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A radio signal detected in the direction of Proxima Centauri in a Breakthrough Listen programme is analysed for signs that it was transmitted by extraterrestrial intelligent life, using a newly developed framework. However, the signal ‘blc1’ is likely to be terrestrial radio-frequency interference.

The ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 induces an immune response in rhesus macaques and leads to reduced SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in respiratory tissues and an absence of pneumonia, but not to a reduction in nasal virus shedding, compared with unvaccinated animals.

Metagenomics and electron microscopy are combined to analyse the diversity of episymbiotic CPR bacteria and DPANN archaea in eight groundwater communities.

McGinn et al. show that mechanical stretch in the developing oesophagus promotes the YAP-dependent emergence of a KLF4⁺ committed basal cell population, revealing how physiological strain triggers the transition to adult homeostasis.

Nik-Zainal and colleagues leverage CRISPR–Cas9 and whole-genome sequencing to examine mutational patterns following knockout of 42 human DNA repair genes. They further develop and validate a clinically relevant tool to detect mismatch repair-deficient tumors.

Single-cell RNA sequencing and T cell receptor sequencing are combined to identify transcriptional programs specific to mutation-associated neoantigen-specific T cells in non-small cell lung cancers treated with anti-PD-1, providing insights into resistance to PD-1 blockade.

Current antibody discovery technologies are limited in terms of their efficacy, accessibility, and scalability. The AHEAD system addresses these limitations by presenting an accelerated evolution workflow for antibody engineering that combines autonomous gene diversification with protein display technology.

Alzheimer’s disease has been associated with increased structural brain aging. Here the authors describe a model that predicts brain aging from resting state functional connectivity data, and demonstrate this is accelerated in individuals with pre-clinical familial Alzheimer’s disease.

The phosphorylation of serine/arginine-rich proteins by CDC-like kinase is a central regulatory mechanism for RNA splicing reactions. Here, the authors synthesize a novel small molecule CLK inhibitor and map CLK-responsive alternative splicing events and discover an effect on conjoined gene transcription.

Zika virus infection during pregnancy can result in birth defects, but underlying pathogenesis at the maternal-fetal interface is unclear. Here, the authors use non-invasive in vivo imaging of Zika-infected rhesus macaques and show that infection results in abnormal oxygen transport across the placenta.

A dataset of coding variation, derived from exome sequencing of nearly one million individuals from a range of ancestries, provides insight into rare variants and could accelerate the discovery of disease-associated genes and advance precision medicine efforts.

Pneumococcal carriage in the upper respiratory tract is an important determinant of influenza severity. Jochems et al. use human systems analysis to show that influenza-induced inflammation increases bacterial burden in the nasal cavity with implications for secondary bacterial pneumonia.

The genetic and pathogenetic basis of heart failure is incompletely understood. Here, the authors present a high-fidelity tissue collection from rapidly preserved failing and non-failing control hearts which are used for eQTL mapping and network analysis, resulting in the prioritization of PPP1R3A as a heart failure gene.

Two below-threshold surface code memories on superconducting processors markedly reduce logical error rates, achieving high efficiency and real-time decoding, indicating potential for practical large-scale fault-tolerant quantum algorithms.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide analyses identify new risk loci for age-related macular degeneration. Ancestry-specific analyses identify distinct effects at major risk loci, including smaller effect sizes for CFH risk alleles in haplotypes of African ancestry.

Type I interferons regulate immune responses by signaling via heterodimeric IFNAR1-IFNAR2 complexes. Hertzog and colleagues reveal a unique IFN-β–IFNAR1 signaling complex that is IFNAR2-independent and modulates expression of a distinct set of interferon-inducible genes.

Rebecca Fitzgerald and colleagues report whole-genome sequence analyses of 23 paired samples of Barrett's esophagus and esophageal adenocarcinoma. Their analyses of the clonal architecture of these lesions shows that copy number increases and heterogeneity persists during development of esophageal adenocarcinoma.

Derivatizing glycosphingolipids, extracted from bovine brain or human erythrocytes, with a fluorescent tag allows their immobilization on an array which can be probed with glycan binding proteins.

An array of approximately 300 different carbohydrate structures from select gut bacteria was generated and probed with mouse and rabbit IgG samples. The binding results indicate that galectins 3, 4 and 8 of the innate immune system can recognize certain microbes only if they express self-like antigens.

The expression of blood group antigens causes deletion of cells that generate self-specific antibodies to those antigens, but this deletion could limit adaptive immunity toward pathogens bearing cognate antigens. Two innate immune lectins, galectin-4 and galectin-8, are now reported to recognize and kill human blood group antigen–expressing bacteria.

Population-based genome sequencing provides an increasingly rich resource for the identification of low-frequency, large effect variants associated with clinically important phenotypes. Timpson et al. use UK10K data to identify a variant of the APOC3gene strongly associated with plasma triglyceride levels.

Adoptive cell therapy with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in metastatic lung cancer patients is safe and elicits antitumor activity, including ongoing complete responses, in association with polyclonal T cell responses against tumor antigens.

A single dose of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine elicits antibodies and cytokine-producing T cells that might help control or prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Whole-genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of nearly 400 esophageal adenocarcinoma samples suggest a model of rapid subclone spreading from the primary tumor to multiple metastatic sites, which the authors term ‘clonal diaspora’.

CellAssign uses a probabilistic model to assign single cells to a given cell type defined by known marker genes, enabling automated annotation of cell types present in a tumor microenvironment.

The authors pooled resources to identify best practices and develop a new standardized protocol for estimating functional connectivity in rats with magnetic resonance imaging.

Transcriptomic analyses of acute phase whole blood from a large cohort of patients with COVID-19 identify molecular determinants of post-infection long-term sequelae.

Melanocytic nevus count is associated with melanoma risk. In this study, a meta-analysis of 11 nevus GWAS studies identifies novel SNPs in KITLG and 9q32, and bivariate analysis with melanoma GWAS meta-analysis reveals that most nevus genes affect melanoma risk, while melanoma risk loci do not alter the nevus count.

Size and shape of the brain are, among others, influenced by the dimensions of the skull. Here, the authors report genome-wide association studies for head circumference and intracranial volume in children and adults and the identification of nine common or low-frequency variants associated with these traits.

Levels of circulating thyrotropin and free thyroxine reflect thyroid function, however, their genetic underpinnings remain poorly understood. Taylor et al. take advantage of whole-genome sequence data from cohorts within the UK10K project to identify novel variants associated with these traits.

In a new study including 200 families who experienced perinatal death, adding genomic analyses to standard autopsies improved the identification of underlying pathogenic causes and informed genetic counseling.

Iris Heid, Gonçalo Abecasis, Sudha Iyengar and colleagues report the results of a large genome-wide association meta-analysis of macular degeneration based on over 43,000 subjects. They identify 16 new risk loci, including some very rare coding variants.

Charles Mullighan, Stephen Hunger, Jinghui Zhang and colleagues report a genomic analysis of 264 pediatric and young adult T-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) samples. They identify 106 candidate driver genes, 53 of which have not been described previously in pediatric T-ALL, as well as associations between mutations and disease stage or subtype.

Matthew Law, Mark Iles and colleagues report the results of a large-scale genome-wide meta-analysis of cutaneous malignant melanoma. They confirm previously reported association signals and identify five new susceptibility loci, with associated variants mapping within putative melanocyte regulatory elements.

Low read depth sequencing of whole genomes and high read depth exomes of nearly 10,000 extensively phenotyped individuals are combined to help characterize novel sequence variants, generate a highly accurate imputation reference panel and identify novel alleles associated with lipid-related traits; in addition to describing population structure and providing functional annotation of rare and low-frequency variants the authors use the data to estimate the benefits of sequencing for association studies.

This report by the Consortium for Refractive Error and Myopia uses gene-environment-wide interaction study (GEWIS) to identify genetic loci that affect environmental influence in myopia development, and identifies ethnic specific genetic loci that attribute to eye refractive errors.

Imputation uses genotype information from SNP arrays to infer the genotypes of missing markers. Here, the authors show that an imputation reference panel derived from whole-genome sequencing of 3,781 samples from the UK10K project improves the imputation accuracy and coverage of low frequency variants compared to existing methods.

A consortium reports the tripling of the number of genetic markers in Phase II of the International HapMap Project. This map of human genetic variation will continue to revolutionize discovery of susceptibility loci in common genetic diseases, and study of genes under selection in humans.

A study demonstrating increasing error suppression with larger surface code logical qubits, implemented on a superconducting quantum processor.