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Single-cell imaging, metabolomics and modelling quantify metabolic exchanges between cyanobacteria and heterotrophic bacteria, showing transient nutritional exchanges facilitated by chemotaxis of the heterotroph.

TROVE2, a gene implicated in inflammatory response and autoimmunity, is also associated with enhanced memory for emotionally charged events in post-traumatic stress disorder.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a devastating disease with poor prognosis. Here, the authors show that deficiency of the E3 ubiqutin-protein ligase Nedd4-2 in airway epithelial cells causes IPF-like disease in adult mice. This model may aid studies of the pathogenesis and therapy of IPF.

Analyses of primary and relapse samples of embryonal tumours with multilayered rosettes provide insights into the molecular mechanisms that underlie the development and opportunities for the treatment of this deadly disease.

A nanoparticle-based immunotherapy targeted to a protein responsible for signalling between monocytes and macrophages reduces plaque inflammation in atherosclerotic mice and appears to be safe in non-human primates.

Transcranial brain stimulation is used to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders. Soekadar et al.describe a novel method that allows simultaneous measurements and transcranial brain stimulation of human oscillatory brain activity associated with motor actions in primary cortical brain regions.

By measuring metabolic and biosynthetic activity with cell cycle progression, Litsios et el. uncover pulses in protein production rate that do not scale with cell size but drive cell cycle entry in budding yeast.

Exosomes mediate cell-to-cell communication by transporting proteins, mRNAs, and miRNAs but the mechanisms of protein sorting to exosomes are poorly understood. Here, the authors uncover that ubiquitin-like 3 (UBL3) regulates protein sorting to exosomes by acting as a posttranslational modification.

Microscopic imaging techniques have a high spatio-temporal resolution but, in living animals, are hampered by cardiac and respiratory motion. This paper describes a microscopic setup that allows fluorescent confocal imaging of the beating mouse heart over a period of several hours.

Baarlink et al. identify a transient pool of nuclear F-actin, the dynamics of which are controlled by cofilin-1 that accumulates after mitosis and is important for chromatin reorganization in G1.

Rapid developmental changes in the response properties of neurons in visual cortex enhance motion discriminability following eye opening. Here the authors show that increases in direction selectivity are accompanied by reductions in the density of active neurons and variability in their responses and levels of noise correlation, changes that depend on the nature of visual experience.

Many biological processes are oscillatory and their rhythms shift in response to external stimuli. Here Kralemann et al. present a method to describe the sensitivity of an oscillator to external influences based on non-invasive observation of the system, and use it to study cardiac–respiratory interactions in humans.

Chlamydiae are sensitive to beta-lactam antibiotics, which target cell-wall peptidoglycan (PG), but it is unclear whether these bacteria possess PG. Pilhofer et al. now demonstrate that cell walls of a chlamydial species, Protochlamydia amoebophila, contain a PG layer.

The bacterial flagellar hook is made up of many copies of the protein FlgE. Here, the authors report the full structure of the hook from Campylobacter jejuni and show that its overall structure is different from that of the previously published filament.

An extreme Einstein ring ~10,000 times as bright as the Milky Way in the infrared is studied with VLT/ERIS and ALMA, and the authors find that the lensed galaxy is a starburst with a fast-rotating disk, rather than being driven by a major merger.

Plasma extracellular vesicles contain quantifiable amounts of TDP-43 and full-length tau, allowing the accurate assessment of pathology in frontotemporal dementia, frontotemporal dementia spectrum disorders and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

MBD proteins are integral subunits of the NuRD complex, a crucial regulator of cellular differentiation. Here the authors systematically dissect which MBD protein domains and isoforms are essential for neuronal differentiation.

In this work, the authors report the Cryo-EM structure of PNF-18, a biotechnologically engineered peptide fibril that enhances retroviral infectivity. The peptide fibrils mature into polymorphic amyloid structures in a time-dependent manner. The structure provides insights into the molecular basis of peptide nanofibrils as retroviral transduction enhancers.

Here, the authors show that replication protein A (RPA) tends to self-assemble into dynamic condensates, in a manner that is stimulated by ssDNA and regulated by RPA2 phosphorylation. RPA condensates are functionally important for telomere clustering and RAD52-dependent telomere maintenance.

Plants have evolved pattern-recognition receptors to perceive pathogens. Here, the authors demonstrate that microbial small cysteine-rich proteins are eminent immune targets that led to convergent evolution of distinct immune receptors in plants.

Characterization of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) in tissues has been hampered by technical constraints. Here, the authors describe ex vivo eRIC, a method for global profiling of RBPs active in mammalian organs, and report comprehensive RBP atlases from mouse brain, kidney and liver.

Genome assemblies of four filamentous Zygnematophyceae and co-expression network analyses shed light on the evolutionary roots of the mechanism for balancing environmental responses and multicellular growth.

Genetic association studies for rare variants suffer from lack of power and thus there is a need for methods to improve rare variant discovery. Here, the authors present functionally informed association tests with increased statistical power to aid discovery and interpretation of rare variants.

Additional roles for A-to-I editing of RNA continue to be uncovered. Niescierowicz et al. report prevalent A-to-I editing in the zebrafish transcriptome, and the distinct maternal and zygotic functions of the editing enzyme Adar in embryonic patterning and in the regulation of innate immune response, respectively.

Ionization delays from ethyl iodide around a giant dipole resonance are measured by attosecond streaking spectroscopy. Using theoretical knowledge of the iodine atom as a reference, the contribution of the functional ethyl group can be obtained.

The maintenance of bacterial and fungal activity is essential for ecosystem functioning, particularly in dry soils where the two phyla co-exist. Here, Worrich and colleagues show experimentally that mycelia traffic water and nutrients and thereby stimulate bacterial activity in stressful conditions.

We can often ‘fill in’ missing or occluded sounds from a speech signal—an effect known as phoneme restoration. Leonard et al. found a real-time restoration of the missing sounds in the superior temporal auditory cortex in humans. Interestingly, neural activity in frontal regions prior to the stimulus can predict the word that the participant would later hear.

Primary cilia are key sensory organelles whose dysfunction leads to ciliopathy disorders such as Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS). Here they identify a role for Bbs1 in lipid homeostasis of photoreceptor outer segments in zebrafish, which may contribute to vision loss in patients with Bardet-Biedl syndrome.

SUMOylation is a post-translational modification that has been shown to be altered in cancer. Here, the authors show that loss of the SUMO isopeptidase SENP6 leads to unrestricted SUMOylation and genomic instability promoting lymphomagenesis and generating vulnerability to PARP inhibition.

Large genome-wide meta-analysis of clinically diagnosed late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) from 94,437 individuals identifies new LOAD risk loci and implicates Aβ formation, tau protein binding, immune response and lipid metabolism.

Wesley et al. describe the developmental trajectories of human foetal liver cell types at single-cell resolution and generate bipotential hepatoblast organoids, which can serve as a new platform to investigate human liver development.

Programmed ribosomal frameshifting (PRF) occurs in many viruses including SARS-CoV-2 to allow the translation of multiple proteins from a single transcript. Here, the authors identify the human short isoform of the zinc-finger antiviral protein (ZAP-S) as a direct regulator of PRF in SARS-CoV-2 that severely impairs SARS-CoV-2 frameshifting in cells and directly interacts with the SARS-CoV-2 RNA; interfering with the folding of the frameshift RNA element.

A 3.3-Å-resolution cryo-EM structure of yeast Maf1 bound to RNA polymerase III (Pol III) explains the molecular mechanism for Pol III inhibition.

A chemical proteomic strategy has now been developed for profiling pyridoxal-phosphate dependent enzymes (PLP-DEs) in cells. Pyridoxal-based probes are phosphorylated in situ and bind to cellular PLP-DEs as cofactor mimics. The method accessed 73% of the Staphylococcus aureus PLP-dependent proteome and annotated uncharacterized proteins as novel PLP-DEs.

Hsp70 chaperones are essential for cellular proteostasis, and their function depends on allosteric communication between their nucleotide- and substrate-binding domains. Here, Kityk et al.provide a mechanical model of allostery and demonstrate that ATP-induced substrate release is more important for chaperone activity than substrate-stimulated ATP hydrolysis.

While nanocarrier-based drug delivery is a promising therapeutic approach, in situ characterization of drug nanocarriers in blood remains difficult. Here, the authors demonstrate how the fluorescence correlation spectroscopy can be used to directly characterize drug nanocarriers in flowing blood.

A new mouse model is developed in which haematopoietic malignancies are caused by genetic changes in the microenvironment of blood cells. Deletion in bone progenitor cells of Dicer1, a gene involved in microRNA processing, leads to a myelodysplastic syndrome-like phenotype which can progress to leukaemia. Deregulation of Sbds, which is mutated in human Schwachman–Bodian–Diamond syndrome, may be involved in this process.

Controlling the assembly of nano-objects with precision is important in the synthesis of materials with enhanced properties. Here, the authors present a protein adaptor-based nano-object assembly (PABNOA), allowing the assembly of nanoparticles with defined interparticle distances.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) thermogenesis counteracts obesity and promotes metabolic health. The role of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the regulation of this process is not well understood. Here the authors identify a maternally expressed lncRNA, H19, that increases BAT oxidative metabolism and energy expenditure.

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.

Binding studies with systematically mutagenized RNA and RNA-binding proteins allow insight into the relationship between an RNA sequence, its structure and its function.

Glacier Perito Moreno, in the southern Patagonian Icefields, is now experiencing accelerated thinning, flow acceleration, and unprecedented frontal retreat, indicating the potential for buoyancy-driven retreat once it passes a subglacial ridge, according to observational data, bathymetric surveys, and satellite time series of surface elevation and velocity.

Elucidating the gastroesophageal junction’s development is key to comprehending its disease susceptibility. Here, the authors mapped its development, uncovering cellular diversity and interaction dynamics using advanced spatiotemporal single-cell analysis.

Ding et al. find a mechanism coordinating fatty acid and glucose supply. Glucose-driven Golgi phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate levels impact the assembly of E3 ligase complex CUL7–FBXW8, controlling adipose triglyceride lipase levels and lipolysis.

Applying thermal proteome profiling to acute B cell childhood leukemia cell lines combined with deep peptide fractionation and a graph-based clustering algorithm allows inference of functional proteoform groups and their association with drug response.

To refold client proteins, HSP90 chaperone undergoes large structural rearrangements. Here the authors use NMR and molecular simulation and reveal structure and dynamics of a key functionally relevant metastable state of human HSP90α N-terminal domain.