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Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

Humanity’s Last Exam, a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, is designed to be an expert-level closed-ended academic benchmark with broad subject coverage.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

A recently developed class of magneto-sensitive fluorescent proteins are engineered to alter the properties of their response to magnetic fields and radio frequencies, enabling multimodal sensing of biological systems.

IL-6 blockade represents a promising therapeutic approach for the treatment of osteoarthritis (OA), although durable effects have yet to be explored in clinical trials. Here, the authors report the results of a phase I randomized clinical trial testing the efficacy and safety of PPV-06, an anti-IL-6 active immunotherapy able to modulate the activity of circulating IL-6 in patients with knee OA.

Pre-treatment dual immune checkpoint blockade in cervical cancer remains understudied. In this trial, the authors show that neoadjuvant immune checkpoint blockade enhances immune activation and correlates with improved response to subsequent chemoradiation in patients with cervical carcinoma.

Segmented Filamentous Bacteria (SFB) are understudied commensals that promote immune activation through their attachment to the intestinal epithelium. Here, Cruz et al. use cryo-electron microscopy and tomography to identify various surface structures and uncover a developmental transition at the SFB adhesive tip.

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.

Analyses of 475 ancient horse genomes show modern horses emerged around 2200 bce, coinciding with sudden expansion across Eurasia, refuting the narrative of large horse herds accompanying earlier migrations of steppe peoples across Europe.

Data provided by Amazonian peoples are used to estimate the value of wild animals as a source of food, including its spatial distribution and nutritional value, providing information that will be key for improved management of forest ecosystems in the region.

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.

Species’ traits and environmental conditions determine the abundance of tree species across the globe. Here, the authors find that dominant tree species are taller and have softer wood compared to rare species and that these trait differences are more strongly associated with temperature than water availability.

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.

Examining drivers of the latitudinal biodiversity gradient in a global database of local tree species richness, the authors show that co-limitation by multiple environmental and anthropogenic factors causes steeper increases in richness with latitude in tropical versus temperate and boreal zones.

The RNA methyltransferase activity of SPOUT1/CENP-32 is crucial for accurate mitotic spindle organization. Here, the authors describe a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by bi-allelic pathogenic SPOUT1 variants with reduced activity and compromised function in spindle organization.

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.

Most Amazon tree species are rare but a small proportion are common across the region. The authors show that different species are hyperdominant in different size classes and that hyperdominance is more phylogenetically restricted for larger canopy trees than for smaller understory ones.

The anti-CRISPR protein IF9 (AcrIF9) specifically inhibits the type I-F CRISPR adaptive immune system. Here, the authors present the cryo-EM structure of AcrIF9 in complex with the type I-F CRISPR RNA-guided surveillance complex (Csy) and a dsDNA bound Csy-AcrIF9 structure, and find that AcrIF9 binding to the Csy complex triggers non-sequence specific dsDNA binding to Csy-AcrIF9, which might sequester the complex from its target DNA.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

An analysis of 2,954 genomes from 38 cancer subtypes identified 19,166 retrotransposition events in 35% of samples. Aberrant LINE-1 retrotranspositions can lead to the deletion of tumor-suppressor genes as well as the amplification of oncogenes.

The SARS-COV-2 pandemic has put pressure on intensive care units, so that predicting severe deterioration early is a priority. Here, the authors develop a multimodal severity score including clinical and imaging features that has significantly improved prognostic performance in two validation datasets compared to previous scores.

Wood density is an important plant trait. Data from 1.1 million forest inventory plots and 10,703 tree species show a latitudinal gradient in wood density, with temperature and soil moisture explaining variation at the global scale and disturbance also having a role at the local level.

Atomic defects in semiconductors, like nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond, are promising as solid state systems for quantum computing. Here, the authors show the complete quantum control of an exciton qubit formed from an isoelectronic centre in GaAs, establishing this material as a promising alternative.

A species-level phylogenetic analysis of the high-elevation flora of the European Alps reveals that the flora is young and colonist rich. Its assembly was primarily driven by the Pleistocene climatic cycles, rather than ancient orogenic events.

Mammary gland resident macrophages are known to be crucial components of the mammary stem cell niche. Here, the authors show that CXCR4⁺ macrophages form a niche that regulates the tumor-initiating activity of breast cancer cells and induces early immune evasion through the recruitment of regulatory T cells.

What is the state of trust in scientists around the world? To answer this question, the authors surveyed 71,922 respondents in 68 countries and found that trust in scientists is moderately high.

Antimicrobial resistance is a major global health threat and its development is promoted by antibiotic misuse. Here, the authors present an offline smartphone application for automated and standardized antibiotic susceptibility testing, to be deployed in resource-limited settings.

A doped quantum antiferromagnet is obtained by using a Rydberg tweezer array comprising three levels encoding spins and holes to implement a tunable model that allows the study of previously inaccessible parameter regimes.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

Analyses of 2,658 whole genomes across 38 types of cancer identify the contribution of non-coding point mutations and structural variants to driving cancer.

In somatic cells the mechanisms maintaining the chromosome ends are normally inactivated; however, cancer cells can re-activate these pathways to support continuous growth. Here, the authors characterize the telomeric landscapes across tumour types and identify genomic alterations associated with different telomere maintenance mechanisms.

With the generation of large pan-cancer whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing projects, a question remains about how comparable these datasets are. Here, using The Cancer Genome Atlas samples analysed as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the authors explore the concordance of mutations called by whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing techniques.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

Whole-genome sequencing data from more than 2,500 cancers of 38 tumour types reveal 16 signatures that can be used to classify somatic structural variants, highlighting the diversity of genomic rearrangements in cancer.

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

A pan-cancer genomic analysis reports the effects of structural variations on chromatin domains (TADs). Most TAD disruptions do not result in appreciable changes in expression of nearby genes.