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Direct infusion–shotgun proteome analysis (DI-SPA) using data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry (DIA-MS) achieves fast and reproducible results by omitting the liquid-chromatography fractionation step and directly performing gas-phase peptide fractionation by ion mobility.

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) lacks effective diagnostic and therapeutic strategies, in particular at advanced stages. Here, the authors show that expression of the somatostatin receptor 2 is induced by Epstein-Barr virus in NPC and has a key role in the diagnosis, imaging, targeted therapies and prognosis of NPC.

Vesicle tethering is the least well understood step of vesicular transport. The core conserved oligomeric Golgi (COG) vesicle tethering complex from yeast, consisting of the four essential subunits Cog1–4, is now reconstituted and characterized by negative stain EM and single particle analysis. The COG complex forms a y-shaped structure, whose central region and the distal regions of at least two legs all participate in interactions with other components of the intracellular trafficking machinery.

Genetic and testing data from England show that the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern B.1.1.7 has a transmission advantage over other lineages.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.

The spectroscopic and photometric observations of a high-mass, transiting warm Jupiter, TIC 241249530 b, with an orbital eccentricity of 0.94, provide evidence that hot Jupiters may have formed by means of a high-eccentricity tidal-migration pathway.

Certain shorelines can be modeled with prediction accuracies comparable to satellite observations, according to benchmarking results using satellite-derived shoreline datasets for model calibration and evaluation.

A resistance mechanism for a class of drugs targeting histone acetyltransferase inhibitors was identified where metabolic rewiring creates high concentrations of acetyl-CoA that outcompete drug-target engagement.

Many individual genetic risk loci associate with multiple diseases, but the molecular basis of these loci often remains unclear. Here, the authors provide a framework to reveal the genetic cross-disease associations at the PROCR vascular disease locus.

Transcription factors of the AP-1 family can play diverse roles despite recognizing the same DNA sequence. Here the authors investigate the DNA binding activities of AP-1 members in mouse macrophages and apply a machine learning approach to identify motifs predicted to drive factor-specific binding profiles.

The cell adhesion molecule E-selectin regulates haematopoietic stem cell self-renewal in the bone marrow vascular niche. Here, the authors show E-selectin adhesion directly induces survival signaling in acute myeloid leukaemia and therapeutic inhibition improves chemotherapy outcomes in mice.

A portable device enables the automated manufacturing of therapeutic-grade biologics in a few hours and under current good-manufacturing-practice conditions.

Marais and colleagues report that checkpoint inhibitor treatment of patients with melanoma leads to dynamic changes in peripheral T cells and expansion of immune effector cells. This awakening of the immune system occurs early after treatment and could be exploited in the clinic.

A new multilevel clustering approach applied retrospectively to 13,000 transcriptomes of different tumors reveals a new diagnostic classification of childhood cancers, in some cases allowing a better prediction of disease outcomes.

The herbicide propyzamide increases inflammation in the small and large intestine, and the AHR–NF-κB–C/EBPβ signalling axis—which operates in T cells and dendritic cells to promote intestinal inflammation—is targeted by propyzamide.

HIV vaccine development can be aided by knowledge of correlates of protection. Here the authors identify engagement and reprogramming of tolerogenic CD14⁺ myeloid cells mediating a spatiotemporal balance of pro- and anti-inflammatory responses, as correlates of efficacy in female macaques vaccinated with the DNA/ALVAC/gp120/Alum platform.

The eukaryotic heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) undergoes an ATP-dependent conformational cycle that is influenced by posttranslational modifications and co-chaperones. Here, the authors show that the yeast co-chaperone Hch1 can be functionally substituted by site-specific phosphorylation in human Hsp90.

The embryonic limb bud is known to be patterned by a Shh morphogen gradient, though how Shh expression is activated remains less clear. Here the authors show that Etv2 acts as a pioneer transcription factor to mediate accessibility of the ZRS enhancer and initiate Shh expression.

A mostly natural sequencing-by-synthesis method is effective for scRNA-seq, particularly in large-scale studies.

Current treatments for toxoplasmosis are limited by adverse reactions and inability to cure chronic infections dominated by semi-dormant cyst forms. Here the authors demonstrate the potential of small molecule inhibitors of PheRS for controlling acute and chronic toxoplasmosis.

Rapid action suppression is often modeled as a race between 'Go' and 'Stop' processes, but how this corresponds to brain mechanisms has been unclear. The authors recorded simultaneously from multiple rat basal ganglia structures during a Stop-signal task and found Go-related activity in striatum and stop-related activity in the subthalamic nucleus. These distinct signals provide convergent, competing influences over individual cells in the substanti anigra pars reticulata, whose activity reflects whether stopping is successful or not. The results tie together neurophysiology and psychological theory to provide a mechanistic account of how we can or cannot cancel forthcoming actions.

Bisphosphoglycerate mutase (BPGM) drives phosphoglycerate mutase 1 (PGAM1) phosphorylation, which is required for glycolytic flux. Loss of BPGM is partially compensated by 1,3-BPG directly phosphorylating PGAM1, sustaining glycolytic flux but diverting metabolites for serine synthesis.

Informed-Proteomics, a software suite for top-down proteomics analysis, consists of a high-accuracy liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry feature-finding algorithm, an efficient database search tool, and an interactive results viewer.

SITE-Seq probes Cas9 cleavage sites in vitro and returns a comprehensive list of off-target sites at different Cas9–sgRNA concentrations.

The Omicron variant evades vaccine-induced neutralization but also fails to form syncytia, shows reduced replication in human lung cells and preferentially uses a TMPRSS2-independent cell entry pathway, which may contribute to enhanced replication in cells of the upper airway. Altered fusion and cell entry characteristics are linked to distinct regions of the Omicron spike protein.

A retrospective analysis using PCR testing, viral enrichment-based sequencing and agnostic metagenomic sequencing finds an association between adeno-associated virus type 2 and paediatric hepatitis of unknown cause.

Lignin conversion to higher value products is essential to the economic viability of lignocellulosic biorefineries. Here, the authors demonstrate the bioconversion of alkali pretreated lignin to itaconic acid by dynamic two stage fermentation using a signal-amplified nitrogen-limitation biosensor.

Bacterial cells actively change their size and shape in response to external environments. Here, Shi et al. explore how cells regulate their morphology during rapid environmental changes, showing that the characteristic dynamics of surface area-to-volume ratio are conserved across genetic and chemical perturbations, as well as across species and growth temperatures.

Though octave soliton microcombs are attractive for on-chip metrology and optical clocks, limitations in existing materials lead to increased chip integration complexity. Here, the authors report access to octave soliton microcombs and self-referencing using aluminium nitride nanophotonic chips.

Clinical and genetic phenotyping of consanguineous family cases of neonatal syndromic diabetes and type 2 diabetes, combined with in-depth functional studies in pluripotent stem cells, reveals a role for genetic variants of ONECUT1 in monogenic and multifactorial diabetes.

Zinc is an essential cofactor for bacterial metabolism. Here, the authors show that the probiotic bacterium Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 utilizes the siderophore yersiniabactin as a zincophore, allowing the microbe to grow in zinc-limited media and to thrive in the inflamed gut.

MetaSTAAR enables functionally informed rare variant association analysis in biobank-scale cohorts using an efficient, sparse matrix approach for summary statistic storage.

Three different ultrafast probes investigate a non-adiabatic phase transition and find substantial evidence of topological defects inhibiting the reformation of the equilibrium phase.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

A nanopore DNA sequencer is used for real-time genomic surveillance of the Ebola virus epidemic in the field in Guinea; the authors demonstrate that it is possible to pack a genomic surveillance laboratory in a suitcase and transport it to the field for on-site virus sequencing, generating results within 24 hours of sample collection.

Many lessons have been learned 10 years after the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa, but urgent work is now needed to prevent another outbreak.

Nocturnin is a rhythmically expressed protein that regulates metabolism under the control of circadian clock proposed to function through the deadenylation of metabolic enzyme mRNAs. Here the authors show that Nocturnin and its fly homolog Curled catalyze the removal of 2′-phosphate from NADP⁺ and NADPH, providing a direct link to metabolic regulation.

Leaky integrate-and-fire artificial neurons based on diffusive memristors enable unsupervised weight updates of drift-memristor synapses in an integrated convolutional neural network capable of pattern recognition.

Ubiquitination may control protein stability or function. Here the authors show that an ubiquitination enzyme, Hectd3, ubiquitinates Stat3 and Malt1 to modulate their function but not degradation in T cells, and thereby promoting the differentiation of pathogenic Th17 cells and susceptibility to a mouse model of multiple sclerosis.

An ultrasensitive miRNA sensor based on gold-coated magnetic nanoparticles modified with redox-labelled probe DNA is capable of detecting miRNA at a concentration of 10 aM to 1 nM in unprocessed blood, and following tumour-induced variation in miRNA levels.

Histone variant macroH2A is initially pervasively deposited across the mouse genome and is subsequently selectively evicted from transcriptionally active regions to establish macroH2A chromatin domains.

Olefin and emulsion polymerizations are incompatible due to the water sensitivity of olefin polymerization catalysts and thus direct synthesis of semi-crystalline polyolefin latexes is difficult. Here, the authors encapsulate a catalyst precursor in micelles which act as nanoreactors for ethylene polymerization in water.

Frequent dispersal and short-lived local transmission clusters fuelled the 2013–2016 Ebola virus epidemic in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Though memristors can potentially emulate neuron and synapse functionality, useful signal energy is lost to Joule heating. Here, the authors demonstrate neuro-transistors with a pseudo-memcapacitive gate that actively process signals via energy-efficient capacitively-coupled neural networks.

The enzyme uracil DNA glycosylase does not actively extrude just the uracil base from the DNA helix to facilitate its removal; instead, transient, passive opening of thymine: adenine and uracil: adenine base pairs allows both thymine and uracil to become extrahelical, but only uracil can subsequently fit in the active site.