Volume 583 Issue 7818, 30 July 2020

The US government needs to strengthen the agency charged with preventing the spread of disease — not undermine it.

As a Black woman who is the chair of a university science department, people have questioned my right to exist at every stage.

Features at ancient Greek sanctuary would have aided visitors with impaired mobility.

The pandemic grounded many commercial flights, starving forecast models of valuable data acquired at high altitudes.

Population density and water storage created a new ecological niche for the disease-carrying insects.

Uncommon genetic variant dampens the response of uterine neurons that sense pain.

The latest science news, in brief.

In Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the hard-won lessons of a deadly pandemic cannot entirely compensate for poverty and weak health systems.

Scientists caution against comparing immune responses shown in early-stage trials, and say there might be more than one path to an effective vaccine.

Archaeologists say stone artefacts point to occupation more than 30,000 years ago — but not everyone is convinced.

Tianwen-1 is the second of three spacecraft set to take off this month for the red planet.

Salim Abdool Karim says the country must rediscover its community spirit to deal with a coming surge in infections.

Images of the dwarf planet’s far side are revealing possible signs of liquid water, mysterious shards of ice and new theories for the frigid world’s birth.

To immunize people against misinformation, public-health researchers must forge authentic relationships that build confidence, urges Heidi Larson. By Joan Donovan

Look beyond gender — if research thrives on collaboration, a book asks, why do we reward individualism?

Some funders and journals are trying to support female researchers and others whose publications and positions are at risk.

Experimental physicist Sheila Rowan works with laser beams and suspended mirrors to sharpen detection of collapsing stars and other celestial events.

The third phase of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project has generated the most comprehensive catalogue yet of the functional elements that regulate our genes.

Observations of a star system called the Phoenix stellar stream offer the first evidence of vanished star clusters that had extremely low levels of heavy elements. Their remnants might cast light on the early assembly of the Milky Way.

A clinical trial has tested the use of gene-sequencing results for lung cancer to match patients to targeted therapies. Some paired treatments were a good fit, but others did not succeed, for reasons that will require further exploration.

The prolonged cold of winter is required for the flowering of many plants. Now the identification of a previously unknown long-term cold-sensing mechanism helps to reveal how plants are able to time their flowering correctly.

The authors summarize the history of the ENCODE Project, the achievements of ENCODE 1 and ENCODE 2, and how the new data generated and analysed in ENCODE 3 complement the previous phases.

The authors summarize the data produced by phase III of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, a resource for better understanding of the human and mouse genomes.

A combination of five assays is used to produce a catalogue of RNA elements to which RNA-binding proteins bind in human cells.

ChIP–seq and CETCh–seq data are used to analyse binding maps for 208 transcription factors and other chromatin-associated proteins in a single human cell type, providing a comprehensive catalogue of the transcription factor landscape and gene regulatory networks in these cells.

A high-density DNase I cleavage map from 243 human cell and tissue types provides a genome-wide, nucleotide-resolution map of human transcription factor footprints.

A map of cohesin-mediated chromatin loops in 24 types of human cells identifies loops that show cell-type-specific variation, indicating that chromatin loops may help to specify cell-specific gene expression programs and functions.

Analysis of chromatin state and accessibility in mouse tissues from twelve sites and eight developmental stages provides a comprehensive view of chromatin dynamics.

Analysis of 168 methylomes from 12 mouse tissues at 9 developmental stages sheds light on the epigenetic and regulatory landscape during mammalian fetal development.

RNA expression is quantified at a tissue level in seventeen mouse tissues across embryonic development, and at the single-cell level in the developing limb.

The Phoenix stream in the Milky Way halo is shown to be a tidally disrupted remnant of an unusually metal-poor globular cluster, which was possibly destroyed during Galactic evolution.

The night-time seeing (the extent to which a star’s light is blurred by the atmosphere) at Dome A, the highest part on the Antarctic plateau, can be as good as 0.13 arcseconds above a height of only 8 metres.

Superconducting giant atoms are realized in a waveguide by coupling small atoms to the waveguide at multiple discrete locations, producing tunable atom–waveguide coupling and enabling decoherence-free interactions.

Photons and plasmons hybridize into polaritons in three-dimensional crystals of plasmonic nanoparticles, leading to deep strong light–matter coupling and the breakdown of the Purcell effect.

A spin–orbit-entangled exciton state in the van der Waals material NiPS₃ is observed, and found to arise from many-body states of a Zhang–Rice singlet.

A solution-based lithography-assisted epitaxial-growth-and-transfer method is used to fabricate single-crystal hybrid perovskites on any surface, with precise control of the thickness, area and chemical composition gradient.

Current models are too noisy to predict climate usefully on decadal timescales, but two-stage post-processing of model outputs greatly improves predictions of decadal variations in North Atlantic winter climate.

Fishing has had a profound impact on global reef shark populations, and the absence or presence of sharks is strongly correlated with national socio-economic conditions and reef governance.

Current outcomes are reported from the ongoing National Lung Matrix Trial, an umbrella trial for the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer in which patients are triaged according to their tumour genotype and matched with targeted therapeutic agents.

In the thalamic reticular nucleus there are two neuron types that are segregated into central and edge zones and receive inputs from different thalamocortical nuclei, creating subcircuits with distinct dynamics.

A study integrating single-cell RNA-sequencing and electrophysiology data shows that in mouse, the cellular repertoire of the thalamic reticular nucleus is characterized by a transcriptomic gradient defined at its extremes by mutually exclusive expression of Spp1 and Ecel1, providing insights into the organizational principles underlying the divergent functions of this brain region.

The authors find that slow plant growth at low temperatures during winter reduces dilution of the transcription factor NTL8, which allows slow accumulation of NTL8 and thus the gradual increase in transcription of VIN3—a gene involved in memory of cold exposure.

Infection with SARS-CoV-2 causes interstitial pneumonia and viral replication in the lungs of transgenic mice that express a human version of ACE2, confirming the pathogenicity of the virus in this model.

The pathogenicity and transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 in golden (Syrian) hamsters resemble features of COVID-19 in human patients, suggesting that these hamsters could be used to model this disease.

The authors show that leptin signalling regulates the plasticity of sympathetic architecture of adipose tissue via a top-down neural pathway that is crucial for energy homeostasis.

Analysis of B-cell leukaemia samples reveals that oncogenic mutations do not cause malignant transformation unless they converge on the same signalling pathway, and that it may be possible clinically to combine inhibition of the principal oncogenic driver with reactivation of divergent pathways.

The histone variant H3.3 is phosphorylated at Ser31 in induced genes, and this selective mark stimulates the histone methyltransferase SETD2 and ejects the ZMYND11 repressor, thus revealing a role for histone phosphorylation in amplifying de novo transcription.

Single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer and real-time confocal laser tracking with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy together characterize how individual lac repressor molecules bypass operator sites while exploring the DNA surface at microsecond timescales.

A cryo-electron microscopy structure of the β1-adrenoceptor coupled to β-arrestin 1 and activated by the biased agonist formoterol, as well as the crystal structure of a related formoterol-bound adrenoreceptor, provide insights into biased signalling in these systems.