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The photosynthetic production of oxygen in the ocean is thought to have begun at least 2.7 billion years ago. The geochemistry of marine sediments deposited 2.6 billion years ago suggests that ocean margins were oxygenated at least 100 million years before the first significant increase in atmospheric oxygen concentrations.

A high-resolution, global atlas of mortality of children under five years of age between 2000 and 2017 highlights subnational geographical inequalities in the distribution, rates and absolute counts of child deaths by age.

Chemical disequilibrium is a known biosignature, and it is important to determine the conditions for its remote detection. A thermodynamical model coupled with atmospheric retrieval shows that a disequilibrium can be inferred for a Proterozoic Earth-like exoplanet in reflected light at a high O₂/CH₄ abundance case and signal-to-noise ratio of 50.

Fine-scale geospatial mapping of overweight and wasting (two components of the double burden of malnutrition) in 105 LMICs shows that overweight has increased from 5.2% in 2000 to 6.0% in children under 5 in 2017. Although overall wasting decreased over the same period, most countries are not on track to meet the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025.

Competition dynamics between early Earth photosynthetic microorganisms are unclear. Here, the authors demonstrate that competition for light and nutrients between oxygenic phototrophs and Fe-based photosynthesizers in surface oceans provides a novel ecophysiological mechanism for the protracted oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere.

Low phosphorus burial in shallow marine sedimentary rocks before about 750 million years ago implies a change in the global phosphorus cycle, coinciding with the end of what may have been a stable low-oxygen world.

Supervised deep learning models hold promise for the interpretation of histology images, but are limited by cost and quality of training datasets. Here, the authors develop a self-supervised deep learning method that can automatically discover features in cancer histology images that are associated with diagnosis, survival, and molecular phenotypes.

Large genome-wide meta-analysis of clinically diagnosed late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) from 94,437 individuals identifies new LOAD risk loci and implicates Aβ formation, tau protein binding, immune response and lipid metabolism.

Seawater buffering via pyrite burial removes CO₂ from the atmosphere and helps to stabilize climate by providing a negative feedback on warming, according to coupled carbon–sulfur cycle modelling.

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

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Efficient statistical emulation of melting land ice under various climate scenarios to 2100 indicates a contribution from melting land ice to sea level increase of at least 13 centimetres sea level equivalent.

Carbon removal is a strongly debated component of societal efforts to address anthropogenic climate disruption, in part because efforts to scale carbon removal could delay or substitute for efforts aimed at mitigating anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Although there is no single solution to this problem, we argue here for radical transparency on the data behind carbon removal claims and the data required for evaluating the dollar-per-ton costs of various carbon removal pathways. Although this would represent a major shift from current practice, it has the potential to both minimize the deleterious impacts of carbon removal on near-term mitigation efforts and provide a foundation for ensuring that future carbon removal serves the public good.

The spin crossover films provide an efficient control of material properties by light excitation. In this work, the authors reveal sequential photo-switching dynamics, from local molecular rearrangement to global lattice deformation.

A state-level analysis of the impact of enhanced weathering deployment on carbon sequestration on agricultural land suggests that enhanced weathering could help the USA meet net-zero 2050 goals.

Keppler and colleagues show that individuals with hematological cancers rapidly develop potent infection-neutralizing antibodies and a robust T cell response against several SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern in response to mRNA vaccination.

Blue carbon ecosystems, such as seagrass meadows and mangrove forests, provide myriad ecosystem services and their restoration has gained global attention. Via enhanced ocean alkalinity, restoring these ecosystems can also promote durable carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere.

Single-molecule measurements of synaptic vesicles show that V-ATPases do not pump continuously in time but instead stochastically switch between ultralong-lived proton-pumping, inactive and proton-leaky modes.

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.

Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere will probably persist for only one billion more years before it sharply deoxygenates to low-level oxygen similar to those of the Archaean, according to a combined biogeochemistry and climate model.

Autoimmune diseases are regulated by the balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines. Here, the authors show that the transcriptional regulator Blimp1 is induced in inflammatory T helper cells by the cytokines IL-27 and IL-12 to counteract pro-inflammatory IL-23 and promote resolution of tissue inflammation.

An extreme Einstein ring ~10,000 times as bright as the Milky Way in the infrared is studied with VLT/ERIS and ALMA, and the authors find that the lensed galaxy is a starburst with a fast-rotating disk, rather than being driven by a major merger.

The expression of oncogenic MYC paralogs in small cell lung cancer is mutually exclusive. In this study, the authors show that MYC, but not MYCN or MYCL, represses BCL2, resulting in cells that are uniquely sensitive to apoptosis, and find that CHK1 and AURKA inhibitors may be useful for treating these cancers.

As land plants expanded in the Late Devonian, when volcanic activity released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, nutrient runoff increased and led to ocean anoxia and marine mass extinction, according to an analysis of continental lacustrine records and Earth system model simulations.

The evolution of multicellular life is hypothesized to have been promoted by rising oxygen levels. Through experimental evolution and modeling, Bozdag et al. demonstrate that our planet’s first oxygenation would have strongly constrained, not promoted, the evolution of multicellular life.

The existence, nature and biological relevance of mechanoradicals in proteins are unknown. Here authors show that mechanical stress on collagen produces radicals and subsequently reactive oxygen species and suggest that collagen I evolved as a radical sponge against mechano-oxidative damage.

In the standard model of terrestrial planet formation, interstellar grains of typical size ∼0.1 μm are expected to grow to millimetre, centimetre or even-metre sized objects rather quickly. Unfortunately, such evolved disks are hard to observe. This paper reports observations of grains that have grown to about millimetre-size or larger in the terrestrial zone of a 3 Myr old star.

Lipid droplet (LD) function relies on protein partitioning between the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and LD. The authors show that UBXD8 adopts distinct conformations in both membranes and undergoes structural rearrangements during ER-to-LD partitioning.

Previous work suggests that marine oxygen levels and bioturbation are important factors that shape phosphorus burial and the size of the marine biosphere. Here the authors show that seawater calcium concentration is a key factor in controlling marine P burial, and thus the global oxygen cycle.

Known genetic loci account for only a fraction of the genetic contribution to Alzheimer’s disease. Here, the authors have performed a large genome-wide meta-analysis comprising 409,435 individuals to discover 6 new loci and demonstrate the efficacy of an Alzheimer’s disease polygenic risk score.

Commercial investment in enhanced rock weathering for carbon dioxide removal on agricultural lands is growing rapidly. This Review explores the potential of large-scale deployment, outlining the challenges faced in science, policy and governance to scale the technology.

Schwann cells (SCs) can acquire a repair phenotype following nerve injury. Here, the authors show that stromal SCs in ganglioneuromas express nerve-repair genes. Importantly, neuroblastoma cells respond to repair-related SCs increasing neuronal differentiation and reducing proliferation via EGFL8.

Enzymatically generated sulfane sulfur species called hydropersulfides terminate free radical chain reactions to prevent oxidative membrane damage and ferroptosis induction.

Evolutionary modelling and expert review are applied to integrate experimentally supported knowledge accumulated in the Gene Ontology knowledgebase to create a draft human gene ‘functionome’.

The application of limestone to croplands has the potential to remove atmospheric CO₂ while improving crop yields and restoring ecosystems from the acidification associated with industrialization.

The evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis should have occurred some time before the oxidation of Earth’s atmosphere 2.5 billion years ago. The molybdenum isotopic signature of shallow marine rocks that formed at least 2.95 billion years ago is consistent with deposition in waters that were receiving oxygen from photosynthesis at least half a billion years before the oxidation of the atmosphere.

Integrin internalization through the endosomal pathway can lead either to recycling back to the surface or to lysosomal degradation. Faessler and colleagues now show that, following internalization, β1 integrins are bound by sorting nexin 17 in early endosomes to prevent integrin degradation in lysosomes and to promote surface recycling.

The disappearance of non-mass-dependent sulphur isotope anomalies from the rock record is thought to indicate the increase in atmospheric oxygen concentration from its initial, persistently low level; however, as a result of long-term surface recycling these anomalies may in fact survive in the sedimentary record for as long as 100 million years after an increase in atmospheric oxygen.

The investigation of a range of n- and p-doped small-molecule organic semiconductors reveals the role of the integer charge transfer complexes formed by host and dopant ions on conductivity and its thermal activation energy.

Systematic investigation of isomerism in covalent organic frameworks (COFs) can provide key insights into their properties. Here, the authors reveal that the constitutional isomerism of the linkage i.e., linkage orientations distinctly impact COFs’ structural and photophysical properties.

Ocean temperature and atmospheric oxygen concentration are key factors in the long-term efficiency of the marine biological carbon pump, according to a mechanistic model of carbon transfer from surface waters to the deep ocean interior.

Regulated exocytosis of neuronal synaptic vesicles is substantially faster than that of endocrine dense core vesicles despite similar molecular machineries. Here authors compare SNARE-mediated fusion of purified synaptic vesicles with insulin vesicles and see disparities in calcium-triggered fusion rates.

Phosphorus is a biolimiting nutrient that is important in regulating the redox state of the ocean–atmosphere system. Here, the ratio of phosphorus to iron in iron-oxide-rich sedimentary rocks through time has been used to evaluate the evolution of the marine phosphate reservoir. Phosphate concentrations have been relatively constant over the past 542 million years of Earth's history, but were high in the aftermath of the 'snowball Earth' glaciations some 750 to 635 million years ago, with implications for the rise of metazoan life.