Reviews & Analysis

Climate models can provide accurate seasonal forecasts of unusually warm ocean temperatures, enabling the models’ predictions to guide decisions made by stakeholders in the marine industries and conservation.

Protected areas are a cornerstone of conservation policies, but many are not benefiting target species. These areas need to be managed better if they are to achieve conservation goals.

Neutral atoms are fast becoming prime candidates for use in quantum computers. Two studies involving multiple quantum bits show how this platform enables creative solutions for building quantum circuits.

Birds and their dinosaur ancestors had feathers, and now it seems that a distantly related group called pterosaurs had them, too. The finding extends the origins of feathers back to long before birds evolved, and sheds light on their role.

The Human Pangenome Reference Consortium aims to offer the highest quality and most complete human pangenome reference that provides diverse genomic representation across human populations.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

While rats pause to eat or rest during navigation tasks, neuronal sequences in the brain are replaying routes around moving obstacles, allowing the animals to reach their goals even in changing environments.

Analysis of climate pledges by nations at the COP26 meeting indicates that such commitments could ensure that global warming does not exceed 2 ºC before 2100 — but only if backed up by short-term policies.

The polarization, wavelength and power of a light wave can be simultaneously identified by a compact device made from twisted layers of carbon atoms — with a little help from an artificial neural network.

Throughout life, cells accrue mutations. It now emerges that longer-lived animals acquire mutations at a slower rate than do short-lived species, potentially explaining why cancer risk does not increase with lifespan.

The inner workings of a family of proteins, known as adhesion G-protein-coupled receptors, have finally been visualized at high resolution — revealing the structural basis of their self-activation mechanism.

Climate effects on ecosystems shaped the evolution of our hominin relatives in the human family tree. A modelling study examines these habitat changes and the various ways in which they influenced hominin species.

The benefits and future prospects of neuromorphic, or bio-inspired, computing technologies are discussed, as is the need for a global, coordinated approach to funding, research and collaboration.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Gaining the ability to make stone tools was a useful development for early human ancestors in the hominin branch of the evolutionary tree. Could studying orangutans provide clues to how this behaviour arose?

Two differing approaches that are used to study common and rare genetic causes of schizophrenia reveal convergent clues about the biology underlying this complex disorder.

The pathogen responsible for the continuing seventh cholera pandemic typically lacks self-replicating plasmids. Genetics, cell biology and bioinformatics analyses have identified two DNA-defence systems that protect bacterial populations from plasmids and bacteriophages, and that might have shaped the evolution of modern Vibrio cholerae.

A general method that quantifies and disentangles the effects of a gene’s mutations on the traits of its protein enables assessments of mutational effects on protein biophysics for many of the proteins of a living organism.

The antibiotic fidaxomicin acts selectively on the bacterium Clostridioides difficile, a main cause of intestinal infections. Structural and biochemical experiments reveal a region in the enzyme RNA polymerase that can sensitize the pathogen to fidaxomicin, helping to explain the drug’s selective clinical activity.

Plasmids — circular DNA molecules — are found in many bacteria, and carry genes that can give the host microorganism new features. The mystery of how a cholera-causing bacterium eliminates plasmids has now been solved.