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Speleothem records from caves in Arctic Siberia allow for the reconstruction of multiannual air temperatures during the late Miocene (8.68±0.09 million years ago). These temperatures suggest that Eurasia was mostly permafrost-free during that time.

Previously uncharacterized cysteine-derived conjugates, including with endogenous sugar metabolites, accumulate in cancer cells with constitutive NRF2 activation and account for some of the increased cystine uptake that cannot be explained by conventional cysteine metabolism.

CRISPR gene targeting in multicellular organisms results in genetic mosaics, limiting knockout efficiency. Here, the authors develop an improved system using Cas12a with multiple guides per gene, and demonstrate high accuracy and superior knockout efficiency in fruit flies.

Bohlen and colleagues report that the E3 ubiquitin ligase CBL is necessary for the development, tolerance and activation of B cells in humans, unlike in mice where CBL deficiency results in loss of T cells.

Land-based mitigation for meeting the Paris climate target must consider the carbon cycle impacts of land-use change. Here the authors show that when bioenergy crops replace high carbon content ecosystems, forest-based mitigation could be more effective for CO₂ removal than bioenergy crops with carbon capture and storage.

The protein corona around artificial nanoparticles is known to influence activity and biological fate, the formation around viruses is less well understood. Here, the authors observe the formation of protein corona on viruses and study the effects this corona has on viral infectivity and on amyloid protein assembly.

Previous research has suggested that pDCs are required for an effective antiviral immune response, but direct experimental evidence to support this is lacking. Here Ngo et al. develop a pDC knockin mouse model and find that pDCs are dispensable for an antiviral immune response to mouse cytomegalovirus and may be detrimental during influenza or SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Cyclic five-membered disulfides (1,2-dithiolanes) have been reported either as nonspecific redox motifs, or as highly specific cellular probes for thioredoxin reductase (TrxR). Here the authors show that 1,2-dithiolane probes are nonspecifically reduced by a range of thiol reductants and are not sensitive to TrxR modulation, thus they are unsuitable as cellular probes for TrxR.

varVAMP is open-source software for designing primers for tiled-amplicon sequencing and qPCR. It simplifies primer design for viral pathogens with high genomic variability by including sequence variations into primer sequences.

Here, the authors present and characterise a collection of human gut bacteria including novel taxa associated with health conditions and a large diversity of plasmids. All isolates, their genomes and metadata are publicly available, facilitating research by others (www.hibc.rwth-aachen.de).

The A.27 SARS-CoV-2 lineage spread globally in 2021 but did not become dominant. Here, the authors show that A.27 shares some mutations in the spike gene that are present in variants of concern, but lacks the D614G mutation, indicating independent evolution of immune escape properties.

We find that justice considerations constrain the integrated Earth system boundaries more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading, and our assessment provides a foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people.

The predicted increase in frequency of droughts and rising temperatures in Europe will lead core populations of a temperate plant to an evolutionary dead-end unless they acquire genetic alleles that are present only in extreme edge Mediterranean, Scandinavian, or Siberian populations.

During SARS-CoV-2 infection caspase-8 fuels harmful inflammation independent of apoptosis. Genetic loss of caspase-8 reduces cytokine levels, lowers viral load and mitigates disease severity, revealing non-apoptotic caspase-8 as a key driver of severe COVID-19.

A SARS-CoV-2-human protein contactome map uncovers an inhibitor of viral replication.

Human gut bacteria bioaccumulate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly known as forever chemicals, in intracellular aggregates. Colonization of gnotobiotic mice with bioaccumulating bacteria increases faecal PFAS excretion.

A large, multicenter, double-blind RCT in 150 children and adolescents found that external trigeminal nerve stimulation, although safe and well tolerated, did not produce significant short-term or long-term clinical benefits for ADHD compared to sham treatment.

Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 can be used to treat infections but there is a risk of driving viral resistance to antibodies. Here the authors characterise SARS-CoV-2 escape mutants from an immunocompromised patient treated with anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies using mouse protection studies and structural prediction.

Human transplantation with allogeneic donor organs results in non-matching of MHC and differential presentation of T cell antigens. Here the authors show that in a lung transplanted SARS-CoV-2 infected patient T cell responses generated from the host may not be able to recognise infected cells within the graft and this may contribute to virus persistence.

A population of TRAIL-positive astrocytes in glioblastoma contributes to an immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment and this mechanism can be targeted with an engineered oncolytic virus to improve outcomes.

A new study in Drosophila reveals that epithelial tissue regeneration after radiation-induced massive apoptosis is driven by compensatory proliferation of two apoptosis-resistant cell populations via a nonapoptotic function of the initiator caspase.

JAK inhibitors display very good clinical responses in patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms, irrespective of JAK2 mutational status. Here, the authors discover that JAK inhibitors exert their anti-tumorigenic effects by targeting the bone marrow stroma and non-malignant hematopoietic cells instead of the oncogenic signaling in myeloproliferative neoplasms.

A novel antiviral targeting the SARS-CoV-2 PLpro protease shows strong efficacy in a mouse model, preventing lung pathology and reducing brain dysfunction. The study provides proof-of-principle that PLpro inhibition may be a viable strategy for preventing and treating long COVID.

Sarcomas are a group of mesenchymal malignancies which are molecularly heterogeneous. Here, the authors develop an in vivo muscle electroporation system for gene delivery to generate distinct subtypes of orthotopic genetically engineered mouse models of sarcoma, as well as syngeneic allograft models with scalability for preclinical assessment of therapeutics.

Here they show that regenerating Drosophila tissues overcome inflammation-induced insulin resistance and restriction by upregulating Pdk1, which sustains protein translation and proliferation independently of PI3K/Akt. This pathway may be similarly exploited by tumor metabolism.

Hodor, an intestinal zinc-gated chloride channel, controls systemic growth in Drosophila by promoting food intake and by modulating Tor signalling and lysosomal homeostasis within enterocytes.

The filamentous fungus expression system Thermothelomyces heterothallica (C1) is a protein expression system that may be useful for large scale antibody production. Here the authors characterise the production of a human monoclonal antibody that neutralises SARS-CoV-2 and compare functional properties in vitro and in animal models to antibodies produced using other methods.

Here, the authors develop hydrocarbon-stapled paxillin-mimetic peptides that act as selective and potent focal adhesion kinase (FAK) scaffold inhibitors to displace FAK from focal adhesions. Treatment shows reduced cancer cell survival in vitro and reduced tumor burden in vivo.

Here the authors show that extremes in the summer jet stream position over Europe create a beech forest productivity dipole between northwestern and southeastern Europe and can result in regional anomalies in forest carbon uptake and growth.

Systematic changes in stock market prices or in the migration behaviour of cancer cells may be hidden behind random fluctuations. Here, Mark et al. describe an empirical approach to identify when and how such real-world systems undergo systematic changes.

Structural and functional studies reveal how viral proteins trigger the phage antirestriction induced system (PARIS) to degrade host tRNA and how viral tRNAs suppress the PARIS nuclease and thereby overcome this phage defense system.

Using multi-ancestry genome-wide association study and fine-mapping, 298 loci and 36 credible genes are identified in the aetiology of bipolar disorder.

Dissipative structures are governed by non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Here, the authors describe a size-dependent transition from active droplets to active spherical shells—a dissipative structure that arises from reaction diffusion gradients.

Mito-SEPs are small peptides that can modulate oxidative metabolism in mitochondria. Here the authors show that C15ORF48 encodes a mito-SEP, MOCCI, capable of altering mitochondria respiration to suppress inflammation, while C15ORF48 3’ untranslated region also contains a miRNA, miR-147b, that synergizes with MOCCI to modulate host anti-viral responses.

The chimeric cytokine IC7Fc combines the beneficial effects of the cytokines IL-6 and CNTF on weight loss and metabolism in mice, with no obvious side effects in mice and non-human primates.

Sullivan and Darnell et al. show that conversion of 5-methyl tetrahydrofolate to tetrahydrofolate by the enzyme methionine synthase is required for tumour growth under physiological folate conditions.

Nucleoside-processing enzymes exhibit strict regioselectivity for glycosylation of purine nucleobases at N9. Here, the authors report an exception and show that wild type nucleoside phosphorylases also furnish N7-xanthosine, a non-native ribosylation regioisomer of xanthosine.

Combining the kinase inhibitor sorafenib with allogeneic stem cell transplantation boosts immune responses against a subtype of acute myelogenous leukemia, suggesting potential clinical benefit.

Upon stimulation of receptors, NAADP is formed as calcium-mobilizing second messenger in many cells. Here, the authors develop MASTER-NAADP, a membrane-permeant precursor of NAADP, and characterize its biological activity.

Refugee populations have been at high risk of COVID-19 but the impacts of the pandemic on healthcare-seeking and diagnosis of other conditions are not well described. Here, the authors use data from a network of refugee centres in Germany to explore impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on incident diagnosis patterns.

In a phase I/II dose-escalation clinical trial, the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b1 elicits specific T cell and antibody responses that suggest it has protective potential.

This study shows that only those dual-targeting antibiotics limit resistance in Gram-negative pathogens that also target the membrane of the bacteria. This mechanism provides a basis for designing future antibiotics with reduced resistance potential.

Lifespan can be affected by both physiological ageing and specific sets of pathologies associated with old age. Here the authors report a resource of large-scale cross-sectional phenotyping of aging male mice at different time points to analyse a large set of phenotypes and molecular markers, including during genetic and diet interventions affecting lifespan.

In a phase-I/II trial in healthy adults, the BNT162b2 vaccine induces neutralizing antibodies and poly-specific T cells against SARS-CoV-2 epitopes that are conserved in a wide range of currently circulating variants.

A consensus cell type atlas for the fly brain provides both an intellectual framework and open-source toolchains for brain-scale comparative connectomics.

Tree diversity is thought to benefit forest ecosystems, but evidence from large-scale studies is scarce. This study of a 400,000 km²forest area shows that higher tree species richness supports higher levels of multiple ecosystem services, and therefore also a more sustainable management of production forests.

Species-specific gamete recognition is needed to maintain species boundaries. Here, Müller et al. show that ARTUMES regulates pollen tube recognition between different Arabidopsisspecies, representing the first gene known to exclusively influence inter- but not intraspecific gamete interaction in plants.