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Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

It is unclear whether the harsh abiotic conditions of drylands hinder biological invasions. This global analysis shows that drylands are vulnerable to non-native plants and are likely to become more so as native plant diversity declines and grazing pressure intensifies.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

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).

The authors in this work present a study with multiplexed gene editing that is used to assess all possible mutations at a native drug binding site. The approach yields data that predicts spontaneous resistance, that aligns with in silico predictions, and that promises to facilitate drug discovery.

Population-level analyses and in vitro experiments show that a specific genetic variant of cyclin D3 inhibits the growth of the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum in erythrocytes, and suggest that its high frequency in Sardinia was driven by past endemic malaria.

Species’ traits and environmental conditions determine the abundance of tree species across the globe. Here, the authors find that dominant tree species are taller and have softer wood compared to rare species and that these trait differences are more strongly associated with temperature than water availability.

Grazing affects plant diversity, but plant diversity in turn may modulate the effect of grazing on the plant community. This global analysis explores the association between plant species richness and plant cover resistance to grazing intensity in drylands.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

Water-vapor interfaces have been studied with many techniques, yet open questions persist about their electronic and molecular structure. Here, the authors demonstrate the application of soft x-ray second harmonic generation to study the water surface by leveraging attosecond pulses at the LCLS and a flat liquid sheet microjet, providing insights on the H-bond structure.

Using proximity-based screening, protein engineering, and structural analysis, this study describes the development of a p62-based biodegrader for the clearance of organelles and aggregated proteins by autophagy-targeted degradation.

Balland et al. use data on scientific papers, patents, employment and GDP for 353 metropolitan areas in the United States to show that economic complexity drives the spatial concentration of productive activities in large cities.

The authors present DNA-Diffusion, a generative AI framework that designs synthetic regulatory elements with tunable cell-type specificity. Experimental validation demonstrates their ability to reactivate AXIN2 expression, a leukemia-protective gene, in its native genomic context.

Analysis of data on 971 bird species in natural habitat and cattle pasture in Colombia finds that near-national-scale losses of bird diversity greatly exceed losses recorded at the local scale, suggesting that extrapolations from local studies will severely underestimate biodiversity losses.

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.

Exploratory ctDNA analyses from the phase 3 INTRIGUE trial indicate that ripretinib may provide benefits in patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors with KIT exon 11 + 17/18 mutations

Wood density is an important plant trait. Data from 1.1 million forest inventory plots and 10,703 tree species show a latitudinal gradient in wood density, with temperature and soil moisture explaining variation at the global scale and disturbance also having a role at the local level.

Analysis of ground-sourced and satellite-derived models reveals a global forest carbon potential of 226 Gt outside agricultural and urban lands, with a difference of only 12% across these modelling approaches.

DNAJC12 variants cause parkinsonism. Here, the authors show that DNAJC12 stabilizes tyrosine hydroxylase, a crucial enzyme in dopamine synthesis, and identify key structural motifs for this interaction, explaining the pathogenesis of truncated variants.

Protection afforded by inorganic minerals is assumed to make mineral-associated organic carbon less susceptible to loss under climate change than particulate organic carbon. However, a global study of soil organic carbon from drylands suggests that this is not the case.

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.

Reference-quality genomes for six bat species shed light on the phylogenetic position of Chiroptera, and provide insight into the genetic underpinnings of the unique adaptations of this clade.

A previously unsampled deep lineage in central Argentina was discovered that had distinctive genetic drift by 8,500 bp and persisted as the main Native American ancestry component in the region up to the present day.

In global drylands, soils tend to be more fertile beneath tree, shrub and grass islands. Soil fertility was greater beneath taller and wider plants but was unaffected by either grazing pressure or the type of herbivore.

Machine-learning algorithms trained on 25,000 geolocated soil samples are used to create high-resolution global maps of mycorrhizal fungi, revealing that less than 10% of their biodiversity hotspots are in protected areas.

Genome-wide data from 400 individuals indicate that the initial spread of the Beaker archaeological complex between Iberia and central Europe was propelled by cultural diffusion, but that its spread into Britain involved a large-scale migration that permanently replaced about ninety per cent of the ancestry in the previously resident population.

In preclinical studies, the FDA approved TSP-1 antagonist gabapentin has been shown to disrupt neuronal-glioma interactions, slowing glioblastoma progression. Here, authors report a retrospective cohort study demonstrating a survival benefit associated with gabapentin in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma.

Analysis of 20 chemical and morphological plant traits at diverse sites across 6 continents shows that the transition from semi-arid to arid zones is associated with an unexpected 88% increase in trait diversity.

A genome-wide study by the Long COVID Host Genetics Initiative identifies an association between the FOXP4 locus and long COVID, implicating altered lung function in its pathophysiology.

Developmental and epileptic encephalopathies are devastating neurological disorders. Here, the authors establish a cohort of patients with variants in the gene DENND5A and use human stem cells to discover a disease mechanism involving altered cell division.

Most mitochondrial proteins are imported from the cytosol and must fold in the mitochondria. Here, the authors show that the mitochondrial protease LONP1 plays a critical role in the mtHSP70 chaperone system independently of its protease activity.

Has Britain lost large potential royalties through a failure to recognise the commercial potential of antibodies? David Dickson reports

Data from a variety of sources—including satellite, climate and soil data, as well as field-collected information on plant traits—are pooled and analysed to map the functional diversity of tropical forest canopies globally.

The authors use long-term satellite tracking to project climate-induced shifts in whale shark distributions and understand their potential future risk of ship-strike. Under high-emission scenarios, the movement of sharks to current range-edge habitat is linked to 15,000-fold increased co-occurrence with ships.

Examining drivers of the latitudinal biodiversity gradient in a global database of local tree species richness, the authors show that co-limitation by multiple environmental and anthropogenic factors causes steeper increases in richness with latitude in tropical versus temperate and boreal zones.

A global dataset of the satellite-tracked movements of pelagic sharks and fishing fleets show that sharks—and, in particular, commercially important species—have limited spatial refuge from fishing effort.

Whole-genome sequences and field experiments focusing on the global invasive forage crop, Trifolium repens, show high levels of genetic variation across continents and parallel signatures of selection in five haploblocks.

From 1980 to 2018, the levels of total and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol increased in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreased in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe.

Biomphalaria glabrata is a fresh water snail that acts as a host for trematode Schistosoma mansoni that causes intestinal infection in human. This work describes the genome and transcriptome analyses from 12 different tissues of B glabrata, and identify genes for snail behavior and evolution.

Multiple myeloma is a plasma cell malignancy that is currently incurable. Cordas dos Santos et al. describe how multiple myeloma arises from precursor states and how T cell-redirecting therapies might be used to intercept disease progression at these earlier stages to improve patient outcomes.

The homeostasis and function of adipose tissue are tightly regulated by immune cells, with macrophages playing a pivotal role. Here the authors show that PpargHIGH macrophages positively enhance brown adipose tissue thermogenesis through GDF15.

Our assessment of a 27-country weather station dataset in the Mediterranean region revealed long-term stability in precipitation over 150 years, along with substantial short-term variability on annual to decadal scales driven by atmospheric circulation; these findings align with the precipitation trends seen in CMIP6 models.

Fatal Ebola virus disease is characterized by a high proportion of CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cells expressing the inhibitory molecules CTLA-4 and PD-1, correlating with high virus load; individuals who survive the infection exhibit lower expression of these inhibitory molecules and generate Ebola-specific CD8⁺ T cells, suggesting that dysregulation of the T cell response is a key component of Ebola virus disease pathophysiology.

Soil age is thought to be an important driver of ecosystem development. Here, the authors perform a global survey of soil chronosequences and meta-analysis to show that, contrary to expectations, soil age is a relatively minor ecosystem driver at the biome scale once other drivers such as parent material, climate, and vegetation type are accounted for.