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Most H₂ used in the chemical industry is derived from fossil fuels. Now it has been shown that coupling native microbial H₂ pathways with engineered alkene biosynthesis and membrane-bound Pd catalysis enables biocompatible hydrogenation of metabolic intermediates in living bacteria. This hybrid chemo-microbial platform supports the carbon-negative synthesis of industrial chemicals from waste-derived feedstocks.

Robustness checks and reproduction of analyses with existing and updated data based on 110 articles in economics and political science journals with data and code-sharing requirements found high levels of robustness and reproducibility and determined that robustness was not dependent on author characteristics or data availability.

Exposome analyses across 34 countries showed that social exposures were associated with faster functional brain aging and physical exposures with faster structural brain aging.

Here, the authors conduct a metagenomic-based study of England’s rivers to show that biofilm bacteria are taxonomically and functionally diverse and are key to biogeochemical cycling, highlighting the importance of river biofilm bacteria in understanding and monitoring freshwater ecosystem health.

When 100 social and behavioural science claims were examined, 34% of reanalyses closely matched the original results, with 74% reaching the same conclusion, revealing limited robustness of single-path analyses and the need to address analytical uncertainty.

Using single-cell tissue imaging and spatial proteomics to study mitochondria–lipid droplet coupling in hepatocytes, PLIN5 phosphorylation is identified as a mediator of lipid flux and nutrient stress responses.

Divergent white matter metabolic patterns reveal a mechanistic basis for cognitive resilience and enhance prediction of future cognitive decline beyond established aging and dementia biomarkers.

Analyses of snRNA genes in a French cohort of people with rare disorders, with validation through international collaboration, identify monoallelic and biallelic variants in RNU2-2 as frequent causes of neurodevelopmental disorders with epilepsy.

Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

Studies in zebra finches show that dopamine has a key role as a reinforcement signal in the trial-and-error process of learning that underlies complex natural behaviours.

Parsimonious deep neural network models can be used for prediction of visual neuron responses.

Genome-wide analysis coupled with long-read sequencing identifies a repeat expansion in GOLGA8A associated with high risk for atypical frontotemporal lobar degeneration with ubiquitin-positive inclusions.

An analysis of rare disease cohorts from the UK, the USA, Italy and the Netherlands identifies a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by biallelic variants in RNU2-2. Individuals with this disorder have substantially reduced levels of U2-2 small nuclear RNA in blood.

Longitudinal metatranscriptomics in a prospective cohort of 1,164 adults hospitalized for COVID-19 reveals that azithromycin offered no apparent anti-inflammatory benefit but enriched the respiratory microbiome with potential pathogens and antimicrobial resistance genes.

A large-scale study on the replicability of claims from social and behavioural science journals reports that about half of the results replicate in the same patterns as the original study.

Analyses of large-scale, multitaxa and long-term thermophilization patterns in forests, grasslands and alpine summits across Europe provide insight into shifts in community composition among different ecosystems in a warming world.

This study reveals that some bacteria living in the phycosphere of marine diatoms and dinoflagellates are host-specific with genomic functions matching their hosts, while some termed as ‘foundation’ bacteria can span both phycosphere types.

This study finds that cell segmentation errors affect numerous downstream applications of spatial transcriptomics data and provides a method to correct these errors by factorizing molecular neighborhoods.

NMDAR expression is sufficient to induce B cell recruitment and affinity maturation, resulting in receptor-modulating antibodies that connect anti-cancer immunity and autoimmunity.

In this work, the authors demonstrate nonlinearity-engineered dissipative quadratic solitons (DQS) for the first time. Moreover, they achieve an in-situ sign reversal of the effective nonlinearity, enabling a transition from bright DQS to platicon generation without requiring any dispersion engineering.

Stable and cell-specific transgene expression can be achieved through in vivo site-specific integration of large DNA payloads using a two-vector system of enveloped delivery vehicles and adeno-associated viruses.

An analysis of whole-exome sequencing data linked to longitudinal electronic health records from 44,028 British South Asians finds new gene–phenotype associations and identifies 2,991 genes with rare biallelic predicted loss-of-function genotypes.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

Borneol has repelled mosquitoes for millennia, but how it worked was unknown. Here, the authors show the sensory pathway mosquitoes use to detect and avoid this ancient plant compound, opening the door to improved natural repellents.

In one-shot perceptual learning, what we see can be dramatically altered by a single past experience. Using psychophysics, fMRI, iEEG, and DNNs, the authors identify neural and computational mechanisms underlying this remarkable ability in humans.

Hodgson, Huang, Lang et al. show that TDP-43 limits ribonucleoprotein particle condensation into paraspeckles in a concentration- and polymerization-dependent manner. They also link paraspeckle condensation to stress response and neuroprotection.

The mammalian gut undergoes a dramatic transformation during mid-gestation to create intestinal villi. Zhu and colleagues show that the transcription factor Foxl1 impacts key events during the epithelial transition of the fetal mammalian gut.

The activity of the membrane-bound enzyme pMMO depends on copper but the location of the copper centers is still under debate. Here, the authors reconstitute pMMO in nanodiscs and use native top-down MS to localize its copper centers, providing insights into which sites are essential for activity.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

The role of mitochondrial supercomplexes in guiding redox proteins across membranes during energy conversion remains unclear. Here, authors integrate multiscale modeling and cryo-EM to examine mechanisms of electron transfer and energy conversion efficiency.

Single-variant and ultrarare variant burden analyses leveraging exome sequencing data from 22 cohorts identify new risk genes for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and show cumulative effects of several rare variants on disease risk.

NeMO Analytics is a compendium of public transcriptomic data focused on the neocortex, enabling biologists without coding expertise to explore hundreds of datasets. Joint decomposition of these data yields insight into brain development and its modeling.

Temporal profiling of central carbon metabolism during Kras^G12D-driven acinar-to-ductal metaplasia reveals that disruptions in NADPH-producing enzymes accelerate the formation of pancreatic precancerous lesions.

SLCO2A1 (also known as OATP2A1) is responsible for the transport of eicosanoids, including prostaglandins (PGs), as well as of a subset of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Here, structures of SLCO2A1 bound to PGs and to four widely used drugs elucidate the molecular basis for PG and drug recognition.

Variation in responses to bacterial and viral stimuli between Batwa rainforest hunter-gatherers and Bakiga agriculturalists from Uganda suggests population-level divergence under natural selection, with hunter-gatherers disproportionately showing signatures of positive selection.

Strong stimulated Brillouin scattering is incorporated in a standard silicon nitride platform via a tellurium oxide layer. The authors demonstrate applications including a silicon-nitride-based Brillouin amplifier (net optical gain, 5 dB), a compact intermodal stimulated Brillouin laser capable of high-purity radio-frequency signal generation (intrinsic linewidth, 7 Hz) and a widely tunable microwave photonic notch filter (ultranarrow linewidth, 2.2 MHz).

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

Bång-Rudenstam et al. report that the acidic tumour microenvironment facilitates the assembly of chondroitin sulfate-enriched glycocalyx to disrupt lipid scavenging and prevent ferroptosis, thereby providing an adaptive mechanism upon tumour acidosis.

Catabolism of extracellular glutathione by γ-glutamyltransferases supports tumour growth and survival, and pharmacological targeting of these enzymes slows tumour growth.

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.

Survey-based indicators of wellbeing are often available for only large administrative units, like provinces. The authors use satellite-based machine learning models trained on such coarse data to make finer resolution estimates.

The APOE-ε4 allele is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but it is not deterministic. Here, the authors show that common genetic variation changes how APOE-ε4 influences cognition.

A pan-cancer genomic analysis reports the effects of structural variations on chromatin domains (TADs). Most TAD disruptions do not result in appreciable changes in expression of nearby genes.

Chemical recycling of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) typically requires high temperatures. Here, the authors report the UV-initiated depolymerisation of PMMA at low temperatures, in non-chlorinated solvents, such as benzonitrile.

In this study, long-read RNA sequencing achieves accurate single-nucleotide polymorphism calling, haplotype phasing and allele-specific expression analysis.

DNA recognition and cleavage control in type II topoisomerases are poorly understood processes. Here, the authors determine cleaved and uncleaved structures of supercoiled DNA-bound topoisomerase VI that reveal how the enzyme activates its cleavage state and prefers to act at deformable substrates.

PCNA–PAF15 has a key role in determining replisome dynamics during genome replication and protecting against genome instability.

How cellular metabolism influences tissue-resident macrophage survival is currently unknown. The authors here demonstrate that SerpinB2 regulates mitochondrial function to promote tissue-resident macrophage survival.

Understanding how each tumor establishes its unique spatial landscape and what factors drive the landscape for tumor fitness remains significantly challenging. Here, the authors employ spatial single-cell imaging and single-cell RNA sequencing to analyze 50 liver cancer biospecimens and find that different tumor cell states may be organized into distinct clusters, or ‘villages’.

Nicholas and Mattar found that people use episodic memory to make decisions when it is unclear what will be needed in the future. These findings reveal how the rich representational capacity of episodic memory enables flexible decision-making.