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Discotic liquid crystals are materials with high charge-carrier mobility, which are promising for molecular electronics. They self-organize into stacks, usually with a twist of 30^∘, but the shape and periphery of the molecules can now be altered to produce materials with a twist of 60^∘. Defect-limited mobilities of these materials reach 0.2 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, but the potential defect-free mobility could be up to 10 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹.

A rare case of asymptomatic dominantly inherited Alzheimer’s reveals confined tau pathology and unique proteomic features, highlighting potential resilience mechanisms decades beyond expected onset.

Tong et al. form a 2D perovskite layer with two large organic cations to improve the structural and optoelectronic properties of Sn–Pb perovskites, and eventually the performance of single-junction and tandem solar cells.

Hot carriers in perovskites experience slow cooling.

The mitochondrial ADP/ATP carrier mediates the proton leak in mitochondria from all tissues that lack UCP1, thereby linking coupled (ATP production) and uncoupled (thermogenesis) energy conversion.

Lin, Geng and colleagues identify a non-canonical AHR pathway that is activated by canonical AHR inhibitors, promoting the proliferation of quiescent endothelial cells with potential applications in cell therapy.

The use of silicon nanostructures in solar cells offers a number of benefits, such as the fact they can be used on flexible substrates. A silicon wire-array structure, containing reflecting nanoparticles for enhanced absorption, is now shown to achieve 96% peak absorption efficiency, capturing 85% of light with only 1% of the silicon used in comparable commercial cells.

The authors demonstrate an exciting technique to cancel the common-mode vibration of a photonic resonator upon optical frequency division to microwave frequencies. The resulting 10 GHz microwave achieves 22.6 dB suppression of vibration noise, without incurring any penalty in phase-noise performance.

Optical frequency combs in the mid-infrared are required for molecular gas detection applications but their realization in compact microresonator-based platforms is challenging. Here, Griffith et al. demonstrate on-chip broadband comb generation on a silicon microresonator spanning from 2.1 to 3.5 μm.

The electronic structure of strongly correlated materials is highly sensitive to external perturbations such as photoexcitation, leading to exotic properties and phases. Here, the authors observe extremely slow hot carrier cooling and a photo-induced insulator-to-metal transition in a Mott insulator α-RuCl3 with scanning ultrafast electron microscopy.

The relationship between pathogenic germline variation, clonal hematopoiesis (CH) and risk of hematologic malignancy is explored in 731,835 individuals across 6 cohorts. Carriers of variants in certain genes show distinct patterns of CH and increased risk of CH progression to malignancy.

To what extent the charge carriers can alter phonon heat conduction at environmental temperatures through electron–phonon interactions is an open question. Here, the authors demonstrate substantial reduction in thermal conductivity at high charge carrier densities due to significant phonon scatterings by electrons.

Iridoids are terpenoid metabolites found in thousands of plants. Using single-cell transcriptomics, the authors discovered an unexpected enzyme that has been neofunctionalized to catalyse the cyclization required to form the iridoid scaffold.

Kaluba, Rogers et al. show that in cancer cells that can metabolize ketones, they may reroute them to produce cytosolic acetyl-CoA and support tumour growth.

Integrated single mode lasers capable of extremely narrow linewidths and high output power will enable precision portable quantum, microwave, and sensing applications. Here we demonstrate a simultaneous record low fundamental linewidth and high output power using an integrated Brillouin laser in a meter-scale silicon nitride coil resonator.

Tamm plasmon thermal emitters can provide low-cost, efficient mid to long infrared emission, but have been limited by a challenging design. Here the authors apply an inverse design protocol to demonstrate tailorable multi-band emission on CdO films.

Common genetic variants associated with plasma lipids have been extensively studied for a better understanding of common diseases. Here, the authors use whole-genome sequencing of 16,324 individuals to analyze rare variant associations and to determine their monogenic and polygenic contribution to lipid traits.

A pangenome of the Cannabis genus including 193 genomes demonstrates high variability in most of the genome but low diversity in cannabinoid synthesis genes and provides a resource for future genetic studies and crop optimization.

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).

Limited tumor cell delivery is a major challenge for the efficacious delivery of siRNAs to silence traditionally undruggable oncogenes. Here the authors optimize siRNAs for in situ binding to albumin through C18 lipid modifications and show the application of the lead conjugate structure for targeting MCL1 in orthotopic breast tumors in mice.

Penetrance of variants in monogenic disease and clinical utility of common polygenic variation has not been well explored on a large-scale. Here, the authors use exome sequencing data from 77,184 individuals to generate penetrance estimates and assess the utility of polygenic variation in risk prediction of monogenic variants.

Mehl and colleagues present a protocol for selecting aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (RS)/tRNA pairs from a publicly available MaPylRS active site mutant library for specific and efficient incorporation of noncanonical amino acids into proteins.

An optically synchronized precision fibre link based on two independent chip-scale cavity-stabilized stimulated Brillouin scattering lasers is demonstrated. An ultralow 3 × 10⁻⁴ rad² residual phase error variance is achieved between the mutually coherent transmit and receive lasers.

Photoluminescence from plasmonic nanostructures exhibits diverse wavelength dependent nonlinear behaviors with debated origins. Here, authors use plasmonic gap mode resonators with precise nanoscale confinement to show this nonlinear emission can become dominated by non-Fermi carrier contributions.

Alkynes found in natural products are typically assembled by metal-dependent enzymes. The enzyme BesB instead forms a terminal alkyne-containing amino acid using pyridoxal phosphate as a cofactor. Here, the authors use structural and mechanistic investigations to identify the key features of BesB that allow it to carry out its fascinating chemistry.

A massive phonon mode in a high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator has been laser cooled close to its ground state. Its robustness to decoherence establishes the potential of these devices for quantum technologies.

A large empirical assessment of sequence-resolved structural variants from 14,891 genomes across diverse global populations in the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) provides a reference map for disease-association studies, population genetics, and diagnostic screening.

By bringing together whole exome and genome sequencing data from five cohorts, the authors assess the contribution of rare germline variants to prostate cancer risk and severity, further validating previously reported genes, and implicating a role for genes not previously reported.

Peer review information

Nature Communications thanks the anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.

In this largest whole-exome sequencing study of epilepsies to date, the Epi25 Collaborative identified extremely rare variants that confer risk for diverse epilepsy subtypes, highlighting roles in synaptic transmission and neuronal excitability.

Female carriers of BRCA1 mutations possess high breast cancer risk, which may reflect deficient growth control of mammary progenitor cells. Here, the authors study progenitor-enriched fractions from these carriers and describe a loss of PLK1-mediated mitotic spindle positioning and an inability of the progeny to acquire features of mature luminal cells.

Increased salinity of Subantarctic Mode Water during the initial phase of the Last Deglaciation could have enhanced deep water formation in the North Atlantic, according to proxy records from a sediment core in the southern Indian Ocean.

Transcription factors (TFs) represent an emerging class of therapeutic targets in oncology. Here, the authors develop Epiregulon, a computational method that constructs gene regulatory networks from ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq and RNA-seq data for accurate prediction of TF activity at the single-cell level, thereby facilitating the discovery of therapeutics targeting TFs.

Analyses of genome and exome sequencing data identify rare coding and structural variants associated with atrial fibrillation and highlight genetic links between atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathies.

Exome sequence data from 628,388 individuals was used to identify 24 risk loci in 40,208 carriers of clonal haematopoiesis of indeterminate potential and link them to other conditions including COVID-19, cardiovascular disease and cancer.

This study supports neurofilament light chain protein (NfL) in both cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood as an early marker of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease but suggests that NfL in CSF may be better suited than blood for monitoring clinical trial outcomes in symptomatic patients.

O-methyl nitronate is a rare functional group in natural products. Now, the biosynthetic pathway to O-methyl nitronate, which involves O-methylation of a peptidyl carrier protein (PCP)-tethered nitronate, has been revealed. In some bacteria, the same PCP-tethered nitronate is shown to be oxidized by nitronate monooxygenases to provide nitrite and a PCP-tethered glyoxylate.

Using sequencing and haplotype-resolved assembly of 65 diverse human genomes, complex regions including the major histocompatibility complex and centromeres are analysed.

The desirable functional properties of complex oxide materials are often influenced by the presence of oxygen defects and epitaxial strain. Meyer et al. demonstrate the role of oxygen defect kinetics in the strain control of the superconducting transition temperature of LSCO.

Epithelial cells sort proteins into apical and basolateral domains. Clathrin plays a key and selective role in the generation of basolateral protein polarity. These results demonstrate an important role of clathrin in sorting of proteins at the trans-Golgi network.

Genome-wide association analysis of an improved telomere length score, calculated from quantitative PCR and whole-genome sequencing measurements in 462,666 individuals in the UK Biobank, identifies novel genes and variants underlying this trait.

A wireless and battery-free 1.7-mm³ neural stimulator implanted onto the sciatic nerve of rats allows for repeatable stimulation across a range of physiological responses.