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Designing synthetic biomolecular condensates offers biological insights and is valuable for cellular and metabolic engineering. Here, the authors express orthogonal, unnatural condensates with protein binding aptamers in E. coli, which can dissolve and reassemble upon thermal cycling.

Expression of ADAM8, a metalloprotease disintegrin, correlates with worse prognosis in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Here Schlomann et al. show that ADAM8 promotes PDAC invasiveness, and develop a peptide inhibitor that blocks ADAM8 function and impedes PDAC progression in mouse models.

Tissue phenotypes arise from molecular states of individual cells and their spatial organisation, so spatial omics assays can help reveal how they emerge. Here, the authors apply graph neural networks to classify tissue phenotypes from spatial omics patterns, and use this approach to understand patterns in cancers and their microenvironments.

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.

High-content screening datasets are integrated within a shared latent space, enabling cross-dataset predictions.

What is the state of trust in scientists around the world? To answer this question, the authors surveyed 71,922 respondents in 68 countries and found that trust in scientists is moderately high.

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.

Literature produced inconsistent findings regarding the links between extreme weather events and climate policy support across regions, populations and events. This global study offers a holistic assessment of these relationships and highlights the role of subjective attribution.

Experimental measurements of high-order out-of-time-order correlators on a superconducting quantum processor show that these correlators remain highly sensitive to the quantum many-body dynamics in quantum computers at long timescales.

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.

Two ‘outrigger’ telescopes were added to CHIME, leading to the localization at detection of FRB 20210603A. The burst originated from deep within the star-forming disk of its host galaxy.

Neutral helium microscopy is a completely nondestructive, surface-sensitive imaging technique. Here, the authors demonstrate sub-resolution contrast using an advanced facet scattering model to reconstruct the topography of technological thin films in the ångström range.

Mastomys natalensis, a mouse found closely to rural human dwellings in Sub-Saharan Africa, is a major reservoir for Lassa Virus (LASV). Here, the authors show that LASV causes transient infections in adult M. natalensis, but persistent infections in young animals despite antibodies. LASV is found in various organs without causing pathology and infected animals efficiently transmit the virus.

Whole-genome alignment of 239 primate species reveals noncoding regulatory elements that are under selective constraint in primates but not in other placental mammals, that are enriched for variants that affect human gene expression and complex traits in diseases.

DNA methylation is one of the major epigenetic mechanisms that critically influence gene expression, genomic stability and cell differentiation. Here, the authors study DNMT1 in complex with DNA substrates and systematically analyze the mechanism and specificity of DNMT1.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

BPNet is an interpretable deep learning tool that predicts transcription-factor binding profiles from DNA sequence at base-pair resolution, enabling the identification of motifs and the regulatory syntax underlying transcription-factor binding.

An antibody screen of two distinct multiple sclerosis cohorts reveals an autoantibody signature that is detectable years before symptom onset and linked to a common microbial motif.

Empirically based models of disease progression in familial frontotemporal dementia reveal the relative ordering of clinical, neuroimaging, and fluid biomarker changes and facilitate novel clinical trial designs

Non-covalent interactions facilitate the stacking of framework layers in two dimensional covalent organic frameworks playing an important role for the framework formation. Here, the authors describe a covalent organic framework with tetratopic borate linkages whose counter cations promote the framework layer interaction.

Single-cell transcriptomics and protein expression analyses of salivary glands and gingiva, along with the detection of infectious virus and virus-specific antibodies in saliva from SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals, support a potential role for the oral cavity in COVID-19 pathogenesis.

Insufficient AHR activation has been suggested in SLE, and augmenting AHR activation therapeutically may prevent CXCL13⁺ T_PH/T_FH differentiation and the subsequent recruitment of B cells and formation of lymphoid aggregates in inflamed tissues.

Whole-genome sequencing in a Canadian cohort of 327 children with cerebral palsy compared to pediatric controls identifies novel pathogenic single-nucleotide variants/indels and copy number variations. In addition, mitochondrial variants in known disease genes were identified. This highlights the importance of genomic testing for individuals with cerebral palsy.

Genomic comparison of E. coli and K. pneumoniae isolated from faeces and blood of the same neonatal patients revealed highly related pairs, suggesting translocation between the gastrointestinal tract and the bloodstream occurred in multiple patients.

The dynamics of a quantum system shows interesting features. Here the authors demonstrate critical scaling in the spin relaxation due to spin-exchange process in a system of impurity Cs atoms immersed in Rb atoms.

Physical realizations of qubits are often vulnerable to leakage errors, where the system ends up outside the basis used to store quantum information. A leakage removal protocol can suppress the impact of leakage on quantum error-correcting codes.

Sabrina Adam et al. use a deep enzymology method to study the effect of neighboring DNA sequence variation on the in vitro activity of Tet1 and Tet2. Their results suggest that flanking sequences could represent an important parameter that influences genomic DNA modification patterns.

In mammals, DNA methylation patterns are established by two de novo DNA methyltransferases, DNMT3A and DNMT3B. Here the authors report the crystal structures of DNMT3B in complex with both CpG and CpA DNA, providing insight into the substrate-recognition mechanism underpinning the divergent genomic methylation activities of DNMT3A and DNMT3B.

Watson et al. demonstrate that astrocyte mitochondria can be horizontally transferred to glioblastoma cells in a GAP43-dependent manner, leading to changes in mitochondrial respiration and metabolism that promote proliferation and tumor growth.

A study of SARS-CoV-2 variants examining their transmission, infectivity, and potential resistance to therapies provides insights into the biology of the Delta variant and its role in the global pandemic.

Investigations of human cardiac disease involving human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes are limited by the disorganized presentation of biomechanical cues resulting in cell immaturity. Here the authors develop a platform of micron-scale 2D cardiac muscle bundles to precisely deliver physiologic cues, improving reproducibility and throughput.

Designing reliable nanoscale quantum-heat engines achieving high efficiency, high power and high stability is of fundamental and practical interest. Here, the authors report the realization of such a quantum machine using individual neutral Cs atoms in an atomic Rb bath, in which quantized heat exchange via inelastic spin-exchange collisions is controlled at the level of single quanta.

A study establishes a scalable approach to engineer and characterize a many-body-localized discrete time crystal phase on a superconducting quantum processor.

It is hoped that quantum computers may be faster than classical ones at solving optimization problems. Here the authors implement a quantum optimization algorithm over 23 qubits but find more limited performance when an optimization problem structure does not match the underlying hardware.

Ludmila Prokunina-Olsson, Thomas O'Brien and colleagues report the discovery of a new gene, INFL4, encoding interferon-λ4, that is upstream of INFL3 (IL28B). A compound dinucleotide frameshift genetic variant in INFL4 creates the full-length INFL4 protein and is more strongly associated with hepatitis C virus clearance in individuals of African ancestry than rs12979860, a known variant associated with clearance.

Two below-threshold surface code memories on superconducting processors markedly reduce logical error rates, achieving high efficiency and real-time decoding, indicating potential for practical large-scale fault-tolerant quantum algorithms.

Humans are better than computers at performing certain tasks because of their intuition and superior visual processing. Video games are now being used to channel these abilities to solve problems in quantum physics. See Letter p.210

Individuals over eighty years of age are less likely to mount a good immune response against SARS-CoV-2 (measured by neutralization titres) after the first dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine, but achieve good neutralization after the second dose.

Here the authors characterize structural variations (SVs) in a cohort of individuals with complex genomic rearrangements, identifying breakpoints by employing short- and long-read genome sequencing and investigate their impact on gene expression and the three-dimensional chromatin architecture. They find breakpoints are enriched in inactive regions and can result in chromatin domain fusions.

Anaplastic oligodendrogliomas are rare and incurable primary brain tumours with few treatment options. Here Labrecheet al. perform whole-exome sequencing and identify recurring mutations in transcription factor TCF12, which are associated with aggressive tumours.

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

Vaccination is effective in protecting from COVID-19. Here the authors report immune responses and breakthrough infections in twice-vaccinated patients receiving anti-TNF treatments for inflammatory bowel disease, and find dampened vaccine responses that implicate the need of adapted vaccination schedules for these patients.

Sven van der Lee, Julie Williams, Gerard Schellenberg and colleagues identify rare coding variants in PLCG2, ABI3 and TREM2 associated with Alzheimer's disease. These genes are highly expressed in microglia and provide additional evidence that the microglia-mediated immune response contributes to the development of Alzheimer's disease.

A study demonstrating increasing error suppression with larger surface code logical qubits, implemented on a superconducting quantum processor.