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We are pleased to share with you the 25 most downloaded Nature Communications articles* in the life and biological sciences published in 2021. (Please note we have a separate collection on the Top 25 COVID-19 papers.) Featuring authors from around the world, these papers highlight valuable research from an international community.
Mammalian cell-based cultured meat has mostly been unstructured, leaving a demand for artificial steak-like meat. Here the authors present an assembled steak-like tissue of bovine skeletal muscle, adipose tissue, and blood capillary tissue fabricated by tendon-gel integrated printing technology.
Differential expression analysis of single-cell transcriptomics allows scientists to dissect cell-type-specific responses to biological perturbations. Here, the authors show that many commonly used methods are biased and can produce false discoveries.
In areas such as animal research and agriculture a single sex is often required in abundance, leading to wasted resources and ethical considerations. Here the authors develop a CRISPR/Cas9 mediated synthetic lethal system that enables the production of single sex offspring that can be repurposed for use in multiple organisms.
Discoveries of persistent coastal species in the open ocean shift our understanding of biogeographic barriers. Floating plastic debris from pollution now supports a novel sea surface community composed of coastal and oceanic species at sea that might portend significant ecological shifts in the marine environment.
The mechanisms underlying how monozygotic (or identical) twins arise are yet to be determined. Here, the authors investigate this in an epigenome-wide association study, showing that monozygotic twinning has a characteristic DNA methylation signature in adult somatic tissues.
Birdsong has long connected humans to nature. Historical reconstructions using bird monitoring and song recordings collected by citizen scientists reveal that the soundscape of birdsong in North America and Europe is both quieter and less varied, mirroring declines in bird diversity and abundance.
‘The timing and ecological dynamics of extinction in the late Pleistocene are not well understood. Here, the authors use sediment ancient DNA from permafrost cores to reconstruct the paleoecology of the central Yukon, finding a substantial turnover in ecosystem composition between 13,500-10,000 years BP and persistence of some species past their supposed extinctions.’
Reports on the origin of European wine grapes are controversial. Here, the authors perform population genetics analyses on a large set of representative wine-making varieties and reveal a single domestication event at the origin of the entire germplasm followed by repeated introgression from wild populations.
Intricate color patterns are a defining aspect of morphological diversity in the Felidae. Here the authors apply morphological and single-cell gene expression analysis to fetal skin of domestic cats to identify when, where, and how, during fetal development, felid color patterns are established.
Little is known about the brain’s computations that enable the recognition of faces. Here, the authors use unsupervised deep learning to show that the brain disentangles faces into semantically meaningful factors, like age or the presence of a smile, at the single neuron level.
Here, the authors show in human iPSC-derived motor neurons from ALS patients and a TDP-43 mouse model that axonal TDP-43 forms G3BP1 positive RNP condensates, which sequester mRNA of nuclear encoded mitochondrial proteins and decrease local protein synthesis in motor neuron axons and neuromuscular junctions.
Trait genetic architecture influences how populations evolve and adapt. Genomic analysis finds that an inversion links genetic variation controlling redpoll finch color and bill shape, allowing the maintenance of latitudinal ecotypes despite a genome largely homogenized by gene flow.
The ‘invariant rate of ageing’ hypothesis suggests that the rate of ageing tends to be constant within species. Here, Colchero et al. find support for the hypothesis across primates, including humans, suggesting biological constraints on the rate of ageing.
Here the authors report single-nucleus RNA sequencing for several anatomical locations in 11 species, including cat, dog, hamster, lizard, goat, rabbit, duck, pigeon, pangolin, tiger, and deer, highlighting coexpression of SARS-CoV-2 entry factors ACE2 and TMPRSS2.
RNA therapeutics have benefited significantly from decades of research on lipid nanoparticles, specifically its key component—the ionizable lipid. This comment discusses the major ionizable lipid types, and provides perspectives for future development.
Dinosaurs are thought to have been driven extinct by an asteroid impact 66 million years ago. Here, Condamine et al. show that six major dinosaur families were already in decline in the preceding 10 million years, possibly due to global cooling and competition among herbivores.
Snakes are one of the most successful groups of living vertebrates, but the timing of their diversification is unclear. Combining molecular clocks, fossils, and biogeography, Klein et al. show that snakes experienced a diversification, and underwent dispersal, around the time of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
Single-cell methods record molecule expressions of cells in a given tissue, but understanding interactions between cells remains challenging. Here the authors show by applying systems biology and machine learning approaches that they can infer and analyze cell-cell communication networks in an easily interpretable way.
Lipid droplets (LDs) are central to lipid metabolism, which is known to regulate neural stem cell behavior. Here, the authors show that LDs influence neural stem cell proliferation and metabolic activity and change upon differentiation or quiescence.
CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing can induce a p53 mediated damage response. Here the authors investigate the possibility of selection of pre-existing cancer driver mutations during CRISPR-Cas9 knockout based gene editing and identify KRAS mutants that may confer a selected advantage to edited cells.
The cucumber mosaic virus is accompanied by short RNA molecules, satellite RNAs. This study shows that leaves infected with Y-satellite RNA preferentially attract aphids and manipulate aphid physiology to promote their spread to neighbouring plants.
One challenge of single cell RNA sequencing analysis is how to consistently identify cell subtypes and states across different datasets. Here the authors propose the use of a reference single-cell atlas as a stable system of coordinates to characterize T cell states across studies, diseases and species.
Face-selective neurons are observed in the primate visual pathway and are considered as the basis of face detection in the brain. Here, using a hierarchical deep neural network model of the ventral visual stream, the authors suggest that face selectivity arises in the complete absence of training.
Nanopore direct RNA Sequencing data contain information about the presence of RNA modifications, but their detection poses substantial challenges. Here the authors introduce Nanocompore, a new methodology for modification detection from Nanopore data.
Mammalian genome engineering has advanced tremendously over the last decade, however there is still a need for robust gene writing with size scaling capacity. Here the authors present Find Cut-and-Transfer (FiCAT) technology to delivery large targeted payload insertion in cell lines and in vivo in mouse models.