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Biosecurity experts use military-style exercises to plan for biological threats. Have their warnings been heeded?

We discuss how to keep tabs on a pandemic despite political meddling.

Lockdowns are lifting but global infections are still rising. We take stock as we enter the next chapter of the outbreak.

A repository with millions of data points will track immunity and variant spread.

How doubt is fuelling the debate over the origin of coronavirus.

Humanity’s Last Exam, a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, is designed to be an expert-level closed-ended academic benchmark with broad subject coverage.

How the brain adjusts the neural integration gain to keep its neural codes for continuous variables accurate is unknown. Using bump attractor networks, the authors derive the principles of this gain adjustment and identify two biologically plausible, error-driven mechanisms.

Using a virtual reality apparatus in rats that dissociates external landmarks from self-motion cues, the authors describe how the two modes of theta phase coding in the hippocampus during navigation are controlled via distinct computations.

The authors present DNA-Diffusion, a generative AI framework that designs synthetic regulatory elements with tunable cell-type specificity. Experimental validation demonstrates their ability to reactivate AXIN2 expression, a leukemia-protective gene, in its native genomic context.

Using a closed-loop virtual reality system, the authors show that optic flow cues can causally drive and recalibrate the hippocampal place cell system in the absence of an absolute spatial reference frame defined by external landmarks.

Among mother-neonate pairs in Madagascar and Cambodia, authors found maternal gut carriage explains only 16.5% of early neonatal extended-spectrum beta-lactamase Enterobacterales acquisition, questioning its role as the main source of colonization.

How chemotherapeutic nucleoside 6-thio-2’-deoxyguanosine (6-thiodG) targets telomerase to inhibit telomere maintenance in cancer cells and tumors was unclear. Here, the authors show that telomere length and telomerase status determine 6-thio-dG sensitivity and uncover the molecular mechanism by which 6-thio-dG selectively inhibits telomerase synthesis of telomeric DNA.

Ma, Cao et al. uncover dynamic changes of chromatin reorganization in progenitor B cells during ageing, associated with altered H3K27ac levels and expression of genes that are critical for B cell development.

Shape transformation without the need for external devices or wires is desirable for soft robotics, but challenging to achieve. Here, the authors report the development of actuators capable of shape changes by polymerization and depolymerization of DNA activator sequences.

The Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network established the UC-GENOME study in order to create a biobank and data repository for metastatic urothelial carcinoma. Here, the authors present the first characterization and analysis of DNA and RNA sequencing data from the 218 patients included in the UC-GENOME.

The authors find that TDP-43 loss of function—the pathology defining the neurodegenerative conditions ALS and FTD—induces novel mRNA polyadenylation events, which have different effects, including an increase in RNA stability, leading to higher protein levels.

Zeolites are porous aluminosilicate molecular sieves with uniform pores of molecular dimensions that have a wide range of applications. Here authors use machine learning to guide zeolite synthesis and predict the structure and properties of faujasite zeolites from synthesis conditions.

Organisms show complex behaviour resulting from a trade-off between obtaining information (explore) and using current information (exploit). Biswas et al. observe a mode-switching strategy modulated by sensory salience in a diverse range of organisms, including electric fish and humans, and argue that the observed heuristic could inform the design of active-sensing behaviours in robotics.

The differentiation of prostate adenocarcinoma to neuroendocrine prostate cancer (CRPC-NE) is a mechanism of resistance to androgen deprivation therapy. Here the authors show that SWI/SNF chromatin-remodeling complex is deregulated in CRPC-NE and that the complex interacts with different lineage specific factors throughout prostate cancer transdifferentiation.

Possible effects of weather conditions on COVID-19 transmission are debated. Here, the authors analyse data from early in the pandemic and show that although temperature and humidity had small effects on transmission, they were far out-weighed by the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions.

An improved, fully re-annotated Aedes aegypti genome assembly (AaegL5) provides insights into the sex-determining M locus, chemosensory systems that help mosquitoes to hunt humans and loci involved in insecticide resistance and will help to generate intervention strategies to fight this deadly disease vector.

A meta-analysis using the Burden of proof method reported consistent evidence supporting harmful associations between smoking and 28 different health outcomes.

Evidence from hippocampal place cells shows that path-integration gain, previously thought to be a constant factor in the computation of location, is flexible and can be rapidly fine-tuned.

The study describes the use of integrative approaches to search for candidate therapeutic targets for DIPG, and the identification of an HDAC inhibitor as a potential treatment strategy

Currently available platforms to study liver stage of Plasmodium species have limitations. Here, the authors show that primary human hepatocyte cultures in 384-well format support hypnozoite and other liver stage development and are suitable for drug and antibody screens.

The safety and efficacy of ribonucleoproteins for genome editing can be enhanced by formulations of lipid nanoparticles optimized for enhanced stability, delivery efficiency and editing potency of the protein complexes.

Studies of mouse and human IgA responses against Candida albicans and other common fungal species show that host adaptive immunity selects for fungal effectors that promote commensalism and prevent intestinal disease.

Penetrance of variants in monogenic disease and clinical utility of common polygenic variation has not been well explored on a large-scale. Here, the authors use exome sequencing data from 77,184 individuals to generate penetrance estimates and assess the utility of polygenic variation in risk prediction of monogenic variants.

Noah Zaitlen, Alkes Price and colleagues report a new approach to estimate the narrow-sense heritability of complex traits from unrelated individuals in a recently admixed population. They apply this approach to estimate the heritability for 13 quantitative or case-control phenotypes in 21,497 African-American individuals and suggest the inflation of family-based h² estimates.

Turbulence is generated in a quiescent environment using vortex rings as building blocks.

Oxygen in shallow shelf waters rose linearly with atmospheric oxygen in the Neoproterozoic era, potentially driving the first radiation of marine animals, but widespread ocean oxygenation came later, according to reconstructions of oxygen levels and marine productivity.

To overcome limitations of previous genome-wide association studies of coronary artery disease, this study incorporates a cohort of individuals containing large fractions of Black and Hispanic individuals to provide a wider view of the genetic landscape of this disease.

A secure framework that harmonizes storage and querying of clinical and genetic data using blockchain technology was developed to support combined genotype–phenotype queries, improving transparency into how and when health information is used.

Laser machining can modify and reshape materials on the scale comparable to light’s wavelength. Here, authors use tailored microstructures to push the limit of laser machining to a scale that is almost 100 times smaller than a wavelength of light.

Risk variants for ALS and FTD in the synaptic gene UNC13A increase the expression of an UNC13A cryptic exon in neurons with TDP-43 depletion.

Selective conversion of methane into value-added chemicals is a promising approach for utilization of hydrocarbon sources. Here the authors develop dimeric copper centers supported on graphitic carbon nitride (denoted as Cu₂@C₃N₄) with >10% conversion and >98% selectivity toward methyl oxygenates in both thermo- and photo- catalytic reactions.

The classical framework of bubble fragmentation in turbulence usually only considers eddies of the bubble size. The authors present an experimental evidence that bubbles can be broken by the eddies of various sizes, supported by analytical model that includes the bubble and eddy scales, and the bubble breakup time.

Detection of structural variants in the human genome is facilitated by a benchmark set of large deletions and insertions.