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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.

CRISPR-based transcriptional activation (CRISPRa) is a powerful tool for controlling gene expression. Here, Liang et al. show that commonly used CRISPRa systems are surprisingly toxic to cells due to their potent activation domains, informing the application and development of this technology.

Zinc-ion batteries face challenges like dendrite formation, limiting their performance. Here, authors reveal that high-current deposition forms (002) textured Zn, enhancing cycling life, and propose guidelines for optimizing battery cycling protocols based on advanced in situ XRD analysis.

Neurons that respond emergently to illusory contours drive pattern completion in V1. Pattern completion in lower cortical areas may therefore mediate perceptual inference by selectively reinforcing activity patterns that match prior expectations.

The fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum distributes its 16 chromosomes irregularly between two nuclei within single ascospore cells. Here, the authors show that chromosomal segregation and genetic recombination occur normally during meiosis in this fungus, despite the unusual chromosomal distribution.

MultiSTAAR provides a general and flexible statistical framework for functionally informed multi-trait rare variant analysis of biobank-scale sequencing studies by jointly analyzing multiple traits and incorporating annotation information.

A high-bandwidth neuromotor interface offers performant out-of-the-box generalization across people.

Plasmodium parasites, the causative agent of malaria, infect and remodel red blood cells by exporting hundreds of proteins into the red blood cell cytosol, a topological conundrum given that the parasite resides in a compartment known as the parasitophorous vacuole; here a dihydrofolate-reductase-based destabilization domain approach is used to inactivate HSP101, part of the Plasmodium translocon of exported proteins, and to demonstrate that it is required for the secretion of all classes of exported Plasmodium proteins.

Improved effectors for CRISPRi/CRISPRa are developed following high-throughput screening of transcriptional domains.

A new study from the eMERGE consortium provides insights on the development of a pipeline for the generation and reporting of polygenic risk scores for ten diseases to diverse populations in a clinical setting.

Life is homochiral, and prior work posited that D-RNA may interact preferentially with L-amino acids. Here, the authors show that self-aminoacylating D-RNAs do not have an intrinsic preference for L-amino acids, suggesting that either handedness could emerge from early living systems.

Here Ramanan and colleagues provide an analysis of mammary T cells during late pregnancy and lactation. This revealed an increase in intraepithelial lymphocytes in the lactating mammary gland, which was driven by thymic and intestinal inputs and was sensitive to changes in the microbiota

Analyses of genome and exome sequencing data identify rare coding and structural variants associated with atrial fibrillation and highlight genetic links between atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathies.

An ingestible electronic device can record biopotential electrical signals from the gastric environment—including the gastric slow wave, respiration signal and heart signal—and can monitor slow wave activity in freely moving and feeding animals.

A consensus cell type atlas for the fly brain provides both an intellectual framework and open-source toolchains for brain-scale comparative connectomics.

Multi-modal analysis is used to generate a 3D atlas of the upper limb area of the mouse primary motor cortex, providing a framework for future studies of motor control circuitry.

Recent estimates of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) intake are generally unavailable. Here the authors show a global SSBs intake of 2.7 servings/week in 2018 in adults (range: 0.7 South Asia, 7.8 Latin America/Caribbean); intakes were higher among males, younger, more educated, and urban adults.

Treatment of primary glioblastoma cell lines with epigenetic therapy reactivates transposable elements (TEs). TE-derived transcripts can produce human leukocyte antigen class I-presented antigens, which could potentially be therapeutically targeted.

A device architecture based on indium arsenide–aluminium heterostructures with a gate-defined superconducting nanowire allows single-shot interferometric measurement of fermion parity and demonstrates an assignment error probability of 1%.

Transposons are DNA sequences that can mobilize, causing deleterious mutations. This work uncovers a novel structure in RNA polymerase IV allowing it to dock with four CLSY recruitment factors and silence transposons throughout the genome.

Explosive volcanic eruptions of Kīlauea in Hawaii can be explained by sudden subsidence of reservoir roof rock causing gas and lithic debris venting by a mechanism similar to that of a stomp rocket, according to seismic inversions for reservoir pressure changes.

An analysis based on data from the Global Dietary Database shows mean animal-sourced food intakes among children and adolescents increased modestly from 1990 to two portions per day in 2018, but remain low in sub-Saharan Africa, India and Bangladesh.

STAARpipeline is a comprehensive framework for flexible and scalable rare-variant association analysis using whole-genome sequencing data and annotation information.

The BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network has constructed a multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex in a landmark effort towards understanding brain cell-type diversity, neural circuit organization and brain function.

Dietary quality is reported at the global, regional and national level across 185 countries. Though diet quality increased modestly since 1990 at the global level, in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa it did not improve. In some regions, children’s dietary quality is lower than that of adults.

The Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues Network aims to create a reference catalogue of somatic mosaicism across different tissues and cells within individuals.

Analysis of multiple tumor types, cancer cell lines and adult tissues identifies tumor-specific transposable-element-chimeric transcripts. Mass spectrometry data confirm that many are translated and subsequently located on the extracellular surface of cancer cells, highlighting potential immunogenic therapies.

Sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) represent the sites where micro-metastasis can first develop, however they are also important to mount effective anti-tumor immune responses. Here the authors describe the design of a flex-patch loaded with anti-PD-1 antibodies and immuno-adjuvant nanosheets, layered double hydroxide, to fuel anti-tumor immune response in the SLN for postsurgical breast cancer adjuvant therapy.

Sparse labelling and whole-brain imaging are used to reconstruct and classify brain-wide complete morphologies of 1,741 individual neurons in the mouse brain, revealing a dependence on both brain region and transcriptomic profile.

The storage capacity of rechargeable lithium batteries is limited by their electrodes, especially the cathode. A layered copper vanadate material, which reacts electrochemically with lithium ions in an unexpected and reversible way, greatly expands the range of cathode choices.

A comprehensive multi-omics reference atlas of prenatal human skin shows that innate immune cells crosstalk with non-immune cells to perform pivotal roles in skin morphogenesis, including the formation of hair follicles.

Cancer cells possess unique molecular features that can confer an increased dependence on specific genes. Here, the authors use CRISPR-Cas9 screens to identify selectively essential genes and therapeutic targets in chordoma.

Off-target effects in CRISPR screens for essential regulatory elements have not been systematically evaluated. Here the authors find Cas9 nuclease, CRISPRi/a each have distinct off-target effects, and that these can be accurately identified and removed using the GuideScan sgRNA specificity score.

Nebulin-based nemaline myopathy is a heterogenous disease with unclear pathological mechanisms. Here, the authors generate a mouse model that mimics the most common genetic cause of the disease and demonstrate that muscle weakness in this model is associated with twisted actin filaments and altered tropomyosin and troponin behaviour.

A transancestral exome-wide association study for body-fat distribution identifies protein-coding variants that are significantly associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index.

The authors report subnanosecond thermal transport on a gold–hexagonal boron nitrite interface governed by hyperbolic phonon–polariton coupling, demonstrating a cooling mechanism orders of magnitude faster than those relying on phonon-mediated processes.

Analysis of whole-genome sequences of 25,465 individuals of European ancestry shows that rare variants contribute substantially to the heritability of height and body mass index.

Exome-wide analysis identifies rare and low-frequency coding variants associated with body mass index. Gene-based meta-analysis and functional studies implicate 13 genes, eight of which are novel, and neuronal pathways as factors in human obesity.

RNA sensing-mediated payload expression provides a specific, versatile, simple and generalizable means of detecting and manipulating animal cells with broad potential applications.

Thus far, pleiotropy analysis using individual-level Electronic Health Records data has been limited to data from one site. Here, the authors introduce Sum-Share, a method designed to efficiently and losslessly integrate EHR and genetic data from multiple sites to perform pleiotropy analysis.

The increasing scale and scope of biomedical data is generating tremendous opportunities for improving health outcomes, but also raises new challenges ranging from data acquisition and storage to data analysis and utilization. To meet these challenges, the authors develop the Personal Health Dashboard, which provides an end-to-end solution for deep biomedical data analytics.

Although the common genetic variants contributing to blood lipid levels have been studied, the contribution of rare variants is less understood. Here, the authors perform a rare coding and noncoding variant association study of blood lipid levels using whole genome sequencing data.

Whole-exome analysis of individuals with developmental disorders shows that de novo mutations can equally cause loss or altered protein function, but that most mutations causing altered protein function have not yet been described.

In Caenorhabditis elegans, the ribonucleotidyltransferase RDE-3 adds alternating uridine and guanosine ribonucleotides to the 3′ termini of RNAs, a key step in RNA interference and thus epigenetic inheritance in the C. elegans germline.

A combination of genetic strategies and tools is used to define and fate-map different subtypes of glutamatergic pyramidal neurons according to their developmental and molecular programs, providing insight into the assembly of cortical processing networks.

Using data from a single time point, passenger-approximated clonal expansion rate (PACER) estimates the fitness of common driver mutations that lead to clonal haematopoiesis and identifies TCL1A activation as a mediator of clonal expansion.