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Eight decades of forest plot monitoring show a pervasive increase in tree mortality across Australia’s forest biomes driven by climate change, jeopardizing their role as enduring carbon sinks.

Mucosal influenza vaccines promise enhanced protection but lack defined immune correlates of protection. Here, the authors conduct a phase I trial of an intranasal recombinant influenza A/H5 vaccine with a nanoemulsion adjuvant, demonstrating successful mucosal priming and broad cross-clade immune responses, advancing the development of intranasal influenza vaccines.

Insulin receptor protein is present in pancreatic β-cells, but the consequences of β-cell insulin resistance are incompletely understood. Here the authors use a combination of mouse studies and mathematical modelling to show that loss of beta-cell insulin receptor affects male and female mice differently and can contribute to hyperinsulinemia in the context of glucose stimulation.

A focus on national security alone is limiting people’s access to key materials.

In the late Hadean era, Earth’s volcanic islands provided the earliest solid, hot and mostly dry surfaces. Here, the authors show how lipid precursors and nucleosides can be phosphorylated in hot neat and dry reaction mixtures under arid prebiotic conditions.

Semiconductor-based, non-optical DNA sequencing technologies such as Ion Torrent sequencing offer speed and cost advantages compared with alternative techniques. Cheng et al. demonstrate a protocol allowing the use of Ion Torrent technology to sequence DNA from chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments.

Internucleosomal linker length alters the stability and dynamics of chromatin condensates by shifting the balance between inter- and intramolecular interactions. Further, by changing the linker lengths, a remodeler can induce or suppress chromatin phase separation.

Here the authors use cryo-EM to determine the structures of three bacterial flagellar filaments, revealing distinct outer domains. Upon further analysis of all AlphaFold predicted flagellar outer domains, they show that the outer domains of flagella are highly diverse.

Monoclonal antibodies show great promise in treating Covid-19 patients. Here, Maisonnasse, Aldon and colleagues report pre-clinical results for COVA1-18 and demonstrate that it reduces viral infectivity in three animal models with over 95% efficacy in macaques upper respiratory tract.

Vaccination is effective in protecting from COVID-19. Here the authors report immune responses and breakthrough infections in twice-vaccinated patients receiving anti-TNF treatments for inflammatory bowel disease, and find dampened vaccine responses that implicate the need of adapted vaccination schedules for these patients.

Hundreds of genetic loci associated with age at menopause, combined with experimental evidence in mice, highlight mechanisms of reproductive ageing across the lifespan.

Using multiple datasets from real-world evidence and completed trials, a machine learning model using routine blood and clinical data is shown to be predictive of patient response to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy, across cancer types and outperforming standard biomarkers.

A combination of genomic and clinical features improves predictions of response to immune checkpoint blockade.

Here the authors show that a Newcastle disease virus based COVID-19 vaccine expressing a stabilized spike protein induces protective immunity in small animal models and reduces replication of variants of concerns. This vaccine candidate can be produced by influenza virus vaccine manufactures around the world.

Reduced glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) is a hallmark of chronic kidney disease. Here, Pattaro et al. conduct a meta-analysis to discover several new loci associated with variation in eGFR and find that genes associated with eGFR loci often encode proteins potentially related to kidney development.

The Cancer Genome Atlas reports on molecular evaluation of 295 primary gastric adenocarcinomas and proposes a new classification of gastric cancers into 4 subtypes, which should help with clinical assessment and trials of targeted therapies.

An integrated transcriptome, genome, methylome and proteome analysis of over 200 lung adenocarcinomas reveals high rates of somatic mutations, 18 statistically significantly mutated genes including RIT1 and MGA, splicing changes, and alterations in MAPK and PI(3)K pathway activity.

Electrochemical reduction of CO2 to formic acid is a promising and sustainable pathway for valuable chemical generation. However, direct production of formic acid rather than formate is challenging. Herein the authors report a zero-gap membrane electrode assembly architecture with perforated cation exchange membrane for the direct electrochemical synthesis of formic acid from CO2.

Association analyses in over 1 million individuals identify 535 new loci influencing blood pressure traits. The results provide new insights into blood pressure regulation and highlight shared genetic architecture between blood pressure and lifestyle exposures.

Adenovirus based (AdV) vectors are promising platforms for therapeutics and vaccines, but receptor usage of serotypes in clinical development remains unclear. Here, based on crystal structures and modeling, Baker et al. show that HAdV-D26/48 fiber knob protein interacts weakly with CAR but not with CD46 or DSG2.

In inflammatory arthritis, pain neurons communicate with spinal cord microglia to establish nociception. Here, the authors show that this communication is mediated by pain neurons releasing galectin-3, which activates microglia through TLR4. In a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, pain is attenuated because microglia lack expression of TLR4.

Genome-wide association meta-analyses of waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index in more than 224,000 individuals identify 49 loci, 33 of which are new and many showing significant sexual dimorphism with a stronger effect in women; pathway analyses implicate adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution.

The biotin-reversible interaction between a 'hook' protein localized to a particular cellular compartment and a reporter protein of interest is exploited in a simple system to synchronize protein traffic through the secretory pathway.

Here, the authors show that SARS-CoV-2 infection causes gut microbiome dysbiosis and gut epithelial cell alterations in a mouse model, and correlate dysbiosis observed in COVID-19 patients with blood stream infections, matching reads of bacterial sequences from stool samples to organisms found in the blood.

Whole-genome sequencing of 25 metastatic melanomas and matched germline DNA in humans reveals that the highest mutation load is associated with chronic sun exposure, and that the PREX2 gene is mutated in approximately 14 per cent of cases

Should renal biopsy be performed in all patients with both HIV infection and kidney disease? In this Viewpoint, Dr Szczech argues that, given its efficacy against conditions like HIV-associated nephropathy, antiretroviral therapy should be implemented before biopsy is considered. Only when suppression of viral replication fails to improve renal function does the case for biopsy become more compelling. In any event, much as with HIV-negative patients with renal disease, empiric therapy should be implemented before renal biopsy is undertaken.

Truong et al. report crystal structures of Squash, a fluorophore-activating aptamer RNA evolved from the adenine riboswitch. Squash preserves the overall scaffold of the adenine riboswitch, yet has a highly divergent ligand-binding site.

Analysis of glioblastoma samples and derived neurospheres and xenografts shows that chromosomal and extrachromosomal alterations often display divergent inheritance patterns during cell culture and xenografting.

Previous studies have linked over 100 genomic loci to age-at-menarche but that work was restricted to common autosomal variation. Here, Lunetta et al. identify associations with rare protein-coding and X-linked variants, implicating new mechanisms that regulate puberty timing.

Erik Ingelsson and colleagues report a large-scale genome-wide meta-analysis for associations to the extremes of anthropometric traits, including body mass index, height, waist-to-hip ratio and clinical obesity. They identify four loci newly associated with height and seven loci newly associated with clinical obesity and find overlap in the genetic structure and distribution of variants identified for these extremes of the trait distributions and for the general population.

Common ragweed is an invasive plant in Europe, and many people are allergic to its pollen. Modelling results indicate that airborne pollen concentrations are likely to increase in Europe over coming decades, at least in part owing to climate change.

Next-generation sequencing has allowed an unprecedented genomic characterization of diverse cancer types. This Review describes our latest understanding of cancer genomes, including methods to interpret the mutation data, and the emerging biological and clinical implications.

Hydrogen produced by water splitting using renewable electricity is key to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. Decoupling hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions during electrolysis is attractive but efficiency and operational challenges remain. A process producing hydrogen and oxygen in separate cells and supporting continuous operation in a membraneless system is now proposed.

This genome-wide study of age at first sexual intercourse and first birth identifies 371 signals driven by reproductive biology, externalising behaviour and environmental effects, with later onset associated with lower incidence of some diseases.