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Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships may change over time. Here, Wagg et al. show that richness-productivity and richness stability relationships grow stronger over time in an experimental grassland community, and shed light on the ecological mechanisms.

An inflammatory-fibrotic tumor microenvironment supports metastatic disease progression in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Here the authors show that metastasis-infiltrating macrophages influence metastasis-associated fibroblast (MAF) heterogeneity in liver metastatic PDAC, by promoting JAK/STAT signalling pathway activation in MAFs.

Examining drivers of the latitudinal biodiversity gradient in a global database of local tree species richness, the authors show that co-limitation by multiple environmental and anthropogenic factors causes steeper increases in richness with latitude in tropical versus temperate and boreal zones.

COVID-19 can be associated with neurological complications. Here the authors show that markers of brain injury, but not immune markers, are elevated in the blood of patients with COVID-19 both early and months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly in those with brain dysfunction or neurological diagnoses.

The EMDataResource Ligand Model Challenge aimed at assessing the reliability and reproducibility of modeling ligands bound to protein and protein–nucleic acid complexes in cryo-EM maps determined at near-atomic resolution. This analysis presents the results and recommends best practices for assessing cryo-EM structures of liganded macromolecules.

Methane is abundant in the Universe, is an important energy carrier and a model system for fundamental studies. Here, the authors measure the self-diffusion coefficient of supercritical methane at ambient temperature up to the freezing pressure, and find a different behavior than expected based on previous models.

Schmid and colleagues show that pancreatic cancer cell colonization of the liver is accompanied by low-grade tissue injury and efferocytosis, which promotes reprogramming of macrophages and upregulation of arginase.

Research on biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships tends to focus on single trophic groups. This analysis of two biodiversity experiments, representing forests and grasslands, shows that plant diversity promotes ecosystem multifunctionality not only directly, but also by enhancing the diversity of other trophic levels.

Here the authors identify TNIP1 as a risk factor for a fatal neurodegenerative disorder and discover specific genetic loci associated with the three main subtypes of this disorder. The findings highlight distinct disease mechanisms, emphasizing the roles of immunity and the notch signaling pathway.

Whether feedback circuits exert control over how parallel visual information is relayed is not fully understood. Here authors utilized optogenetics to causally manipulate the activity of identified neuronal circuits, and showed that cortical feedback in the visual system operates in at least two modes: to regulate spatial resolution in a pathway-specific manner and to control the timing of incoming visual signals generally.

Swarm Learning is a decentralized machine learning approach that outperforms classifiers developed at individual sites for COVID-19 and other diseases while preserving confidentiality and privacy.

The involvement of cell death pathways in the early stage of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) development, especially KRAS-dependent acinar-to-ductal metaplasia (ADM), remains to be investigated. Here, the authors find that TAK1 mediates cell survival during ADM transdifferentiation through suppression of apoptosis and necroptosis, which could be targeted for prevention and treatment of PDAC.

Alternative stable states in forests have implications for the biosphere. Here, the authors combine forest biodiversity observations and simulations revealing that leaf types across temperate regions of the NH follow a bimodal distribution suggesting signatures of alternative forest states.

By targeting a mutant Flp recombinase that forms a covalent protein-DNA complex to a single FRT site placed anywhere in the yeast genome, the authors can study repair pathways activated by a single genomic insult as well as events at the site of damage.

A cluster-randomized trial carried out across 980 villages in a high-risk region in China found that systematic treatment of antibiotics, omeprazole and bismuth modestly reduced gastric cancer incidence in Helicobacter pylori-positive populations.

SlyB, a lipoprotein in the PhoPQ stress regulon in Gram-negative bacteria, forms stable stress-induced complexes with the outer membrane proteome.

Genetic variants at multiple loci of chr5p15.33 have been associated with susceptibility to numerous cancers. Here the authors show that the association of one of these loci may be explained by a variant, rs36115365, influencing telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) expression via ZNF148.

Genome-wide association analyses of DNA methylation in peripheral blood from 3,799 Europeans and 3,195 South Asians identify unique SNP–CpG associations (meQTL), providing insights into molecular mechanisms and the potential links to phenotypic variation.

Species-rich plant communities often have higher productivity than monocultures. Here, the authors analyse biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments in grasslands and forests and find that the biodiversity effects on community productivity strengthen over time thanks to shifts in contributions of species with different resource acquisition traits.

Openshaw and colleagues find myeloid inflammation and complement activation signatures in patients with long COVID who were previously hospitalized.

SARS-CoV-2 detection with LAMP-Seq combines isothermal amplification and barcoding with high-throughput sequencing.

The universality class for plastic yield in amorphous materials remains controversial. Here authors present a tensorial mesoscale model that captures both complex shear patterns and avalanche scaling behaviour, which differs from mean-field models and suggests a distinct type of critical phenomenon.

The authors infer that pelvic skeleton reduction in a fossil sequence of the Miocene stickleback fish, Gasterosteus doryssus, proceeds through the same gene of large effect and a similar suite of genes of small effect as in a closely related extant species, Gasterosteus aculeatus.

Convergent mutations in hot spots of the spike proteins of currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants increase the binding affinity for the host receptor and promote more efficient fusion with host cell membranes.

Soft hair arrays anchored to a substrate are useful for bio-inspired engineering applications. Here, the authors demonstrate a rapid 3D printing technique for creating fine, continuous, biomimetic hair arrays using solvent exchange. Fibers as small as 1.5 µm are printed at high speeds, offering scalability for biomimetic and structural applications.

Proteins that bend membranes often contain curvature-promoting structural motifs such as wedges or crescent-shaped domains. Busch et al.report that intrinsically disordered domains can also drive membrane curvature and provide evidence that steric pressure driven by protein crowding mediates this effect.