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Trees come in all shapes and size, but what drives this incredible variation in tree form remains poorly understood. Using a global dataset, the authors show that a combination of climate, competition, disturbance and evolutionary history shape the crown architecture of the world’s trees and thereby constrain the 3D structure of woody ecosystems.

Using a globally distributed standardized aerial sampling of fungal spores, we show that the hyperdiverse kingdom of fungi follows globally highly predictable spatial and temporal dynamics, with seasonality in both species richness and community composition increasing with latitude.

Fire has shaped plant life for millions of years, but flammability as an inherited trait has been difficult to discern. This Letter reveals several predictors in the evolution of plant flammability.

A statistical analysis of the associations between virus structure and virus transmission suggests that virus structures limit viral transmission routes and have implications for infection prophylaxis and gene therapy strategies.

This study introduces an ion mobility–mass spectrometry method for de novo glycan structure identification, using a self-expanding database that reduces reliance on synthetic reference standards.

Combining a large-scale dataset of 23 ungulate species (in which newborns follow contrasting tactics of predator avoidance) with continuous-time stochastic movement models, the authors reveal that there are multiple dimensions of maternal movement behaviour and space use.

Glycosyl cations are key intermediates in glycosylation reactions, but their structure has remained elusive due to their transient nature. Here, the authors perform an in-depth structural analysis and report that C2-participating protective groups induce acetoxonium cations with distinct ring conformations.

Currently, only a few specialized labs can characterize O-glycans. The present study couples high-resolution ion mobility spectrometry with tandem mass spectrometry to efficiently identify complex O-glycan structures in clinical samples.

The role of cationic intermediates in the benzylidene-directed synthesis of 1,2-cis glycosidic linkages is unclear. Now cryogenic infrared spectroscopy provides insight into the S_N1 mechanism of benzylidene-directed glycosylation reactions. The analysis reveals that cationic intermediates form anhydro cations through a two-step process, which correlates with the observed stereochemical outcome.

During mouse preimplantation phases, a repressive imprint is imposed on the maternal allele of Xist, which encodes a large non-coding RNA required for X-chromosome inactivation. Here the authors show that trimethylation of histone H3 at lysine 9 on Xist promoter chromatin is responsible for the maternally determined Xistrepression.

Heparan sulfates (HS) contain functionally relevant structural motifs, but determining their monosaccharide sequence remains challenging. Here, the authors develop an ion mobility mass spectrometry-based method that allows unambiguous characterization of HS sequences and structure-activity relationships.

Detergents are indispensable reagents in membrane protein structural biology. Here, L. H. Urner and co-workers introduce oligoglycerol detergents (OGDs) and use native mass spectrometry to show how interactions of membrane proteins with native membrane lipids can be preserved during purification.

Glycolipids are glycoconjugates with important biological functions, but techniques for their analysis are deficient. Here, the authors report the use of cryogenic gas-phase infrared spectroscopy to investigate isomerism in a set of immunologically relevant glycolipids, and show that their structural features can be accurately resolved based on a narrow spectral fingerprint region.

There is increasing evidence that highly dynamic, polydisperse peptide oligomers are the toxic species in amyloid-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Now, the secondary structure of individual amyloid oligomers has been analysed directly for the first time using a combination of ion-mobility spectrometry–mass spectrometry and gas-phase infrared spectroscopy.

Multiple independent origins of fragmented mitochondrial genome evolution in parasitic lice provide insights into eukaryotic mitochondrial evolution.

A diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries provides health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help to bring this public health threat to an end.

Octameric complexes of serine are long known for their special properties, such as their enhanced stability and preference for homochirality. Yet, there is no consensus on their structures. Now, experimental data on the serine octamer–dichloride complex is presented that supports a highly symmetrical, highly stable structure.

The majority of discrete structures obtained by self-assembly possess high symmetry, and thus low complexity: all subunits relate to their neighbours in a similar manner. Now, the spontaneous formation of complex low-symmetry assemblies produced from a single building block has been demonstrated using a systems chemistry approach. The single building block oligomerizes to form specific homomeric cyclic macromolecules that adopt a folded conformation.

Risk models to predict outcomes in cardiac surgery are increasingly being used to identify patients who might be better treated using percutaneous techniques than by surgical intervention. In this Review, Thalji and colleagues critically evaluate how the databases from which these models are derived might influence risk prediction in clinical practice, particularly for selecting patients to undergo transcatheter aortic valve implantation.

Whole-genome sequencing of 1,013 clonal haematopoietic colonies from myeloproliferative neoplasms of 12 individuals reveals haematopoietic phylogenies and indicates that driver mutations are acquired sequentially, starting early in life.

Kevin Campbell and colleagues isolate DNA from extinct woolly mammoths and resurrect mammoth hemoglobin. The authors identify three amino acid substitutions that reduce the energetic requirements of heme deoxygenation, which may have played a role in the adaptation of the woolly mammoth from tropical to arctic environments.

The branched structure and stereoisomerism of carbohydrates make them difficult to analyse; here, ion mobility–mass spectrometry is used to distinguish unambiguously between synthetic trisaccharides that differ in connectivity or configuration.

Glycosyl cations are reactive sugar intermediates that govern the stereoselective formation of glycosidic bonds, however, studying glycosyl cations remains challenging due to their unstable and short-lived features. Here, the authors review the recent achievements in gas-phase research on glycosyl cations by mass spectrometry.