Volume 616 Issue 7955, 6 April 2023

The World Health Organization is emerging from the peak of the pandemic bruised. Its member states must get back to prioritizing universal health care.

Drastically reduce emissions first, or carbon dioxide removal will be next to useless.

The virulent H5N1 strain now sweeping across the world is adapting to its mammalian hosts in northern North America.

A design strategy that relies on virtual lattices allows scientists to recreate biological shapes in a wide variety of materials.

Dust rich in silicon and oxygen churns through the atmosphere of a young giant planet.

Complexes of DNA and dye send a light signal in the presence of strontium ions created by nuclear power plants.

Repairs to DNA allow stem cells to develop into T cells.

Neurons involved in stimulating appetite become more active right after fasting ends, animal experiments show.

Both marsupial and placental mammals draw on the same genes to form their aerofoil skin flaps.

GISAID revoked researchers’ access following the report, sparking discussion about findings based on data found in online repositories.

A potential legal reform is reigniting debate about a time limit on fixed-term postdoc contracts.

As the effects of climate change grow, scientists from fields spanning astronomy to biology are trying to decarbonize their research.

The results of a US case could dictate how broad patents are, and have knock-on effects for those developing drugs.

Telescope didn’t spot an atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1b, but has kicked off a new era in understanding planetary evolution.

Technique borrowed from nature, and honed using artificial intelligence, could spur the development of better drug-delivery systems.

Crocodiles and Komodo dragons provide evidence to support the idea of a scaly cover over the teeth of dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex.

Patrick Vallance, who advised the UK government during the height of COVID, says that scientific officials should know four key things when guiding policymakers.

The European country is one of several reassessing its cultural unease with collecting information on scientists’ race and ethnicity.

Researchers are looking to drug combinations, vaccines and gene therapy as they forge the next generation of treatments for the condition.

Clearly communicating baselines for assessing ocean warming is essential for understanding extreme events and how they will affect marine ecosystems and livelihoods in the future.

University partnerships that let PhD students split their time between two countries and keep jobs at home have many benefits.

Agriculturist Rohan McDonald is rebuilding a medical-cannabis laboratory after an eruption destroyed his team’s work.

Air pollution is associated with the development of lung cancer. Analysis of clinical samples and mouse cancer models suggests that inflammation and a tumour-promotion process induced by polluted air are the major culprits.

Observations from five telescopes have revealed a pair of supermassive black holes in coalescing galaxies, farther from Earth than any such pair detected previously. This feat offers key insight into how galaxies form.

Innovative use of medieval musings about the Moon has revealed that volcanic eruptions coincided with abrupt, global-scale cooling events. The approach is exciting from the perspective of climate scientists and historians alike.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Cancers that arise from epithelial cells often contain tumour cells that have acquired the characteristics of another cell type — a mesenchymal cell. A mouse model of skin cancer offers insights into why such cells resist treatment.

What are the benefits of a fish-rich diet, not only for nutrition and health but also for the environment, economies and sustainability? A new framework offers a way to assess the benefits and trade-offs on national and global scales.

The authors report multiwavelength observations of SDSS J0749 + 2255, hosted by massive compact disk-dominated galaxies, as a kpc-scale, dual-quasar system hosted by a galaxy merger at cosmic noon.

A study demonstrates the extension of a lifetime of a quantum memory using active quantum error correction and reinforcement learning.

The lifetime of a qubit in a circuit quantum electrodynamics architecture can exceed the break-even point through quantum error correction, representing a key step towards scalable quantum computing.

A Kondo lattice was realized in AB-stacked MoTe₂/WSe₂ moiré bilayers and widely and continuously gate-tunable Kondo temperatures were demonstrated.

The epitaxial synthesis of high-density, vertically aligned arrays of two-dimensional (2D) fin-oxide heterostructures is described, enabling the fabrication of 2D fin field-effect transistors with high electron mobility and desirable low-power specifications.

By creating nanosized grains and defects in lanthanum trihydride, its electronic conductivity can be suppressed, transforming it into a superionic conductor at −40 °C with a record high H⁻ conductivity.

A LaCl₃-based lithium superionic conductor is developed that has excellent interfacial compatibility with lithium metal electrodes, with its optimized Li_0.388Ta_0.238La_0.475Cl₃ electrolyte exhibiting good Li⁺ conductivity and low activation energy.

Chiral hydrogen-bond donors bind anions of organometallic catalysts to achieve enantiocontrol and reaction-rate enhancement through ion pairing together with other non-covalent interactions.

Analysis of contemporary reports of total lunar eclipses, combined with aerosol model simulations and tree-ring-based climate proxies, allowed greater precision in dating of the occurrence of stratospheric volcanic eruptions during the High Medieval Period.

Rural population ageing reduces the sustainability of smallholder farming in China, but the transition to a new farming model could reverse the negative effects of rural population ageing.

A study proposes four ways in which foods sourced in aquatic environments can contribute to healthier, more environmentally sustainable and equitable food systems, and examines the relevance of these ambitions to nations.

The authors present two technologies for spatially resolved, genome-wide, joint profiling of the epigenome and transcriptome by cosequencing chromatin accessibility and gene expression, or histone modifications and gene expression on the same tissue section at near-single-cell resolution.

A machine learning approach is used to analyse multi-omics (proteomics, metabolomics and transcriptomics) data, producing genetic scores for more than 17,000 biomolecular traits in human blood, and identifying possible associations with disease.

In songbird, thalamus drives a small population of premotor neurons to initiate transitions between song syllables.

Visceral pain and anxiety in mice are found to be associated with gut enterochromaffin cells, and genetic models for eliciting visceral hypersensitivity and studying the sex bias of gut pain are proposed.

A multiomics single-cell atlas of the human maternal–fetal interface including the myometrium, combining spatial transcriptomics data with chromatin accessibility, provides a comprehensive analysis of cell states as placental cells infiltrate the uterus during early pregnancy.

The murine norovirus NTPase NS3 induces mitochondrial disruption, resulting in cell death, which is required for viral egress.

Combination of epidemiology, preclinical models and ultradeep DNA profiling of clinical cohorts unpicks the inflammatory mechanism by which air pollution promotes lung cancer

RHOJ regulates epithelial-to-mesenchymal-transition-associated resistance to chemotherapy by enhancing the response to replicative stress and activating the DNA damage response, enabling tumour cells to rapidly repair DNA lesions induced by chemotherapy.

The cryo-electron microscopy structure of the Polycomb repressive deubiquitinase (PR-DUB) in complex with the H2AK119ub1 nucleosome provides insight into how the substrate specificity of PR-DUB is achieved.

X-ray, cryo-EM and kinetic studies of the circadian oscillator KaiBC from the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides shed light on the evolution of self-regulating oscillators.

Using cryo-electron microscopy, the molecular architecture and catalytic mechanism of action of the fungal β-1,3-glucan synthase FKS1 are determined.

In situ structures of PBS–PSII–PSI–LHC megacomplexes from the alga P. purpureum at near-atomic resolution using cryogenic-electron tomography and in situ single-particle analysis are reported, providing interaction details between PBS, PSII and PSI.