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A geological, petrographic and geochemical survey of distinctive mudstone and conglomerate outcrops of the Bright Angel formation on Mars reveals textures, chemical and mineral characteristics, and organic signatures that warrant consideration as potential biosignatures.

Concatenating Original Duplex for Error Correction (CODEC) is a method that concatenates both strands of each DNA duplex to enable highly sensitive mutation detection in a range of analytes with fewer reads and lower error rates than current methods.

Genomic analyses applied to 14 childhood- and adult-onset psychiatric disorders identifies five underlying genomic factors that explain the majority of the genetic variance of the individual disorders.

This protocol describes how to use natural language processing software to analyze metabolomics data to prioritize metabolites for further study, identify candidates for unique disease biomarkers and elucidate their function on a pathway level.

The goal of the 1000 Genomes Project is to provide in-depth information on variation in human genome sequences. In the pilot phase reported here, different strategies for genome-wide sequencing, using high-throughput sequencing platforms, were developed and compared. The resulting data set includes more than 95% of the currently accessible variants found in any individual, and can be used to inform association and functional studies.

Antibody responses against Mycobacteria infection have been reported, but whether and how they impact anti-bacteria immunity in the host is unclear. Here the authors characterize human anti-Mycobacteria antibodies to find them targeting a Mycobacteria transporter protein, PstS1, show distinct interaction modes in crystal structure, and mediate protection in vitro.

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.

Abnormal folate metabolism in mice results in transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of congenital malformations. Here, the authors provide evidence that defective folate metabolism causes germline epigenetic instability and observe multigenerational misexpression of Hira in embryos, implicating Hira transcript levels as a biomarker of maternal phenotypic inheritance.

It was previously suggested that formation of RNA secondary structure tends to bring the 5′ and 3′ ends of RNA into close proximity. Here the authors use experimental and computational approaches to show that mRNAs and lncRNAs have an intrinsic propensity to fold into structures in which the 5′ end and 3′ end are ≤7 nm apart irrespective of length.

Functional dissection of G-quadruplex–induced replication stress uncovers complementary telomeric roles of BLM and FANCJ helicases and identifies FANCJ loss as a vulnerability that increases telomere damage and sensitivity to G4-stabilizing agents.

Whereas synthetic DNA nanostructures are widely studied, the use of RNA as a structural building block is much less common. Now, it has been shown that tRNA molecules can be designed to assemble into a rigid and thermally stable square antiprism structure that may prove useful for delivery applications inside cells.

Variably methylated intracisternal A particle (VM-IAP) retrotransposons are stable across the murine lifespan. VM-IAP retrotransposons are unaffected by maternal exposure to the endocrine disruptor bisphenol A, an obesogenic diet or methyl donor supplementation.

An antibody screen of two distinct multiple sclerosis cohorts reveals an autoantibody signature that is detectable years before symptom onset and linked to a common microbial motif.

It is unclear whether stream detritivore diversity enhances decomposition across climates. Here the authors manipulate litter diversity and examine detritivore assemblages in a globally distributed stream litterbag experiment, finding a positive diversity-decomposition relationship stronger in tropical streams, where detritivore diversity is lower.

Selectively inhibiting N-Methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) containing the GluN2C/2D subunits has been challenging. Here, using electrophysiology and X-ray crystallography, authors show that compounds UBP791 and UBP1700 show over 40- and 50-fold selectivity for GluN2C/2D compared to GluN2A.

Observations of TOI-849b reveal a radius smaller than Neptune’s but a large mass of about 40 Earth masses, indicating that the planet is the remnant core of a gas giant.

The Human Microbiome Project Consortium has established a population-scale framework to study a variety of microbial communities that exist throughout the human body, enabling the generation of a range of quality-controlled data as well as community resources.

How maternal diet influences offspring metabolism is unclear, as it is difficult to distinguish between the effects of the in utero environment and epigenetic factors contributed by the oocyte. In a mouse model of high-fat diet, a new study teases apart these mechanisms by using in vitro fertilization and shows that susceptibility of offspring to metabolic disorder can likely be attributed to epigenetic inheritance via the oocyte.

The emerging field of dissipative DNA nanotechnology aims at developing synthetic devices and nanomaterials with life-like properties such as directional motion, transport, communication or adaptation. This Review surveys how dissipative DNA systems combine the programmability of nucleic-acid reactions with the consumption of energy stored in chemical fuel molecules to perform work and cyclical tasks.

The Human Microbiome Project Consortium reports the first results of their analysis of microbial communities from distinct, clinically relevant body habitats in a human cohort; the insights into the microbial communities of a healthy population lay foundations for future exploration of the epidemiology, ecology and translational applications of the human microbiome.

The transcriptomes of eukaryotic cells are unexpectedly complex, with virtually the entire non-repeat portions of many genomes being transcribed. Using deep sequencing, this study reveals that a remarkable breadth of RNA species that come from both within annotated genes and from unannotated intergenic regions in human cells. Many of these small RNAs possess cap structures and seem to be processed from mature mRNAs resulting in populations of long and short RNAs with capped 5' ends that coincide.

Forkhead box O (FOXO) transcription factors have many diverse physiological functions and regulate gene-expression programmes that are involved in immunity, metabolism and oncogenesis. This Review discusses how FOXO proteins integrate different environmental signals in order to regulate T cell differentiation and functions in a context-dependent manner.