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Collective cell migration is usually attributed to large-scale transmission of signals through cell junctions. Here, the authors confine cells into a ring-shaped pattern and show that collective cell migration can arise at the single-cell level.

Long-range cis-regulatory elements play important roles in regulating agronomic traits, but they are largely uncharacterized in crops. This study provides genetic, epigenomic and functional molecular evidence to support their widespread existence in the maize genome.

Marc Lecuit, Sylvain Brisse and colleagues combine Listeria monocytogenes population genomic data with human epidemiological and clinical data to study human listeriosis. They report new putative virulence factors and demonstrate that some clones are hypervirulent in a humanized mouse model of listeriosis and have enhanced neural and placental tropism.

As tissues mature, they undergo shape changes that are the result of individual and collective cell movement triggered by cell-autonomous behavior or external forces. By measuring patterns of strain rates the authors can model these forces and quantify tissue shaping behavior.

Leptosphaeria maculans is a plant pathogen that causes stem canker of oilseed rape. Rouxel et al. sequence and describe the key features of the L. maculansgenome, including partitioning into AT-rich blocks that are enriched in effector genes and transposable elements affected by repeat-induced point mutation.

Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet—a threat for sea level rise—is accelerated by ice algal blooms. Here the authors find a link between mineral phosphorus and glacier algae, indicating that dust-derived nutrients aid bloom development, thereby impacting ice sheet melting.

In this work, Danileviciute, Zeng et al. provide new insights into the regulation of the PDH complex by PARK7/DJ-1 and show its relevance in T_reg homeostasis during ageing.

Analysis of the kinase activity of 300 protein Ser/Thr kinases reveals that the substrate specificity of the kinome is substantially more diverse than expected and is driven extensively by negative selectivity

The proliferation of molecular biology and bioinformatics tools necessary to generate huge quantities of immune receptor data has not been matched by frameworks that allow easy data analysis. The authors present immuneML, an open-source collaborative ecosystem for machine learning analysis of adaptive immune receptor repertoires.

Long-read single-cell RNA sequencing is capable of detecting isoform-level gene expression and genomic alterations such as mutations and gene fusions, thereby providing cell-specific genotype-phenotype information. Here, the authors use long-read scRNA-seq on metastatic ovarian cancer samples and detect cell-type specific isoforms and gene fusions that may otherwise be misclassified in short-read data.

The authors devise an efficient quantum approach to address the van der Waals interactions due to photoexcitations by approximating the Bethe-Salpeter equation. Both attractive/repulsive forces can arise, that could couple to collective protein dynamics.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by lipid abnormalities which are not well understood. Here, the authors investigate the role of Stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD) in a mouse model of AD. They show that inhibiting SCD activity induces major brain and immune cell transcriptional changes and restores dendritic structure and learning and memory.

Thymic epithelial tumors are associated with increased risk of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-induced myotoxicities, and the presence of anti-acetylcholine-receptor antibodies has the potential to serve as a biomarker for ICI-induced myocarditis in patients with cancer.

The European sea bass is an economically important fish species, which is subject to intense selective breeding. Here, the authors sequence the genome of the European sea bass and highlight gene family expansions underlying adaptation to salinity change, as well as the genomic architecture of speciation between two divergent sea bass lineages.

How interleukin 17 influences B cell biology is unclear. Bonnefoy-Bérard and colleagues find that interleukin 17 alone or in combination with B cell–activating factor controls the survival, proliferation of human B cells and their differentiation into immunoglobulin-secreting cells.

Here, the authors describe the emergence and spread of a new potential SARS-CoV-2 variant of interest, B.1.620. They show that this lineage, first identified in Lithuania, has established local transmission in Europe on multiple occasions and likely emerged in Central Africa.

Melanoma cells interact with pain-mediating sensory neurons by increasing their release of the neuropeptide CGRP, which increases the exhaustion of CD8⁺ T cells and thus promotes the survival of cancer cells.

Empirically based models of disease progression in familial frontotemporal dementia reveal the relative ordering of clinical, neuroimaging, and fluid biomarker changes and facilitate novel clinical trial designs

Large-scale Mendelian randomization and colocalization analyses using gene expression and soluble protein data for 1,263 actionable druggable genes, which encode protein targets for approved drugs or drugs in clinical development, identify IFNAR2 and ACE2 as the most promising therapeutic targets for early management of COVID-19.

Different mechanisms have been reported to explain resistance to chemotherapy in cancer. Here, the authors show that the chemotherapeutic drug 5-fluorouracil alters the function of ribosomes to promote pro-survival gene translation leading to chemotherapy resistance.

A tuneable platform using twisted WTe₂ stacks is described in which an electronic phase in the two-dimensional moiré lattice array is shown to resemble one-dimensional Luttinger liquids.

The pathogenic function of XBP1-expressing astrocytes in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis and multiple sclerosis have been studied using FIND-seq, a new method combining microfluidics cytometry, PCR-based detection of nucleic acids and cell sorting for in-depth single-cell transcriptomics analyses of rare cells.

Researchers demonstrate a laser-plasma accelerator-driven free-electron laser in a seeded configuration, where control over the radiation wavelength and longitudinal coherence are achieved.

A genome-wide association study and Metabochip meta-analysis of body mass index (BMI) detects 97 BMI-associated loci, of which 56 were novel, and many loci have effects on other metabolic phenotypes; pathway analyses implicate the central nervous system in obesity susceptibility and new pathways such as those related to synaptic function, energy metabolism, lipid biology and adipogenesis.

Mammalian genomes are scattered with repetitive sequences, but their biology remains largely elusive. Here, the authors show that transcription can initiate from short tandem repetitive sequences, and that genetic variants linked to human diseases are preferentially found at repeats with high transcription initiation level.

A subpopulation of astrocytes characterized by the expression of LAMP1 and TRAIL limits inflammation in the central nervous system through a mechanism involving the microbiota-modulated expression of IFNγ in meningeal natural killer cells.

By examining chromatin accessibility and modification as well as sequence conservation in 13 plant species, this study characterizes thousands of putative cis-regulatory elements and reveals their prevalence, dynamic evolution and chromatin signatures.

Beneficial plant-microbe interactions are common in nature, but direct evidence for the evolution of mutualism is scarce. Here, Li et al. experimentally evolve a rhizospheric bacterium and find that it can evolve into a mutualist on a relatively short timescale.

Simultaneous accurate and efficient prediction of molecular properties relies on combined quantum mechanics and machine learning approaches. Here the authors develop a flexible machine-learning force-field with high-level accuracy for molecular dynamics simulations.

Nephrophthisis (NPH) is a common manifestation of ciliopathy diseases. Here the authors identify mutations in intraflagellar transport 54 (IFT54) in patients with NPH and discover an extra-ciliary role for IFT54 in regulating cytoplasmic microtubule dynamics, that contributes to the pathophysiology of this disease.

Obtaining precise structural information for metal-centred reactions that take place within the pores of metal–organic frameworks continues to be an elusive goal. Now, a flexible framework has been synthesized that enables the direct elucidation of the products of post-synthetic metallation reactions and subsequent chemical transformations by single-crystal X-ray crystallography. Camera image: © boyoglu/iStock/Thinkstock

The question of whether women who produce twins are more fertile than other women has been debated. Here, the authors analyze a large dataset of pre-industrial birth outcomes and find evidence against the idea of higher fertility and instead that more births lead to more twinning opportunities.

Sleep duration is associated with an adverse lipid profile. Here, the authors perform genome-wide gene-by-sleep interaction analysis and find 49 previously unreported lipid loci when considering short or long total sleep time.

The hydroxyl radical OH has been detected in a planet-forming disk exposed to ultraviolet radiation and in a rovibrationally excited state. These JWST observations, when coupled with quantum calculations, reveal the ongoing photodissociation of water and its reformation in the gas phase.

Mice deficient in the pro-inflammatory cytokine IFNγ have improved glucose tolerance. Here, the authors show that this effect depends on the gut microbeAkkermansia muciniphila, whose abundance increases in the absence IFNγ, and which is known to have beneficial effects on host metabolism.

In patients with alcoholic hepatitis, cytolysin-positive Enterococcus faecalis strains are correlated with liver disease severity and increased mortality, and in mouse models these strains can be specifically targeted by bacteriophages.

Attractive, non-covalent interactions between aromatic rings—termedπ−πstacking—is common in chemistry but difficult to model. Here the authors report a quantum-mechanical model to show the importance of collective charge fluctuations for understanding pi-stacked supramolecular systems.

Machine learning is an increasingly popular approach to analyse data and make predictions. Here the authors develop a ‘deep learning’ framework for quantitative predictions and qualitative understanding of quantum-mechanical observables of chemical systems, beyond properties trivially contained in the training data.

Temozolomide therapy seems to lead to mismatch repair deficiency and hypermutation in gliomas, but not to an increase in response to immunotherapy.

The authors report genetic, archaeological and stable isotopic data from two late Palaeolithic individuals in Britain, from Gough's Cave and Kendrick's Cave. The individuals differ not only in their ancestry but also their diets, ecologies and mortuary practices, revealing diverse origins and lifeways among inhabitants of late Pleistocene Britain.

Biomarkers of prostate cancer metastasis have been difficult to determine with confidence. Here the authors analyse mutation prevalence in 1844 prostate cancers and show that ZNRF3 loss is enriched in metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer and associated with metastasis of localized disease.

There has been a drastic increase in detection of lung nodules, many of which are precancers, preinvasive, minimally invasive or sometimes invasive lung cancers. Here, Hu et al. perform multi-region exome sequencing to discern the evolutional trajectory from precancers to invasive lung cancers.

DART (drug acutely restricted by tethering) enables the manipulation of native receptors on genetically defined neurons. This work describes second-generation DART reagents for manipulating GABA_A and AMPA receptors with higher cellular specificity than previously achieved.

DNA methylation quantitative trait locus (mQTL) analyses on 32,851 participants identify genetic variants associated with DNA methylation at 420,509 sites in blood, resulting in a database of >270,000 independent mQTLs.

Understanding oscillation phenomena in catalysis is a long-standing challenge. Here the authors report a temporally and spatially resolved operando analysis of CO oxidation over Rh/Al₂O₃, revealing the interplay of Boudouard reaction and carbon combustion in generating the oscillations.