Volume 581 Issue 7809, 28 May 2020

Landmark study identifies the genes that it seems people can and cannot live without and highlights ongoing challenges in making data sets more representative of the world’s population.

Economists must improve tools to weigh trade-offs between health and wealth, says Andy Haldane.

Storing Edvard Munch’s masterpiece at low humidity will help to preserve its colours, analysis shows.

Rabies virus helps to trace the nerve network that keeps the stomach in good form.

The core might contain Earth’s biggest reservoir as a result of hydrogen moving into the early planet’s centre.

Enormous predators of the deep are forced to invest extra time to chase luminous prey.

The latest science news, in brief.

Scientists urge caution over hints of success emerging from small human and animal studies.

Early analyses suggest that female academics are posting fewer preprints and starting fewer research projects than their male peers.

US scientists say that better data, testing and hospital preparedness are key to erasing inequalities — and to defeating the pandemic overall.

NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins is at the forefront of a new crop of space explorers destined for the Moon, and maybe one day, Mars.

After three months adrift on a ship, scientists with the MOSAiC mission returned with crucial information about the rapidly warming far north.

Analysts are tracking false rumours about COVID-19 in hopes of curbing their spread.

Breakneck triage nails many diagnoses, but deeper treatment is needed.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the week’s best science picks.

Chemist and lawyer who shaped international weapons conventions.

Restricting movement on the basis of biology threatens freedom, fairness and public health.

The first long-term study of how lung cancer evolves is revealing that therapies targeting multiple proteins in tumour cells could help to outpace the disease.

Scientists with fieldwork experience in remote areas share stories of social isolation, staying positive and eking out supplies.

Computational approaches help to map the extensive biochemical chatter between bacteria and their human hosts.

Museum curator Andrew Hosie gets a close-up introduction to beautiful and bizarre organisms from the depths of the ocean.

A massive genome-sequencing and analysis effort has produced the most comprehensive sets of data and tools for understanding human genetic variation so far. The resource will be invaluable to biologists of every stripe.

Efforts to make hydrogen from water directly using sunlight have been hampered by the inefficiency of the catalysts that promote the process. A model system demonstrates that almost perfectly efficient catalysts can be made.

The multi-subunit protein haemoglobin relies on complex interactions between its components to function properly. Analysis of ancient precursors suggests that its evolution from a simple monomer involved only a few steps.

The baryon density determined along the lines of sight to localized fast radio bursts is consistent with that determined from the cosmic microwave background and required by Big Bang nucleosynthesis.

Measurements of low-energy electronic states of radium monofluoride validate predictions of the use of this short-lived radioactive molecule in exploring fundamental physics and provide evidence of its suitability for laser cooling.

A thermo-assisted spin-coating process followed by packaging is used to fabricate sodium films that are stable for several months, enabling the realization of plasmonic devices with state-of-the-art performance at near-infrared wavelengths.

Large-area single-crystal high-index copper and nickel foils with several types of facet are fabricated using mild pre-oxidation of the metal foil surface followed by annealing in a reducing atmosphere.

Water splitting with an internal quantum efficiency of almost unity is achieved using a modified semiconductor photocatalyst that selectively promotes the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions on separate crystal facets.

The synthesis of tertiary amines is achieved through a carbonyl alkylative amination reaction facilitated by visible light, in which an aldehyde and an amine condense to form an iminium ion that subsequently reacts with alkyl radical.

Adalatherium hui, a newly discovered gondwanatherian mammal from Madagascar dated to near the end of the Cretaceous period, shows features consistent with a long evolutionary trajectory of isolation in an insular environment.

Odorant-dependent sniff responses predicted the long-term survival rates of patients with severe brain injury, and discriminated between individuals who were unresponsive and in minimally conscious states.

A catalogue of predicted loss-of-function variants in 125,748 whole-exome and 15,708 whole-genome sequencing datasets from the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) reveals the spectrum of mutational constraints that affect these human protein-coding genes.

A large empirical assessment of sequence-resolved structural variants from 14,891 genomes across diverse global populations in the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) provides a reference map for disease-association studies, population genetics, and diagnostic screening.

A novel variant annotation metric that quantifies the level of expression of genetic variants across tissues is validated in the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) and is shown to improve rare variant interpretation.

Analysis of predicted loss-of-function variants from 125,748 human exomes and 15,708 whole genomes in the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) provides a roadmap for human ‘knockout’ studies and a guide for future research into disease biology and drug-target selection.

Detailed virological analysis of nine cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) provides proof of active replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in tissues of the upper respiratory tract.

The infant gut is colonized first by temperate bacteriophages induced from pioneer bacteria and later by viruses that replicate in human cells, the populations of which are modulated by breastfeeding.

The secondary bile acid 3β-hydroxy-deoxycholic (isodeoxycholic) acid, produced by gut bacteria, promotes the generation of colonic extrathymic regulatory T cells, whose immunosuppressive activities are known to be essential for intestinal health.

Experimental analysis of reconstructed ancestral globins reveals that haemoglobin’s complex tetrameric structure and oxygen-binding functions evolved by simple genetic and biophysical mechanisms.