Search

Cassava, a staple crop consumed by 800 million people, is enriched in iron and zinc through genetic biofortification.

Sensory systems must adapt to changing perceptual demands. Here, the authors show that changes in sub-second timescale neural population dynamics enable flexible sensory encoding during different behavioural states, in mouse visual cortex.

Brain slices offer an experimental window into human neurophysiology. Using high-density microelectrode array recordings and adeno-associated virus–mediated optogenetics, the authors demonstrate that optogenetic targeting of CAMK2A+ neurons can affect network activity in human hippocampal slices.

How the carbon stocks of the Arctic–Boreal Zone change with warming is not well understood. Here the authors show that wildfires and large regional differences in net carbon fluxes offset the overall increasing CO₂ uptake.

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.

Barcia Durán, Dayasagar, et al. map the expression of immune checkpoints in human atherosclerosis and examine the influence of lipid-lowering treatments and type 2 diabetes to understand how immune checkpoint inhibitors worsen cardiovascular risk in survivors of cancer.

Mangrove canopy height varies strongly around the globe in response to climatic factors, according to a global analysis of remote sensing and field data.

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.

Individual variation in fMRI-derived brain networks is reproduced in a model using only the smoothness (autocorrelation) of the fMRI time series. Smoothness has implication for aging and can be causally manipulated by psychedelic serotonergic drugs.

Time-resolved cryo-EM captured transient intermediates during E. coli RNAP promoter melting, revealing conformational changes affecting stepwise transcription bubble opening. Results inform how DNA sequence controls bacterial transcription initiation.

Norman-Haignere et al. present a general method for estimating neural integration windows. Applied to human intracranial recordings, the method reveals how human auditory cortex integrates across the multiscale temporal structure of natural sounds.

A nanoparticle-based immunotherapy targeted to a protein responsible for signalling between monocytes and macrophages reduces plaque inflammation in atherosclerotic mice and appears to be safe in non-human primates.

A reinforcement-learning algorithm that combines a tree-based search with a learned model achieves superhuman performance in high-performance planning and visually complex domains, without any knowledge of their underlying dynamics.

Cofactorless oxygenases are rare in nature and natural product biosynthesis. Here the authors describe the biochemical and structural characterization of two such oxygenases catalyzing deformylation, ring cleavage and epoxidation in the biosynthesis of the enediyne natural product tiancimycin A.

Summer snow accumulation and its albedo effect on Arctic sea ice are controlled by the Arctic Oscillation atmospheric circulation pattern, according to a combined modelling and remote sensing analysis.

Combined phylogenetic analyses and glycoprotein structure prediction across the Flaviviridae reveals divergent membrane fusion systems and provides insights into the complex evolutionary history within this family of viruses.

Analysis of antibody responses to COVID-19 vaccines encoding variant-specific spike, with or without ancestral spike, suggests no loss of neutralization of the ancestral virus with variant-only vaccines, which may simplify future vaccine updates.

Stabl selects sparse and reliable biomarker candidates from predictive models.

The discovery of the fossil remains of a tetrapod-like fish sheds light on the order in which important tetrapod characters arose.

Electrical deep brain stimulation therapy is limited by the risks of inserting electrodes into the brain. Here the authors report non-invasive deep brain stimulation in the human hippocampus using temporal interference of kHz electric fields.

20ExM achieves isotropic ~20× expansion of cells and tissues in a single shot for super-resolution imaging with <20-nm resolution on a conventional microscope.

Pantazopoulou et al. discovered that leaves sense neighbors by mutual touching of hairs on their surface, called trichomes. Using fluorescent biosensors, they show that this triggers a calcium wave to activate leaf movement away from competitors

Non-pharmaceutical interventions for COVID-19 also reduced incidence of respiratory pathogens such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Here, the authors report the resurgence of RSV in Australia following lifting of some of the restrictions and describe reduction in genetic diversity in circulating clades.

Immune disease-associated biomarker values are commonly more variable in affected compared to unaffected patient populations, which limits a biomarker’s informative range. Here, the authors formalise a computational solution that splits datasets into informative and uninformative subsets to improve biomarker discovery and performance of multivariate predictive models.

Inflammatory processes in atherosclerotic lesions promote disease progression and plaque rupture. Here the authors load the drug statin into nanoparticles made of recombinant high-density lipoprotein and show that these accumulate in atherosclerotic plaques and reduce plaque inflammation in mice.

Lee et al. have created the largest functional gene network for plants by combining existing data on Arabidopsis thaliana with data gathered from other organisms. Although the genetics of many A. thaliana traits has been thoroughly studied, the authors succeed in discovering new genes associated with root development and drought resistance.

How soluble misfolded proteins can bypass chaperones is unknown. Utilizing a meta-analysis, multi-scale modelling, and new experimental data it is found that this phenomena is common and arises from misfolded states that are native-like and long-lived due to protein self-entanglements.

A dataset of the genomes of 363 species from the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project shows increased power to detect shared and lineage-specific variation, demonstrating the importance of phylogenetically diverse taxon sampling in whole-genome sequencing.

Nissley and co-workers predict protein misfolding into kinetically trapped, entangled conformations that can bypass the proteostasis network to remain soluble but less-functional for long timescales is widespread within the E. coli proteome.

Spinal cord injury leads to flaccid paralysis resulting from the loss of descending serotonergic modulation. Murray et al. demonstrate that spontaneous recovery of motoneuron excitability is associated with alternative mRNA editing and increased expression of constitutively active 5HT_2C serotonin receptors. Activation of these receptors leads to large persistent calcium currents, sustained muscle contractions and restoration of locomotion. However, in the absence of descending modulation from the brain, this leads to spasticity. Inhibiting constitutive 5-HT receptor activity is effective in reducing spasticity in rats and humans following spinal cord injury.

THOC2 is an essential subunit of Transcription mRNA Export complex of eukaryotic cells and its compromise causes adverse (neuro)development. Using mouse model and patient cells the authors unravel molecular pathology of the syndrome, from R-loops dysregulation, to altered transcriptome and DNA damage triggered cell death.

Unlike Amazonian forests, African forests have maintained their carbon sink until recently but by 2030 the African carbon sink will have shrunk by 14 per cent and the Amazonian sink will reach almost zero.

Here the authors show the structures of single-pass transmembrane receptor guanylyl cyclase in both apo and hormone-bound states, advancing our understanding of cross-membrane signaling by single-pass transmembrane receptors.

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.

Field surveys suggest peatlands in the central Congo Basin are globally significant carbon stocks, storing approximately 28% of the world’s tropical peat carbon.

In a large-scale UK Biobank study of multimodal brain imaging and physiological markers, the authors find brain-mediated patterns of organ function and lifestyle pathways that are predictive of specific mental health outcomes.

The IDG-DREAM Challenge carried out crowdsourced benchmarking of predictive algorithms for kinase inhibitor activities on unpublished data. This study provides a resource to compare emerging algorithms and prioritize new kinase activities to accelerate drug discovery and repurposing efforts.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is highly heritable but the mechanisms of sporadic ALS are not fully understood. In this study, the authors identify drivers of variation and disease-relevant changes in the epigenomic profile of iPSC-derived motor neuron lines generated from ALS patients and healthy controls as part of the Answer ALS program.

Three techniques for estimating mass losses from the Greenland Ice Sheet produce comparable results for the period 1992–2018 that approach the trajectory of the highest rates of sea-level rise projected by the IPCC.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

The root cause of lithium dendrites during battery cycling is of fundamental interest. By performing operando microprobe experiments and statistical analyses, the authors report that lithium dendrites are initiated via nanoscale mechanical defects and can be manipulated via globally applied stresses.