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Male túngara frogs living in urban environments have adjusted their mating calls in response to differing sexual and natural selection pressures. Males have more conspicuous calls, experience lower predation risk and attract more females than forest-dwelling conspecifics.

Acromyrmex ants cultivate fungus gardens that can be parasitized by Escovopsis sp., leading to colony collapse. Here, Heine et al. identify two secondary metabolites produced by Escovopsis that accumulate in Acromyrmex tissue, reduce behavioural defenses and suppress symbiotic Pseudonocardia bacteria.

Animal sexual signals should be conspicuous to mates but not to enemies. Here, the authors show that call site properties can set limits on the attractiveness of male frogs' advertisement call, but that males may balance sexual success over predation risk by digging deeper puddles.

Gamboa et al. develop a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapeutic strategy based on synthetic antigens that are delivered to the tumor by lipid nanoparticles and demonstrate the therapeutic efficacy of their approach using CAR T cells directed against the synthetic antigen.

The genetic mechanisms underlying mate choice decisions can inform our understanding of speciation. A study on Heliconius butterflies identifies 5 candidate genes that would allow sympatric species to evolve distinct preferences without altering their visual perception of the wider environment.

The diverse Heliconius butterflies have evolved key innovations, including pollen feeding, and are a quintessential example of adaptive radiation. Using comparative genomics, Cicconardi et al. identify targets of selection at coding and non-coding loci during major ecological transitions in Heliconius.

Here, the authors present an update to a widely used curatedMetagenomicData (cMD) database and use it to create a catalog of microbiome-phenotype associations (age, sex, body mass index), and develop an oral enrichment score in the gut microbiome independently of age.

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a form of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma with a high degree of genetic and clinical heterogeneity. Here, using a multi-omics approach, the authors investigate genetic alterations in association with the tumour microenvironment to identify potential therapeutic vulnerabilities.

Leaf-cutting ants cultivate fungi that have evolved inflated hyphal cells, known as gongylidia, on which the ants feed. Here, the authors perform genetic and transcriptomic analyses of gongylidia, supporting that these fungal structures provide the ants with essential amino acids and plant-degrading enzymes.

Shock synthesis of diamond and even harder carbon polymorphs from graphite is of great interest for science and technology. Here, the authors present unprecedented in situmeasurements of the structural changes, showing ultrafast formation of diamond and, at higher pressures, evidence for a pure lonsdaleite structure.

Biomineral armour is known in a number of diverse creatures but has not previously been observed in insects. Here, the authors report on the discovery and characterization of high-magnesium calcite armour which overlays the exoskeletons of leaf-cutter ants.

Analysis of soundscape data from 139 globally distributed sites reveals that sounds of biological origin exhibit predictable rhythms depending on location and season, whereas sounds of anthropogenic origin are less predictable. Comparisons between paired urban–rural sites show that urban green spaces are noisier and dominated by sounds of technological origin.

A parasitic ant has abandoned the multiple mating habit of the queens of its related host.

Multiomics analysis of right colon tissues identifies a distinct immune gene signature associated with greater risk of and shorter time to dysplasia in patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis, but not in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

The delivery of oligonucleotides disrupting the secondary structure of single-guide RNAs and of short interfering RNAs targeting Cas9 mRNA can enhance lipid-nanoparticle-mediated gene editing in vivo in tissues other than the liver.

Genome-wide analyses identify common variants associated with 11 distinct neuropathology endophenotypes, providing insights into the mechanisms underlying the genetic risk of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

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.

A meta-analysis of associations between human genetic variation and gut microbial structural variations shows that ABO genotype differentially affects the presence of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii strains containing GalNAc utilization pathway in the gut.

Wing colour patterning of multiple species in the butterfly genus Heliconius is controlled by differential expression of the gene cortex, a member of a conserved family of cell cycle regulators.

Changes in the abundance and diversity of neural cell types provide the substrate for behavioral evolution. This study provides evidence of extensive, mosaic expansion of an integration brain center, among closely related Heliconiini butterflies, associated with increased neuron number, visual processing and long term memory.

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.

Spatial control of the production of immunomodulatory biologics by CAR T cells engineered with synthetic gene switches that respond to mild elevations in temperature enhances the cells’ antitumour activity.

The ATLAS Collaboration reports a measurement of the ratio of the decay rates of W bosons to τ leptons and muons, in agreement with universal lepton couplings as postulated in the standard model of particle physics.

It is challenging to reliably probe the miscibility behavior of elements in extreme conditions. Here, the authors use X-ray Thomson scattering and compare to the X-ray diffraction method in order to determine mixing of different atomic species in warm dense matter conditions.

The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider reports a search for charged-lepton-flavour violation in decays of Z bosons into a τ lepton and an electron or muon of opposite charge.

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Diamonds precipitate from methane under the intense pressures of the atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus. Here, a laser shock experiment on a hydrocarbon sample shows that diamonds may require ten times as much pressure to precipitate as was previously thought.

A database of microbial signatures is used for systematic comparison of differential abundance patterns.

Cell-specific respiration rates differ by more than 1,000× among prokaryoplankton genera, and the majority of respiration was found to be performed by minority members of prokaryoplankton, whereas cells of the most prevalent lineages had extremely low respiration rates.

Joseph Gleeson, David Silver and colleagues show that inactivating mutations in MFSD2A, which encodes an essential transporter of long-chain fatty acids in brain, cause a lethal microcephaly syndrome. These results establish a link between the activity of this transporter and human brain growth.

Jens Lykke-Andersen, Frank Baas, Joseph Gleeson and colleagues report that mutations in the 3′ exonuclease TOE1 cause pontocerebellar hypoplasia type 7. They further show that these mutations result in the accumulation of incompletely processed small nuclear RNAs, leading to severe, early-onset neurodegeneration.