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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.

Synthetic molecular systems exhibiting allosteric regulation are used in purification, sensing, delivery and catalysis. Metal–organic cages provide a versatile platform for allosteric regulation due to their structural diversity and tunable cavities. This Review discusses recent advances in allosteric regulation with metal–organic cages, emphasizing design principles, applications and future challenges.

Jonathan R. Nitschke considers how the story of phosphorus, an element that glows without fire, nicely illustrates the pursuit of scientific knowledge — including how such knowledge goes on to serve many purposes, for better or for worse.

The preparation of artificial host–guest systems that display dynamic adaptation during guest binding is challenging. Here the authors report a chiral self-assembled tetrahedral cage featuring curved walls that reconfigures stereochemically to fit fullerene guests, regulates corannulene inversion, and enables the determination of co-guest enantiomeric excess by NMR spectroscopy.

One of the challenges of synthetic self-assembled capsules is achieving selective recognition of specific cargoes. Here, authors synthesize a self-assembled porphyrin cubic cage that is capable of sequestering imidazole and thiazole-containing small molecules and peptides, protecting them from proteolysis.

The construction of a self-assembled nanocage composed of four metal ions and six antiaromatic walls is demonstrated, and the effect of antiaromaticity on the host–guest properties is investigated.

A coordination cage has been prepared that self-assembles through second-order templation. Peripheral perchlorate or hexafluorophosphate template anions direct the formation of a hollow prism whose central pocket was able to bind a small anionic guest such as halide or azide, in a manner reminiscent to signal transduction in biological systems.

The addition of a single chemical signal can trigger multiple disassembly–reassembly events in a dynamic self-assembling system that is based on the formation and exchange of both imine and metal–ligand bonds. Different metal-helicate superstructures are either created or destroyed in response to the signal as the system seeks thermodynamic equilibrium following perturbation.

Interlocked molecules represent some of the most challenging synthetic targets in terms of non-natural products. It has now been demonstrated how a cyclic [3]catenane composed of three mutually interpenetrating rings can be prepared in two stages using a selective imine exchange reaction on a self-assembled triangular precursor.

Synthesizing topologically complex interwoven molecules with high yield remains challenging due to structural preorganization demands. Here face-bridging ligands on metal–organic cage frameworks are shown to enable high-yield synthesis of knotted cages that mechanically trap guests inside, enhancing guest retention and structural robustness.

Data collected from more than 2,000 taxa provide an unparalleled opportunity to quantify how extreme wildfires affect biodiversity, revealing that the largest effects on plants and animals were in areas with frequent or recent past fires and within extensively burnt areas.

Synthetic nanocages that can adapt the size and shape of their cavity in response to a given guest have potential applications in various areas, including chemical purification. Now a flexible, pseudo-cubic metal–organic cage has been developed that is able to dynamically expand its cavity from 46% to 154% of its initial volume by flipping its cage faces.

Urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UCAR) is associated with various clinical outcomes such as kidney disease and cardiovascular disease. Here, the authors report genome-wide meta-analysis in over 500,000 individuals and find 68 UACR loci, followed by statistical fine-mapping, gene prioritization and experimental validation in flies.

The advent of sophisticated analytical tools enables the collective behaviour of networks of interacting molecules to be studied. The emerging field of systems chemistry promises to allow such networks to be designed to perform complex functions, and might even shed light on the origins of life.

This Review discusses recent progress in the uses, challenges and future prospects for separations using metal–organic cages. Precise control over the size, shape and functionalization of these cages enables their application for separations required in petroleum, pharmaceuticals, mining and life sciences.

There is increasing evidence for metabolic processes mediating antimicrobial resistance. Here, the authors present a mechanism of sulfamethoxazole resistance in Group A Streptococcus that is dependent on acquiring end products of the host folate biosynthesis pathway.

The enantioselective functionalization of C₆₀ is highly challenging, typically requiring complex chiral tethers or demanding chromatography. Fullerenes have now been shown to undergo Diels–Alder reactions in a chemo-, regio- and enantio-selective fashion through confinement within an enantiopure metal–organic cage functionalized with a chiral formylpyridine group.

In the original Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, a potential gradient of particles between two neighbouring compartments is created without the apparent use of work. Now a functional example of this experiment where material is pumped over centimetres has been reported—o-fluoroazobenzene is transported unidirectionally under light stimulation between two arms of a U-tube across an aqueous layer containing coordination cages.

Macrophages are pleiotropic and can have different functions and phenotypes. Here the authors show that a population of macrophages, previously described as pro-fibrotic, can be induced through Notch2 blockade and that in a mouse lung injury and fibrosis model this macrophage population does not promote inflammation or fibrosis.

Synthetic procedures for making nanoparticles often result in samples that contain a range of different particle sizes. By using hollow self-assembled metal–organic spheres as templates, however, it is possible to make silica nanoparticles with uniform shapes and sizes in a precisely controlled fashion.

Two coordination cages have been devised that undergo covalent modification during a cascade of two orthogonal Diels–Alder reactions. This results in increased lipophilicity for the second cage, enabling its phase transfer and separation from the first. The trigger, relay and inhibition features of this cascade system mimic key aspects of natural post-translational modification cascades.

Controlling the self-assembly of large coordination cages is challenging owing to entropic costs and difficulties in error correction. Now an array of large cages prepared by the rational design of alterations that allow for the tuning of the dihedral angle between pentagonal subunits is reported.

Shwachman-Diamond syndrome (SDS) is a leukemia predisposition disorder that is caused by defective release of eIF6 during ribosome assembly. Here the authors show that acquired somatic EIF6 mutations are frequent in the hematopoietic cells from individuals with SDS and provide a selective advantage over non-modified cells.

Porous liquids promise to combine the advantages of the porosity of solids with those of the fluidity of liquids. Now, a permanently porous ionic-liquid coordination cage has been assembled that encapsulates isomers of butanol and propanol with some size and shape selectivity, as well as three gaseous chlorofluorocarbons with a size-dependent affinity.

An interconverting system of three distinct stereoisomers of a cuboctahedral Co^II-based cage is able to regulate the binding affinities of large anionic guests. Through cooperative templation with fullerene guests, the cage converts into a desymmetrized cage that in turn exhibits positive cooperativity in binding of an icosahedral anion; this interaction is anti-cooperative in the fullerene-free parent.

This study finds germline loss-of-function mutations in HAVCR2, which encodes the immune modulator TIM-3, in individuals with subcutaneous panniculitis-like T cell lymphomas and hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, a life-threatening inflammatory condition.

A new class of interwoven metal–organic containers, including one with a cubic architecture, twelve crossing points and a large internal volume, has now been reported. Interconversion between different self-assembled structures can be triggered by simply exchanging the associated anions.

Selective binding of multiple guests within cages could lead to new applications in catalysis and sensing. This Review discusses the design of synthetic cages with the aim of developing and controlling guest–guest chemistry.