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Restructuring of genome sections creates conditions that increase blood cancer risk — plus, the latest from the Nature Briefing.

The ingestible device shoots out tiny jets of drugs to deliver them to the GI tract of pigs and dogs — plus how light-powered catalysts could help break down ‘forever chemicals’.

We round up some recent stories from the Nature Briefing.

Mitochondria divide to share the load when nutrients are scarce — plus, how smashing atomic nuclei together helps identify their shapes.

Enzymes embedded directly into the material allows PLA plastic to completely break down — plus a gel that can safely store proteins for shipping.

With a combined length of 23 million light years, these jets are the biggest yet discovered — plus, a single-step process for making metal alloys.

In episode 1 of What’s in a name we look at how species are named, and whether the current system needs to evolve in the face of societal pressure.

A hormone discovered in mice could help keep bones healthy during lactation, and a new way to edit genes in the gut microbiome.

Geographic location can be a key determinant of human health outcomes. Here, the authors show that in large-scale trials, randomization that is pair matched by geography can lead to substantial improvements in statistical efficiency and enable insights into spatially varying intervention effects.

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

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.

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).

A consensus cell type atlas for the fly brain provides both an intellectual framework and open-source toolchains for brain-scale comparative connectomics.

FlyWire presents a neuronal wiring diagram of the whole fly brain with annotations for cell types, classes, nerves, hemilineages and predicted neurotransmitters, with data products and an open ecosystem to facilitate exploration and browsing.

With the increasing dependence of the civilised world on science, the need is not so much for ‘popularisation’ as for understanding and critical appreciation of scientific advances if alienation from science is to be avoided.

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.

T cell responses can be generated to either pathogen infection or from priming with a vaccine. Here the authors compare T cell generation, phenotype and single cell transcriptome of participants vaccinated with a mpox vaccine or infected with the virus showing that the virus induced T cells showed more effective function and phenotype.

Here, the authors show that neutralization of human sera from both BNT162b2 vaccine recipients and from convalescent COVID-19 patients is less efficient against SARS- CoV-2 variants B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 and negatively associated with patient age.

Dillon et al. developed a new computational approach for optimizing CT-based image guidance for lung cancer radiation therapy. Monitoring the patient while controlling the imaging hardware in real time resulted in a 63% reduction in scan time and an 85% reduction in radiation, as demonstrated in a clinical trial of 30 patients.

The team select some of their favourite stories from the past 12 months.

Global-scale analyses of marine, terrestrial and freshwater assemblages found that temporal rates of species replacement were faster in locations with faster temperature change, including warming and cooling, and vulnerable assemblages were especially responsive.

Analysis of population decline shows that frequent disturbances enhance a population’s capacity to resist and recover from downturns and that trade-offs exist when adopting new or alternative land-use strategies.

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

Extinction threatens to erode the Tree of Life. Here, the authors calculate extinction risk for jawed vertebrates, predicting a loss of 86–150 billion years (11–19%) of evolutionary history through the next 50–500 years and indicating that cartilaginous fish, ray-finned fish, and turtles are most at risk from a phylogenetic perspective.

Three-dimensional simulations of massive star convection show that core-convection-driven gravity wave oscillations at the surface of the star are not the source of ‘red noise’ seen in photometric observations. The search for the source continues.

An extensive map of human DNase I hypersensitive sites, markers of regulatory DNA, in 125 diverse cell and tissue types is described; integration of this information with other ENCODE-generated data sets identifies new relationships between chromatin accessibility, transcription, DNA methylation and regulatory factor occupancy patterns.

DNase I footprinting in 41 cell and tissue types reveals millions of short sequence elements encoding an expansive repertoire of conserved recognition sequences for DNA-binding proteins.

Samples of different body regions from hundreds of human donors are used to study how genetic variation influences gene expression levels in 44 disease-relevant tissues.

Antibody cocktails represent a promising approach to prevent SARS-CoV-2 escape. Here, Ku et al., identify SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies from a phage library and identify an antibody combination that prevents viral escape and protects mice from viral challenge.

Lim and colleagues present the UK PROSECO study where they assess humoral and cellular immune responses to one, two and three doses of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 in patients with B-cell malignancies in a prospective observational study.

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) is an anti-inflammatory drug proposed as a treatment for COVID19. Here the results are reported from a randomised trial testing DMF treatment in 713 patients hospitalised with COVID-19. DMF was not associated with any improvement in day 5 outcomes.

A genome-wide association study of critically ill patients with COVID-19 identifies genetic signals that relate to important host antiviral defence mechanisms and mediators of inflammatory organ damage that may be targeted by repurposing drug treatments.

Human glial progenitor cells (hGPCs) lose mitotic competence with age. Here, the authors show that with maturation, adult hGPCs acquire a set of transcriptional repressors that actively suppress developmental gene expression.

It has been suggested that the Cambrian ocean was oxygen deficient, but physical evidence for widespread anoxia has been lacking. Now, sulphur isotope data from Cambrian rocks at six different locations around the world is presented, with the finding of a positive sulphur isotope excursion in phase with a large excursion in the marine carbon isotope record, which is thought to be indicative of a global carbon cycle perturbation at the time. With the help of a box model, these isotope shifts support the idea of large-scale anoxic and sulphidic conditions in the later Cambrian ocean.

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.

Incomplete splicing of HTT results in the production of the highly pathogenic exon 1 HTT protein. Here the authors identify the necessary intronic regions and the underlying mechanisms that contribute to this process.

Simple analytic estimates and detailed numerical calculations show that the solar dynamo begins near the surface, rather than at the much-deeper tachocline.

Here we show how PFL2 and PFL3 neurons in the Drosophila brain compare a representation of direction with internal spatial goals, both anchored in world-centric coordinates, and produce body-centric steering commands that act to correct deviations from the goal direction. 

The Mouse ENCODE Consortium has mapped transcription, DNase I hypersensitivity, transcription factor binding, chromatin modifications and replication domains throughout the mouse genome in diverse cell and tissue types; these data were compared with those from human to confirm substantial conservation in the newly annotated potential functional sequences and to reveal pronounced divergence of other sequences involved in transcriptional regulation, chromatin state and higher order chromatin organization.

Spatially resolved transcriptome analysis of human and mouse idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis identifies disease-associated niches and a role for aberrant alveolar epithelial cells in human disease pathogenesis.

Roifman Syndrome is a rare disorder whose disease manifestations include growth retardation, spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia and immunodeficiency. Here, the authors use whole-genome sequencing to discover that rare compound heterozygous variants disrupting the small nuclear RNA gene RNU4ATACcause Roifman Syndrome.

The ATLAS Collaboration reports the observation of the electroweak production of two jets and a Z-boson pair. This process is related to vector-boson scattering and allows the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking to be probed.

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.

The ways in which ocean communities respond to warming are related to their composition. The variety of thermal affinities and thermal ranges of individual species, along with vertical temperature gradients, shape community response and allow the prediction of regional responses to warming.