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The genomic profile and early transmission dynamics of the Omicron strain of SARS-CoV-2.

Zika and dengue incidence in the Americas declined in 2017–2018, but dengue resurged in 2019 in Brazil. This study uses epidemiological, climatological and genomic data to show that the decline of dengue may be explained by protective immunity from pre-exposure to ZIKV and/or DENV in prior years.

Using intensive eDNA sampling in space and time across five rivers in Europe and North America, this study shows that eDNA gives relevant information on freshwater diversity and ecology across broad taxonomic groups, and with limited downstream transport. The findings demonstrate that eDNA is vital for freshwater biodiversity monitoring in a time of anthropogenic change.

There is a trade-off between increasing thickness of active layers in organic photovoltaic cells to be compatible with modern printing techniques and decreasing it to improve the device performance. Sun et al.report a nematic liquid crystalline molecular electron donor material used in thick layers.

Sialic acid transporters (SiaT) are required for sialic acid uptake in a number of human pathogens and are of interest as targets for antimicrobial drug development. Here the authors present the substrate bound SiaT structure from the uropathogen Proteus mirabilis and provide insights into the mechanism of sialic acid transport.

The design of solution-processed thermoelectric nanomaterials with efficient, stable performance remains a challenge. Here, the authors report an in-situ doping method based on nanoscale interface engineering to realize n-type thermoelectric nanowires with high performance and stability.

Genome-wide association analyses of intracranial and nine subcortical brain volumes in 74,898 participants of European ancestry identify 254 independent loci and yield polygenic scores accounting for brain variation across ancestries.

A carbon nanotube-based sensor was developed to monitor endolysosomal acidification events in live cells and in vivo. The technology enables a spatiotemporal measurement of endolysosomal pH and real-time tracking of the dynamics of autophagy in tumors.

Multifilament surgical sutures functionalized with a conductive polymer and incorporating pledgets with capacitive sensors operated via radiofrequency identification can be used to monitor physicochemical states of deep surgical sites.

The combination of a bispecific antibody against EGFR and MET with a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) in patients with TKI-relapsed, chemotherapy-naive, EGFR-mutated advanced NSCLC is safe and shows preliminary efficacy.

In this in vitro, in silico, and in vivo study Nguyen and colleagues show that specific and stable viral gene delivery of engineered prokaryotic voltage-gated sodium channels (BacNav) to cardiomyocytes can directly augment cardiac tissue excitability and conduction.

Contact guidance on aligned substrates leads to directed cell migration through a poorly defined mechanism. Here the authors show that alignment of adhesion structures and F-actin generates anisotropic traction stress to drive directional migration, and cell-cell contact reduces force orientation and directional response.

Vaccination against COVID-19 has shown activation of different immune cell types. Here the authors characterise the immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine using longitudinal CyTOF single cell approaches to characterise antigen specific B and T-cell responses promoted by this vaccine.

Gene-editing at the DM1 mutant locus revealed a fundamental difference between undifferentiated and differentiated cell states: abnormal epigenetic modifications cannot be repaired after differentiation.

Volitional reward taking emerges through a sequence of preluding events. Yet, the underlying neural mechanism is not fully understood. Here authors show a series of temporal dynamics of nucleus accumbens neurons that may substantiate such preluding events to commit “free-willed” animals to reward taking.

The fragmentation of crystallization-driven self-assembly nanomaterials is only achievable with external stimuli. Now we report that two-dimensional platelets containing less stable domains can spontaneously fragment upon ageing, providing a simple one-step method for creating hollow platelet polymer particles.

The construction of C–C bonds with regio- and stereoselectivity is paramount in natural product synthesis and metal-catalysed asymmetric allylic alkylation reactions have played a key role, with high C3 selectivity demonstrated in butenolide synthesis. Now, a palladium-catalysed C5-selective method is reported, providing direct and highly enantioselective access to a range of diversely substituted butenolides.

The mechanisms of thermosensing in the Drosophila brain are elucidated by the identification of distinct classes of projection neurons which are excited either by external cooling or warming, or both; the neurons that are excited by warming participate in complex circuits that incorporate crossover inhibition from cool receptor neurons.

Guidance is lacking on how to best integrate sex, gender and social and structural determinants of health into neuroscience research on brain resilience in ageing and dementia. In this Roadmap article, Rajah et al. propose a way forward for conducting more inclusive research in this field.

Krause corpuscles of the clitoris and penis are highly sensitive mechanical vibration detectors that mediate sexually dimorphic mating behaviours in mice.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the PP2A:B55 holoenzyme bound to its inhibitors ARPP19 and FAM122A show distinct binding modes of the two inhibitors.

The photosynthetic reaction centres, photosystems I and II, have been investigated for the light-induced generation of fuels and electrical power. Now, Yehezkeliet al. report a photobiofuel cell that generates electricity upon irradiation of photosystem II-functionalized electrodes in aqueous solutions.

A study demonstrates that plasticity in the head direction system in Drosophila is modulated by dopamine, which increases learning when reorienting movements are bringing in new spatial information.

Structural studies of Escherichia coli transcription intrinsic termination complexes representing distinct intermediates using cryo-electron microscopy provide insights into the steps and mechanism of transcription termination.

Using genetics and pharmacology, the authors find that the dynamics of olfactory receptor neurons can be separated into two sequential steps: transduction and spike generation. They then characterize these two components.

Osmotic compensation by electroneutral ion transport buffers TORC1-mediated changes in the cytosolic proteome, and maintains intracellular homeostasis and cell volume over the circadian cycle. Here, the authors find such ion content changes drive daily rhythms in cardiomyocyte electrical activity.

The authors report an Initial Upper Palaeolithic archaeological assemblage from China dating to 45,000 years ago that includes blade technology, tanged and hafted projectile points, long-distance obsidian transfer and the use of a perforated graphite disc.

During the Cambrian Radiation, oxygenation occurred in a series of short pulses. Here, the authors quantify episodic changes in reef size, extent of habitat and in metacommunity ecological complexity associated with these oxygenation pulses by examining archaeocyath sponges.

The overexpression of β-catenin and the transcription factor Gata4 in skin fibroblasts induces these cells to secrete reparative exosomes, as shown in mice models of myocardial infarction and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

By manipulating the rhythmicity of neural activity in entorhinal cortex and hippocampus, Quirk et al. show that memory is impaired by aberrant oscillatory activity during the encoding phase, but not during retention or retrieval phases.

The ability to control nanostructure shape and dimensions presents opportunities to design materials in which their macroscopic properties are dependent upon the nature of the nanoparticle. Here the authors show nanoparticle shape is a critical consideration in the determination of nanocomposite hydrogel properties.

Quantitative multimodal 3D reconstruction of human pancreatic tissue at single-cell resolution reveals a high burden of multifocal, genetically heterogeneous pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasias in the normal adult pancreas.

In this work, authors take a multiomics and microfluidics-based approach to elucidate the mechanism of endothelial damage in critical illness associated with SARS-CoV-2.

The genomic organization and origin of the avenacin biosynthetic gene cluster remain unknown. Here, the authors assemble the genome of diploid oat Avena strigosa, reveal the structure and organization of the consecutive genes, characterize the last two missing pathway steps, and investigate the origin of the pathway in cereals.

Increased anthropogenic nitrogen inputs into the biosphere are fundamentally altering ecosystems worldwide. Here, Kearns et al.show that a decade of nitrogen additions to salt marshes reduces the proportion of active microorganisms, despite no net change to the total microbial community.

Visual inputs to compass neurons can reorganize over minutes as a fly explores an altered virtual-reality environment.

Differentiating neutrophil functional states is difficult. Here the authors show, using single cell RNA-sequencing and trajectory analyses, that mouse neutrophils can be presented as a transcriptome continuum rather than discrete subsets, but are affected by inflammation to express distinct transcriptional states.

Signalling endosomes are known to be essential for neuronal survival. Here the authors show that, in cultured hippocampal neurons and live Drosophilalarval motor neurons, neuronal activity increases the retrograde flux of signalling endosomes, and this coupling depends on TrkB activation.

A major earthquake 2500 years ago caused one of the largest rivers on Earth to abruptly change its course. A recurrent event would pose the risk of such cascading hazards to the densely populated floodplains of present-day Bangladesh.

Precise and reliable gene delivery remains technically challenging. Here, the authors show that rationally designed frameshifting splicing can be used to express genes only in targeted cell types, with the potential to enhance the specificity AAV gene delivery.

A sequencing chemistry that separates nucleotide identification from nucleotide incorporation achieves high accuracy.

Sensory stimuli fluctuate on many timescales but short-term plasticity causes synapses to act as temporal filters, limiting the range of frequencies they can transmit. Here, the authors show how the interaction of multiple synaptic and circuit mechanisms can reduce synaptic depression to promote faithful coding of both fast and slow stimuli.

Proteins evolve through the modular rearrangement of domains. Here the authors introduce MISER, a minimization by iterative size-exclusion and recombination method to make all possible deletions of a protein, uncovering functions for Cas9 domains involved in DNA binding.