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Trade in arachnids includes millions of individuals and over 1264 species, with over 70% of individuals coming from the wild.

Chronic tinnitus is often treated with cognitive-behavioural therapy, hearing aids, counselling, or sound therapy, but their combined benefit is unclear. Here, the authors show, in a multicentre randomised trial, that combination treatments improve tinnitus scores more than single therapies, though benefits appear compensatory rather than synergistic.

Yashinskie, Zhu and colleagues show that p53 activation triggers increased synthesis and accumulation of phospholipids, with enhanced activation of autophagy and lysosomal catabolism programmes and increased reliance on lipid headgroup recycling.

A genomic constraint map for the human genome constructed using data from 76,156 human genomes from the Genome Aggregation Database shows that non-coding constrained regions are enriched for regulatory elements and variants associated with complex diseases and traits.

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.

Functional connectivity measured from fMRI data is widely used in neuroscience. Here the authors report an association between two types of breathing signature and obtained BOLD data, and associated sex differences.

Deconvolution methods infer levels of immune infiltration from bulk expression of tumour samples. Here, authors assess 6 published and 22 community-contributed methods via a DREAM Challenge using in vitro and in silico transcriptional profiles of admixed cancer and healthy immune cells.

The authors defined a roadmap for investigating the genetic covariance between structural or functional brain phenotypes and risk for psychiatric disorders. Their proof-of-concept study using the largest available common variant data sets for schizophrenia and volumes of several (mainly subcortical) brain structures did not find evidence of genetic overlap.

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.

Systematic large-scale analysis of embryonic development requires the processing of large amounts of microscopy data. Here Schmid et al.solve this problem by developing a high-speed imaging system that projects zebrafish embryos onto a ‘world map’ in real time, revealing characteristic migration patterns in the early endoderm.

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.

A portion of the orbitofrontal cortex can be subdivided by its connectivity with the posterior cingulate cortex. This connectivity-based parcellation shows differences in functional connectivity and economic choice signals.

The unpredictability of evolution makes it difficult to deal with drug resistance because over the course of a treatment there may be mutations that we cannot predict. The authors propose to use quantum methods to control the speed and distribution of potential evolutionary outcomes.

Benjamin Voight and colleagues report the annotated genome of the golden orb-weaver spider. They describe 28 spider silk genes (spidroins), characterize their expression in distinct silk gland types and identify non-spidroin genes with expression patterns suggesting potential roles in silk production.

Genome-wide analyses identify variants associated with sinus node dysfunction, distal conduction disease and pacemaker implantation, implicating ion channel function, cardiac developmental programs and sarcomeric structure in bradyarrhythmia susceptibility.

E. coli maintains membrane lipid asymmetry by transferring glycerophospholipids from the outer membrane to the inner membrane; this requires outer membrane protein MlaA, periplasmic chaperone MlaC, and inner-membrane complex MlaBDEF. Here, the authors show that in some bacteria that lack MlaA and MlaC, MlaD forms a transenvelope bridge comprising a typical inner-membrane domain and, in addition, an outer-membrane domain.

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.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

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.

The authors measured the variability of neuronal responses across a large number of datasets and cortical areas. They found that variability decreased in response to all stimuli tested, whether the animal was awake, behaving or anesthetized, suggesting that the stabilization of cortex in response to an input is a general cortical property.

Global public expectations for carbon removal governance are: engagement beyond acceptance research; regulating industry beyond incentivizing innovation; systemic coordination; and prioritizing underlying and interrelated causes of unsustainability.

A downsampling approach to assess causal variant fine-mapping, replication failure rate, finds that commonly used methods may be miscalibrated. Simulations suggest this is probably due to a nonsparse genetic architecture model misspecification. Incorporating infinitesimal effects in the SuSiE and FINEMAP frameworks improves performance.

Water use in river basins is an age-old resource-management question, but it is rare to quantify consumption by specific sectors. The Colorado River is being overused for beef and dairy production, endangering the entire river ecosystem.

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.

ATRX inactivation occurs often in IDH-mutant gliomas and has been associated with immune dysfunction. Here, using preclinical models of glioma, the authors show that ATRX inactivation promotes innate immune signalling in response to double stranded RNA-based innate immune agonists, an effect that is masked in IDH-mutant tumours, presenting a therapeutic vulnerability.

TG2 functions as an eraser and exchanger of H3 monoaminylations, including histaminylation of Gln5 of histone H3.

Tang and colleagues show that a half-life-extended IL-10–Fc fusion protein acts directly on terminally exhausted PD1⁺TIM-3⁺CD8⁺ T cells to enhance their proliferation and effector function by reprogramming the cellular metabolism to oxidative phosphorylation in a mitochondrial pyruvate carrier–dependent manner. Treatment of tumor-bearing mice with IL-10–Fc and adoptive T cell therapy led to eradication of their established solid tumors and durable cures.

Cell migration is sensitive to environmental stiffness, but how cells sense optimal stiffness is not known. Here the authors develop a model that predicts that the optimum can be shifted by altering the number of active molecular motors and clutches, and verify their model in two cell types.

The giant planet 8 Ursae Minoris b seems to have avoided engulfment by its giant host star through a stellar merger that either affected the evolution of the host star or produced 8 Ursae Minoris b as a second-generation planet.

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common cancers in women and has an average 5-year survival of only 43%. Here, Kanchi et al.describe the germline and somatic mutation spectrum in ovarian cancer patients and identify potential risk variants associated with the disease.

Advances in laboratory-scale characterization have spurred a revival in transuranium organometallic chemistry. This Review discusses the field up to early 2025, framed alongside fundamental properties, past landmarks and future challenges. These exotic species are contrasted against lanthanide and earlier actinide examples.

The ability of the DEAD-box RNA helicase DDX5 to interact with master transcription factor RORγt is dependent on binding of the long noncoding RNA Rmrp; the DDX5–RORγt complex coordinates transcription of selective T_H17 genes and is required for the pathogenicity of T_H17 cells.

Schizophrenia is a highly heritable genetic disorder, however, identification of specific genetic risk variants has proven difficult because of its complex polygenic nature—a large multi-stage genome-wide association study identifies 128 independent associations in over 100 loci (83 of which are new); key findings include identification of genes involved in glutamergic neurotransmission and support for a link between the immune system and schizophrenia.

Isotope analysis of human and faunal remains dated to the Later Stone Age reveals a substantial plant-based component to hunter-gatherer diets at the site of Taforalt, several millennia prior to the development of agriculture in the Levant, renewing the question of why agriculture did not develop contemporaneously in North Africa.

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.

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.

A pangenome analysis of 76 wild and domesticated barley accessions in combination with short-read sequence data of 1,315 barley genotypes indicates that allelic diversity at structurally complex loci may have helped crop plants to adapt to agricultural ecosystems.

Durable agonism of NPR1 achieved with a novel investigational monoclonal antibody could mirror the positive hemodynamic changes in blood pressure and heart failure identified in humans with lifelong exposure to NPR1 coding variants.

Past volcanic eruptions along the densely populated Ethiopian Rift valley remain poorly constrained despite the present day hazard. Hutchison et al. show that a large volcanic flare up along a 200 km section of the rift occurred between 320–170 ka dramatically affecting the landscape and hominin population.

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.

A sequencing chemistry that separates nucleotide identification from nucleotide incorporation achieves high accuracy.