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How bacteria coordinate transcription and translation is incompletely understood. Here, ppGpp-dependent coordination between both processes is shown to occur under normal growth conditions and to be disrupted when translational elongation is slowed, a process that leads to premature transcriptional termination.

To successfully colonize a habitat in the presence of competing chemotactic bacterial populations, the winner is required to expand its range at a speed given by the habitat size and the population doubling time.

Bacterial colonies growing on solid surfaces can exhibit robust expansion kinetics, with constant radial growth and saturating vertical expansion. Here, the authors use modeling and experiments to show that colony growth dynamics are driven by an interplay of mechanical constraints and nutrient gradients arising from obligatory metabolic processes.

Here the authors show that tissue-resident memory and exhausted T cells in tumors are distinct populations that are shaped by relative presence or absence of TCR signals, suggesting that a tailored therapeutic strategy is needed to target each subset.

Photoacoustic microscopy is a hybrid imaging technology based on the conversion of absorbed light into ultrasound emission. A single-wavelength pulse-width-based method allows fast functional imaging of the brain.

Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle mass and strength associated with physical disability during ageing. Here, the authors analyse muscle biopsies from 119 patients with sarcopenia and age-matched controls of different ethnic groups and find transcriptional signatures indicating mitochondrial dysfunction, associated with reduced mitochondria numbers and lower NAD⁺ levels in older individuals with sarcopenia.

Despite much effort, the question of whether the Navier–Stokes equations allow solutions that develop singularities in finite time remains unresolved. Terence Tao discusses the problem, and possible routes to a solution.

mGluR5 has been shown to play a role in chronic pain regulation. Here, the authors use membrane permeable and non-transported, impermeable mGluR5 antagonists to show that spinal analgesic effects in vivoare mediated by intracellular rather than cell surface mGluR5.

PAPD5 is responsible for adenylation of microRNAs. Here, the authors show that elevated level of PAPD5 enhances the adenylation and reduced expression of miR-7-5p. As a result, expression of TAB2, a target of miR-7-5p, is induced triggering neuronal apoptosis in Huntington’s disease.

Parity induces an accumulation of CD8⁺ T cells, including cells with a tissue-resident-memory-like phenotype within human normal breast tissue, offering long-term protection against triple-negative breast cancer.

Pioneering bacterial cells use chemotaxis along self-generated attractant gradients to facilitate rapid colonization of nutrient-replete environments.

The reovirus outercapsid protein σ1 binds to α-linked sialic acid and junctional adhesion molecule A (JAM-A) for virus entry. Here, combining atomic force microscopy and confocal microscopy, the authors provide insights into the dynamics of these interactions at the single-virion level in living cells.

Micro-scale microbial community dynamics can substantially alter the fate of sinking particulates in the ocean thus playing a key role in setting the vertical flux of particulate carbon in the ocean.

This work uses single-molecule techniques to show that conformational changes of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 modulate binding to its human receptor. The study provides key insights into the molecular mechanisms of virus infection and immune evasion.

Chitin-degrading bacteria split into on- and away-from-particles subpopulations. Only on-particle cells grow and most disperse after replication, leaving chitinases behind. High dispersal is sustained by remaining cells thriving on leftover chitinases.

Spatial proteomic data serve to provide cell-level location information for the extraction of biological features from tissues, but analyzing such data can be difficult. Here the authors report the development of SPIAT for data analyses and spaSim for simulation and validation of methods to help bridge the gap between the technology and its translation.

Mammalian orthoreovirus causes serotype-specific disease in the brain. Here, Shang et al. identify and characterise the role of paired immunoglobulin-like receptor B in reovirus attachment, entry and infectivity in the brain.

Ultrafast breaking of the molecular symmetry is a key process in photochemistry. Here the authors show direct observation during internal conversion of a heterocyclic molecule using Coulomb explosion imaging supported by simulations.

Cancer RNA-seq data are normalized with respect to library size, tumor purity and batch effects.

Reovirus endocytosis depends on junctional adhesion molecule A (JAM-A) and β1 integrin binding. Here, Koehler et al. use single-virus force spectroscopy and confocal microscopy to demonstrate a direct interaction between reovirus and β1 integrins via viral capsid protein λ2, which promotes clathrin recruitment to cell-bound reovirus.

Alzheimer’s disease is heterogeneous in its neuroimaging and clinical phenotypes. Here the authors present a semi-supervised deep learning method, Smile-GAN, to show four neurodegenerative patterns and two progression pathways providing prognostic and clinical information.

Glutamine is an energetic source required for the proliferation of cancer cells. Here, the authors show that soft tissue sarcomas expressing high levels of glutaminase (GLS) are particularly sensitive to glutamine starvation and GLS inhibition in tumour-bearing allograft and autochthonous mouse models.

Clinical proteomics critically depends on the ability to acquire highly reproducible data over an extended period of time. Here, the authors assess reproducibility over four months across different mass spectrometers and develop a computational approach to mitigate variation among instruments over time.

Coherent interconversion between microwave and optical frequencies is crucial for developing quantum networks. To this end, the authors integrate piezoelectric actuators on photonic integrated circuits, enabling bidirectional transduction mediated by high-overtone bulk acoustic resonances.

Mackay and colleagues show that distinct programs of tissue residency are induced in CD8⁺ and CD4⁺ T_RM cell subsets, a difference attributable to the activity of the transcription factor Runx3.

A model of sequential flux bottlenecks explains a universal trade-off between steady-state growth and physiological adaptation time in bacteria exposed to fluctuating growth conditions.

In contrast to the significant retreat of Arctic sea-ice, Antarctic sea-ice has exhibited a modest expansion in recent decades. Here, the authors employ model simulations to investigate the drivers of this unexpected trend.

In this study the authors identify a possible link between the gene FAM222A and brain atrophy. The protein it encodes is found to accumulate in plaques seen in Alzheimer’s disease, and functional analysis suggests it interacts with amyloid-beta.

Lithium niobate plays an important role in integrated photonics, but its widespread application requires a reliable solution. Here, the authors present a wafer-scale approach to LNOI integration via wafer bonding to silicon nitride PICs.

Mass spectrometry-based metabolomics is a powerful method for profiling large clinical cohorts but batch variations can obscure biologically meaningful differences. Here, the authors develop a computational workflow that removes unwanted data variation while preserving biologically relevant information.

Antibiotics reduce the fraction of active ribosomes rather than slow translational elongation, a process also observed during E. coli adaptation to slow-growth conditions.

Neurological disorders such as temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) are known to be regulated by gene networks. In this study, the authors describe a genome-wide approach that uses samples of hippocampal tissue from patients with TLE, to identify the gene Sestrin 3 (SESN3) as a positive regulator of the disease.

Using experimental proteomics and modelling in E. coli, the amount of protein needed to run respiration (per ATP produced) is shown to be twice as much as that needed to run fermentation; results demonstrate that overflow metabolism (known as the Warburg effect in cancer cells) is a necessary outcome of optimal bacterial growth, governed by a global resource allocation program, and that the methodology is directly applicable to synthetic biology and cancer research.

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.

Total mRNA expression in cancer cells is a marker for disease progression and death.

Tissue-resident memory T (T_RM) cells are distributed throughout the body as relatively sessile populations. Mackay and colleagues find that the tissue in which T_RM cells are generated dictates their properties and is in turn defined according to T_RM-cell-intrinsic sensitivity to signaling via the cytokine TGFβ.

Here, using single-molecule experiments, the authors show that SpCas9 responds to shifted PAMs by inducing overhanging DNA ends. Such shift-PAM targeting is enhanced by physiological levels of DNA supercoiling and in turn promotes dissociation of the complex after catalysis.

A β-lactamase, a novel type of amidase, and the phenylacetic acid catabolon comprise a catabolic pathway, revealed by genomic and transcriptomic analysis, that enables multiple soil bacteria to use β-lactam antibiotics as a carbon source.

There is disproportionally high cancer prevalence in males. Here, the authors analyse the tumour suppressor p53 in sporadic cancers, highlighting a higher incidence of its mutation in males. Males are further disadvantaged by a failure to shield against the expression of damaged X-linked genes in p53-networks. These factors likely contribute to sex-disparity.

Using genetic approaches and transcriptional profiling, Kallies and colleagues reveal a common program of effector CD8⁺ T cell differentiation that is regulated by the cooperation of IL-2 and IL-12 signaling and the combined activities of the transcriptional regulators Blimp-1 and T-bet.

A prostate cancer epigenome map reveals that genes are suppressed in clusters through long-range epigenetic silencing (LRES). Regions of LRES contain known tumour suppressors and miRNAs, and may expand to neighbouring genes during tumour progression.

The genome of the grey short-tailed opossum Monodelphis domestica has been sequenced and analyzed, giving a first peek at a marsupial's genetic code. Of particular interest are the genetics of the immune system, which has been studied as a model for humans, and of the X chromosome for historical reasons.