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The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider reports a search for charged-lepton-flavour violation in decays of Z bosons into a τ lepton and an electron or muon of opposite charge.

A study shows that epididymal spermatozoa are sensitive to preconception diet, identifies mitochondrial tRNAs and their fragments as sperm-borne factors and demonstrates epigenetic inheritance of mitochondrial tRNAs.

Aging-related Meibomian gland shrinkage is associated with dry eye disease. Here, the authors identify Meibomian gland stem cell populations and identify regulatory pathways altered in aging, suggesting new therapeutic targets for Meibomian gland dysfunction.

Steve Brown and colleagues report an analysis of 20 phenotyping tests, including 413 data parameters, across 449 mutant mouse alleles. They identify widespread pleiotropy and assign putative functions to genes that lacked previous phenotypic annotation.

α-Substituted-β-hydroxy ketones are valuable intermediates, but their preparation by alkylation of enolates is difficult with hindered electrophiles. Now, a direct method for preparing α-substituted-β-hydroxy ketones — including those having α-quaternary centres — by addition of Grignard reagents to epoxyhydrazones has been developed, enabling the stereocontrolled incorporation of a wide range of carbon based substituents.

Sea spray aerosols are thought to alter cloud properties in remote ocean regions. Aerosol analyses over four ocean regions reveal that these aerosols represent less than 30% of cloud condensation nuclei in typical marine boundary layer clouds.

The direct measurement of the QCD dead cone in charm quark fragmentation is reported, using iterative declustering of jets tagged with a fully reconstructed charmed hadron.

It is unclear how often genetic mosaicism of chromosome X arises. Here, the authors examine women with cancer and cancer-free controls and show that X chromosome mosaicism occurs more frequently than on autosomes, especially on the inactive X chromosome, but is not linked to non-haematologic cancer risk

Genetic variants associated with susceptibility to pancreatic cancer have been identified using genome wide association studies (GWAS). Here, the authors combine data from over 9000 patients and perform a meta-analysis to identify five novel loci linked to pancreatic cancer.

The climate impacts of deforestation due to changes in biogenic volatile organic compound emissions, which act as short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), are poorly understood. Here the authors show that including the impact SLCFs increases the projected warming associated with idealised deforestation scenarios.

RNF5 is a ubiquitin ligase regulating ER stress response. Here the authors show that Rnf5 deficiency potentiates immune response against melanoma via altered microbiota, and isolate bacterial strains that confer the same phenotype to wild type mice.

Quantum electrodynamics predicts a rare process in which light is scattered by light. The ATLAS Collaboration reports signs of this elusive effect in the collisions of ultra-relativistic lead ions.

Ten years after the discovery of the Higgs boson, the ATLAS  experiment at CERN probes its kinematic properties with a significantly larger dataset from 2015–2018 and provides further insights on its interaction with other known particles.

Laser beams travelling side-by-side through a medium usually only interact if they’re within a beam-diameter apart. An observation of the attraction and coalescence of high-power beams separated by several beam diameters in a plasma has implications for the development of laser-driven fusion.

Measurements of the inelastic cross section of anti-³He allow the estimation of the transparency of the Milky Way to the propagation of these light antinuclei produced in either cosmic-ray collisions or annihilation of dark-matter particles.

Evidence from animal models indicates that B cells have both pathogenic and protective functions in autoimmune diseases. In this Review, the authors highlight recent insights into the suppressive functions of activated B cells in mice, describe the potential of B cells for use as cell-based therapy for experimental autoimmune diseases, and finally discuss the possibility of translating this cellular approach to treat human autoimmune diseases.

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.

A few bacterial Cas9 nucleases have been repurposed as genome editing tools. Here, the authors use bioinformatic and biochemical analyses to characterize 79 Cas9 proteins, revealing substantial functional diversity and thus expanding the available toolbox of RNA-programmable CRISPR-associated nucleases.

N₂ fixation was key to the expansion of life on Earth, but which organisms fixed N₂ and if Mo-nitrogenase was functional in the low Mo early ocean is unknown. Here, the authors show that purple sulfur bacteria fix N₂ using Mo-nitrogenase in a Proterozoic ocean analogue, despite low Mo conditions.

Luis Pérez-Jurado, Stephen Chanock and colleagues detect clonal chromosomal abnormalities in peripheral blood or buccal samples from individuals in the general population. They show that the frequency of such events increases with age and is associated with elevated risk of developing subsequent hematological cancers.

Correlations in momentum space between hadrons created by ultrarelativistic proton–proton collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider provide insights into the strong interaction, particularly the short-range dynamics of hyperons—baryons that contain strange quarks.

In a multicenter research program coordinated by the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, Spielmann et al. analyze the cardiac function and structure in ~4,000 monogenic mutant mice and identify 705 mouse genes involved in cardiac function, 75% of which have not been previously linked to cardiac heritable disease in humans. Using the UK Biobank human data, the authors validate the link between cardiovascular disease and some of the newly identified genes to illustrate the resource value and potential of their mutant mouse collection.

The fate of ocean carbon is determined by the balance between primary productivity and heterotrophic breakdown of that photosynthate. Here the authors show that diatoms produce a polysaccharide that resists bacterial degradation, accumulates, aggregates and stores carbon during spring blooms.

The excited states of three-dimensional topological insulators can be accessed by ultrafast light pulses, which opens new possibilities for current transmission. Here, the authors show that a non-equilibrium gas of relativistic fermions with a long lifetime can emerge in a photoexcited topological insulator.

The Omicron variant evades vaccine-induced neutralization but also fails to form syncytia, shows reduced replication in human lung cells and preferentially uses a TMPRSS2-independent cell entry pathway, which may contribute to enhanced replication in cells of the upper airway. Altered fusion and cell entry characteristics are linked to distinct regions of the Omicron spike protein.

Pemphigus vulgaris is a life-threatening blistering skin disease caused by autoantibodies which destabilize cell adhesion of keratinocytes. The phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitor apremilast prevents skin blistering by stabilizing the keratin filament anchorage of desmosomes.

Contrary to the view that urbanization is a major driver of the global rise in obesity, the global increase in body-mass index is shown to be mostly due to increases in the body-mass indexes of rural populations.

Triggering and sustaining fusion reactions — with the goal of overall energy production — in a tokamak plasma requires efficient heating. Radio-frequency heating of a three-ion plasma is now experimentally shown to be a potentially viable technique.

A wealth of gene expression data is publicly available, yet is little use without additional human curation. Ma’ayan and colleagues report a crowdsourcing project involving over 70 participants to annotate and analyse thousands of human disease-related gene expression datasets.

A free-electron laser provides a sufficiently intense source of X-rays to allow X-ray and optical wave mixing, here demonstrated by measuring the induced charge density and associated microscopic fields in single-crystal diamond.