Volume 615 Issue 7953, 23 March 2023

Green technologies cannot advance without a secure supply of essential metals.

Several diets are linked to lower rates of chronic disease — but eating red and processed meats poses a higher risk.

The biggest phytoplankton bloom ever recorded in the South Pacific Ocean was triggered by a small but lingering storm.

A body classified as an exoplanet has been shown to nurture thermonuclear fusion of heavy hydrogen — a trait of objects called brown dwarfs.

A global campaign to vaccinate pregnant people would reduce not only infant mortality but also stillbirths and developmental damage.

A small group of people are eight times more likely to spread a SARS-CoV-2 infection than average.

Analysis of the the Amur sleeper’s genome and RNA reveal its tricks for surviving the winter frozen in ice.

The chemical bonds in a stretchy gel quickly reform if the material is severed.

Discovery highlights need for future missions after NASA puts one on hold.

While society grapples with the social and ethical implications of heritable genome editing, technical obstacles still abound.

Bailouts mean customers’ deposits are safe, but the bank’s demise has sparked concern about future investment in small tech companies.

The National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference have boosted science and technology in the national agenda.

Fruit fly ‘connectome’ will help researchers to study how the brain works, and could further understanding of neurological diseases.

US president takes aim at China with proposal to invest big in manufacturing and clean energy.

Scientists are calling for a thorough and transparent investigation of a mysterious sickness affecting potentially thousands of Iranian schoolgirls.

Researchers are examining the weird immune systems of bats, hoping to help prevent the next outbreak.

Biochemist who invented recombinant DNA technology.

Managing water and climate in tandem would protect water resources, reduce disaster risks, lower greenhouse-gas emissions and assure equitable access.

Many researchers dislike the term, but the practice of dialling back unrewarded duties is gaining traction.

The sequencing of two bacterial species created a legacy that could be at risk without further investment, warn the region’s genomic leaders.

Luis Fonseca leads research into micro-, nano- and photonic chip technologies that could kill cancer cells, protect the environment and facilitate space research.

A high-quality reference genome has been generated for the broad bean (also known as the faba or fava bean). The sequence could be used to identify ways to increase yield, improve pest resistance and more.

An analysis of mice carrying the protein tau — a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — reveals that immune cells collaborate to drive tau-mediated neurodegeneration, and that drugs already in use in the clinic can combat this decline.

In 2020, Nature endorsed Joe Biden in the US presidential election. A survey finds that viewing the endorsement did not change people’s views of the candidates, but caused some to lose confidence in Nature and in US scientists generally.

Seemingly contradictory observations of the first known interstellar object are reconciled in a model that presents a simple and physically realistic framework for understanding the object’s many peculiarities.

Bacteria with a synthetic genome were engineered to alter the way that the DNA code instructs cells to make proteins. This ‘language barrier’ serves to isolate the cells genetically, and makes them immune to viral infection.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Collecting training data by focusing on dangerous scenarios offers an efficient way for artificial intelligence to improve the safety of autonomous vehicles. Augmented reality allows the approach to be tested without risking lives.

The current observations and understanding of black holes is reviewed, and the future of the field of black-hole astrophysics is discussed.

Analysis of a supersoft X-ray source shows an accretion disk whose optical spectrum is completely dominated by helium, suggesting that it is a white dwarf binary accreting helium from a hydrogen-free donor star.

Acceleration of ‘Oumuamua is due to the release of entrapped molecular hydrogen formed through energetic processing of an H₂O-rich icy body, supporting the idea that it originated as a planetesimal relic similar to Solar System comets.

We report an ensemble of cold ⁸⁵Rb atoms strongly coupled to a superconducting resonator and optical cavity, resulting in the demonstration of quantum-enabled transduction of millimetre wave photons to optical photons.

An intelligent environment has been developed for testing the safety performance of autonomous vehicles and its effectiveness has been demonstrated for highway and urban test tracks in an augmented-reality environment.

By analysing atomic-scale Pb–Pb Josephson junctions including magnetic atoms in a scanning tunnelling microscope, a new mechanism for diode behaviour is demonstrated, opening up new paths to tune their properties by means of single-atom manipulation.

An unsymmetric, strong and confined chiral acid, a highly fluorinated imino-imidodiphosphate, catalyses the selective conversion of neral to (1R,6S)-trans-isopiperitenol, enabling sustainable routes to menthol and cannabinoids.

A spatial and temporal compilation of geochemical data documents a stepwise transgression of toxic euxinic waters into shallow oceans that drove a series of Late Devonian extinction events.

Investigations of the crystallization of FeSi in Fe–Si–H melt under high pressure−temperature conditions provide evidence of a new process that explains geochemical and geophysical observations at the core–mantle boundary.

Using a high-quality chromosome-scale assembly of the faba bean genome, the genetic basis of seed size and hilum colour is explored.

A small population of prostaglandin E2-responsive glossopharyngeal sensory neurons provides a sensory pathway between airway and brainstem that mediates sickness responses to early-phase influenza virus infection.

A study finds T cells in areas of tau, not amyloid, pathology in Alzheimer’s disease brain and mouse models, with their presence correlating with neuronal loss and their depletion, or that of microglia, preventing neurodegeneration and cognitive decline.

JNJ-1802—a highly potent dengue virus inhibitor—blocks the NS3–NS4B interaction within the viral replication complex, and is highly effective against viral infection with DENV-1 or DENV-2 in non-human primates.

A first-in-human phase I clinical trial demonstrates the feasibility and safety of non-viral precision genome-engineering of a personalized adoptive cell transfer anticancer therapeutic.

Effective anti-PD-1 immunotherapy is associated with the presence of polyclonal CD8⁺ T cells in the tumour and blood specific for a limited number of immunodominant mutations, which are recurrently recognized over time.

Consumption of high doses of the sweetener sucralose has immunomodulatory effects in mice, as a result of reduced T cell proliferation and differentiation.

A study describing an approach that combines imaging and profiling techniques to structurally and functionally analyse lung cancer in vivo, revealing heterogeneous mitochondrial networks and an association between bioenergetic phenotypes and mitochondrial organization and function.

A study details the creation of an Escherichia coli genetically recoded organism that is resistant to viral infection, and describes a further modification that keeps the organism and its genetic information biocontained.

The authors report the cryo-EM structure of human A3G bound to HIV-1 Vif, and the hijacked cellular proteins that promote ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, suggesting how Vif antagonizes A3G by intercepting it to prevent viral restriction.

Biochemical and molecular dynamics studies show that the third intracellular loop of G protein-coupled receptors autoregulates the receptor activity and tunes the signalling specificity by controlling access to the G protein-binding site.

Through the use of cryo-electron microscopy and molecular dynamics stimulations, mechanistic insight into the binding of an odorant to the human odorant receptor OR51E2 is provided.