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Mice bearing mutations in Flt3-ITD and Npm1c, which are commonly found in acute myeloid leukemia, are used to characterize the cooperative effects of these cancer drivers on the cellular epigenome and three-dimensional genome conformation during tumor development.

Microbiomes designed with predictable functions could enable broad applications in health, agriculture and bioprocessing. Here the authors use a model-guided approach to design diverse synthetic human gut communities for production of the health-relevant metabolite butyrate.

Relative contributions of pre-existing versus de novo genomic variation to adaptation remain unclear. Here, the authors address this problem by examining the adaptation of autotetraploid Arabidopsis arenosa to serpentine soils and find that both types of variations contribute to rapid adaptation.

Genetic manipulation of poised enhancers (PEs) shows that orphan CpG islands promote physical and functional communication between PEs and distally located developmental genes.

Wood et al. examine gender differences in Hadza hunter-gatherer spatial behaviour using 2,078 days of GPS-recorded travel. As predicted from principles of foraging ecology, Hadza men walked further per day, explored more land, followed more sinuous paths and were much more likely to be alone.

Most COVID-19 vaccines require two doses but a single dose provides partial protection, so it is unclear how best to prioritize vaccine distribution in the context of limited supply. Here, the authors show that campaigns in which some age groups receive one dose while others receive both doses may be optimal.

Developing highly efficient and reversible hydrogenation-dehydrogenation catalysts shows great promise for hydrogen storage technologies. Here the authors develop a highly efficient and reversible de/rehydrogenation single-site platinum catalyst which exhibits great promise for hydrogen storage technologies with cyclic alkanes/aromatics as liquid organic hydrogen carriers.

The charge transport mechanism in MXenes—an emerging class of layered materials—is not yet fully understood. A combination of terahertz spectroscopy and transport measurements shows that the formation of large polarons play a crucial role.

The discovery that mRNA degradation and deadenylation are uncoupled during meiosis in budding yeast provides a unique context to examine the regulation of each process individually, and reveals that transcript length is a determinant of deadenylation rates across eukaryotes.

Exciton-polaritons are typically formed in organic systems when the molecules are confined between metallic or dielectric mirrors. Here, the authors reveal that interactions between excitons and moderately confined photonic states within the bare organic film can also lead to polariton formation, making them the primary photoexcitation.

This work describes inCITE-seq that jointly measures intranuclear protein levels and the transcriptome in single nuclei, which is applied to mouse brain tissue to relate quantitative protein levels of TFs to gene expression programs.

The tunability of covalently bound cationic and anionic moieties of zwitterionic materials makes them attractive for potential applications. A family of zwitterions exhibiting molecular disorder and plasticity allows their use as a solid-state conductive matrix.

Photoinduced changes in transmission, reflection and scattering prevent conventional pump-probe spectroscopy to unambiguously assign the origin of spectral signatures. Ashoka et al. have developed an optical modelling technique to extract quantitative and unambiguous changes in the dielectric function from standard pump-probe measurements.

A class of quantum neural networks is presented that outperforms comparable classical feedforward networks. They achieve a higher capacity in terms of effective dimension and at the same time train faster, suggesting a quantum advantage.

Whole-genome sequencing analyses of African populations provide insights into continental migration, gene flow and the response to human disease, highlighting the importance of including diverse populations in genomic analyses to understand human ancestry and improve health.

Increasing the rigidity of a macromolecule while maintaining solubility is challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate covalent connection of two rigid-rod polymer chains with stiff connectors, leading to rigid ladder structures with well-defined conjugated rails.

Moiré potentials substantially alter the electronic properties of twisted bilayer graphene at a magic twist angle. A propagating plasmon mode, which can be observed with optical nano-imaging, is associated with transitions between the moiré minibands.

‘Cooperative redox enhancement (CORE) effects, which arise through the coupling of oxidative dehydrogenation and oxygen reduction reactions, can lead to increased rates of reaction over spatially separated bimetallic heterogeneous catalysts.

A metasurface comprising electrically controlled heating units and a phase-change material offer non-volatile and reversible modulation of reflectance by more than fourfold.

Mao et al. systematically evaluates the integration of digital health technologies (DHT) in 262 clinical trials across ten rare diseases. Results reveal that DHTs enable remote monitoring, digital interventions and patient support, enhancing trial inclusivity, authors also propose a “4A” framework for DHT implementation.

An international consortium reports the genomic sequence for ten Drosophila species, and compares them to two other previously published Drosophila species. These data are invaluable for drawing evolutionary conclusions across an entire phylogeny of species at once.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) hold great potential for modelling human developmental processes and diseases. Here the authors induce human iPSCs to spontaneously form fully laminated three-dimensional retinal tissue containing functional photoreceptor cells.

Using a sample of more than 1 million individuals, Hatoum et al. identify genomic loci associated with general and substance-specific addiction risk.

This paper proposes a framework to assess systemic risks that compound and cascade within and between systems. This emphasizes political economy and transformations, as well as trans-disciplinarity and diverse participation, evidence and methods.

STING signalling is activated in metastatic cancer cells that exit from an immune-evasive dormant state, blocking their progression and cancer relapse.

The activity of standard Cas9-based genome-editing systems can be constrained by the addition of cytosine stretches to the 5′-end of conventional single-guide RNAs.

Polyketide synthase 13 from mycobacteria was purified endogenously ‘in action’ with wild-type substrates bound. Structures by cryo-EM define multiple states of acyl carrier proteins in the final step of mycolic acid synthesis by a key drug target.

Laser-driven ultrafast tranmission electron microscopy (UTEM) approaches such as stroboscopic UTEM enable the study of ultrafast reversible processes at time resolutions at the femtosecond scale and beyond. This Primer focuses on stroboscopic UTEM, describing its experimental set-up and variants, and covers the various applications of this technique in condensed matter physics, including imaging structural dynamics, photo-induced near-field electron microscopy, attosecond-scale imaging, dark-field imaging and beyond.

A primordial carbon-to-oxygen ratio (C/O) greater than 0.8 in an exoplanet causes a carbide-dominated interior, as opposed to the silicate-dominated composition found on Earth; the atmospheres also can differ from those in the Solar System. The solar C/O is 0.54. This study reports an analysis of spectra from the transiting hot Jupiter WASP-12b that reveals that C/O>1 in its atmosphere, based upon the observed concentrations of the prominent molecules CO, CH₄ and H₂O.

Can excitons be used to achieve scalable control of quantum light? Steffen Michaelis de Vasconcellos explained toNature Photonicsthat the optoelectrical control of exciton qubits in quantum dots offers great promise.

Iris Heid, Gonçalo Abecasis, Sudha Iyengar and colleagues report the results of a large genome-wide association meta-analysis of macular degeneration based on over 43,000 subjects. They identify 16 new risk loci, including some very rare coding variants.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) modern strains emerged from a common progenitor after the loss of Mtb-specific deletion 1 region (TbD1). Here, the authors show that deletion of TbD1 correlates with enhanced Mtb virulence in animal models, mirroring the development of hypoxic granulomas in human disease progression.

Lead halide perovskites have unique electronic properties that depend on the crystal’s anharmonicity. Dielectric solvation theories, developed for molecules dissolved in polar liquids, are shown here to reproduce the temperature behavior of carrier solvation in the electronic spectra, implying strongly anharmonic lattice dynamics.

Koning and colleagues used mass cytometry, single-cell RNA-seq and high-throughput TCR sequencing to characterize the CD4⁺ T cell compartment in the human fetal intestine.

Magnetic-based isolators are critical components for protecting qubits against noise in quantum setups but unsuitable for large processors. Here, Abdo et al. show good protection of a qubit in a high-fidelity quantum readout setup using a Josephson-based isolator devoid of magnetic materials.

Murine norovirus protects intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) from chemical injury by inducing a type I interferon (IFN-I) response in the colon via the viral non-structural protein NS1/2. IFN-I signalling in IECs, in turn, stimulates the production and signalling of the cytoprotective cytokine interleukin-22.

The weak effects induced by lattice disorder on the optoelectronic properties of halide perovskites still remain elusive. Here Wu et al. confirm the indirect transition tail states in perovskite crystals which explain their low photoluminescence quantum yield, dual emission peaks and difficulties in realizing lasing.

Designing efficient organic solar cells is limited by the energy required to overcome the mutual Coulomb attraction between electron and hole. Here, the authors reveal long-lived and disorder-free charge-transfer states enable efficient endothermic charge separation in non-fullerene systems with marginal energy offset.

Neurons form synapses onto glioma cells, and depolarization of glioma membranes promotes glioma growth in vivo, whereas blocking electrochemical signalling blocks tumour growth.

Quantum entanglement is realized between rotational levels of a molecular ion with energy differences spanning several orders of magnitude and long-lived internal states of a single atomic ion.

Electron-spin to photon-polarisation conversion is a promising technology for achieving free-space or fibre coupled quantum transfer. Here, the authors demonstrate acoustically-driven single photons from single electrons, without the need for self-assembled quantum dots, using a SAW-driven lateral n-i-p junction.

Integrating electrocatalytic H₂ production with biological H₂-fed systems for CO₂ upgrading requires H₂ generation to occur in biocompatible media—typically with neutral pH. Here, the authors design multi-site H₂ evolution catalysts that minimize the water dissociation barrier and promote hydride coupling in neutral media.

Thermal properties of materials are driven by complex many-body interactions among thermal atomic vibrations called phonons. Here the authors show, from first-principles, that a full description of the unusual thermal behaviour in boron arsenide requires considering often-neglected four-phonon interactions.

Mouldable hydrogels find a variety of applications in the biomedical industry. Here, Appel et al. show a method to fabricate hydrogels through a self-assembly process based on the interaction between biopolymers and functional nanoparticles for multistage drug delivery in vivo.