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In this study, Aggarwal and colleagues perform prospective sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 isolates derived from asymptomatic student screening and symptomatic testing of students and staff at the University of Cambridge. They identify important factors that contributed to within university transmission and onward spread into the wider community.

A cross-ancestry meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies association signals for stroke and its subtypes at 89 (61 new) independent loci, reveals putative causal genes, highlighting F11, KLKB1, PROC, GP1BA, LAMC2 and VCAM1 as potential drug targets, and provides cross-ancestry integrative risk prediction.

Ossenkoppele, Coomans and colleagues analyzed the tau PET data of 12,048 individuals from 42 cohorts worldwide. They found that age, amyloid-β status, presence of an APOE ε4 allele and female sex are key contributors to tau PET positivity, which should aid clinical decision-making and trial designs.

Rashan, Bartlett and colleagues show that mammalian 4-hydroxy fatty acids are primarily catabolized by ACAD10 and ACAD11 (atypical mitochondrial and peroxisomal acyl-CoA dehydrogenases, respectively) that use phosphorylation in their reaction mechanisms.

Antibiotic resistance poses a critical global health threat. Here, the authors identify a carbapenem resistant clone of uropathogenic Escherichia coli with atypical virulence features as an increasing cause of urinary tract infection

COVID-19 can be associated with neurological complications. Here the authors show that markers of brain injury, but not immune markers, are elevated in the blood of patients with COVID-19 both early and months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly in those with brain dysfunction or neurological diagnoses.

The authors identified a sub-clade of NPF transporters that orchestrates GA12 long-distance shoot-to-root translocation. Once in the phloem unloading zone, ABA and GA are loaded into pericycle vacuoles and then slowly released to induce endodermal suberin formation in the maturation zone.

In this Stage 2 Registered Report, Buchanan et al. show evidence confirming the phenomenon of semantic priming across speakers of 19 diverse languages.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

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

A study describes the experimental infection of cattle with a highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b genotype B3.13 strain using an aerosol respiratory route for heifers and an intramammary route for lactating cows.

Genome-wide association meta-analyses identify 26 risk loci for epilepsy, including 19 loci specific to genetic generalized epilepsy. Prioritized candidate genes implicate synaptic processes and overlap with targets of antiseizure medications.

The main protease, a key enzyme of SARS-CoV-2, can protect itself from oxidative damage. Here, Reinke, Schubert, and colleagues used XFEL radiation to image the enzyme, revealing the disulfide and NOS/SONOS bonds that form in response to oxygen.

Metabolic dynamics within the small intestine are difficult to study due to the lack of in situ access. Here, the authors report an ingestible, self-powered, and wireless biosensing system, demonstrating proof-of-principle real-time glucose monitoring in the small intestines of pigs.

This paper highlights the far-red chemigenetic H₂O₂ reporter oROS-HT₆₃₅, which enables detailed insights into intricate intracellular and intercellular H₂O₂ dynamics, along with their environmental interactants, through spatially resolved, multiplexed real-time H₂O₂ imaging.

The Omicron variant evades vaccine-induced neutralization but also fails to form syncytia, shows reduced replication in human lung cells and preferentially uses a TMPRSS2-independent cell entry pathway, which may contribute to enhanced replication in cells of the upper airway. Altered fusion and cell entry characteristics are linked to distinct regions of the Omicron spike protein.

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.

Daily location data on the individuals of 14 migratory marine species from 2000 to 2009 allow annual migratory cycles to be mapped to the time spent in the high seas and the exclusive economic zones of specific countries, providing a basis for international management strategies for these species.

The Human Microbiome Project Consortium has established a population-scale framework to study a variety of microbial communities that exist throughout the human body, enabling the generation of a range of quality-controlled data as well as community resources.

A genome-wide association study including over 76,000 individuals with schizophrenia and over 243,000 control individuals identifies common variant associations at 287 genomic loci, and further fine-mapping analyses highlight the importance of genes involved in synaptic processes.

Data from a variety of sources—including satellite, climate and soil data, as well as field-collected information on plant traits—are pooled and analysed to map the functional diversity of tropical forest canopies globally.

A diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries provides health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help to bring this public health threat to an end.

Despite new treatment options, prognosis for patients with glioblastoma (GBM) remains poor. Here the authors report the clinical course of patients with GBM treated with a personalized neoantigen-derived peptide vaccine treated within the scope of an individual healing attempt.

Combined patch clamp recording, biocytin staining and single-cell RNA-sequencing of human neurocortical neurons shows an expansion of glutamatergic neuron types relative to mouse that characterizes the greater complexity of the human neocortex.

In this largest whole-exome sequencing study of epilepsies to date, the Epi25 Collaborative identified extremely rare variants that confer risk for diverse epilepsy subtypes, highlighting roles in synaptic transmission and neuronal excitability.

Here, the authors perform a meta-analysis in 26,699 people with seizures and 492,324 controls to identify 25 genome-wide significant copy-number variants. The discovered loci point to known disease genes and associations with clinical annotations.

A national prospective study of patients requiring hospitalization for COVID-19 demonstrates global cognitive deficits at 1 year, associated with elevated brain injury markers and reduced gray matter volume.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.

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.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

This paper demonstrates that Pif1 helicase works with polymerase d to promote DNA synthesis through a migrating D-loop, a mechanism used to copy tens of kilobases during repair of chromosome breaks by break-induced replication (BIR).

Tree mortality has been shown to be the dominant control on carbon storage in Amazon forests, but little is known of how and why Amazon forest trees die. Here the authors analyse a large Amazon-wide dataset, finding that fast-growing species face greater mortality risk, but that slower-growing individuals within a species are more likely to die, regardless of size.

RNA modifications represent a critical aspect of RNA biology that is not well suited to sequencing methods. Here, the authors provide a software tool for automated analysis of RNA tandem mass spectra with full support of modifications, isotope labelling, and control of false discovery rate.

Analysing 27 years of freshwater invertebrate biomonitoring data from European rivers, the authors show that although some commonly used biodiversity metrics can reflect anthropogenic impacts at broad spatial scales, there was little consistency among other metrics in accurately reflecting community responses.

This overview of the ENCODE project outlines the data accumulated so far, revealing that 80% of the human genome now has at least one biochemical function assigned to it; the newly identified functional elements should aid the interpretation of results of genome-wide association studies, as many correspond to sites of association with human disease.

Some immune-mediated diseases may originate in early childhood. The authors mapped eQTLs and response eQTLs to various stimuli in neonatal myeloid cells and T cells, and revealed their potential role in immune-mediated diseases using colocalisation and Mendelian randomisation.

The Human Microbiome Project Consortium reports the first results of their analysis of microbial communities from distinct, clinically relevant body habitats in a human cohort; the insights into the microbial communities of a healthy population lay foundations for future exploration of the epidemiology, ecology and translational applications of the human microbiome.

Improvements in European freshwater biodiversity occurred mainly before 2010 but have since plateaued, and communities downstream of dams, urban areas and cropland were less likely to experience recovery.

TssA is an important component of the bacterial type VI secretion system (T6SS). Here, Dix et al. integrate structural, phylogenetic and functional analysis of the TssA subunits, providing new insights into their role in T6SS assembly and function.

Understanding how hydrogen embrittles steels and developing the solutions are crucial for enabling the hydrogen economy. Here, the authors report a materials design strategy that can increase the hydrogen trapping capacity by creating carbon vacancies in metal carbide precipitates via microalloying.

The components of the glioma immune microenvironment and their roles in promoting tumourigenesis remain poorly understood. Here, the use of single-cell RNA sequencing and multiplexed tissue-imaging in adult and pediatric high-grade gliomas reveals the activity and spatial organization of the immunomodulatory purinergic signaling pathway.

Insufficient AHR activation has been suggested in SLE, and augmenting AHR activation therapeutically may prevent CXCL13⁺ T_PH/T_FH differentiation and the subsequent recruitment of B cells and formation of lymphoid aggregates in inflamed tissues.

Unlike Amazonian forests, African forests have maintained their carbon sink until recently but by 2030 the African carbon sink will have shrunk by 14 per cent and the Amazonian sink will reach almost zero.

A pan-Amazon study of forests shows large variations in drought tolerance traits and finds that forests in regions of pronounced climate change are losing biomass and may be operating beyond their hydraulic limits.