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Comparison of mucosal and systemic immunity after vaccination with the live-attenuated vaccine sCPD9, mRNA vaccine BNT162b2 or an adenovirus-vectored vaccine following SARS-CoV-2 challenge in hamsters.

Managing landscapes sustainably is challenging given the competing interests of different stakeholder groups. By combining broad ecological data with information on the ecosystem service priorities of multiple stakeholder groups, this study provides a tool to quantify the social impact of land-use changes.

Here, the authors show that cystatin C (CST3) regulates the activity of cathepsin B during pancreatitis in a pH dependent manner. Moreover, cathepsin B activity is inhibited by monomeric CST3 but activated by dimeric CST3.

The influence of X chromosome genetic variation on blood lipids and coronary heart disease (CHD) is not well understood. Here, the authors analyse X chromosome sequencing data across 65,322 multi-ancestry individuals, identifying associations of the Xq23 locus with lipid changes and reduced risk of CHD and diabetes mellitus.

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 authors defined a roadmap for investigating the genetic covariance between structural or functional brain phenotypes and risk for psychiatric disorders. Their proof-of-concept study using the largest available common variant data sets for schizophrenia and volumes of several (mainly subcortical) brain structures did not find evidence of genetic overlap.

A case–control study investigating the causes of recent cases of acute hepatitis of unknown aetiology in 32 children identifies an association between adeno-associated virus infection and host genetics in disease susceptibility.

Sven van der Lee, Julie Williams, Gerard Schellenberg and colleagues identify rare coding variants in PLCG2, ABI3 and TREM2 associated with Alzheimer's disease. These genes are highly expressed in microglia and provide additional evidence that the microglia-mediated immune response contributes to the development of Alzheimer's disease.

Planarians are model systems for stem cells and regeneration. This study provides new genome assemblies of the model species S. mediterranea and 3 relatives and uses comparative genomics of planarians to reveal that synteny is not an evolutionary constraint in flatworm genome evolution.

Integration of GWAS and single-cell transcriptomic data from the entire nervous system systematically identifies cell types underlying brain complex traits and provides insights into the etiology of Parkinson’s disease.

Myosin motors perform many fundamental functions in eukaryotic cells by providing force generation, transport or tethering capacity. Here, the authors show that a single phosphorylation event can modulate actin-activated ATPase activity and change the mechanical properties of myosin-VI.

Research on biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships tends to focus on single trophic groups. This analysis of two biodiversity experiments, representing forests and grasslands, shows that plant diversity promotes ecosystem multifunctionality not only directly, but also by enhancing the diversity of other trophic levels.

Demonstration of high performance, upscaling and integration of ultra-lightweight perovskite solar cells are still rare. Hailegnaw et al. develop 2D perovskite solar cells based on methylbenzyl ammonium iodide with improved specific power and stability, showing scalability and integration in drones.

Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants raise concerns on immune evasion. Here, the authors evaluate the neutralization efficiency of COVID-19 mRNA vaccinee sera against representative viruses of 13 WHO-designated SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern/interest.

Although co-occurring species may differ widely in their response traits, coordinated functional trait shifts may emerge at the community level in response to environmental factors. Here, the authors use data from 150 grassland sites to identify a coordinated slow-fast strategy response to land-use intensification across above- and belowground taxa.

A horizon scan was used to explore possible impacts of robotics and automated systems on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Positive effects are likely. Iterative regulatory processes and continued dialogue could help avoid environmental damages and increases in inequality.

The Tyrolean Iceman is 5,300 years old and his mitochondrial genome has been previously sequenced. This study reports the full genome sequence of the Iceman and reveals that he probably had brown eyes, was at risk for coronary disease and may have been infected with the pathogen Lyme borreliosis.

Amyloid self-assembly is linked to type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. Here the authors designed constrained peptides which are nanomolar amyloid inhibitors of the key polypeptides IAPP and Aβ42 and act via supramolecular nanofiber co-assembly.

Direct measurements of carbon fixation rates in groundwater suggest a substantial contribution of in situ primary production to subsurface ecosystem processes.

Diphthamide is a post-translationally modified histidine residue present in animal and yeast TRANSLATION ELONGATION FACTOR2. Here the authors show that diphthamide modification of eEF2 is conserved in Arabidopsis thaliana and contributes to translational fidelity and growth via cell proliferation.

Meshworks of claudin polymers control the paracellular transport and barrier properties of epithelial tight junctions. Here, the authors show different claudin nanoscale organization principles, finding that claudin segregation enables barrier formation and paracellular ion flux across tight junctions.

Free-electron lasers are capable of high repetition rates and it is assumed that protein crystals often do not survive the first X-ray pulse. Here the authors address these issues with a demonstration of multi-hit serial crystallography in which multiple FEL pulses interact with the sample without destroying it.

The circadian clock and the cell cycle systems coordinate global physiology. Here the authors show that MYC represses the clock genes, together with MIZ1, and induces proliferation, suggesting that MYC inversely modulates cell cycle and circadian clock genes.

This analysis of a large, clinically annotated cohort of individuals with predisposition to myelodysplastic syndromes reveals insights into the genetic determinants of disease progression and their relationship with clinical manifestations and therapy outcome.

The genetic basis of metabolic diseases is incompletely understood. Here, by high-throughput phenotyping of 2,016 knockout mouse strains, Rozman and colleagues identify candidate metabolic genes, many of which are associated with unexplored regulatory gene networks and metabolic traits in human GWAS.

Natural product biosynthesis gene clusters were identified in bacterial isolates from the Arabidopsis phyllosphere, including inhibitory products with antibiotic activity, demonstrating the potential of the phyllosphere as a resource for antibiotics.

Commonly used organic dyes can photoconvert to blue-shifted fluorescent species, especially under intense illumination. The mechanism of this process and how to avoid unwanted artifacts in super-resolution microscopy are explored here.

While GWAS have uncovered susceptibility loci for B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (BCP-ALL), much of the heritable risk remains undiscovered. Here, the authors perform a meta-analysis of two existing BCP-ALL GWAS together with an unpublished GWAS to identify risk loci at 8q24.21 and 2q22.3.

Climate change is expected to intensify the global hydrological cycle and to alter evapotranspiration, but direct observational constraints are lacking at the global scale. Now a data-driven, machine-learning technique and a suite of process-based models have been used to show that from 1982 to 1997 global evapotranspiration increased by about 7.1 millimetres per year per decade. But since 1998 this increase has ceased, probably because of moisture limitation in the Southern Hemisphere.

In synthetic biology, the use of regulatory proteins that bind either DNA or RNA to reprogram mammalian cellular functions allows a variety of computational ‘logic circuits’ to be built in a plug-and-play manner, which may pave the way for precise and robust control of future gene-based and cell-based therapies.

Investigation of variation in three cohorts has identified multiple genetic signals associated with the pregnancy-specific liver disorder, intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy, giving insight into the disease which can cause preterm birth and stillbirth.

Groundwater supplies about 59% of global river flow, suggesting a larger contribution of groundwater to the global water cycle than currently appreciated, according to an analysis integrating estimates from models and observations.

Despite being a hallmark of cancer, the identification of targetable vulnerabilities of aneuploid cancer cells remains limited. Here, the authors develop RPE1-hTERT cell lines with varying degrees of aneuploidy to investigate the consequences of chromosomal imbalance, identifying CRAF as an aneuploid-selective therapeutically targetable vulnerability.

Translation efficiency can be affected by mRNA stability and secondary RNA structures. Here the authors reveal that loss of DHX36 helicase activity leads to an accumulation of translationally inactive target mRNAs with G-rich structures in untranslated regions.

Using new optogenetic tools to induce distinct ion fluxes, a study shows that these discrete signals trigger different metabolic and transcriptional pathways that allow plants to respond to specific types of stress.

In summer 2022 an enormous fish kill was observed in the Oder River as a consequence of prymnesins produced by an algal bloom. An investigation of the exposure of aquatic life and human cells to the contaminated Oder water revealed the presence of neurotoxicants, which are attributed to B-type prymnesins, with minor contributions by organic micropollutants.

Multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable blood malignancy. Here, the authors report 35 MM risk loci and two causal mechanisms for genetic MM risk: longer telomeres and elevated plasma B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) and interleukin−5 receptor alpha (IL5RA) levels.

Two below-threshold surface code memories on superconducting processors markedly reduce logical error rates, achieving high efficiency and real-time decoding, indicating potential for practical large-scale fault-tolerant quantum algorithms.

From 1980 to 2018, the levels of total and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol increased in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreased in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe.

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.