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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.

Exposome analyses across 34 countries showed that social exposures were associated with faster functional brain aging and physical exposures with faster structural brain aging.

Christopher Haiman, Bogdan Pasaniuc, David Reich and colleagues report a major role for low-frequency variation in the risk for prostate cancer. They show that alleles with >1% minor allele frequency contribute an order of magnitude more to risk for prostate cancer than these alleles do to overall genetic variation.

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.

DrugGPT outperforms existing LLMs to answer questions related to drug interactions and recommendations.

Longitudinal tracing of antibody responses to the ChAdOx1 and the BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccines in 45,965 adults from the United Kingdom give indications for vaccine prioritization.

Most people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 seroconvert within a few weeks, but the determinants and duration of the antibody response are not known. Here, the authors characterise these features of the immune response using data from a large representative community sample of the UK population.

The duration and strength of protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection resulting from a booster vaccine dose or breakthrough infection are not well understood. This study uses data from the UK COVID-19 Infection Survey to investigate correlates of protection against Omicron BA.4/5 infection and assess antibody responses to booster vaccination and breakthrough infections.

Genetic diversity and speciation rate support adaptability and species richness patterns, respectively. Here, the authors find a negative association between mitochondrial genetic diversity and speciation rate in 1897 mammals that is not explained by ecological attributes.

The factors influencing risk of reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 are poorly understood. Here, the authors use data from the UK COVID-19 Infection Survey, a community based longitudinal study, to assess characteristics of ~45,000 reinfections compared to initial infections.

Plasmid-mediated transmission plays a significant role in the spread of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales. Here, analyzing 1,115 carbapenemase-producing plasmids from Singapore, the authors suggest that maintenance of conserved genomes adapted for stable propagation across multiple species, enables evolutionarily successful carbapenemase plasmid genotypes to achieve hyperendemicity in the population.

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.

The impact of prior infection on the immune response to COVID-19 vaccination has not been fully characterised. Here, the authors use data from ~100,000 adults in the UK and find that a single vaccine dose in those with prior infection produces a comparable or stronger response to two doses in those without infection.

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.

In this study, Aggarwal and colleagues perform prospective sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 isolates derived from asymptomatic student screening and symptomatic testing of students and staff at the University of Cambridge. They identify important factors that contributed to within university transmission and onward spread into the wider community.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.

Gene expression, alternative splicing and DNA methylation profiles from human kidney samples provide insights into the effects of common variants influencing blood pressure. Mendelian randomization uncovers the effects of blood pressure on renal outcomes.

Estimates of infection rates from the UK COVID-19 Infection Survey may have been biased by the characteristics of people who chose to take part. Here, the authors show that the survey population had unusually high vaccination rates and adjust infection estimates taking this into account.

Genetic and testing data from England show that the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern B.1.1.7 has a transmission advantage over other lineages.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

A large study in the United Kingdom shows that virus-specific antibody levels associated with at least 67% protection against SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant infection last longer after two doses of BNT162b2 vaccine than after two doses of ChAdOx1 vaccine in previously uninfected individuals.

Post-international travel quarantine has been widely implemented to mitigate SARS-CoV-2 transmission, but the impacts of such policies are unclear. Here, the authors used linked genomic and contact tracing data to assess the impacts of a 14-day quarantine on return to England in summer 2020.

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 large, community-based study in the United Kingdom indicates that the effectiveness of BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 infections with symptoms or high viral burden is reduced with the Delta variant compared to the Alpha variant.

Alternative stable states in forests have implications for the biosphere. Here, the authors combine forest biodiversity observations and simulations revealing that leaf types across temperate regions of the NH follow a bimodal distribution suggesting signatures of alternative forest states.

Data from acute hospitals in England are used to quantify hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections, evaluate likely pathways of spread and factors associated with heightened transmission risk, and explore the impact on community transmission.

The tendency of machine learning algorithms to learn biases from training data calls for methods to mitigate unfairness before deployment to healthcare and other applications. Yang et al. propose a reinforcement-learning-based method for algorithmic bias mitigation and demonstrate it on COVID-19 screening and patient discharge prediction tasks.

Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales cause healthcare-associated infections but modes of transmission are not well understood. Here, the authors find evidence of transmission without direct patient contact, indicating presence of undetected environmental reservoirs, whilst half of the transmission events are likely due to plasmid-mediated transmission.

Results from the Office of National Statistics COVID-19 Infection Survey in the United Kingdom demonstrate that the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and BNT162b2 vaccines reduce the incidence of new SARS-CoV-2 infections by up to 65% with a single dose and up to 80% after two doses, with no significant differences in efficacy observed between the two vaccines.

Analyses of the exposomes of populations across 40 countries found global disparities in healthy aging attributed to diverse biological, socioeconomic and political factors, with accelerated aging seen in populations from Egypt, South Africa, and Latin American and Caribbean regions.

Many SARS-CoV-2 infections may go undetected through conventional PCR or lateral flow tests. Here, the authors analyse the utility of analysing longitudinal nucleocapsid antibody trajectories to improve identification of prior SARS-CoV-2 infections using surveillance data from the UK.

An exciting genome-wide association study in the British population for seven common diseases. This analysis confirms previously identified loci and provides strong evidence for many novel disease susceptibility loci.

Schistosoma mansoni and Schistosoma japonicum are the pathogenic agents that cause the tropical disease schistosomiasis. Here, and in an accompanying paper, the genomes of these two flatworms are sequenced and analysed. The results provide insights into the molecular architecture and host interactions of the flatworms, as well as avenues for future development of targeted interventions for schistosomiasis.

Understanding the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 is dependent on being able to distinguish COVID-19 immune responses from cross-reactive immune responses to other coronaviruses. Here the authors show that choice of antigens and whether an ICS, ELISPOT or T cell proliferation assay is used has a major effect on this discriminatory ability.

This is an issue edsumm for 32. Identification of the Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum in a marine sedimentary sequence shows that sea surface temperatures near the North Pole increased from roughly 18 degrees Celsius to over 23 degrees Celsius — such warm values imply the absence of ice and thus exclude the influence of ice-albedo feedbacks on this Arctic warming.

Integrating inventory data with machine learning models reveals the global composition of tree types—needle-leaved evergreen individuals dominate, followed by broadleaved evergreen and deciduous trees—and climate change risks.

Jane Worthington and colleagues report that three SNPs, located on chromosomes 10p15, 12q13 and 22q13, are associated with susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis. These SNPs had previously been putatively associated with rheumatoid arthritis in the genome-wide association study conducted by the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium.

The engagement of immunological memory is a key component to the protective anti-SARS-CoV-2 B and T cell responses. Here the authors assess the B and T cells of a cohort of UK healthcare workers in response to infection and longitudinally track the compartment showing distinct trajectories following early priming.