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This study provides a comprehensive spatiotemporal map of human and mouse gonadal differentiation, using a combination of single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, chromatin accessibility assays and fluorescent microscopy, which can guide in vitro gonadogenesis.

The Large Hadron Collider beauty collaboration reports a test of lepton flavour universality in decays of bottom mesons into strange mesons and a charged lepton pair, finding evidence of a violation of this principle postulated in the standard model.

Climate change mitigation will require both household and government action. This study shows that engaging in energy-saving behaviour at home leads to the perception that sufficient progress is being made through individual action, which reduces support for government policies.

Over half the world’s rivers dry periodically, yet little is known about the biological communities in dry riverbeds. This study examines biodiversity across 84 non-perennial rivers in 19 countries using DNA metabarcoding. It finds that nutrient availability, climate and biotic interactions influence the biodiversity of these dry environments.

This overview of the ENCODE project outlines the data accumulated so far, revealing that 80% of the human genome now has at least one biochemical function assigned to it; the newly identified functional elements should aid the interpretation of results of genome-wide association studies, as many correspond to sites of association with human disease.

Adult forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are of a polygenic nature, but paediatric and very early onset (VEO) IBD also occur as monogenic forms. Here, using whole exome sequencing, the authors explore both the monogenic and polygenic contribution to VEO-IBD and characterize a rare somatic mosaic VEO-IBD patient.

Integrating inventory data with machine learning models reveals the global composition of tree types—needle-leaved evergreen individuals dominate, followed by broadleaved evergreen and deciduous trees—and climate change risks.

The LHCb collaboration reports an improved measurement of the oscillation frequency of mesons consisting of a bottom quark and strange quark, which is then combined with previous results.

AcrB is a prototypical resistance–nodulation–division (RND) bacterial transporter, conferring resistance to a variety of antibiotics. HDX-MS and other, complementary approaches offer insight into AcrB structural dynamics and suggest the molecular mechanisms underlying drug export and inhibition of this multidrug-resistance conferring pump.

Bean et al. provide evidence showing that the mitochondrial cristae biogenesis protein Opa1 facilitates cell-autonomous white to brown/beige adipocyte conversion, through a process dependent on the urea cycle.

Denoising low-counting statistics data in the presence of multiple, unknown noise profiles is a challenging task in scientific applications where high accuracy is required. Oppliger and colleagues train a deep convolutional neural network on pairs of experimental low- and high-noise X-ray diffraction data and demonstrate better performance on experimental noise filtering compared with the case of training on artificial data pairs.

Hydrogen is mainly produced industrially via steam methane reforming, a multistage process carried out in large plants to minimize energy losses and costs. Here, by exploiting thermal integration in a protonic membrane reformer, the authors produce compressed hydrogen in a single step with high efficiency.

Despite the apparent simplicity of a H2O molecule, the mutual ferroelectric ordering of the molecules is unresolved. Here, the authors realize a macroscopic ferroelectric phase transition in a network of dipole-dipole coupled water molecules located in nanopores of gemstone.

Analyzing the massive and heterogenous datasets from genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) datasets presents several computational and statistical challenges. Ji et al. present a software suite that integrates all steps in ChIP-chip and ChIP-seq data analyses and illustrate the use of these tools by comparing the ability of the two platforms to identify transcription factor binding sites.

The heterogeneity of breast cancer has a major role in drug response and resistance. In this study, the authors use patient-derived tumour xenografts as a platform for drug testing and correlation with single-cell proteomic phenotypes characterized by mass cytometry.

A computer built entirely using transistors based on carbon nanotubes, which is capable of multitasking and emulating instructions from the MIPS instruction set, is enabled by methods that overcome inherent challenges with this new technology.

The extragalactic background light at far-infrared wavelengths comes from optically faint, dusty, star-forming galaxies with star formation rates at the level of a few hundred solar masses per year. These faint submillimetre galaxies are challenging to study individually, but their average properties can be studied using statistics such as the angular power spectrum of the background intensity variations. This study reports excess clustering over the linear prediction at arcminute angular scales in the power spectrum of brightness fluctuations at 250, 350 and 500 micrometres. It is found that submillimetre galaxies are located in dark matter haloes with a minimum mass of log₁₀[M_min/solar mass]=11.5^+0.7_-0.2 at 350° micrometres.

Amino acid glycine is shown here to form in the laboratory at temperatures of <15 K without the need for energetic processing (such as ultraviolet irradiation or particle bombardment). The implication is that amino acids could potentially form at the very earliest stages of star formation and persist until planetary systems are established.

A universal descriptor for the prediction of C–H bond activation barriers has been established, and combined with a thermodynamic analysis of methane activation, to provide design rules for various types of heterogeneous catalysts.

Exome sequencing and copy number analysis are used to define genomic aberrations in early sporadic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma; among the findings are mutations in genes involved in chromatin modification and DNA damage repair, and frequent and diverse somatic aberrations in genes known as embryonic regulators of axon guidance.

CP violation has deep implications for particle physics and cosmology. Previously observed only in meson decays, signs of CP violation have now been spotted in baryon decays by analysing the proton–proton collision data from the LHCb detector.

Contrary to the view that urbanization is a major driver of the global rise in obesity, the global increase in body-mass index is shown to be mostly due to increases in the body-mass indexes of rural populations.

There is limited evidence linking learning related changes in hippocampal representations and memory interference. Here Favila and colleagues demonstrate that learning reduces overlap in hippocampal activity patterns corresponding to similar events, which benefits subsequent learning by preventing interference.

Matthew Meyerson and colleagues report whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing of 55 small intestine neuroendocrine tumors. They identify recurrent somatic mutations in CDKN1B, implicating cell cycle dysregulation in the pathogenesis of these tumors.

Analysis of mitochondrial genomes (mtDNA) by using whole-genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancer samples across 38 cancer types identifies hypermutated mtDNA cases, frequent somatic nuclear transfer of mtDNA and high variability of mtDNA copy number in many cancers.

Direct sequencing of RNA molecules in real time using nanopores allows for the detection of splice variants and hold promises for profiling RNA modifications.

To promote the recovery of the currently declining global trends in terrestrial biodiversity, increases in both the extent of land under conservation management and the sustainability of the global food system from farm to fork are required.

Resistance to first line treatment is a major hurdle in cancer treatment, that can be overcome with drug combinations. Here, the authors provide a large drug combination screen across cancer cell lines to benchmark crowdsourced methods and to computationally predict drug synergies.

Mutations in proteins that localize to primary cilia cause devastating diseases, yet the primary cilium is a poorly understood organelle. Here the authors use interaction proteomics to identify a network of human ciliary proteins that provides new insights into several biological processes and diseases.

Ancient DNA analysis of early European farmers has found a high level of genetic affinity with present-day Sardinians. Here, the authors generate genome-wide capture data for 70 individuals from Sardinia spanning the Middle Neolithic to Medieval period to reveal relationships with mainland European populations shifting over time.

Severe congenital development defects such as Jeune syndrome can result from the malfunction of primary cilia and dynein. Here Schmidts et al. report unique biallelic null mutations in a gene encoding a dynein light chain, helping to explain the nature of ciliopathies in human patients.

Efficient, large-scale genomic analysis is facilitated on the cloud by a computational tool with error-diagnosing and self-healing capabilities.

Previous work had suggested that fMRI measures can be used as a marker of pain experience. Here the authors find no evidence for a link between perceived pain intensity and fMRI activation.

A series of four storms appeared on Saturn’s northern polar region in 2018, unusually close to each other in space and time. By their dimension and the energy needed to form them, they appear to be a hitherto unobserved kind of storm at Saturn, intermediate between the regional- and the global-sized ones.

Barrett’s oesophagus is thought to be a precursor lesion for oesophageal cancer, and predicting the benign lesions that progress to cancer is clinically important. Here, the authors use FISH to study the clonal evolution of Barrett’s oesophagus and show that genetic diversity and somatic mutations are present early in the benign disease.

Analysis of whole-genome sequencing data across 2,658 tumors spanning 38 cancer types shows that chromothripsis is pervasive, with a frequency of more than 50% in several cancer types, contributing to oncogene amplification, gene inactivation and cancer genome evolution.

In the version of this article initially published, there was a mistake in the calculation of the nucleotide mutation rate per site per generation: 1 × 10⁻⁹ mutations per site per generation was used, whereas 9.5 × 10⁻⁹ was correct. This error affects the interpretation of population-size changes over time and their possible correspondence with known geological events, as shown in the original Fig. 4 and supporting discussion in the text, as well as details in the Supplementary Note. Neither the data themselves nor any other results are affected. Figure 4 has been revised accordingly. Images of the original and corrected figure panels are shown in the correction notice.

Victor Albert, Petri Auvinen, Ykä Helariutta, Jaakko Kangasjärvi and colleagues report the reference genome of the silver birch (Betula pendula) and resequencing of 150 birch individuals. They infer past population size crashes consistent with historical periods of climatic change and identify candidate targets of more recent positive selection.

Eric Rahrmann and colleagues performed a transposon-based somatic mutagenesis screen for genes involved in malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNSTs). They identified many recurrent transposon insertions and nominate Foxr2 as a new oncogene in MPNSTs.

The accurate determination of quark mixing parameters is essential for the understanding of the Standard Model. The LHCb collaboration now reports the coupling strength of the b quark to the u quark through the measurement of a baryonic decay mode.