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Placing a single layer of tungsten diselenide in contact with twisted bilayer graphene enables superconductivity even for non-magic twist angles where insulating behavior is absent.

Necroptosis is a form of cell death characterized by membrane rupture via MLKL oligomerization, although mechanistic details remain unclear. Here, the authors show that MLKL ubiquitylation of K219 facilitates high-order membrane assembly and subsequent rupture, promoting cytotoxicity.

Atopic dermatitis (AD) and psoriasis (PSO) are associated with dysbiosis. Here, by analyses of skin microbiome and host transcriptome of AD and PSO patients, the authors find distinct microbial and disease-related gene transcriptomic signatures that differentiate both diseases.

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.

Analysis of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid samples from patients with SARS-CoV-2-induced respiratory failure suggests that SARS-CoV-2 infects alveolar macrophages to cause release of T cell chemoattractants, thereby inducing local inflammatory cytokine release and further T cell activation, ultimately resulting in a positive feedback loop that drives alveolar inflammation.

Evidence for a parasitic lifestyle in extinct species tends to be indirect. Here, the authors provide direct evidence through X-ray examination of approximately 30–40 million year old fossil fly pupae, revealing 55 parasitation events by four newly described wasp species.

Therapy of tuberculosis is challenging, mainly due to complex structures of necrotic granulomas that often impair drug delivery. In this work, the authors show that the drug BTZ-043 fully penetrates necrotic granulomas and has potent lesional antibacterial activity.

Here, Geoghegan, Evelyn et al. provide a lattice light-sheet microscopy based 4D imaging pipeline to quantitatively investigate Plasmodium spp. invasion and show that the nascent parasitophorous vacuole is predominantly formed from host’s erythrocyte membrane and undergoes continuous remodeling throughout invasion.

The physicochemical driving forces of protein-free, RNA-driven phase transitions were previously unclear, but it is now shown that RNAs undergo entropically driven liquid–liquid phase separation upon heating in the presence of magnesium ions. In the condensed phase, RNAs can undergo an enthalpically favourable percolation transition that leads to arrested condensates.

Granular materials exhibit yielding behaviors rather different from glasses that can be elastic. Here, Yuan et al. show a cross-over from creep to diffusive dynamics in three-dimensional granular systems under cyclic shear and that the relaxation process depends on the roughness of the constituent particles.

An expanded phylogeny elucidates the evolutionary relationships of the “terror crocodile” Deinosuchus, shedding light on osmoregulation in crocodyliforms and body-size evolution patterns in the group.

Drinking water distribution systems are commonly being used to deliver new-quality water after decades of service, and monitoring the occurrence of transition effects is critical for both water utilities and customers. This 2 year longitudinal study offers an exceptional opportunity to explore transition effects when a distribution system receives new-quality water.

An optogenetic system enables the controlled release of soluble and transmembrane proteins for precise exploration of cellular protein function at the single-molecule level and streamlined single-molecule imaging.

Resilience to drought is crucial for tree survival under climate change. Here, DeSoto et al. show that trees that died during drought were less resilient to previous dry events compared to surviving conspecifics, but the resilience strategies differ between angiosperms and gymnosperms.

Analysis of ancient DNA from 424 individuals in the Avar period, from the sixth to the ninth century AD, reveals population movement from the steppe and the prolonged existence of a steppe nomadic descent system centred around patrilineality and female exogamy in central Europe.

Here, using murine models of prostate cancer, the authors show that reduced fecal microbiota alpha-diversity correlates with increased prostate tumor burden, and that Omega-3 prebiotic supplementation reduces prostate cancer up-grading associated with a reduction of gut Ruminococcaceae and fecal butyrate levels.

This study by Scacchi et al. shows that a mobile small-RNA-based Turing system dynamically organizes plant organ polarity. The afforded developmental flexibility accounts for diversity in organ shapes, from radialized or cup-shaped to the robust planar shape of a typical leaf.

The active zone is a brain signaling hub critical for synaptic information transfer and the encoding of behaviors. The authors identify Blobby as an assembly factor required for proper active zone nanoscale protein architecture and memory formation.

The impact of cell configuration on Cu catalyst reconstruction is crucial for optimizing CO₂ electroreduction to produce C₂₊ chemicals. Here, the authors shows that membrane electrode assembly cells uniquely alter Cu reconstructions compared to H-type cells, significantly affecting performance.

The development of direct-acting antivirals to combat COVID-19 remains an important goal. Here the authors design covalent inhibitors that target the papain-like protease from SARS-CoV-2. The most promising inhibitor blocks viral replication in mammalian cells.

Two-dimensional, self-assembled heteromolecular networks often lack functionality. Here the authors study the photoresponse of self-assembled heteromolecular networks, while controlling their positions and interfaces at an atomic level, suggesting bottom-up assembly of optoelectronics devices.

It remains unclear how rapid antibiotic switching affects the evolution of antibiotic resistance in individual patients. Here, Chung et al. combine short- and long-read sequencing and resistance phenotyping of 420 serial isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa collected from the onset of respiratory infection, and show that rare resistance mutations can increase by nearly 40-fold over 5–12 days in response to antibiotic changes, while mutations conferring resistance to antibiotics not administered diminish and even go to extinction.

Imputation uses genotype information from SNP arrays to infer the genotypes of missing markers. Here, the authors show that an imputation reference panel derived from whole-genome sequencing of 3,781 samples from the UK10K project improves the imputation accuracy and coverage of low frequency variants compared to existing methods.

Over the past 70 years, CERN’s accelerators and experiments have delivered some remarkable results and discoveries, owing to the efforts of generations of physicists. We asked seven of the new generation — all CERN Fellows, in the early stages of their career — to tell us about some of the milestone achievements in the history of their laboratory.

Observations of the galaxy NGC 253 show that the cool molecular wind from the central starburst region limits star-formation activity and the final stellar content.

The Middle East is known to emit large amounts of non-methane hydrocarbon pollutants to the atmosphere, but the sources are poorly characterized. Here the authors discover a new source—deep water in the Red Sea—and calculate that its emissions exceed rates of several high gas-production countries.

Understanding tumour development at a granular level is a challenge in solid tumours. Here, the authors provide a cell atlas across tumour development in a genetic model of salivary gland squamous cell carcinoma using single-cell transcriptome and epitope profiling.

The cryo-EM structure of Bcs1, an AAA-ATPase of the inner mitochondrial membrane, reveals two large aqueous vestibules separated by a seal-forming middle domain, an architecture that suggests an airlock-like translocation mechanism for its folded substrate.

Radiation damages the healthy lung and triggers severe side effects. Here the authors provide a single cell atlas of the lung responses to radiation injury to explore the spatio-temporal dynamics of the mechanisms leading to radio-induced pulmonary fibrosis.

The contribution of anthropogenic forcing to rising sea levels during the industrial era remains uncertain. Here, the authors provide a probabilistic evaluation and show that at least 45% of global mean sea level rise is of anthropogenic origin.

Cells respond to redox changes by shifting their protein thiol–disulfide balance. Here, the authors show that this balance is spatially regulated and varies widely across individuals, challenging the concept that glutathione acts as the main cellular redox buffer.

A massive galaxy hosting an accreting supermassive black hole two billion years after the Big Bang shows fast neutral-gas outflows that are capable of stopping star formation by removing its fuel while the stars keep rotating in a disk.

A hybrid analogue–digital quantum simulator is used to demonstrate beyond-classical performance in benchmarking experiments and to study thermalization phenomena in an XY quantum magnet, including the breakdown of Kibble–Zurek scaling predictions and signatures of the Kosterlitz–Thouless phase transition.

Science competitions in secondary school can inspire students and teachers alike, as Eric Plum, now a lecturer, and his former teacher Walter Stein explain.

This paper proposes storing hydrogen in pipes filled with gravel in lakes and reservoirs. Results show the levelized cost of hydrogen storage to be 0.17 USD kg−1 at 200 m depth, which is competitive with other hydrogen storage options.

Carbon capture, utilization and storage is key for climate change mitigation and developing more environmentally friendly technologies. Now it has been shown that CO₂ capture in single-component water-lean solvents is accompanied by the self-assembly of reverse-micelle-like tetrameric clusters in solution that enable the formation of various CO₂-containing compounds.

The Aurora hydrothermal field (Arctic Ocean) is hosted in volcanic rocks but also shows evidence of mantle rock influence in the shallow sub-surface. Our discovery is pertinent to disciplines from marine mining to the search for life beyond Earth.

The bacterial ABC transporter MsbA is essential for lipopolysaccharide biogenesis. Here, the authors apply native mass spectrometry, X-ray crystallography, cryo-EM and biochemical approaches to characterize the structural basis and functional roles of MsbA binding to copper and specific lipids.

Multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli have a high frequency of collateral sensitivity to antimicrobial peptides, which may arise from changes in lipopolysaccharide regulation.

Spin-based electronics offers significantly improved efficiency, but a major challenge is the electric manipulation of spin. Here, Powalla et al find a large gate induced spinpolarization in graphene/WTe2 heterostructures, illustrating the potential of such heterostructures for spintronics.

Circadian rhythms have been shown to influence immune responses, but it is unclear whether this influences responses to vaccines. Here the authors show that dendritic cells migrate in a circadian rhythm meaning that interactions with T cells are altered leading to differential vaccine responses.

Efforts to identify microbial signatures of response to immune checkpoint blockade suggest that strain-level associations may be cancer type agnostic but cancer therapy specific.