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Membranes made of metal-coated silicon nitride can be used to assemble van der Waals heterostructures without a polymer support layer, thus improving cleanliness and allowing assembly at more extreme temperature and vacuum conditions.

Two-dimensional electron gases that form in some complex oxide heterostructures may have useful functional behavior due to the interaction of the parent materials. Here the authors show that PZT/STO interfaces can host a spin-polarized electron gas, even though the bulk materials are nonmagnetic.

A 25-year-old question about whether a two-dimensional system can be a real metal at low temperatures and in zero magnetic field has recently been answered positively. A new link between this unusual metallic behaviour and the quantum Hall effect (observed at high magnetic fields) suggests that they share a common physical origin.

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.

Correlation-driven topological phases with different Chern numbers are observed in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene in modest magnetic fields, indicating that strong electronic interactions can lead to topologically non-trivial phases.

Placing monolayer tungsten diselenide on Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene promotes enhanced superconductivity, indicating that proximity-induced spin–orbit coupling plays a key role in stabilizing the pairing, paving the way for engineering tunable, ultra-clean graphene-based superconductors.

In this study, Aggarwal and colleagues perform prospective sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 isolates derived from asymptomatic student screening and symptomatic testing of students and staff at the University of Cambridge. They identify important factors that contributed to within university transmission and onward spread into the wider community.

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.

Timothy Frayling, Joel Hirschhorn, Peter Visscher and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for adult height in 253,288 individuals. They identify 697 variants in 423 loci significantly associated with adult height and find that these variants cluster in pathways involved in growth and together explain one-fifth of the heritability for this trait.

3D-printed steels with hierarchically heterogeneous microstructures demonstrate high strength and ductility.

A hidden effect can occur in materials where locally a symmetry is broken, even though global symmetry is preserved. An example is hidden spin-polarization, arising from local inversion symmetry breaking in otherwise globally centro-symmetric materials. Here, Yuan et al uncover a hidden spin-polarization that can occur in antiferromagnets without spin-orbit coupling and identify the key material requirements for this to occur.

A genome-wide association study including over 76,000 individuals with schizophrenia and over 243,000 control individuals identifies common variant associations at 287 genomic loci, and further fine-mapping analyses highlight the importance of genes involved in synaptic processes.

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.

Genetic and testing data from England show that the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern B.1.1.7 has a transmission advantage over other lineages.

The Dresselhaus and Rashba effects have traditionally been expected only in non-centrosymmetric systems but recent work has shown that they can exist in some centrosymmetric materials. Here the authors show that the so-called hidden Rashba effect originates from wavefunction segregation enforced by local symmetries.

Breast cancer risk for BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation carriers varies depending on other genetic factors. Here, the authors perform a case-only genome-wide association study and highlight novel loci associated with breast cancer risk for BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation carriers.

It is difficult to compute the transport properties of a broad array of complex materials both accurately and inexpensively. Here, the authors develop a computationally efficient method for calculating carrier scattering rates of semiconductors, with good accuracy but low cost.

Due to the crystal symmetry of single-layer transition metal dichalcogenides and the fact that the conduction and valence band edges are at the zone-edge K points, the 2p exciton states are split. A two-colour pump–probe scheme is used to drive the 1s–2p exciton transition, and then probe the changes in absorption near the spectral position of the 1s line to measure the splitting energy.

Many tumours exhibit hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypoxic tumours often respond poorly to therapy. Here, the authors quantify hypoxia in 1188 tumours from 27 cancer types, showing elevated hypoxia links to increased mutational load, directing evolutionary trajectories.

The authors present SVclone, a computational method for inferring the cancer cell fraction of structural variants from whole-genome sequencing data.

Tuning the effective g-factor of semiconductors by a perpendicular electric field is essential for designing controllable spin-based devices such as qubits and spin field-effect transistors. Here, a wide-range g-factor tunability by external electric field is demonstrated in a high-mobility 2D hole heterostructure.

With the generation of large pan-cancer whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing projects, a question remains about how comparable these datasets are. Here, using The Cancer Genome Atlas samples analysed as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the authors explore the concordance of mutations called by whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing techniques.

Post-international travel quarantine has been widely implemented to mitigate SARS-CoV-2 transmission, but the impacts of such policies are unclear. Here, the authors used linked genomic and contact tracing data to assess the impacts of a 14-day quarantine on return to England in summer 2020.

Placing a single layer of tungsten diselenide in contact with twisted bilayer graphene enables superconductivity even for non-magic twist angles where insulating behavior is absent.

The C. elegans neuropil is shown to be organized into four strata composed of related behavioural circuits, and its design principles are linked to the developmental processes that underpin its assembly.

The authors show human embryo lineage specification in the blastocyst is driven by differential FGF/ERK signaling, which segregates yolk sac-fated hypoblast and embryonic epiblast. They establish naïve embryonic stem cells based on these insights.

Data suggest an inverse relationship exists between where plant diversity occurs in nature and where it is housed. This disparity persists across physical and digital botanical collections despite overt colonialism ending over half a century ago.

A region on chromosome 19p13 is associated with the risk of developing ovarian and breast cancer. Here, the authors genotyped SNPs in this region in thousands of breast and ovarian cancer patients and identified SNPs associated with three genes, which were analysed with functional studies.

Ruth Loos and colleagues report results of a large genome-wide association study for body mass index. They identify 18 new loci associated with this trait, some of which map near key hypothalamic regulators of energy balance.

NKG7 is a molecule well associated with NK cells but of unknown function. Engwerda and colleagues demonstrate that NKG7 is also associated with T_H1 cells and is essential for type I and cytotoxic responses.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

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.

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.

Over 170 susceptibility loci have been identified by genome-wide association studies in breast cancer. Here, the authors interrogated the role of risk-associated variants from non-breast tissue, and using expression quantitative trait loci, identify potential target genes of known breast cancer susceptibility variants, as well as 11 regions not previously known to be associated with breast cancer risk.

Employing a remote Coulomb superlattice formed by twisted bilayer WS₂, the authors demonstrate the engineering and on/off switching of a Coulomb superlattice of correlated states in bilayer graphene with period and strength determined by the remote superlattice.

Cancers evolve as they progress under differing selective pressures. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, the authors present the method TrackSig the estimates evolutionary trajectories of somatic mutational processes from single bulk tumour data.

Scanning tunnelling microscopy imaging of the correlated phases of magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene shows marked signatures of interaction-driven spatial symmetry breaking.

Multi-ancestry meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies for self-reported physical activity during leisure time, leisure screen time, sedentary commuting and sedentary behavior at work identify 99 loci associated with at least one of these traits.

Serological analysis and infection outcomes of participants in the multi-center, prospectively enrolled OCTAVE cohort, comprising 2,686 participants with immune-suppressive diseases who recieved two COVID-19 vaccines, reveals specific clinical phenotypes that might benefit from specific COVID-19 therapeutic strategies.

Analyses of 2,658 whole genomes across 38 types of cancer identify the contribution of non-coding point mutations and structural variants to driving cancer.

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.

Population-scale whole-genome sequencing across four remote Indigenous Australian communities reveals a large fraction of structural variants that are unique to these populations, emphasizing the genetic distinctiveness of and diversity among Indigenous Australians.