Search

Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

Antimicrobial resistance genes that have been mobilized between bacterial species represent a subset of the naturally occurring resistome. Here, the authors compare the abundance, diversity and geographical patterns of acquired resistance genes with latent resistance genes in global sewage metagenomes.

Inventory data from more than 1 million trees across African, Amazonian and Southeast Asian tropical forests suggests that, despite their high diversity, just 1,053 species, representing a consistent ~2.2% of tropical tree species in each region, constitute half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees.

A micrometre-scale device that exploits the piezoresistive characteristics of silicon acts like an engine, converting heat into mechanical work in one mode of operation, and, in another, like a refrigerator, suppressing mechanical fluctuations.

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

Data collected from more than 2,000 taxa provide an unparalleled opportunity to quantify how extreme wildfires affect biodiversity, revealing that the largest effects on plants and animals were in areas with frequent or recent past fires and within extensively burnt areas.

Similarities in cancers can be studied to interrogate their etiology. Here, the authors use genome-wide association study summary statistics from six cancer types based on 296,215 cases and 301,319 controls of European ancestry, showing that solid tumours arising from different tissues share a degree of common germline genetic basis.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have become a key tool to discover genetic markers for complex traits; however, environmental factors that interact with genes are rarely considered. Here, the authors conduct a GWAS of obesity traits, and find that smoking may alter genetic susceptibilities.

Known genetic loci account for only a fraction of the genetic contribution to Alzheimer’s disease. Here, the authors have performed a large genome-wide meta-analysis comprising 409,435 individuals to discover 6 new loci and demonstrate the efficacy of an Alzheimer’s disease polygenic risk score.

Application of reprogrammed bacteriophage to functional metagenomics in clinically relevant bacterial strains improves identification of antibiotic resistance genes, including those against recently developed or approved antibiotics.

New archaeological and ancient genomic data from humans in Papua New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago shed light on regional human admixture and genetic isolation over the past 2,500 years.

Oceanic deposition of wildfire aerosols can enhance marine productivity, as supported here by satellite and in situ profiling floats data showing that emissions from the 2019–2020 Australian wildfires fuelled phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean.

Maintaining a healthy nuclear proteome during DNA damage is important but its regulation is poorly understood. The authors here show that a SUMO modification of the small heat shock protein Btn2 regulates yeast nuclear protein sequestration during stress.

Traumatic brain injury is associated with changes to the metabolome. Here the authors show that acute traumatic brain injury has distinctive serum metabolic patterns which may suggest protective changes of systemic lipid metabolism aiming to maintain lipid homeostasis in the brain.

The heterogeneity of androgen receptor (AR) gene alterations across metastases in prostate cancer remains unresolved. Here, the authors characterise AR genomic complexity across spatially separated lethal metastases from 10 prostate cancer patients and investigate how AR alterations evolve.

Type I natural killer T cells are characterized by an invariant V_α14-J_α18 T cell antigen receptor α-chain. Godfrey and colleagues describe a population of CD1d-restricted natural killer T cells that express a previously unidentified canonical V_α10-J_α50 α-chain.

DNA:RNA hybrids are linked to genetic instability in several pathological situations. Here, the authors report that various types of DNA lesions can trigger hybrid formation in yeast and humans, calling for a re-examination of the causality between these structures and genetic instability.

Analyses of the relationships between temperature, moisture and seven key plant functional traits across the tundra and over time show that community height increased with warming across all sites, whereas other traits lagged behind predicted rates of change.

Primary biliary cirrhosis is an autoimmune liver disease with poor therapeutic options. Here Cordell et al. a perform meta-analysis of European genome-wide association studies identifying six novel risk loci and a number of potential therapeutic pathways.

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 natural experiment in the environmental domain shows how attempts to increase prosocial behaviours like recycling using monetary rewards can be counter-productive, and how this effect depends on underlying pro-environmental motivation.

A randomized controlled trial comparing the efficacy of electronic cigarettes and nicotine patches for smoking cessation in pregnant women found no differences between the interventions. However, electronic cigarettes were found to have some benefit when only the data from women who adhered strictly to the trial protocol were analyzed.

Combination of epidemiology, preclinical models and ultradeep DNA profiling of clinical cohorts unpicks the inflammatory mechanism by which air pollution promotes lung cancer

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.

Soil age is thought to be an important driver of ecosystem development. Here, the authors perform a global survey of soil chronosequences and meta-analysis to show that, contrary to expectations, soil age is a relatively minor ecosystem driver at the biome scale once other drivers such as parent material, climate, and vegetation type are accounted for.

PolyGembler, a method for grouping and ordering contigs into complete pseudomolecules by combining long-read sequencing and genotype information from an outbred mapping population, improves the accuracy for assembly of polyploidy plant genomes.

Accumulations of R-loops can lead to genome instability. Here the authors reveal a role for the MRN complex in suppressing R-loops and associated DNA damage at transcription–replication conflicts.

Policies aiming to preserve vegetated coastal ecosystems (VCE) to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions require national assessments of blue carbon resources. Here the authors assessed organic carbon storage in VCE across Australian and the potential annual CO₂ emission benefits of VCE conservation and find that Australia contributes substantially the carbon stored in VCE globally.

In the Arctic, the risks of the permafrost thaw are perceived differently by communities, and key hazards include infrastructure failure, mobility disruption, decreased water quality and food security, and exposure to diseases, according to a transdisciplinary analysis based on workshops and a thematic network approach.

The degree to which species tolerate human disturbance contributes to shape human-wildlife coexistence. Here, the authors identify key predictors of avian tolerance of humans across 842 bird species from open tropical ecosystems.

Climate change enhances root exudation of organic compounds into soils and can lead to loss of soil carbon. Research now shows that oxalic acid (a common exudate) releases organic compounds from protective mineral associations.

Polar bear numbers are expected to decline as the sea ice they rely on to catch their prey declines with global warming. Projections show when fasts caused by declining sea ice are likely to lead to rapid recruitment and survival declines across the polar bear circumpolar range.