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Mass-wasting deposits that accumulated against mid-ocean ridge faults have high porosity in which calcium carbonate precipitated, storing seawater carbon dioxide, as revealed by cores of a 61-million-year-old seafloor talus deposit.

A large reservoir of organic carbon persists in oxic pelagic sediments for millions of years as demonstrated by samples from the North Atlantic and South Pacific. This predominantly proteinaceous carbon persists due to physical protection and adsorption to mineral surfaces.

There has been much interest recently in the transport mechanisms of metals from hydrothermal vents. Here the authors found that nanoparticulate pyrite is not removed from the plume and can account for over 50% of filtered iron one metre from the vent mouth.

Integrated Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 402 drilled two in-situ long mantle sections in the Tyrrhenian Sea, revealing that retention of large quantities of melts at mantle levels delayed the birth of an ocean basin.

Deciphering the origin, age, and composition of deep marine organic carbon remains a challenge for understanding the dynamics of the marine carbon cycle. Here, the authors identify (sub)micron-sized graphite emanating from both high and low temperature hydrothermal vents along the East Pacific Rise, and suggest graphite is a source of old carbon in the deep ocean.

There are over 40 different simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) with which African primates are naturally infected; two of these have crossed the species barrier to generate human immunodeficiency virus types 1 and 2 (HIV-1 and HIV-2). Although SIVs do not generally cause AIDS in primates, AIDS-like disease is now shown to occur in chimpanzee populations in the wild who are naturally infected with SIVcpz, a close relative of HIV-1.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impairments in social and communication skills. Accumulating evidence suggests a genetic component to ASDs, and here a two-stage, genome-wide approach is used to identify candidate genomic loci enriched in ASD cases. The majority of these loci are found to be involved in neuronal adhesion and ubiquitin degradation, suggesting novel susceptibility mechanisms.

Patagonian ice sheet changes largely mirrored those of the Northern Hemisphere over the last glacial cycle owing to displacements of the southern westerly winds, according to beryllium isotope constraints.

The autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) are highly heritable, yet the underlying genetic determinants remain largely unknown. Here, a genome-wide analysis of rare copy number variants (CNVs) has been carried out, revealing that ASD sufferers carry a higher load of rare, genic CNVs than do controls. Many of these CNVs are de novo and inherited. The results implicate several novel genes in ASDs, and point to the importance of cellular proliferation, projection and motility, as well as specific signalling pathways, in these disorders.

Immune checkpoint blockade has been proposed as a potentially curative strategy to reduce the HIV reservoir. Studies in monkeys now show that this approach alone is ineffective at enabling viral control after antiretroviral treatment interruption.

Yuen et al. developed a cloud-based database with 5,205 whole genomes from families with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They identified 18 new candidate ASD-risk genes and approximately 100 risk genes and copy-number loci, which account for 11% of the cases. They also found that individuals bearing mutations in ASD-risk genes had lower adaptive ability.

Exome sequencing of 175 autism spectrum disorder parent–child trios reveals that few de novo point mutations have a role in autism spectrum disorder and those that do are distributed across many genes and are incompletely penetrant, further supporting extreme genetic heterogeneity of this spectrum disorder.

Autism is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder, and yet few specific susceptibility genes have been identified to date. A linkage and association mapping study using half a million genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms is now described in a common set of 1,031 multiplex autism families. The linkage regions identified provide targets for rare variation screening whereas the discovery of a single novel association, SEMA5A, demonstrates the action of common variants.

Freshening of porewater in marine sediments offshore the southern Chilean Margin is driven by submarine emplacement of fossil groundwater below Patagonia, according to elemental and isotopic analyses of sedimentary pore waters.