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An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

‘Safe and sustainable by design’ is a framework to guide innovations for chemicals and materials. Here the authors apply this approach for the synthesis of a polyester with desirable mechanical and thermal properties from a non-oestrogenic bisphenol.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

Typical quantum error correcting codes assign fixed roles to the underlying physical qubits. Now the performance benefits of alternative, dynamic error correction schemes have been demonstrated on a superconducting quantum processor.

Experimental measurements of high-order out-of-time-order correlators on a superconducting quantum processor show that these correlators remain highly sensitive to the quantum many-body dynamics in quantum computers at long timescales.

The LHCb experiment at CERN has observed significant asymmetries between the decay rates of the beauty baryon and its CP-conjugated antibaryon, thus demonstrating CP violation in baryon decays.

‘T cell engagers promote antitumor immunity, but how macrophage modulates this activity in tumor is still unclear. Here the authors show, using biopsies from patients with uveal melanoma and single cell analyses, that a T cell engager, tebentafusp, reprograms tumor-associated macrophages and ameliorates, in synergy with IL-2, immunosuppression to cancer.

Whole-genome sequencing analysis of individuals with primary immunodeficiency identifies new candidate disease-associated genes and shows how the interplay between genetic variants can explain the variable penetrance and complexity of the disease.

SFRP1, an ADAM10 inhibitor, is elevated in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Antibody-mediated neutralization of its activity stalls brain alterations and cognitive loss in AD-like mice, supporting SFRP1 as a potential target for disease therapy.

Despite being a common congenital facial anomaly, the genetic etiology of craniofacial microsomia (CFM) is not well understood. Here, the authors use exome and genome sequencing of 146 individuals with CFM to identify haploinsufficient variants in SF3B2 as a prevalent underlying cause.

A new phylogenomic tree for butterflies is constructed using 391 genes from 2,300 species, representing 92% of genera. It suggests that butterflies originated around 100 million years ago in what is now the Americas and originally fed on Fabaceae.

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

Post-neoadjuvant treatment options for patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) include the chemo-drug capecitabine but also immune checkpoint inhibitors. Here the authors report the results of a phase II study of adjuvant nivolumab, capecitabine or the combination in patients with residual TNBC.

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.

Here, the authors perform transcriptional profiling on tracheal aspirates of adults requiring mechanical ventilation for SARS-CoV2-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and identify a dysregulated host response predicted to predicted to be potentially modulated by dexamethasone.

Physical realizations of qubits are often vulnerable to leakage errors, where the system ends up outside the basis used to store quantum information. A leakage removal protocol can suppress the impact of leakage on quantum error-correcting codes.

Genetic factors that cause cardiac angiosarcoma are unknown. Calveteet al. show that a missense mutation in protection of telomeres1 (POT1) gene causes cardiac angiosarcoma by affecting the POT1 function and, consequently, telomere length and stability.

Genetic variants at multiple loci of chr5p15.33 have been associated with susceptibility to numerous cancers. Here the authors show that the association of one of these loci may be explained by a variant, rs36115365, influencing telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) expression via ZNF148.

Fine-scale geospatial mapping of overweight and wasting (two components of the double burden of malnutrition) in 105 LMICs shows that overweight has increased from 5.2% in 2000 to 6.0% in children under 5 in 2017. Although overall wasting decreased over the same period, most countries are not on track to meet the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025.

Genotype and exome sequencing of 150,000 participants and whole-genome sequencing of 9,950 selected individuals recruited into the Mexico City Prospective Study constitute a valuable, publicly available resource of non-European sequencing data.

The existence and properties of tetraquark states with two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks have been widely debated. Here, the authors use a unitarized model to study the properties of an exotic narrow state compatible with a doubly charmed tetraquark.

In this work, authors assess airway microbiome dynamics to show bacterial pneumonia in critically ill COVID-19 patients is significantly associated with death, corticosteroid treatment, disruption of the lung microbiome and a distinct pulmonary host response.

Over one hundred loci have been identified to be associated with the familial risk of prostate cancer but the functional effects are poorly understood. Here the authors use single-nucleotide variant and epigentic data to show an underlying genetic architecture marked by histone modification.

Measurements of subclonal expansion of ctDNA in the plasma before surgery may enable the prediction of future metastatic subclones, offering the possibility for early intervention in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer.

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.

Whole-genome sequencing and phenotype data sharing are introduced in a national health system to streamline diagnosis and to discover coding and non-coding variants that cause rare diseases.

Using financial data from 6.5 million individuals, Muggleton et al. find that gambling, at all levels, is associated with financial distress, unemployment, disability and higher mortality, with stronger associations amongst the heaviest gamblers.

FlyWire presents a neuronal wiring diagram of the whole fly brain with annotations for cell types, classes, nerves, hemilineages and predicted neurotransmitters, with data products and an open ecosystem to facilitate exploration and browsing.

The Large Hadron Collider beauty collaboration reports a test of lepton flavour universality in decays of bottom mesons into strange mesons and a charged lepton pair, finding evidence of a violation of this principle postulated in the standard model.

Genomic analyses of major clades of huge phages sampled from across Earth’s ecosystems show that they have diverse genetic inventories, including a variety of CRISPR–Cas systems and translation-relevant genes.

The LHCb collaboration reports an improved measurement of the oscillation frequency of mesons consisting of a bottom quark and strange quark, which is then combined with previous results.

Dexamethasone has been used in the treatment of critically ill COVID-19 patients. Here the authors apply transcriptomics to investigate the effects of dexamethasone treatment in COVID-19 patients, and show both systemic and compartment-specific effects.

Salvage logging has become a common practice to gain economic returns from naturally disturbed forests, but it could have considerable negative effects on biodiversity. Here the authors use a recently developed statistical method to estimate that ca. 75% of the naturally disturbed forest should be left unlogged to maintain 90% of the species unique to the area.

Genome-wide analysis of matched human IVF embryonic stem cells (IVF ES cells), induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) and nuclear transfer ES cells (NT ES cells) derived by somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) reveals that human somatic cells can be faithfully reprogrammed to pluripotency by SCNT; NT ES cells and iPS cells derived from the same somatic cells contain comparable numbers of de novo copy number variations, but whereas DNA methylation and transcriptome profiles of NT ES cells and IVF ES cells are similar, iPS cells have residual patterns typical of parental somatic cells.

CP violation has deep implications for particle physics and cosmology. Previously observed only in meson decays, signs of CP violation have now been spotted in baryon decays by analysing the proton–proton collision data from the LHCb detector.

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.

Alzheimer’s disease has been associated with increased structural brain aging. Here the authors describe a model that predicts brain aging from resting state functional connectivity data, and demonstrate this is accelerated in individuals with pre-clinical familial Alzheimer’s disease.

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 machine learning approach was used to recover over 10,000 inovirus-like sequences from existing microbial genomes and metagenomes, consequently proposing the reclassification of the Inoviridae family to a viral order, and uncover the previously unrecognized diversity of these viruses across hosts and environments.

The goal of the 1000 Genomes Project is to provide in-depth information on variation in human genome sequences. In the pilot phase reported here, different strategies for genome-wide sequencing, using high-throughput sequencing platforms, were developed and compared. The resulting data set includes more than 95% of the currently accessible variants found in any individual, and can be used to inform association and functional studies.