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The study suggests a positive association between in utero drought exposure and faster biological aging in children in a global climate change hot spot. Drought experienced during pregnancy may reduce life expectancy.

Guidance on how to decarbonize the economy while limiting impacts on jobs and ensuring stability is scarce. Now a study finds that relying on a carbon tax alone falls short, whereas combining industrial regulations, subsidies and a modest tax is the most promising approach to achieve sustainable growth with green jobs.

Inbreeding depression has been observed in many different species, but in humans a systematic analysis has been difficult so far. Here, analysing more than 1.3 million individuals, the authors show that a genomic inbreeding coefficient (FROH) is associated with disadvantageous outcomes in 32 out of 100 traits tested.

Here, the authors characterize the neutralization capacity of post-Sputnik V vaccination sera against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern B.1.1.7 (alpha) and B.1.351 (beta), showing the latter to exhibit resistance to neutralization in vitro.

Assessing the value of genomics is key to informing evidence-based policies; this Review outlines how current approaches to health technology assessment, implementation and data management can be adapted to suit the rapidly evolving technology and evidence base.

In the proof-of-concept phase 2 ROME trial, comprehensive genomic profiling followed by molecular tumor board evaluation and randomization of patients with metastatic solid cancer to receive personalized therapy or standard of care led to a significantly higher objective response rate and longer progression-free survival in patients who received personalized therapy.

Moreno-Loaiza et al. found that interleukin-1β, acting upon cardiac resident macrophages, promotes atrial fibrillation in mice, and this mechanism may represent a common pathway connecting various risk factors to this arrhythmia.

Brain tumors are challenging to diagnose, with DNA-methylation profiling being key to their classification, but with AI-based classifiers requiring constant adjusting to newer technologies. A publicly available AI tool is now shown to classify tumors with high accuracy, independently of profiling platform, epigenome coverage or sequencing depth.

Genetic factors have been found to be associated with severe COVID-19. Here, the authors integrated genomic, proteomic, and single-cell data to identify ELF5 as a candidate risk gene with a possible role in respiratory epithelial cells, which are targeted by SARS-CoV-2.

Analysing >1,700 inventory plots from the Amazon Tree Diversity Network, the authors show that the majority of Amazon tree species can occupy floodplains and that patterns of species turnover are closely linked to regional flood patterns.

The authors analyze rare coding variants in 1990 individuals with congenital kidney anomalies, finding diagnostic variants in 14.1% of cases. They identify two new causal genes, ARID3A and NR6A1, along with 38 candidate genes, providing evidence for shared genetics with other developmental disorders.

The increasing amount of sequenced microbial genomes and metagenomes requires platforms for efficient integrated analysis. Here, Asnicar et al. present PhyloPhlAn 3.0, a pipeline allowing large-scale microbial genome characterization and phylogenetic contextualization at multiple levels of resolution.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae Reference Assembly Panel (ScRAP) comprising telomere-to-telomere assemblies of 142 strains representing phylogenetic and ecological diversity of the species characterizes its genome structural landscape.

As part of the first anniversary issue of Nature Chemical Engineering, we present a collection of opinions from 40 researchers within the field on what they think are the most exciting opportunities that lie ahead for their respective topics.

Circulating proteins are a potential source of cancer biomarkers. Here, the authors assessed 2,074 circulating proteins and used Mendelian randomisation to compare with the risk of 9 common cancer types across multiple GWAS cohorts and identified key considerations with respect to the potential for adverse effects of altering cancer-risk proteins that inform their utility in cancer prevention.

Cell labelling in a non-invasive and genetic engineering-free manner is crucial to cell biology applications. Here the authors develop cell labelling via photobleaching (CLaP), that uses laser illumination to label individual cells for genomics, cell-tracking, flow cytometry or ultra-microscopy.

A new study reveals that 53BP1 influences high-fidelity homology-directed repair by showing that its depletion in the presence of increasing DNA-damage levels triggers a shift from RAD51-dependent gene conversion, an error-free process, to RAD52-mediated single-strand annealing, which is mutagenic.

For infants with three copies of SMN1 at risk for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 1, onasemnogene abeparvovec improves ventilator-free survival and nutritional/respiratory independence and allows motor development indistinguishable from healthy children without SMA.

Clinical studies have suggested that the therapeutic potential of polyclonal convalescent plasma is highest in the first days of symptoms. Here, the authors present results from a pooled analysis of two clinical trials in COVID-19 outpatients that did not provide conclusive evidence in favor of convalescent plasma.

Nanowire networks with memristive properties are promising for neuromorphic applications. Here, the authors observe the formation of a preferred conduction pathway which uses the lowest possible energy to get through the network and could be exploited for the design of optimal brain-inspired devices.

The electronic transport properties of charge-ordered kagome metals are controversial. Now careful measurements on unperturbed samples show that previously measured anisotropy in the transport occurs only when external perturbations are present.

Whole-genome sequence analysis identifies five independent risk loci for Lewy body dementia and demonstrates overlapping genetic architecture with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

The ‘invariant rate of ageing’ hypothesis suggests that the rate of ageing tends to be constant within species. Here, Colchero et al. find support for the hypothesis across primates, including humans, suggesting biological constraints on the rate of ageing.

Neural population activity in the medial entorhinal cortex of mice can be organized into ultraslow oscillatory sequences, with periods extending up to the minute range.

Kopal and colleagues built computational bridges between rare CNVs in a clinical dataset and their deep phenotypic profiling in ~40,000 UK Biobank participants. Results show that CNVs are associated with many organ systems across the entire body.

Heat extremes have been growing at staggering rates with global warming. This study shows that temperature variability is key to explaining the highly heterogeneous trajectories of future extremes and their rapid intensification in many regions.

To date there is only one single drug with modest efficacy and no vaccine available to protect from schistosomiasis. Here, Amaral et al. characterize the self-cure process of rhesus macaques following primary infection and secondary challenge with Schistosoma mansoni to inform future vaccine development studies.

A deep neural network is developed to automatically extract ground deformation from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar time series. Applied to data over the North Anatolian Fault, the method can detect 2 mm deformation transients and reveals a slow earthquake twice as extensive as previously recognized.

Analyses of epigenomic datasets spanning transitions from normal prostate epithelium to localized prostate cancer to metastases show that latent developmental programs are reactivated in metastatic disease and that prostate lineage-specific regulatory elements are strongly enriched for prostate cancer risk heritability.

The depolarizing funny current contributing to cardiac pacemaking is upregulated in the myocardium of  failing and infarcted hearts, but whether the current is implied in disease mechanisms is unclear. Here the authors generate HCN4 transgenic mice and show that upregulation of funny current to the levels observed in human heart failure alters calcium homeostasis leading to cardiac remodelling and arrhythmia.

Technology is expected to play an important role in climate change adaptation, but little is known about whether it is actually being transferred to developing countries. Research now shows that in most of the adaptation projects managed by the Global Environment Facility, technology transfer is occurring mainly in the form of early deployment of existing technologies.

The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report revised estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity as a result of the ongoing warming hiatus. This study investigates how accumulating observations affect climate sensitivity estimates and finds that although there is a small downwards adjustment in the sensitivity, the lower bound of the 90% range is unchanged.

Defect in the death receptor signally caused by impaired FADD/BID expression leads to failure of T-cell mediated immunotherapy in multiple myeloma patients.