Articles in 2022

Study identifies neurons that can improve sound perception, which could explain the variation in performance in people with cochlear devices.

An X-ray imaging mission has unveiled the magnetic field in the environment of a dead star. The order and symmetry of the field will reshape our understanding of how it accelerates particles to ultra-high energies.

The mammalian testis is a rapidly evolving organ, in both structural and molecular terms. An investigation of testicular cell nuclei from 11 species has unveiled genes, cell types and evolutionary forces that underlie these changes.

Data that raised hopes of a new elementary particle has turned out to be a fluke. Plus, plastic ‘nurdles’ hurt sea urchins and Twitter changed science — what happens now it’s in turmoil?

A microorganism that is a proposed relative of our cellular ancestors has been grown successfully in the laboratory. Its internal architecture offers clues to the early evolution of eukaryotic cells.

RNA–DNA hybrids are immunogenic species that can aberrantly accumulate in the cytoplasm after R-loop processing, linking R-loop accumulation to cell death through the innate immune response.

Culture and analysis of ‘Candidatus Lokiarchaeum ossiferum’—a member of the Asgard phylum—reveals an elaborate cell architecture with extensive membranous protrusions.

Optomechanical lattices in one and two dimensions with exceptionally low disorder are realized, showing how the optomechanical interaction can be exploited for direct measurements of the Hamiltonian, beyond the tight-binding approximation.

The retrosplenial cortex and superior colliculus of mouse form a neural circuit that specifically encodes shelter location, facilitating rapid escape from predatory threats.

Recent key developments in the exploration of kagome materials are reviewed, including fundamental concepts of a kagome lattice, realizations of Chern and Weyl topological magnetism, flat-band many-body correlations, and unconventional charge-density waves and superconductivity.

In Caenorhabditis elegans, paternal exposure to ionizing radiation results in HIS-24 and HPL-1-dependent genome instability phenotypes, causing embryonic lethality in the offspring.

BRD8 is identified as a specific epigenetic vulnerability for glioblastomas that harbour wild-type p53.

Somitoids and segmentoids—culture systems that recapitulate the formation of somite-like structures—reveal that an initial salt-and-pepper expression pattern of MESP2 in a newly formed segment is transformed into compartments of anterior and posterior identity through an active cell-sorting mechanism.

Polarization can exceed 60% at the leading edge of the inner part of the Vela pulsar wind nebula; in contrast with the case of the supernova remnant, the electrons in the pulsar wind nebula are accelerated with little or no turbulence in a highly uniform magnetic field.

A lifetime cartography of in vivo senescent cells shows that they are heterogeneous. Senescent cells create an aged-like inflamed niche that mirrors inflammation associated with ageing and arrests stem cell proliferation and tissue regeneration.

Evolutionary analyses of single-nucleus transcriptome data for testes from 11 species are reported, illuminating the molecular evolution of spermatogenesis and associated forces, and providing a resource for investigating the testis across mammals.

Ultrasmall monodisperse perovskite quantum dots are synthesized in situ on a substrate via ligand structure regulation, yielding the highest external quantum efficiency blue perovskite LEDs reported so far.

Behavioural studies with deafened rats show that locus coeruleus activity and plasticity are key to rapid adaptation to and long-term hearing performance with cochlear implants.

A 3D model of human segmentation and somitogenesis derived from induced pluripotent stem cells captures the oscillatory dynamics of the segmentation clock as well as morphological and molecular features of the developing embryonic axis and tail.

Snippets from Nature’s past.