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Given that the human body is composed of many microbial niches, and there have been few reports on the biogeography of the microbiome, the authors analyse the intra-individual inter-organ and intra-organ microbiome of seven surface organs of deceased individuals.

Sustainable management of soil organic carbon (SOC) in farmland is critical for mitigating climate change and improving soil health. Degradable film mulching is a promising alternative to plastic film mulching, sequestering SOC and reducing C loss in dryland agroecosystems under climate change.

How complex microbial communities assemble through the animal’s life, and how predictable the assembly process is, remains poorly understood. Here, the authors profile the cow gut microbiome from birth to adulthood in animals born in C-section or natural birth and show that chance events early in life have a strong impact on microbiome development.

Sparse labelling and whole-brain imaging are used to reconstruct and classify brain-wide complete morphologies of 1,741 individual neurons in the mouse brain, revealing a dependence on both brain region and transcriptomic profile.

In somatic cells the mechanisms maintaining the chromosome ends are normally inactivated; however, cancer cells can re-activate these pathways to support continuous growth. Here, the authors characterize the telomeric landscapes across tumour types and identify genomic alterations associated with different telomere maintenance mechanisms.

The characterization of 4,645 whole-genome and 19,184 exome sequences, covering most types of cancer, identifies 81 single-base substitution, doublet-base substitution and small-insertion-and-deletion mutational signatures, providing a systematic overview of the mutational processes that contribute to cancer development.

Investigating the inner structure of baryons is important to further our understanding of the strong interaction. Here, the BESIII Collaboration extracts the absolute value of the ratio of the electric to magnetic form factors and its relative phase for e + e − → J/ψ → ΛΣ decays, enhancing the signal thanks to the vacuum polarisation effect at the J/ψ peak.

Clonally diverse and activated memory CD4⁺ T cells at baseline are associated with the development of severe immune-related adverse events, irrespective of the affected organ system, in patients with melanoma treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors.

Previous work has shown in iPSC derived neurons that synaptic impairments are associated with a 4bp DISC1 deletion. Here the authors demonstrate a role for the PDE4 signalling pathway in these synaptic impairments.

Dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area have a role in modulating aggression in adult male mice, and this effect of dopamine depends strongly on fighting experience.

Maternal SETD2 deficiency leads to loss of H3K36me3, aberrant DNA methylation and ectopic H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 in mouse oocytes. Maternal depletion of SETD2 causes oocyte defects and subsequent zygotic arrest.

Genome-wide association analysis of gout and urate identifies 148 new loci, implicating biological pathways and prioritizing candidate genes involved in inflammatory processes.

Alzheimer’s disease is associated with changes in astrocytes. Here the authors investigated the astrocyte translatome associated with amyloid-ß and tau pathology.

Viscous Dirac fluid flow in room-temperature graphene is imaged using quantum diamond magnetometry, revealing a parabolic Poiseuille profile for electron flow in a high-mobility graphene channel near the charge-neutrality point.

Designing an efficient electrocatalyst of hydrogen oxidation reaction is highly critical for anion exchange membrane fuel cells. Here the authors report implanting oxophilic metal atoms in PtRu nanowires to significantly improve the mass activity, stability, and resistance to CO-poisoning for hydrogen oxidation.

Zhu and colleagues show that a subpopulation of spleen-derived fibroblasts secrete Gremlin 1, which suppresses chronic myeloid leukemia progression by inducing leukemia stem cell apoptosis through the BMP signaling pathway.

Here, the authors design NaNbO₃ based ceramics with the aim of enabling a field-induced reversible phase transformation between the antiferroelectric and ferroelectric phases, which manifests itself in a well-defined double hysteresis loop in the P-E hysteresis curve.

Conversion electrodes possess high energy density but suffer a rapid capacity loss over cycling compared to their intercalation equivalents. Here the authors reveal the microscopic origin of the fading behavior, showing that the formation and augmentation of passivation layers are responsible.

Geminal disubstitution of cyclic monomers is known to improve the chemical recyclability of their polymers, but usually at the expense of performance properties. Now, geminal disubstitution of a six-membered lactone has been shown to synergistically enable chemical recyclability back to the monomer and enhance the materials performance of the resulting polyesters, with properties that rival or exceed those of polyethylene.

Layered oxide heterostructures are widely studied because of the new quantum states that can arise at the interface between the oxide materials used. Here, the authors are able to link the rotation of crystallographic oxygen octahedra at the interface to a modified ferromagnetic state in such heterostructures.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

Some cancer patients first present with metastases where the location of the primary is unidentified; these are difficult to treat. In this study, using machine learning, the authors develop a method to determine the tissue of origin of a cancer based on whole sequencing data.

Mammalian oocytes divide asymmetrically during meiotic maturation. Here, the authors show that spindle movement away from oocyte center depends on actin filaments nucleated from the spindle periphery pushing against surrounding mitochondria, which polarizes spontaneously to produce directional spindle motion.

Electrocaloric effects are large in a limited set of materials that display hysteretic first-order phase transitions. Here epitaxial SrTiO₃ thin films are strain engineered to achieve anhysteretic second-order phase transitions, with electrocaloric effects enhanced by one order of magnitude over bulk.

Kagome superconductors host a panoply of condensed matter phenomena, some of which are mediated by band topology. Here, authors use ARPES and DFT to identify type-II and type-III Dirac nodal lines, flat bands and topological surface states in the kagome metal CsTi₃Bi₅.

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

In this study the authors consider the structural variants (SVs) present within cancer cases of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. They report hundreds of genes, including known cancer-associated genes for which the nearby presence of a SV breakpoint is associated with altered expression.

Prostate cancers (PCa) are characterized by an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Here the authors identify a subset of iron-loaded cancer-associated fibroblasts secreting myeloid cell-associated proteins and driving immunosuppression in PCa.

Biobased materials are of interest for many applications. Here the authors report insect-derived peptides that self-assemble into hollow nanocapsules through a gradient-driven, single-step, solvent exchange process, enabling the encapsulation of diverse cargoes with potential for drug delivery applications.

Twisted bilayers of 2D semiconductors are being intensively investigated due to their emergent physical properties, but their controlled bottom-up synthesis remains challenging. Here, the authors report a confined-space chemical vapour deposition strategy to synthesize MoS₂ bilayers with twist angles ranging from 0° to 120°.

Dissecting the relations between cells, genes, and histological regions in the tumor microenvironment (TME) remains challenging. Here, the authors develop stKeep, a heterogeneous graph learning method that integrates multimodal data and gene-gene interactions to identify cell states and composition in the TME from spatial transcriptomics.

The authors summarize the data produced by phase III of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, a resource for better understanding of the human and mouse genomes.

The impact of genetic fusions on degrons, which are motifs for ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation, has not been fully explored. Here, the authors analyse fusion genes affecting degrons in pan-cancer genomics data, validate their functional impact and find enrichment for both internal and C-terminal degron losses.

Analysis of copy number alterations in 1,451 patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) and matched patient tumor samples shows strong conservation from patient tumors through late-passage PDXs and a lack of systematic copy number evolution driven by the mouse host.

A South China Sea expedition in 2021 identified a 3.5-km-deep site close to the Equator for a next-generation neutrino telescope: TRIDENT. A large array of advanced detectors will be arrayed on the seabed to probe fundamental physics and explore the extreme Universe.

Neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC) is an aggressive subtype with limited effective therapeutic options. Here, the authors identify the RNA-binding protein ELAVL3 as a driver of differentiation into NEPC via a positive feedback loop with MYCN and demonstrate the use of the repurposed drug pyrvinium pamoate to target this axis using preclinical models of NEPC.

Zhu and colleagues identify GREMLIN1 as an FGFR1 ligand that promotes plasticity and castration resistance in prostate cancer through regulation of MAPK signaling, and show that anti-GREMLIN1 antibody therapy synergizes with androgen deprivation.

CTL responses are critical in protection against pathogens. Here, using mass spectrometry and flow cytometry, the authors characterize the kinetics of influenza A virus class I MHC epitopes cross-presented in professional antigen presenting cells and identify new epitopes that elicit T cell responses in infected mice.

The authors investigate junctions made of two flakes of the cuprate superconductor Bi₂Sr_2-xLa_xCuO_6+y (Bi2201) twisted by 45 degrees. They find evidence for an isotropic pairing component, and call into question theoretical predictions of d+id superconductivity in this system.

GWAS have identified more than 500 genetic loci associated with blood lipid levels. Here, the authors report a genome-wide analysis of interactions between genetic markers and physical activity, and find that physical activity modifies the effects of four genetic loci on HDL or LDL cholesterol.

NeuroString, a tissue-like biological interface created by laser patterning of polyimide into a graphene/nanoparticle network embedded in an elastomer, is introduced, allowing in vivo real-time detection of neurotransmitters in the brain and gut.

This overview of the ENCODE project outlines the data accumulated so far, revealing that 80% of the human genome now has at least one biochemical function assigned to it; the newly identified functional elements should aid the interpretation of results of genome-wide association studies, as many correspond to sites of association with human disease.

Multi-modal analysis is used to generate a 3D atlas of the upper limb area of the mouse primary motor cortex, providing a framework for future studies of motor control circuitry.

Water is believed to undermine the performance of aprotic lithium–air batteries. However, the authors here disclose different battery chemistry, showing that both lithium ions and protons are involved in the battery reactions in the presence of water, leading to an unprecedented dynamic product.

To understand the anomalous electronic transport properties of ZrTe₅ remains an elusive puzzle. Here, Zhang et al. report direct electronic evidence to the origin of the resistivity anomaly and temperature induced Lifshitz transition in ZrTe₅, indicating it being a weak topological insulator.

While single atom catalysis combines heterogeneous materials with molecular understanding, the role of the single atoms remains vague. Here, authors examine single Ni on MoS₂ via in situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy to reveal the intermediate and catalytically active species.

RNA sequencing reveals widespread transcriptomic changes across the cerebral cortex in autism spectrum disorder, including primary sensory regions, in addition to association regions, as well as an attenuation of regional identity.