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This study reveals that brain aberrations after preterm birth are highly individual yet shaped by early injury and social environment, influencing long-term cognitive outcomes.

Interoception, the perception of internal bodily signals, is crucial for mental and physical well-being, yet the origins of disruptions in interoception are not well understood. Here the authors conduct a meta-analysis of 17 studies, revealing that childhood maltreatment, particularly emotional maltreatment, is linked to reduced body trust, potentially impacting long-term health outcomes.

Low IVF efficiency is in part due to fertilization failure, though little is known about why retrieved oocytes vary in this regard. Here they show that oocyte maturation and nurse cell contacts are disrupted by superovulation and aging, and propose nurse cell markers to predict success of fertilized eggs.

Class A and B GPCR show differential downstream regulation and functions. Here, the authors show how their C-termini largely mediate GRK-specific β-arrestin N-domain conformational changes and co-internalization, while GPCR helix-bundles govern pERK.

Jamaican fruit bats support disseminated infection of Ebola but not Marburg virus. The differences in infection dynamics are partially attributable to Marburg’s less efficient entry and impaired antagonism of type I interferon signaling.

The main protease, a key enzyme of SARS-CoV-2, can protect itself from oxidative damage. Here, Reinke, Schubert, and colleagues used XFEL radiation to image the enzyme, revealing the disulfide and NOS/SONOS bonds that form in response to oxygen.

Here the authors show that contemporary SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants are evolving towards the upper respiratory tract while causing less severe disease in the lung. The more antigenically distinct variant JN.1 fails to transmit in the male hamster model and causes reduced pathology.

The mechanisms by which debris flows acquire mass and momentum as they entrain material are unclear. Large-scale experiments suggest that the pore pressure of wet bed sediment increases as the flow moves over the bed, leading to reduced friction and progressive scouring of the base.

The impact of various immune statuses on SARS-CoV-2 transmission is unclear. Here, the authors used transmission chain experiments in hamsters to show better transmission prevention after intranasal vaccination and previous infection. Higher humoral responses against Delta may provide a competitive advantage to Omicron.

Comparing infection routes and subsequent transmission of MPXV in the multimammate rat (Mastomys natalensis) indicates increased susceptibility, shedding and transmission via the genital mucosae.

An optimized transmission caging system reveals the increased transmission competitiveness of the Alpha variant via aerosols compared with SARS-CoV- 2 lineage A in vivo.

Here, Port and Yinda et al. directly compare the relative contribution of contact, fomite, and airborne transmission route of SARS-CoV-2 to disease outcome in Syrian hamsters; while intranasal and aerosol inoculation causes severe pathogenesis, fomite exposure is characterized by milder disease.

The authors demonstrate the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the nasopharynx and brain, suggesting that the virus is present in the CNS and may enter through the olfactory mucosa, exploiting the close vicinity of olfactory mucosal, endothelial and nervous tissue.

Biodiversity often increases the functioning and productivity of ecosystems or communities. This work shows that such a positive diversity effect, namely overyielding in mixtures of two divergent Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes, can be genetically mapped and resolved to a single gene.

Land management impacts ecosystem functions. Here, the authors conduct field experiments in Germany assessing ecosystem variables in cropland and grasslands showing that sustainable agricultural practices enhance ecological and economic benefits.

Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants raise concerns about vaccine effectiveness. Here, the authors show that the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine protects Syrian hamsters from pulmonary infection and disease after infection with SARS-CoV-2 B.1.351 or B.1.1.7 variants.

A high-fat diet promotes intestinal tumorigenesis independently of obesity in a mouse model with oncogene activation, by changing the composition of the gut microbiota and altering immune regulation.

Structural sexual dimorphism in the developing nervous system can lead to functional differences in physiology and behavior. Postnatal, gender-based differences in cell number were presumed to be passively maintained, but here, Ahmed et al. reveal an active mechanism modulated by sex hormones that maintains different numbers of cells in sexually dimorphic brain areas.

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.

How carvedilol, a β1-blocker, activates β2-adrenoceptors, is unclear. Here, the authors resolve this enigma and show that carvedilol drives all of its detectable cellular β2-adrenoceptor signals by slow and low efficacy G protein activation.

Steve Brown and colleagues report an analysis of 20 phenotyping tests, including 413 data parameters, across 449 mutant mouse alleles. They identify widespread pleiotropy and assign putative functions to genes that lacked previous phenotypic annotation.

Genome-wide and multitrait analyses identify novel loci associated with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and relevant left ventricular traits. Gene-level burden analyses show that rare truncating SVIL variants are associated with high risk of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Cathelicidins are antimicrobial peptides that eliminate pathogens and contribute to the innate immune response. Here the authors show that neutrophil-derived LL-37/CRAMP induces platelet activation and promotes arterial thrombosis and thrombo-inflammation.

Despite the growing use of biodiversity offsets from major industrial projects, little is known about how effective they are. This study shows that the offsets associated with the Ambatovy mine in Madagascar trying to compensate for deforestation at the mine site are on track to achieve no net loss of forest.

The archaeal RNA transcription machinery does not have a dedicated helicase factor. Here, the authors report the three-dimensional architecture of the open complex of DNA, RNA polymerase and its associated factors from M. jannaschii, providing a possible mechanism for promoter DNA melting.

Interactions between germline variants and somatic mutations is a relatively unexplored topic in cancer. Here, in Ewing sarcoma, the authors show that binding of the oncogenic EWSR1-FLI1 fusion transcription factor to a polymorphic enhancer-like DNA element controls MYBL2, whose high expression correlates with prognosis.

A population of highly interconnected cells in glioblastoma makes these tumours resistant to general damage but vulnerable to targeted disruption of this small fraction of cells and their rhythmic Ca²⁺ oscillations.

A method to introduce defined mutations into the yeast genome enables saturation mutagenesis of a gene and genome-scale introduction of genetic variants.

The new European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser (EuXFEL) is the first XFEL that generates X-ray pulses with a megahertz inter-pulse spacing. Here the authors demonstrate that high-quality and damage-free protein structures can be obtained with the currently available 1.1 MHz repetition rate pulses using lysozyme as a test case and furthermore present a β-lactamase structure.

This Review discusses how a comprehensive system for defining nanomaterial descriptors can enable a safe-and-sustainable-by-design concept for engineered nanomaterials.

This study identifies a cytolytic peptide toxin in the opportunistic human fungal pathogen Candida albicans—the peptide is both a crucial virulence factor that permeabilizes the host cell plasma membrane and a key signal that triggers a host danger response pathway.

Heart failure is a major public health issue but due to our poor disease understanding the current therapies are symptomatic. Here the authors identify Myoscape as a novel cardiac protein regulating membrane localization of the L-type calcium channel and heart's contractile force, thus promising new therapeutic avenues for heart failure.

Academics, funders and publishers need to support interdisciplinary research processes in which social sciences are placed on an equal footing with the natural sciences and engineering.

The number of adults aged ≥65 years with cancer is rapidly growing; these individuals continue to have worse outcomes than younger adults with cancer. The authors of this Review summarize the unique challenges of treating older adults with cancer owing to competing health and ageing-related conditions, and describe the current guidelines as well as investigational studies underway to improve the outcomes of these patients.

Saldanha, Zhu et al. present an integrated pipeline combining weakly supervised learning with local artificial intelligence (AI) model training via swarm learning (SL) to circumvent a need for centralized data sharing. Deploying SL internationally with on-site data processing addresses challenges such as data privacy and annotation variability enabling AI training across international datasets while preserving data privacy.