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Endothelial injury drives vascular diseases like atherosclerosis, but key regulators are unclear. Here, the authors show that endothelial major vault protein (MVP) acts as an intracellular regulator promoting Parkin-mediated mitophagy, thereby antagonizing vascular remodeling and suggesting its role as a potential therapeutic target.

Dongxin Lin, Philip Taylor, Li-Dong Wang and colleagues have now pooled three genome-wide association analyses of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, finding two new risk loci at genome-wide significance and an HLA class II locus of significance in high-risk populations. They reanalyze the strength of evidence for previously published risk loci.

China operates a national surveillance program for acute respiratory infections and sampled over 200,000 patients between 2009–2019. Here, the authors present results from this program and describe patterns by age, pathogen type, presence of pneumonia, and season.

Zhang et al. report non-destructive halide exchange by employing butylammonium halide incorporated post-treatment to achieve perovskite with low trap density and tuneable bandgap for blue LEDs, with external quantum efficiencies of 23.6%, 20.9%, and 15.5% for emission peaks at 488, 478, and 468 nm, respectively.

ACSS2 catalyzes the conversion of acetate to acetyl-CoA. Here, authors show that ACSS2 regulates iron metabolism and ferroptosis in alcoholic liver disease by modulating the histone acetylation of HAMP1/2.

The controlled synthesis of monodisperse nanospheres faces a number of difficulties, such as extensive crosslinking during hydrothermal processes. Here, the authors show a route for the controlled synthesis of mesoporous polymer nanospheres, which can be further converted into carbon nanospheres through carbonization.

Chronic wounds typically exhibit dynamic variations within the complex wound microenvironment over time. Here, Cheng et al. develop a microenvironment-feedback hydrogel to achieve homeostatic wound pH and blood glucose levels to accelerate repair of diabetic chronic wounds.

The solvent choice for processing organic solar cells impacts layer morphology and ultimately device performance. By controlling the molecular interactions, Zhang et al. realize a solvent-independent morphology that leads to high device efficiency.

Neural circuit mechanisms that regulate the panic-like defensive state are not fully understood. Using a robot-based experimental paradigm, the authors identify Cbln2-expressing (Cbln2+) neurons in the mouse posterior hypothalamic nucleus (PHN) as a key neuronal population essential for the induction of panic-like defensive state.

Legionella effector LnaB, a recently identified actin-activated AMPylase, mediates phosphoryl-AMPylation in a yet-unknown manner. Here the authors unveil a two-step catalytic process involving dual ATPase–AMPylase activity based on structural studies, providing a biochemical basis for AMPylation.

Dynamic assembly and disassembly of primary cilia is critical for tissue development and homeostasis. Here the authors identify lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) as a physiological extracellular factor that initiates cilia disassembly through both YAP/TAZ mediated transcription and calcium/calmodulin mediated activation of Aurora A.

Human case studies suggest that Zika virus can be transmitted independently of mosquitoes and sexual contact. Here, the authors show intranasal Zika infection in different animal models and show that contact transmission of Zika virus occurs in guinea pigs.

Li Dong Wang and colleagues report a genome wide association study for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in the Chinese population. They identify two risk loci at PLCE1 and C20orf54.

Graphene quantum dots have electronic structures resembling these of atoms. Here, the authors use two of these compounds to construct artificial molecules and study their electronic properties at tunable distances.

Phase separation is essential for various physiological processes. Feng et al. propose PSMutPred, a machine learning approach to predict impacts of missense mutations on phase separation and aid in understanding the pathogenesis of disease variants.

In eukaryotes, the leading strand DNA polymerase Polε synthesises the DNA with higher processivity when in complex with the DNA clamp PCNA. Here, the authors report two cryo-EM structures of human Polε bound to the PCNA clamp and a DNA substate, revealing the conformational changes associated with incoming nucleotide binding.

Pathological retinal neovascularization (RNV) is a major cause of blindness. Here, the authors show that endothelial protein C receptor (EPCR) promotes RNV through carbon monoxide derived from heme catabolism, and blocking EPCR offers therapeutic potential for the treating RNV.

Asparagales is the largest monocot order. Here, the authors produce the phylogeny of Asparagales with transcriptomic data from 455 species and investigate the evolution of genes involved with allium flavor biosynthesis.

Chiral materials with strong and tunable chiroptical activities are highly desirable. Here, the authors employ an AI-guided robotic platform to fully execute a cyclic process to perform inverse design and fabricate chiral films with target chiroptical performance.

This study presents iKraph, a large-scale biomedical knowledge graph built using an award-winning natural language processing pipeline with expert-level accuracy. Using probabilistic semantic reasoning, iKraph enables automated knowledge discovery with excellent performance.

Geopolymers formed in the mineral-catalyzed reaction of organic molecules act as electron shuttles to accelerate microbial dissimilatory iron reduction, which severely threatens the stability of the iron-carbon association in anoxic environments.

A direct correlation between the monolayer Pt nanocluster size and the number of interfacial perimeters on Pt/α-MoC_1-x catalysts was established by combining sacrificial CO adsorption per Pt atom, DFT calculations, and CO chemisorption measurements.

Cytosine base editors still face several limitations in practical microbial genome engineering. Here, the authors develop a high-efficiency, unbiased, wide-window, and low off-target cytosine base editor based on FrCas9 protein, demonstrating its effective application in various microorganisms.

Fagaceae are diverse family including trees of ecological and economic importance. This phylogenomic analysis of nuclear and plastid genomes reconstructs evolutionary history and finds evidence of multiple adaptive introgression events in this important plant family.

The diagnosis and prognosis of chronic kidney disease (CKD) relies on invasive renal biopsies, which can be clinically constrained. Here, the authors develop a non-invasive model using retinal images that can be used to screen for CKD and identify five common pathological types of CKD.

Toxic methylmercury in soil can accumulate in rice grains. Here, the authors use DNA stable-isotope probing and metagenomics to identify soil microbes and pathways potentially involved in methylmercury degradation.

Pesticides affect a diverse range of non-target species and the magnitude of this hazard remains only partially understood. Wan et al. found that insecticides, fungicides and herbicides have negative effects on non-target plants, animals and microorganisms within terrestrial and aquatic systems.

The benchmark fullerene-based electron-transporting materials (ETMs) for inverted perovskite solar cells are often limited by thermal evaporation or stability issues. Here the authors report solution-processable non-fullerene ETMs with improved device stability and efficiency.

Mechanisms regulating the formation of pre-metastatic niches remain poorly understood. Here, the authors show that ITGBL1-containing extracellular vesicles derived from primary colorectal cancer cells activate the production of inflammatory cytokines by resident fibroblasts in distant organs, promoting metastatic cancer growth.

Worldwide, the number of only-child families is increasing. This research examines how growing up without siblings affects adult brain structure, function and connectivity, cognition, personality and mental health.

The authors study CsV₃Sb₅ by nuclear quadrupole resonance. At ambient pressure, there are two superconducting gaps with line nodes in the smaller one. For pressures above P_c ~ 1.85 GPa, where the charge-density wave phase is completely suppressed, they observe fully-gapped superconductivity with broken rotational symmetry.

The alignment of carbon nanotubes on a surface is of importance to deploy them in electronic devices. Here, Chen et al.achieve the orientation of carbon nanotubes according to their helical angle and handedness, thus separating nanotubes of different electronic properties.

A haplotype-resolved genome of hybrid sugarcane cultivar XTT22 and population analyses of Saccharum accessions highlight the genome evolution of allopolyploids and provide opportunities for sugarcane breeding.

The spin-orbit torque (SOT) induced magnetic switching makes metal/magnetic insulators bilayers preferred in the energy efficient spintronic applications. Here the authors show SOT switching in W/TmIG bilayers and reveal the dimension crossover of SOT as a function of TmIG thickness.

Here, the authors perform a genome-wide association study of the ALPS-index, identifying 17 unique genome-wide significant loci, unraveling mechanisms of brain glymphatic activity and providing insight for its relation to neuropsychiatric phenotypes.

In this study, Qin et al. present a murine-adapted SARS-CoV-2 strain, MASCp36, as a model for studying the pathogenicity, evolution and adaptation of the virus to human and animal hosts.

Methods to stratify patients according to mortality risk are essential to allocate limited heath resources during the COVID-19 crisis. Here, using machine learning methods, the authors present a mortality risk prediction model for COVID-19 that uses patients’ clinical data on admission to stratify patients by mortality risk.

How cortical interneurons gain regional specification remains elusive. Here authors recruit 685,692 interneurons from the developing telencephalons of humans and macaques to characterize the shared and distinct molecular programs regulating the cortical arealization of primate interneurons.