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A systematic analysis of lignin biosynthetic genes to quantitatively understand their effect on wood properties is still lacking. Here, the authors integrate transcriptomic, proteomic, fluxomic and phenomic data to quantify the impact of perturbations of transcript abundance on lignin biosynthesis and wood properties.

Measurements of the net ecosystem exchanges of CO₂, CH₄ and soil N₂O from Acacia plantation, degraded forest and intact forest enable presentation of the peatland wood plantation rotation greenhouse gas flux balance.

This study estimates construction-related emissions and carbon budgets for over 1,000 cities worldwide. Through quantitative analysis and an accessible open dashboard, this study empowers city stakeholders to craft science-based strategies for aligning future construction growth with climate goals.

Baked sediment, heat-shattered artefacts and introduced pyrite in a 400,000-year-old Palaeolithic occupation site in Suffolk, UK provide evidence of intentional fire-making, marking a pivotal moment in human development.

Australian archaeological finds of 12,000-year-old fireplaces and artefacts match nineteenth-century GunaiKurnai ritual practices. They represent approximately 500 generations of cultural transmission of this ritual.

Northern peatlands are a significant carbon sink but are vulnerable to decomposition during drought and low water tables. Woody litter added to these ecosystems during high water table conditions leaches polyphenolics that protect carbon stores against decomposition, even during subsequent drought.

Genome-wide association studies incorporating data for populations of African ancestry provide an expanded view of the genetic basis of schizophrenia, which has previously been studied mainly in European and East Asian cohorts.

Achieving mitigation from forests aligned with #NDCs requires $20–72 billion annually by 2030. Global coordination could double mitigation with the same level of finance, revealing major efficiency gains and informing next generation climate targets.

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.

Projections of extinctions of bird species and losses of functional diversity over the next 100 years suggest that even immediate and widespread threat abatement would be insufficient to prevent losses, and targeted recovery programmes must also be implemented to conserve avian diversity.

Little is known about the diets of early modern humans as they dispersed into Australia. Here, Florin et al. study charred plant remains from Madjedbebe rockshelter, which show that 65–53 thousand years ago, early modern humans in northern Australia already had a broad diet of plants.

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 large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

A high-resolution local palaeoclimatic archive is correlated to the early Holocene human behavioural record at the British Mesolithic site of Star Carr. Despite environmental stresses at this time, intensive human activity persisted over centuries, suggesting resilience to climate change.

Using tree community data from 29 tropical and temperate sites that have experienced multi-decadal alterations in fire frequency, the authors show repeated burning generally reduces stem density and basal area, with most pronounced effects in savanna ecosystems and in sites with strong wet seasons or strong dry seasons.

An analysis of the impact of logging intensity on biodiversity in tropical forests in Sabah, Malaysia, identifies a threshold of tree biomass removal below which logged forests still have conservation value.

COVID-19 has provided an opportunity to rethink the scientific conference. If online meetings become the norm, how can researchers make the most of them?

Over-reliance on charcoal sourced from native forests rather than plantations doubled CO₂ emissions from Brazil’s steel industry between 2000 and 2007.

Land use change has important impacts on biodiversity. Here, the authors calculate agriculture’s impact on the Brazilian Cerrado’s diversity with three methods, finding consistent magnitude of impacts and complementary insights among approaches, and using these findings to make recommendations for their application.

The roles of Asgard archaea in soil ecosystems are unclear. In this study, the authors report complete genomes and metatranscriptomic data of Asgard archaea that indicate a role in production and consumption of carbon compounds known to serve as substrates for methane production in wetland soils.

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.

Using 13 functional traits we characterize the Amazonian trees and the communities they form. Amazonian tree communities are distributed along a fast-slow-spectrum. This results in clear differences in traits among these forests, as well as their biomass and biomass productivity.

New 43–45 ka dates for stone tool assemblages associated with anatomically modern humans (AMHs) at the southern Spanish site of Bajondillo suggest an early AMH incursion and weaken the case for late Neanderthal persistence in the region.

The number of individuals in a given space influences animal interactions and network dynamics. Here the authors identify general rules underlying density dependence in animal networks and reveal some fundamental differences between spatial and social dynamics.

Plants across many ecosystems are increasingly exposed to dryness stress. Using meta-analysis, the authors show that plants can adjust their hydraulic traits in response to drought and other global change factors, but not equally across traits and not enough to prevent lethal hydraulic failure.

Little is known about the microbial ecology of the deep seabed. Here, Dong et al. predict metabolic capabilities and microbial interactions in deep seabed petroleum seeps using shotgun metagenomics, sediment geochemistry, metabolomics, and thermodynamic modelling.

Here, the authors reveal that protozoal communities shape rumen microbiome structure, offering fresh insights into how these complex communities coordinate essential metabolic tasks across multiple microbial domains.

Land-based mitigation for meeting the Paris climate target must consider the carbon cycle impacts of land-use change. Here the authors show that when bioenergy crops replace high carbon content ecosystems, forest-based mitigation could be more effective for CO₂ removal than bioenergy crops with carbon capture and storage.

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.

Harmful algal and bacterial blooms are increasingly frequent in lakes and rivers. From the Sydney Basin, Australia, this study uses fossil, sedimentary and geochemical data to reveal bloom events following forest ecosystem collapse during the end-Permian event and that blooms have consistently followed warming-related extinction events, inhibiting the recovery of freshwater ecosystems for millennia.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

Only about 1.07 °C of climate warming above the pre-industrial level is required for fire to substantially diminish the effectiveness of global carbon sinks, suggesting that climate change has already been weakening carbon storage through fire, according to integrated model simulations that consider the interaction between fire and vegetation.

Inventory data from more than 1 million trees across African, Amazonian and Southeast Asian tropical forests suggests that, despite their high diversity, just 1,053 species, representing a consistent ~2.2% of tropical tree species in each region, constitute half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

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.