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It is unclear whether the harsh abiotic conditions of drylands hinder biological invasions. This global analysis shows that drylands are vulnerable to non-native plants and are likely to become more so as native plant diversity declines and grazing pressure intensifies.

Field needs independent experiments to prove or disprove the work, researchers say.

Ten people who mattered this year.

Early- and late-onset preeclampsia pose serious maternal-fetal risks, yet non-invasive early prediction remains challenging. Here, the authors show that cfRNA signatures reveal distinct decidual and multiorgan signals, enabling accurate, externally validated prediction of both subtypes.

Open-science advocates fail to reproduce controversial findings.

The biennial international AIDS conference is a scientific gathering, a chance for politicians to network and an activists? rally all rolled into one. This year, 15,000 people from 160 countries have headed to Bangkok, Thailand, from 11 July to 16 July to discuss the scientific, economic, political and social dimensions of the global AIDS epidemic. Erika Check brings you daily conference news, plus gossip and behind-the-scenes coverage.

Protection of the endothelial glycocalyx in vascular allografts via the enzymatic ligation of immunosuppressive glycopolymers prevents allograft rejection after transplantation in the absence of systemic immunosuppression.

A genome-wide study by the Long COVID Host Genetics Initiative identifies an association between the FOXP4 locus and long COVID, implicating altered lung function in its pathophysiology.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

But genetic tests of 200,000 people reveal no clear cause-and-effect.

Wood density is a key control on tree biomass, and understanding its spatial variation improves estimates of forest carbon stock. Sullivan et al. measure >900 forest plots to quantify wood density and produce high resolution maps of its variation across South American tropical forests.

Blog documenting quest to replicate finding could be taste of things to come.

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

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.

Hamidzada et al. show that human pluripotent stem cell–derived macrophages are educated into a tissue-resident fate within human cardiac microtissues, enhancing its function via efferocytic ingestion of stressed cardiomyocyte cargo.

Salivary gland cancers (SGC) respond poorly to immunotherapies and new treatment strategies are needed. Here, the authors develop an integrated analysis of advanced SGC to characterize the immune microenvironment and identify potential therapeutic vulnerabilities.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

Analysing >1,700 inventory plots from the Amazon Tree Diversity Network, the authors show that the majority of Amazon tree species can occupy floodplains and that patterns of species turnover are closely linked to regional flood patterns.

Onset of inherited disease does not change over generations, finds Eric Minikel, whose wife is affected.

HELQ is differentially regulated by RAD51, which stimulates helicase activity, and RPA, which inhibits helicase activity and stimulates annealing.

The intact proviral DNA assay quantifies the genomically intact HIV reservoir, but assay failure due to HIV-1 polymorphism has been observed. Here, the authors report a 28% failure rate in a cohort of people with HIV-1, and note within-host HIV-1 diversity as a further challenge to IPDA accuracy.

Critiques prompt researchers to offer samples of poison-tolerant microbe to doubters.

A large international panel of experts reach consensus on a new standard for reporting settings in psychedelic trials, identifying 30 key non-pharmacological factors to strengthen the rigor of psychedelic research.

Abstinence campaigners claim success over AIDS.

The authors analyse tree responses to an extreme heat and drought event across South America to understand long-term climate resistance. While no more sensitive to this than previous lesser events, forests in drier climates showed the greatest impacts and thus vulnerability to climate extremes.

Data from a variety of sources—including satellite, climate and soil data, as well as field-collected information on plant traits—are pooled and analysed to map the functional diversity of tropical forest canopies globally.

A study of SARS-CoV-2 variants examining their transmission, infectivity, and potential resistance to therapies provides insights into the biology of the Delta variant and its role in the global pandemic.

Applying tiny forces to single molecules at high speed reveals the mechanics behind molecule unfolding.

Campaigns to change peoples' behaviour to fight AIDS show signs of success.

Oral nicotinamide riboside (NR) at a dose of 3000 mg daily for 30 days is safe and associated with a pronounced systemic augmentation of the NAD metabolome, but no methyl donor depletion.

Antibody therapies have had more than their fair share of crashes. But designers are at work on faster, fancier new models, finds Erika Check.

An extensive map of human DNase I hypersensitive sites, markers of regulatory DNA, in 125 diverse cell and tissue types is described; integration of this information with other ENCODE-generated data sets identifies new relationships between chromatin accessibility, transcription, DNA methylation and regulatory factor occupancy patterns.

T-UCRs encode long non-coding RNAs implicated in human carcinogenesis, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, the authors identify uc.339 as an oncogene in lung cancer that is upregulated through the loss of TP53 and promotes Cyclin E activation by entrapping regulatory miRNAs.

Collisions of transcription and replication machineries on the same DNA strand threaten genomic stability. Here, the authors show that RAD52 prevents these collisions by regulating R-loop formation and resolution. RAD52 deficiency leads to increased R-loops, exacerbated collisions, DNA damage, and higher mutational burden in tumors.

Scientists know a lot about the virus that causes Ebola — but there are many puzzles that they have yet to solve.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

Here the authors apply machine learning approaches to Alzheimer’s genetics, confirm known associations and suggest novel risk loci. These methods demonstrate predictive power comparable to traditional approaches, while also offering potential new insights beyond standard genetic analyses.

Safely opening university campuses has been a major challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, the authors describe a program of public health measures employed at a university in the United States which, combined with other non-pharmaceutical interventions, allowed the university to stay open in fall 2020 with limited evidence of transmission.

Multi-year field experiments across six continents suggest that insects have an important contribution to decomposition and carbon release from forest deadwood.

A dataset of 16 plant traits sampled from 2,461 individual trees from 74 tropical forest sites around the world is used to show a strong link between climate and plant functional diversity and redundancy, with drier tropical forests likely being less able to respond to declines in water availability.

Latitudinal ecosystem boundaries in the global upper ocean may be driven by many factors. Here the authors investigate pole-to-pole eukaryotic phytoplankton metatranscriptomes, gene co-expression networks, and beta diversity, finding that geographic patterns are best explained by temperature gradients.

This Consensus Statement presents the standards for technical reporting in environmental and host-associated microbiome studies (STREAMS) guidelines.

Variations in expression of the gene ORMDL3 were found to be associated with development of childhood asthma, suggesting this gene should be examined in more patient groups.