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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.

During plant cultivation, denitrification process can release greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N₂O) to atmosphere. Here, the authors develop a soybean–bradyrhizobial symbiosis system with enhanced capacity to reduce N₂O emissions using the incompatibility between two soybean R genes and their effector present in bradyrhizobia.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

Adoptive T-cell immunotherapy offers promise to patients who are resistant to standard anti-viral strategies. Here the authors describe clinical observations in patients with viral complications treated with adoptive immunotherapy over the last 15 years.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

Using well-calibrated statistical methods the authors jointly analyze Undiagnosed Diseases Network genomes, identifying known and novel disease genes. Software is publicly available to support future cross-cohort rare disease discovery efforts.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

Rapid extracellular antibody profiling reveals a contribution of autoantibodies to the effectiveness of checkpoint immunotherapy for cancer.

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

A national prospective study of patients requiring hospitalization for COVID-19 demonstrates global cognitive deficits at 1 year, associated with elevated brain injury markers and reduced gray matter volume.

In this study, the authors analyse 2,409 nasopharyngeal swabs from 300 infants in Botswana to investigate the impacts of respiratory virus infection on the colonisation dynamics of bacterial respiratory pathobionts.

The results obtained by seventy different teams analysing the same functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset show substantial variation, highlighting the influence of analytical choices and the importance of sharing workflows publicly and performing multiple analyses.

Whole-genome sequencing and phenotype data sharing are introduced in a national health system to streamline diagnosis and to discover coding and non-coding variants that cause rare diseases.

Lightning Pose is an efficient pose estimation approach that requires few labeled training data owing to its semi-supervised learning strategy and ensembling.

The non-coding RNA RNU4-2, which is highly expressed in the developing human brain, is identified as a syndromic neurodevelopmental disorder gene, and, using RNA sequencing, 5′ splice-site use is shown to be systematically disrupted in individuals with RNU4-2 variants.

Genome-wide association analyses identify 11 loci associated with native myocardial T1 time, a marker of interstitial fibrosis, providing insights into the pathways involved in myocardial fibrosis and myofibroblast cell state acquisition.

Covalent inhibitors that selectively target bacterial enzymes are potential antibiotic drug candidates. Here, the authors apply high-throughput screening to identify selective covalent inhibitors that target serine hydrolases in Staphylococcus aureus

BamA carries out the essential process of folding outer membrane β-barrels in Gram-negative bacteria and is a potential antibiotic target. Here, the authors discover macrocyclic peptide inhibitors that trap BamA in distinct structural conformations.

Orange Carotenoid protein (OCP) is the only photoreceptor with a carotenoid for sensing. Here, the authors report crystal structures of the early OCP photoproduct, suggesting that photo-sensing involves single bond isomerization.

This report from the 1000 Genomes Project describes the genomes of 1,092 individuals from 14 human populations, providing a resource for common and low-frequency variant analysis in individuals from diverse populations; hundreds of rare non-coding variants at conserved sites, such as motif-disrupting changes in transcription-factor-binding sites, can be found in each individual.

The search for biomarkers associated with konzo disease has been a long-standing question within the research community. Here, the authors have uncovered a potential biomarker for konzo that is associated with the ability to manage oxidative damage.

A multi-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analysis of kidney cancer identifies 63 regions associated with disease susceptibility including one locus that was associated with increased risk in individuals with African ancestry.

Orange carotenoid proteins are involved in photoprotection in cyanobacteria. In this Article, a new family of orange carotenoid proteins are identified and characterized, combining phylogenetic analysis, biochemistry, spectroscopy and structural studies.

Permanent hearing loss occurs in many cancer patients treated with cisplatin. In this study, the authors examine cisplatin pharmacokinetics in the cochleae of mice and humans showing that cisplatin is retained for months to years after treatment.

Similarities in cancers can be studied to interrogate their etiology. Here, the authors use genome-wide association study summary statistics from six cancer types based on 296,215 cases and 301,319 controls of European ancestry, showing that solid tumours arising from different tissues share a degree of common germline genetic basis.

The goal of the 1000 Genomes Project is to provide in-depth information on variation in human genome sequences. In the pilot phase reported here, different strategies for genome-wide sequencing, using high-throughput sequencing platforms, were developed and compared. The resulting data set includes more than 95% of the currently accessible variants found in any individual, and can be used to inform association and functional studies.

Therapeutic T cells bearing ligands engineered to optimize adhesion and transmigration through the blood–brain barrier can be targeted to brain tumours.

In a new strategy for increasing the availability of lungs for transplantation, human lungs declined for transplantation because of their poor quality can be recuperated by connecting them to the circulation of a pig.

The Zwicky Transient Facility has observed a transitioning white dwarf with two faces, with one side of its atmosphere dominated by hydrogen and the other by helium.

Genome-wide association studies have identified regions which confer risk of high-grade serous epithelial ovarian cancer. Here the authors use expression quantitative train locus analysis to identify candidate genes and functionally characterise them, identifying a role for HOXD9 in ovarian cancer.

Motor cortical neurons enable performance of a wide range of movements. Here, the authors report that dominant population activity patterns, the neural modes, are largely preserved across various tasks, with many displaying consistent temporal dynamics and reliably mapping onto muscle activity.

Discovery of macrocyclic ligands to the 19S regulatory particle protein PSMD2 enables the synthesis of heterobifunctional molecules that demonstrate proof-of-concept, targeted degradation of BRD4 through direct engagement of the 26S proteasome.

The immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection is variable but has been linked to prognosis and the development of severe immunopathology. Here the authors assess a range of immune parameters in both peripheral blood and respiratory samples, providing a comparative assessment of the immune response between these compartments and their potential impact on immune-pathogenesis.

Diagnostic filtering is an important step to analyze the functional and clinical significance of the large number of genetic variants identified from next-generation genome sequencing data. Here, the authors develop a flexible and scalable system for diagnostic filtering of genetic variants using G2P with Ensembl VEP.

Gastric aspiration severely injures donor lungs, frequently making them unacceptable for transplantation. Here the authors show that an interventional cross-circulation platform enables the regeneration of severely damaged lungs in a swine model of gastric aspiration injury.

Two doses of the coronavirus disease 2019 vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 boost antibody responses and functions in phase 1/2 trial participants.

Massively parallel DNA sequencing allows entire genomes to be screened for genetic changes associated with tumour progression. Here, the genomes of four DNA samples from a 44-year-old African-American patient with basal-like breast cancer were analysed. The samples came from peripheral blood, the primary tumour, a brain metastasis and a xenograft derived from the primary tumour. The findings indicate that cells with a distinct subset of the primary tumour mutation might be selected during metastasis and xenografting.

Results for the final phase of the 1000 Genomes Project are presented including whole-genome sequencing, targeted exome sequencing, and genotyping on high-density SNP arrays for 2,504 individuals across 26 populations, providing a global reference data set to support biomedical genetics.

In rodent models, only a minority of infecting Plasmodium parasites, expressing one of several clusters of virulence-associated pir genes, establishes a chronic infection in a manner that is independent of adaptive immunity.

HNF1B is overexpressed in the clear cell subtype and epigenetically silenced in the serous subtype of ovarian cancer. Pearce and colleagues now show that genetic variants in HNF1B are differentially associated with risks of developing these two cancer subtypes, possibly through an epigenetic mechanism.

DNA methylation is associated with breast cancer risk. Here the authors measure DNA methylation in the blood of individuals from 25 Australian families with multiple cases of breast cancer but not known mutations associated with breast cancer risk to identify possible heritable methylation markers.

A region on chromosome 19p13 is associated with the risk of developing ovarian and breast cancer. Here, the authors genotyped SNPs in this region in thousands of breast and ovarian cancer patients and identified SNPs associated with three genes, which were analysed with functional studies.

The tidal disruption event AT2019dsg is probably associated with a high-energy neutrino, suggesting that such events can contribute to the cosmic neutrino flux. The electromagnetic emission is explained in terms of a central engine, a photosphere and an extended synchrotron-emitting outflow.

Senescent cells accumulate with age and contribute to the functional decline of many tissues; however, their role in skeletal muscle is not well understood. Here the authors comprehensively assess cellular senescence in skeletal muscle of young and old mice and detail senescence features in subpopulations of p16⁺ fibroadipogenic progenitors and p21⁺ myofibers.

Frontal fibrosing alopecia (FFA) features lichenoid cutaneous inflammation and scarring hair loss. Here, Tziotzios et al. identify four genetic loci associated with FFA by GWAS followed by Bayesian fine-mapping, co-localisation and HLA imputation which highlights HLA-B*07:02 as a risk factor.