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Mariana-type subduction redox is controlled by sulfide oxidation that enables fluids to carry redox budgets from the slab to the mantle wedge, and iron-rich slab sediment melts that oxidize the back-arc mantle, according to a 2D thermomechanical–thermodynamic model.

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

While the photoreceptor outer segments in the bird outer retina have access to oxygen, the inner retina operates under chronic anoxia, supported by anaerobic glycolysis in the retinal neurons.

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.

Liquid biopsy methods have mainly been focused on the use of peripheral blood, and comparison between body fluids has been limited. Here, the authors utilize samples from a rapid tissue donation program to compare body fluid sites in their representativeness of the metastatic disease in patients with breast cancer.

Training deep neural networks by backpropagation consumes significant energy in digital hardware. Boon and Cassola et al. show that homodyne detection can be used to extract gradients directly in a physical device, enabling efficient gradient descent and offering a scalable route to material-based learning.

Early stellarator designs suffered from high particle losses, an issue that can be addressed by optimization of the coils. Here the authors measure the magnetic field lines in the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, confirming that the complicated design of the superconducting coils has been realized successfully.

Polymorphism, the presence of different crystal structures of the same molecular system, provides an opportunity to discover new phenomena and properties. Here, the authors crystallize coronene in the presence of a magnetic field, forming a different polymorph, which remains stable under ambient conditions.

A genetic study identifies hundreds of loci associated with risk tolerance and risky behaviors, finds evidence of substantial shared genetic influences across these phenotypes, and implicates genes involved in neurotransmission.

A genome-wide association study in ~3 million individuals identifies 3,952 independent variants associated with educational attainment. A polygenic index explains 12–16% of variance for this trait and contributes to risk prediction for ten diseases.

Owing to its short atmospheric life, methane’s contribution to agricultural emissions and climate change may vary substantially depending on the temporal scale considered. Based on projections from three agricultural economic models, this study reveals how different appreciations of methane’s global warming potential may affect the cost-effectiveness of carbon pricing and low-meat diets.

Understanding phylogenetic relationships among species is key to studying evolutionary transitions, but the growing scale of sequence data poses challenges for current methods. This study presents PhyloTune, a fine-tuning approach using DNA language models to enable efficient phylogenetic updates.

This report from the 1000 Genomes Project describes the genomes of 1,092 individuals from 14 human populations, providing a resource for common and low-frequency variant analysis in individuals from diverse populations; hundreds of rare non-coding variants at conserved sites, such as motif-disrupting changes in transcription-factor-binding sites, can be found in each individual.

Mathieson et al. carried out a genome-wide association study of reproductive success (number of children born) in humans, revealing the importance of diverse neuro-endocrine and behavioural factors.

The authors demonstrate the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the nasopharynx and brain, suggesting that the virus is present in the CNS and may enter through the olfactory mucosa, exploiting the close vicinity of olfactory mucosal, endothelial and nervous tissue.

The authors investigate temperature and pH effects on fitness of an abundant marine crustacean (copepod) across 25 generations. Reduced fitness under combined warming and acidification was recovered rapidly, but incompletely, due to interactions between warming and acidification effects.

Quantifying the long-term (LT) response of crop yields to nitrogen fertilizer is critical to improving nutrient management practices. Based on 25 LT field experiments, this study develops a generic LT nitrogen response function for global cereals to characterize the yield impacts, associated LT economic benefits and external costs of changing nitrogen inputs.

Better analytical methods are needed to extract biological meaning from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of psychiatric disorders. Here the authors take GWAS data from over 60,000 subjects, including patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, and identify common etiological pathways shared amongst them.

This study uses gene expression predictors for the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other brain regions to perform a transcriptomic imputation analysis of schizophrenia, identifying 413 genic associations across 13 brain regions and 36 significantly enriched pathways.

The evolution of non-recombining chromosomes is poorly understood. Here, the authors sequence the collared flycatcher female-specific W chromosome and show nonrandom survival of genes during W chromosome degeneration which is due to selection for maintaining gene dose and expression levels of essential genes.

Satellite-borne radar systems are promising tools to obtain spatial habitat data with complete geographic coverage. Here the authors show that freely available Sentinel-1 radar data perform as well as standard airborne laser scanning data for mapping biodiversity of 12 taxa across temperate forests in Germany.

Time-resolved measurements of the X-ray photoemission delay of core-level electrons using attosecond soft X-ray pulses from a free-electron laser can be used to determine the complex correlated dynamics of photoionization.

In this prospective cohort study, authors follow 328 households in Germany with at least one confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and find that children are more likely to seroconvert without symptoms and have higher specific antibody levels that persist longer than in adults.

Forest dynamics are monitored at large scales with remote sensing, but individual tree data are necessary for ground-truthing and mechanistic insights. This study on high temporal resolution dendrometer data across Europe reveals that the 2018 heatwave affected tree physiology and growth in unexpected way.

A new carbonate phase calcium carbonate hemihydrate was recently discovered and characterized, but exclusively as a synthetic material. Here the authors find that it exists in nature, albeit transiently, on the surface of growing nacre and coral skeletons, and show that 2 amorphous and 2 metastable crystalline nano-minerals form before biominerals settle into their stable crystals.

Boninite lavas are erupted during the early stages of subduction, however they have previously been found only in the ancient geological record. Discovery of an active boninite eruption shows that abundant volatile gases derived from the subducting slab drive this violent eruptive activity, even in the deep sea.

A class of chimeric synthetic antibiotics that bind to lipopolysaccharide and BamA shows potent activity against multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria, with the potential to address life-threatening infections.

The association between obesity and breast cancer biology remains understudied in humans. Here, using a large retrospective data collection, the authors identify obesity associated changes in the genomic, transcriptomic profile, and the tumor microenvironment of primary untreated breast tumors.

The cheapest way to add new power stations to a domestic power grid is by tree-like connections to the network. A numerical basin stability analysis of Menck et al.suggests that this undermines a grid’s stability against blackouts but can be fixed with extra transmission lines to these otherwise ‘dead ends’.

Increasing the capacity of existing lines or adding new lines in power grids may, counterintuitively, reduce the system performance and promote blackouts. The authors propose an approach for prediction of edges that lower system performance and defining potential constrains for grid extensions.

Structural and cellular analyses reveal that the presence of an isoform-specific α-helix in myosin VI determines whether this motor protein functions in endocytosis or cell migration.

Alzheimer’s disease is heterogeneous in its neuroimaging and clinical phenotypes. Here the authors present a semi-supervised deep learning method, Smile-GAN, to show four neurodegenerative patterns and two progression pathways providing prognostic and clinical information.

Clinical studies have suggested that the therapeutic potential of polyclonal convalescent plasma is highest in the first days of symptoms. Here, the authors present results from a pooled analysis of two clinical trials in COVID-19 outpatients that did not provide conclusive evidence in favor of convalescent plasma.

The authors found that the key elements of plant form and function, analysed at global scale, are largely concentrated into a two-dimensional plane indexed by the size of whole plants and organs on the one hand, and the construction costs for photosynthetic leaf area, on the other.

This Registered Report presents evidence from 87 countries and regions showing that brief emotion-regulation interventions consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sebastien Gagneux and colleagues analyze a global collection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates to classify sublineages by phylogeography. They find globally distributed ‘generalist’ and geographically restricted ‘specialist’ sublineages of lineage 4, indicating that different evolutionary strategies were adopted to succeed in various ecological niches.

Culturing new microorganisms requires a great deal of experience, and trial and error. Here, the authors build a database of >3,300 culturing media recipes and >18,000 microbial species that allows the prediction of appropriate media recipes for the growth of new microbes based on their 16S rDNA sequences.

Organismal ageing is driven by conserved biological processes. Here the authors build on a comparative RNA-seq analysis in three model organisms to demonstrate that the gene, bcat-1, which catalyses the degradation of branched-chain amino acids, regulates lifespan in worms.

The authors discuss the dysregulated host response in sepsis and the use of biomarkers to gauge the immunological status of patients and potentially guide precision medicine. They also highlight potential immunomodulatory therapies for sepsis and discuss the future of sepsis clinical trials.

Individual SNPs have small effects on anthropometric traits, yet the impact of CNVs has remained largely unknown. Here, Kutalik and co-workers perform a large-scale genome-wide meta-analysis of structural variation and find rare CNVs associated with height, weight and BMI with large effect sizes.

Two surveys of over 1,700 publications whose authors use quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) reveal a lack of transparent and comprehensive reporting of essential technical information. Reporting standards are significantly improved in publications that cite the Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments (MIQE) guidelines, although such publications are still vastly outnumbered by those that do not.