Articles in 2022

Defective DNA interstrand crosslink repair in Fanconi anaemia drives extensive genomic rearrangements, thereby substantially increasing the risk of cancer development.

A series of early-time, multiwavelength observations of an optical transient, AT2022cmc, indicate that it is a relativistic jet from a tidal disruption event originating from a supermassive black hole.

The authors show that, in a chronic social defeat stress rodent model, a subset of male and female mice avoided social interaction with non-aggressive, same-sex juvenile mice and did not develop context-dependent social reward following these encounters.

By using Si₃N₄ photonic integrated circuits on a silicon chip, a continuous-travelling-wave parametric amplifier is shown to yield a parametric gain exceeding both on-chip propagation loss as well as fibre–chip–fibre coupling losses.

Bitopic functionalized ligands based on fentanyl can target the sodium ion-binding site of the mu-opioid receptor and selectively modulate downstream signalling pathways, potentially leading to safer analgesics.

Amyloid-plaque-associated axonal spheroids are prominent contributors to neural network dysfunction in an Alzheimer’s model and can be reversed by endolysosomal modulation.

Analysis of new observations from the EUREC⁴A field campaign shows that lower-tropospheric mixing does not desiccate the base of trade cumulus clouds, refuting the mixing-desiccation hypothesis and explaining the weak trade cumulus feedback.

Integrated single-cell atlases of human fetal cerebella and MBs show potential cell populations predisposed to transformation and regulatory circuitries underlying tumour cell states and oncogenesis, highlighting hitherto unrecognized transitional progenitor intermediates predictive of disease prognosis.

Aberrant crosstalk between cancer stem cells and their microenvironment triggers angiogenesis and TGFβ signalling, creating conditions that are conducive for hijacking leptin and leptin receptor signalling, which in turn launches downstream PI3K–AKT–mTOR signalling during the benign-to-malignant transition.

Mass spectrometry imaging of long-chain alkenones in sediments from the Cariaco Basin shows that average temperatures remained stable during the Younger Dryas to Holocene transition but seasonality more than doubled and interannual variability intensified.

Analysis of Landsat imagery from the past two decades allows quantification of the changes in salt marsh ecosystems, as well as associated carbon emissions resulting from net global losses.

An efficient and scalable direct seawater electrolysis method for hydrogen production that addresses the side-reaction and corrosion problems associated with using seawater instead of pure water is demonstrated.

A study demonstrates that plasticity in the head direction system in Drosophila is modulated by dopamine, which increases learning when reorienting movements are bringing in new spatial information.

A new taxon of toothed Late Cretaceous ornithurine preserving a pterygoid is reported, overturning assumptions about the nature of the ancestral crown bird skull.

Ant pupae secrete a fluid, derived from the moulting fluid, that elicits parental care behaviour, provides nutrients for larvae and must be removed for pupal survival.

A sparsified SYK model is constructed using learning techniques and the corresponding traversable wormhole dynamics are observed, representing a step towards a program for studying quantum gravity in the laboratory.

A study using super-resolution protein imaging to visualize synaptic proteins from layer 5 pyramidal neurons in the primary visual cortex of adult mice shows that filopodia are a structural substrate for silent synapses.

A study identifies two broadly conserved families of flippases that catalyse the transport of undecaprenyl phosphate in bacteria and could function to recycle dolichol phosphate in eukaryotes and archaea.

Exome sequence data from 628,388 individuals was used to identify 24 risk loci in 40,208 carriers of clonal haematopoiesis of indeterminate potential and link them to other conditions including COVID-19, cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Members of the DUF368-containing and DedA transmembrane protein families have conditional roles in undecaprenyl phosphate translocation in Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria and may have a widely conserved function in the biogenesis of microbial cell surface glycopolymers.