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Engineered bacteria sense gut bleeding and secrete repair materials.

A protocol to isolate small intracellular vesicles from human cells is reported; these are molecularly distinct from small extracellular vesicles and show superior therapeutic potential in retinal degeneration and drug delivery.

Integrated single-cell RNA and immune repertoire analysis of PBMCs identifies key circulating immune perturbations in lupus nephritis, highlighting non-invasive biomarkers and CD74 as a potential therapeutic target.

Hanging Coffins were a mortuary tradition practiced in southern China and Southeast Asia. Here, the authors show that different groups of ancient Hanging Coffin practitioners are genetically related, and that they are ancestors of present-day Bo people.

Ionizable lipids containing albumin-binding motifs are used in lipid-nanoparticle-based mRNA vaccines, facilitating lymph node enrichment and dendritic cell internalization to potentiate their efficacy and avoiding liver accumulation.

The combination of a diverse selection of magnetic and semiconducting constituent materials makes van der Waals heterojunctions ideal for exploring effects associated with tunnelling magnetoresistance. Here, Zhu, Wen, Zhu, Cui, and coauthors report on a unusual bias dependence of tunnelling magnetoresistance, that they explain via a planar dependent tunnelling model.

PLD4 loss-of-function mutations in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus leads to excessive activation of TLR7 and TLR9.

Wild relatives of wheat provide a valuable source of genes and allelic variants for wheat improvement. Here, the authors identify a type-B response regulator (RR) AcRR1 from Agropyron cristatum and show its potential of boosting wheat yield by increasing the grain number per spike and promoting early heading.

AlphaFold2 has revolutionized bioinformatics, but its ability to predict protein structures with high accuracy comes at the price of a costly database search for multiple sequence alignments. Fang and colleagues pre-train a large-scale protein language model and use it in conjunction with AlphaFold2 as a fully trainable and efficient model for structure prediction.

Bidirectional Mendelian randomization analyses in 3,432 Chinese individuals identify putative causal relationships between the gut microbiome and blood metabolite levels.

The mechanisms underlying the invasiveness and aggressiveness of pituitary neuroendocrine tumours (PitNETs) remain poorly understood. Here, the authors perform single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to characterise the tumour microenvironment of PitNETs and identify potential therapeutic targets.

A small-molecule agonist of transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily M member 4 persistently activates the ion channel and induces necrosis characterized by sodium overload.

The molecular basis for the unique taste and aroma of tea cultivars is largely unknown, but is critical for breeding new cultivars. Here the authors use transcriptomics and metabolomics to study the relationship among phylogenetic groups and specialized metabolites from 136 tea accessions in China.

Activation of the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) can induce immunity in various cancer therapies, but delivery of STING agonists to tumours is challenging. Now a metal-based polymeric nanoparticle delivers STING agonists to tumours upon disruption of endothelial cells in tumour vasculature and targets tumour-associated macrophages, eliciting anti-tumour immune response in hard-to-treat cancer models.

The imbalance in structural tension between crystalline materials and surfactant micelles makes the synthesis of crystalline mesoporous metal–organic frameworks (meso-MOFs) challenging. Now single-crystalline meso-MOFs featuring ordered mesopores have been prepared through the assembly of surfactant micelles and subunits of crystalline MOFs—a process co-mediated by strong and weak acids.

Genome-wide data from 166 East Asian individuals dating to between 6000 bc and ad 1000 and from 46 present-day groups provide insights into the histories of mixture and migration of human populations in East Asia.

Nanozymes have been identified as suitable candidates for pollutant degradation, but their thermoresponsive catalytic properties remain underexplored. Here, the authors report a MoN_xO_y nanozyme composed of Mo₅N₆ and MoO₂ crystalline phases and apply it to catalyze the degradation of phenolic pollutants at high temperature, observing an increase in laccase-like and peroxidase-like activities up to 90 °C.

Examining the interplay of environmental exposure with the airway microbiome provides insights for possible intervention in lung health.

Multi-chambered structures have attracted great attention due to their ability to create multifunctional partitions in different chambers. Here, the authors prepared mesoporous silica nanoreactors with hierarchical chambers for catalytic cascades.

Mathematical functions can be found throughout nature and have importance for studying the assembly of single particles into branched superstructures. Here, Wedderburn–Etherington number patterns are produced in branched mesoporous silica nanotrees.

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) may contribute to cancer progression. Here the authors show that LncRNA INHEG modulates rRNA 2’-O-methylation and facilitates mRNA translation to promote glioma stem cell renewal and growth.

The histone methyltransferase ASH1L plays a role in various diseases, including cancer, and has been validated as a therapeutic target; however, no inhibitors of ASH1L have been reported. Here the authors present small molecule inhibitors of ASH1L and demonstrate their on-target activity in leukemia cells and a mouse model of leukemia.

Mesoporous Janus nanoparticles (mJNPs) have attracted a lot of attention due to their unique morphology. Here, the authors demonstrate a hydrophilicity mediated interfacial selective assembly strategy for the versatile synthesis of metal compound based mJNPs.

Mosquito salivary-gland extract can modulate the host immune response. Qi and colleagues show that the salivary factor LTRIN from Aedes aegypti facilitates the transmission of Zika virus by interfering with the lymphotoxin-β receptor.

Addition of a multifunctional ionic additive in mixed two-dimensional–three-dimensional bromide/chloride perovskites enables efficient blue perovskite LEDs with external quantum efficiency of up to 21.4% and half-lifetime of 129 min at an initial luminance of 100 cd m^–2.

The understanding of salty water droplet freezing is limited. The authors examine the formation of brine film on top of frozen salty droplets and discover a new ice crystal growth pattern sprouting from the bottom of the brine film.

Despite many reports on nanoparticle-covalent organic frameworks (COF) composites, a universal strategy for the synthesis of monodisperse core-shell structured COF nanocomposites remains challenging. Here, the authors develop a strategy for interfacial growth of highly crystalline COFs on functional nanoparticles with abundant optical, electrical and magnetic properties.

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.

Metal nanoparticles anchored on perovskite provide catalytically active interfaces for CO2 electrolysis. The authors promote exsolution of RuFe alloy nanoparticles on Sr2Fe1.4Ru0.1Mo0.5 O6−δ perovskite by enriching the active Ru underneath the perovskite surface via repeated redox manipulations.

Control of composite nanoparticle topology can be difficult. Here the authors control the topological structure of mesoporous multipods by controlling the number of nucleation sites, and they used the resultant nanoparticles for bacterial adhesion, segregation and antibiotic delivery.

Large biomolecules cannot be loaded into conventional Janus nanoparticles with small mesopores, preventing the establishment of efficient logic-gate systems in single Janus nanoparticles. Now, an emulsion-oriented assembly approach has been shown to fabricate Janus double-spherical nanoparticles with dual-tunable mesopores, enabling the design of various single-particle-level logic systems.

Primary biliary cholangitis is an autoimmune liver disease. Here, the authors show that variants in interleukin genes which potentially deregulate their expression are associated with this condition, and suggest that the IL21 signalling pathway may have a role in disease aetiology.