Volume 626 Issue 7997, 1 February 2024

Researchers have a part to play in addressing concerns about government interference in science.

The research system must lose its overly rigid attitude towards career progression — and mothers are uniting to make that happen.

Careful retooling of laser beams allows scientists to harness photons for performing quantum calculations.

Wine-fermentation jars used in Georgia today hint at the properties of ancient vintages.

A variation on CAR T-cell therapy damps down the number of cancerous cells in people with certain types of lymphoma or leukaemia.

Scientists puzzled over the height of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta range in Colombia find that its supporting crust dripped away over time.

The decommissioning of the Joint European Torus near Oxford, UK — a test bed for ITER — will take until 2040 and be studied in detail.

Researchers have doubted how useful the AI protein-structure tool will be in discovering medicines — now they are learning how to deploy it effectively.

Nature talks to Sholto David about his process for flagging image manipulation and his tips for scientists under scrutiny.

EXCLUSIVE: Poor-quality studies are polluting the literature — a group will study the businesses that produce them to stem the flow of bogus research.

Landing within 100 metres of its target zone, the craft has pioneered a new image-based automatic navigation system. But its mission might be cut short.

Proteins involved in immunity, clotting and inflammation could help to unravel the complexity of long COVID.

A bacterium in the intestines of stressed mice interferes with cells that protect against pathogens.

A new wave of research is unpicking the relationship between cancer and neurons — and looking for ways to stop the crosstalk.

Rigorous historian who shed light on how researchers’ personalities and institutions are central to the development of scientific knowledge.

The conventional way of classifying metastatic cancers according to their organ of origin is denying people access to drugs that could help them.

Without rapid change, the World Health Organization’s goals for tackling cervical cancer by 2030 will be missed. Four experts share ways to move the needle.

Shared lab spaces provide a streamlined launchpad, offering benches as well as a diverse network of industry mentors.

Marguerite Nicodeme works with Snoopy the dog to bring moments of cheerful relief to patients and their carers.

Conservation is bringing back certain predators that are high in the food chain, but how this affects an ecosystem overall is debated. Rigorous fieldwork provides strong evidence that sea otters help to mitigate coastal erosion.

Small groups of mobile neutral atoms have been manipulated with extraordinary control to form ‘logical’ quantum bits. These qubits can perform quantum computations more reliably than can individual atoms.

A technique for embedding fibres with semiconductor devices produces defect-free strands that are hundreds of metres long. Garments woven with these threads offer a tantalizing glimpse of the wearable electronics of the future.

A rare example of the reversal of a bacterial predator–prey relationship suggests that such species interactions are more complex than was realized.

LINE-1 DNA elements self-duplicate, inserting the copy into new regions of the genome — a key process in chromosome evolution. Structures of the machinery that performs this process in humans are now reported.

The risk of catching COVID-19 as calculated by a smartphone app scales with the probability of subsequently testing positive for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, showing that digital contact tracing is a useful tool for fighting future pandemics.

Four future greenhouse gas emission scenarios for the global plastics system are investigated, with the lead scenario achieving net-zero emissions, and a series of  technical, legal and economic interventions recommended.

A programmable quantum processor based on encoded logical qubits operating with up to 280 physical qubits is described, in which improvement of algorithmic performance using a variety of error-correction codes is enabled.

The Berry phase is resolved in light-driven crystals, via attosecond interferometry, in which the electronic wavefunction accumulates a geometric phase as it interacts with the laser field, mapping its coherence into the emission of high-order harmonics.

A mechanical design is developed for the fabrication of ultralong, fracture-free and perturbation-free semiconductor fibres to address the increasing demand for flexible and wearable optoelectronics.

We report atomic observations of six incoherent twin boundary configurations and structural transitions in diamond at room temperature, showing a dislocation-mediated mechanism different from metallic systems and shedding new light on grain boundary behaviour.

We develop a proton-exchange membrane system that reduces CO₂ to formic acid at a catalyst that is derived from waste lead–acid batteries and in which a lattice carbon activation mechanism contributes.

We introduce a method for the direct 1,3-difunctionalization of alkenes, based on a concept termed ‘charge relocation’, which enables stereodivergent access to 1,3-difunctionalized products of either syn- or anti-configuration from unactivated alkenes.

We investigate the mechanism underlying the sulfur reduction reaction that plays a central role in high-capacity lithium sulfur batteries, highlighting the electrocatalytic approach as a promising strategy for tackling the fundamental challenges associated with these batteries.

A study reports a combination of processing, optimization and low-damage deposition methods for the production of silicon heterojunction solar cells exhibiting flexibility and high performance.

Sea otters recolonizing an estuary in California indirectly reduce erosion by reducing burrowing crab abundance, suggesting that restoring predators could be a key mechanism to improve the stability of coastal wetlands and other ecosystems.

Analysis of naturally hybridizing swordtail fish species reveals a mitonuclear genetic incompatibility among three genes that encode components of mitochondrial respiratory complex I, providing insights into the emergence of hybrid incompatibilities and reproductive barriers.

Latrophilin-3 organizes synapses through a convergent dual-pathway mechanism in which Gα_s signalling is activated and phase-separated postsynaptic protein scaffolds are recruited.

A study describes the role of the anterior cingulate cortex in coding and regulating helping behaviour exhibited by mice towards others experiencing pain.

Digital measurements of proximity and duration of exposure by the NHS COVID-19 app show a strong relation to actual infections among 7 million contacts notified in England and Wales, with longer durations translating to increased risk of transmission.

Low-affinity transcription factor binding sites are prevalent across the genome, and single nucleotide changes that increase binding affinity even slightly can cause gain-of-function gene expression and phenotypes (such as polydactyly).

Autoreactive T cells that target myelin antigens in the peripheral nerves are present in patients with the demyelinating form of Guillain–Barré syndrome, and these T cells are likely to contribute to disease pathophysiology.

High-speed molecular tracking is integrated with three-dimensional electron microscopy to map the diffusion distribution and ultrastructure of endoplasmic reticulum-mitochondria contact sites, revealing the ability of high-speed single-molecule imaging to map contact site interface structures and corresponding diffusion landscapes.

An explainable deep learning model using a chemical substructure-based approach for the exploration of chemical compound libraries identified structural classes of compounds with antibiotic activity and low toxicity.

Human LINE-1 ORF2p relies on upstream single-stranded target DNA to position the adjacent duplex in the endonuclease active site for nicking of the longer DNA strand, with a single nick generating a staggered DNA break.

X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy, structural modelling, biochemistry, cell biology, and evolutionary analysis enable characterization of ORF2p, the reverse transcriptase of the ancient ‘parasitic’ LINE-1 retrotransposon that has written around one-third of the human genome.

Deep learning and transfer learning were used to design tissue-specific enhancers in the Drosophila embryo that were active and specific, validating this approach to achieve tissue-, cell type- and cell state-specific expression control.

Deep learning models were used to design synthetic cell-type-specific enhancers that work in fruit fly brains and human cell lines, an approach that also provides insights into these gene regulatory elements.