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Vaccinations against the SARS-CoV-2 KP.2 variant were introduced for the 2024-25 season in the United States. Here, the authors investigate the effectiveness of these vaccines up to April 2025 through a target trial emulation study using electronic health record data.

Cryo-EM structures of yeast complex II in active and inhibitor-bound states reveal fungi-specific features governing enzyme stability and fungicide binding, paving the way for structure-guided design of improved inhibitors for agriculture and health.

Skyrmions are localized magnetic textures that form lattices in some magnetic materials. Neutron spin-echo measurements have now been able to observe topological effects on the low-energy collective excitations of a skrymion lattice.

The crystal symmetry of a material impacts on its electronic structure and can lead to a range of interesting non-trivial topological phases and properties. Here, the authors theoretically study thin films of rhombohedral graphite and investigate the Berry curvature induced anomalous transport properties.

The authors find that TDP-43 loss of function—the pathology defining the neurodegenerative conditions ALS and FTD—induces novel mRNA polyadenylation events, which have different effects, including an increase in RNA stability, leading to higher protein levels.

Solar photovoltaics is entering a multi-terawatt era, driven by decades of cost, performance and reliability gains. In this Perspective Alberi et al. discuss the role of historical and future learning, highlighting the increasing importance of sustainability considerations.

An improved reference genome of sweet orange and newly sequenced genomes of its somatic mutants uncover the global pattern of somatic variations, the diversification and dispersal history of sweet orange and candidate genes controlling fruit taste and flavour.

COVID-19 can be associated with neurological complications. Here the authors show that markers of brain injury, but not immune markers, are elevated in the blood of patients with COVID-19 both early and months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly in those with brain dysfunction or neurological diagnoses.

Using well-calibrated statistical methods the authors jointly analyze Undiagnosed Diseases Network genomes, identifying known and novel disease genes. Software is publicly available to support future cross-cohort rare disease discovery efforts.

In non-Hermitian systems, spectral degeneracies can arise that can cause unusual, counter-intuitive effects; here exciton-polaritons—hybrid light–matter particles—within a semiconductor microcavity are found to display non-trivial topological modal structure exclusive to such systems.

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.

Electron–electron interactions have a strong influence on the properties of bilayer graphene, but less of an effect on trilayer material. Grushina et al. show that tetralayer graphene has an insulator state, bucking the trend for electron–electron interactions becoming weaker with more layers.

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.

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.

Exploring the diversity of the wild progenitor of the wheat D subgenome allows for rapid trait discovery.

A national prospective study of patients requiring hospitalization for COVID-19 demonstrates global cognitive deficits at 1 year, associated with elevated brain injury markers and reduced gray matter volume.

Arrayed CRISPR libraries with each plasmid encoding an array of four non-overlapping single-guide RNAs allow for the efficient genome-wide ablation, activation and epigenetic silencing of human protein-coding genes.

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.

Prostate cancer (PrCa) involves a large heritable genetic component. Here, the authors perform multivariate fine-mapping of known PrCa GWAS loci, identifying variants enriched for biological function, explaining more familial relative risk, and with potential application in clinical risk profiling.

Coupling reactions of nitrogen atoms represent elementary steps to many important, heterogeneously catalysed reactions, such as the Haber–Bosch process or selective catalytic reduction of NO_x to N₂. Here, the synthesis and characterization of closed- and open-shell, square-planar iridium nitrido complexes is described, indicating considerable nitridyl radical character for the open shell complex.

Empirically based models of disease progression in familial frontotemporal dementia reveal the relative ordering of clinical, neuroimaging, and fluid biomarker changes and facilitate novel clinical trial designs

Observations from the Lucy spacecraft of the small main-belt asteroid (152830) Dinkinesh reveals unexpected complexity, with a longitudinal trough and equatorial ridge, as well as the discovery of the first contact binary satellite.

Chromosome 8q24 is known to be a major susceptibility region for prostate cancer risk. Here the authors analyze genetic data across the 8q24 region from 71,535 prostate cancer patients identifying 12 risk loci, three previously unreported, highlighting the contribution of germline variation at this locus.

A machine learning approach is presented to identify dominant patterns in disease progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. The nonlinearity of ALS progression has important clinical implications.

The de novo genome assembly of maize line Mo17 and comparative analysis with other sequenced maize lines show extensive gene-order variations. This study provides insights into maize evolution and has implications for improving maize hybrid lines.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

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.

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.

A secure framework that harmonizes storage and querying of clinical and genetic data using blockchain technology was developed to support combined genotype–phenotype queries, improving transparency into how and when health information is used.

Deep-sea diving mammals routinely undergo extreme physiological challenges not experienced by their terrestrial counterparts. Using high-resolution electrocardiographic recorders fitted to seals and dolphins, Williams et al. report an increased frequency of cardiac arrhythmias at greater exercise intensity and dive depth.