures. Here the authors produce an extrudable microbial ink entirely from the engineered cells, which can be further programmed to 3D print functional living materials.

A neuron-specific activity-dependent DNA repair mechanism is identified, the impairment of which may lead to neurodevelopmental disorders, neurodegeneration and ageing.

Wigger, Barovic and Brunner et al. perform a multidimensional analysis of islets from metabolically characterized patients who had undergone pancreatectomy, observing remarkable heterogeneity between samples from individuals with type 2 diabetes, thus arguing against models of linear beta-cell dedifferentiation in diabetes.

An analogue of nano-indentation performed on a colloidal crystal provides direct images of defect formation in real time and on the single-particle level — allowing investigation of the effects of thermal fluctuations.

Fluorescent biosensors are important tools for studying cellular metabolism, but development and optimization are challenging. Koveal et al. present a high-throughput multiparameter screen for sensor performance, and used it to generate LiLac, a high-performance, quantitative lactate sensor.

It has been thought that sheets of cells move by traction forces exerted by the cells at the leading edge of the sheet. Using traction microscopy to create a map of physical forces, it is now shown that in fact it is cells many rows from the front that do most of the work.

Photocatalytic nanostructures can be created by using a genetically engineered virus as a scaffold to assemble organic photosensitizers and metal oxide catalysts in close proximity.

Inorganic nanowires composed of gold(I) cyanide can be grown directly on pristine graphene, aligning themselves with the zigzag lattice directions of the graphene, and then used as templates to create graphene nanoribbons with zigzag-edged directions.

Chromatin state is analyzed for the first time in single cells, revealing new cell subpopulations.

Multidimensional time- and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy is used to determine the interlayer exciton formation process, reveal a direct hallmark of the superlattice moiré modification, and reconstruct the real-space wavefunction distribution.