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This study surveyed key informants across 26 countries on burning plastic for waste management and energy needs. It finds high awareness of this practice, with potential drivers including inadequate waste collection and a lack of affordable fuels.

Structure determination of large proteins by solution state NMR is challenging due to spectral overlap. Here the authors present a labeling strategy using 2-¹³C and 3-¹³C pyruvate as carbon source for E. coli, which increases the effective resolution of triple-resonance HNCA experiments and helps to overcome this problem.

Mutual paracrine regulation of the cytokines GREM1 and SPP1 mediate mesenchymal and epithelial cell fate in pancreatic cancer.

An Oryza-specific histone H4 variant (H4.V) forms condensed, less stable nucleosomes. H4.V enhances the salt-stress-dependent deposition of H4 lysine 5 acetylation marks at several protein-coding loci, thereby regulating the salt stress transcriptome.

A common immune signature in the blood of patients with COVID-19, who are otherwise clinically heterogeneous, sheds light into the pathogenesis and clinical progression of the disease.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

What regulates mRNAs transcript localization in the germ granules in Drosophila is unclear. Here Trcek et al.identify that germ plasm proteins are homogeneously distributed in germ granules but once localized, individual mRNAs form homotypic clusters, contributing structure to the germ granules.

Here the authors use RT-qPCR and mass spectrometry to analyze longitudinal blood samples from intensive care unit (ICU) COVID-19 patients and controls. They find that viral RNA and pentraxin-3 predict 28-day ICU mortality and that galectin-3-binding protein is an interaction partner of SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein with antiviral properties.

Here the authors show that a gene-inactivating protein complex packs inactive genes into a dynamic and accessible structure. The study challenges the traditional views that restricted accessibility and low dynamics cause gene repression.

A case–control study investigating the causes of recent cases of acute hepatitis of unknown aetiology in 32 children identifies an association between adeno-associated virus infection and host genetics in disease susceptibility.

The frequency of aberrant alternative splicing events increases with age in breast cancer patients, including 390 high-variability-specific splicing events that are exclusively observed in older adults with breast cancer. Alternative splicing events can also be used to resolve three distinct subtypes of older adults with breast cancer, and predict the prognosis of older patients.

Using a well-resolved spatial transcriptomics coupled with genetic data, this study identified rice CLSY3 chromatin remodeler as an upstream player in endosperm development. OsCLSY3 is imprinted and endosperm-specific, and, curiously, its expression is controlled by RdDM.

Structural and biochemical studies of the Mycobacterium smegmatis hydrogenase Huc provides insights into how [NiFe] hydrogenases oxidize trace amounts of atmospheric hydrogen and transfer the electrons liberated via quinone transport.

A metabolite screen of pancreatic cells shows that pancreatic cancer cells metabolize uridine-derived ribose via UPP1, supporting redox balance, survival and proliferation.

Nucleic acid nanotechnology offers a promising route towards the design and synthesis of reconfigurable biomolecular materials. Now, the combination of dynamic and structural DNA nanotechnology has enabled the dynamic control of the assembly and disassembly of DNA nanotubes. The process involves minimal synthetic gene systems, including an autonomous molecular oscillator.

Single-molecule fluorescence in situ hybridization (smFISH) enables mRNA quantification while preserving spatial information. Trcek et al. describe an smFISH procedure for Drosophila embryos, using wide-field, confocal and structured illumination miscroscopy.

Correlating aromatic carbons attached to fluorine with meta-position hydrogens in fluorine-labelled phenylalanines can yield two-dimensional correlations with narrow linewidths in large proteins. Adapting phenylalanine-tRNA synthetase increases the incorporation rate, while expanding the genetic code enables site-specific incorporation of fluorinated phenylalanine. The resulting HC_F-transverse relaxation-optimized spectroscopy can illuminate protein dynamics and drive multiplexed drug discovery campaigns.

Long-read sequencing allows the detection of RNA isoforms, but is hampered by low throughput and potential artefacts. Here, the authors develop the scTaILoR-seq hybridisation capture method for long-read RNA sequencing to improve transcript detection, and use this method to detect isoforms at the single-cell level in ovarian cancer.

The deprivation of amino acids in the tumor microenvironment affects T cell survival and activation. Here the authors show that reduced levels of methionine are associated with PD1 upregulation in CD4+ T cells and that methionine supplementation promotes CD4+ T cell dependent anti-tumor immune responses.

From 1980 to 2018, the levels of total and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol increased in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreased in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe.

Domestication reduces genetic diversity and constrains crop improvement. Here the authors identify factors that shaped species diversity in the wild progenitors of chickpea, and produce wild introgression populations that increase diversity for breeding by ~100-fold, including traits of agronomic relevance.

An investigation using various methods reports an association between adeno-associated virus 2 and paediatric hepatitis of unknown aetiology.

It is now revealed, using cell cultures and in silico models, that weakening intercellular contacts is a fundamental process essential for switching from extensile to contractile tissue behaviour.

A data-driven solution of partial differential equations is developed with conditional generative adversarial networks, which could be used in both forward and inverse problems.

Characterising the molecular profile of soft tissue sarcomas (STS) remains critical. Here, the authors analyse samples from 321 STS patients across 11 histological subtypes using proteomics and identify prognostic signatures that can be applied to multiple subtypes.

Cryo-EM, X-ray crystallography and crosslinking mass spectrometry are harnessed to solve the structure of the full-length Rho-GEF P-Rex1, uncovering a two-layered mechanism of autoinhibition released upon Gβγ and PI(3,4,5)P3 binding.

The authors previously identified a family of viral insulin-like peptides (VILPs) with high homology to human insulin/IGF−1. Here, they report that one of these VILPs exhibits antagonist properties associated with a unique conformation of the IGF1R.

Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common and aggressive form of primary brain tumour, and in 50% of cases EFGR is mutated, amplified or upregulated. Here the authors show that NHE9 controls the amount of EGFR at the membrane surface of brain tumour-initiating stem cells by affecting the luminal pH of sorting endosomes.

An improved, single-cell lineage-tracing system, based on deep detection of naturally occurring mitochondrial DNA mutations with simultaneous readout of transcriptional states and chromatin accessibility, is used to define the clonal architecture of haematopoietic stem cells.

A reinforcement learning model can predict risk-based follow-up recommendations to improve early detection and reduce screening costs in breast cancer across diverse patient populations.

Reticular frameworks are crystalline porous materials with desirable properties such as gas separation, but their large design space presents a challenge. An automated nanoporous materials discovery platform powered by a supramolecular variational autoencoder can efficiently explore this space.

This work demonstrates subtype-specific molecular fidelity, laminar positioning, long-distance interhemisheric connectivity and electrophysiologic circuit integration by developmentally primed, microtransplanted neurons in postnatal mouse neocortex.

Mammalian eggs require a single sperm for viable fertilization, and cortical granule exocytosis prevents additional sperm binding. Vogt et al. image at single granule resolution to document that cortical granule anchoring in the cortex ensures proper trafficking, exocytosis and polyspermy block.

Recent studies have suggested that long genes (>100 kb) are more likely to be misregulated in some neurological diseases, such as autism and Rett syndrome. Here the authors find that the apparent length-dependent trends previously observed in MeCP2 microarray and RNA-sequencing datasets disappeared after controlling for baseline variations.

The BMP inhibitor GREM1 is a key regulator of cellular heterogeneity in pancreatic cancer in human and mouse.

Pierre Guermonprez and colleagues have worked out how a subset of dendritic cells expands in individuals with severe malaria. Plasmodium infection causes an accumulation of xanthine in infected red blood cells. The researchers found that type I interferon triggers an increase in the enzyme that metabolizes xanthine to uric acid. Uric acid then acts on mast cells to release Flt3 ligand, an important regulator of dendritic cells, which in turn stimulate T cells to respond to the infection.

This study presents MetaVision3D, a pipeline to integrate mass spectrometry imaging sections into 3D reconstructions of metabolomic maps. The authors also provide a comprehensive 3D metabolome atlas of the brains of healthy mice and two disease models.

Contrary to the view that urbanization is a major driver of the global rise in obesity, the global increase in body-mass index is shown to be mostly due to increases in the body-mass indexes of rural populations.

Characterization of a cohort of children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection provides insights into the immunopathogenic features of the disease.