Volume 588 Issue 7839, 24 December 2020

Ten profiles illustrate an unforgettable year that propelled research teams to the front of the world’s stage.

The coronavirus pandemic shaped the year in research — from vaccines and treatments to campus shutdowns and virtual meetings.

A flood of coronavirus research swept websites and journals this year. It changed how and what scientists study, a Nature analysis shows.

Mars missions, record-breaking wildfires and a room-temperature superconductor are among this year’s top non-COVID stories.

A new virus, wafer-thin solar cells, gene-edited squid and more.

A COVID vaccine developer, an Arctic voyager and a prime minister are some of the people behind the year’s big research stories.

Highlights from News & Views published this year.

Amid all the year’s losses, I grieve what was once the world’s biggest radio telescope, where I got my scientific start.

First footage of ‘pseudocopulation’ shows the lengths certain molluscs go to to mate.

Long atomic strings that are woven together create a structure with symbolic power for adherents of Buddhism.

Changes triggered by obesity help to give tumour cells the upper hand in the struggle for nutrients.

In the past 35 years, some US waterways have become greener and others yellower, providing clues to ecosystem health.

The latest science news, in brief.

Scientists reveal further details about the damage sustained under Trump — and the challenges for Biden in restoring science’s standing at the agency.

Sweeping calculation suggests it could be — but how to fix the problem is unclear.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain say the vaccine is 86% effective, but scientists would like to see data to support the claim.

With the festive season ahead, Nature examines what is known about the risks of COVID spread, and how researchers will spend their time off.

Outbreaks have long wrought fear, lies, intolerance, inequality and ruin — will we ever learn?

Records of past pandemics are patchy. This one has seen a global frenzy of collecting.

The head of scientific work at the World Health Organization reflects on the agency’s challenges and achievements as it navigates the COVID pandemic.

Seven government researchers who helped to guide their governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic speak out.

Scientists offer their views on what’s important for the coming year.

UK geoscientist Christopher Jackson will be the first Black researcher to deliver a Christmas lecture at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

Populations of river fish are threatened by pressures on land and water resources. Networks of reserves managed by Indigenous people at community level offer a way to conserve fish diversity and enhance yields of nearby fisheries.

Microscopy methods that reveal the spatial patterns of individual types of microbe are limited by the number of different species that can be monitored together. A new technique now provides progress on this front.

Wetlands remove nitrate pollution from water effectively. An analysis shows that this effect is constrained in the United States by the distribution of wetlands, and could be increased by targeting wetland restoration to nitrate sources.

A 3D-printing technique has been developed that can produce millimetre- to centimetre-scale objects with micrometre-scale features. It relies on chemical reactions triggered by the intersection of two light beams.

A chip-scale platform is developed for the conversion of a single microwave excitation of a superconducting qubit into optical photons, with potential uses in quantum computer networks.

A reinforcement-learning algorithm that combines a tree-based search with a learned model achieves superhuman performance in high-performance planning and visually complex domains, without any knowledge of their underlying dynamics.

Strong electron–electron interactions in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene can fundamentally change the topology of the system’s flat bands, producing a hierarchy of strongly correlated topological insulators in modest magnetic fields.

Topological plasmonic spin textures are excited by shining light on a structured silver film, and imaging defines how these quasiparticle field and spin textures evolve on the nanometre and femtosecond scales.

By combining the use of photoswitchable photoinitators and intersecting light beams, objects and complex systems can be produced rapidly with higher definition than is possible using state-of-the art macroscopic volumetric methods.

Analysis of US continental wetland inventory data combined with model simulations indicate that a spatially targeted 10% increase in wetland area could double wetland nitrogen removal.

A network of small, community-run river reserves in Thailand increases local fish biomass, diversity and richness.

Analysis of data on species co-occurrence in the Paleobiology Database using a new machine learning algorithm reveals that mass extinctions and mass radiations are not coupled in evolutionary history.

An analysis using ribosome-profiling and matched RNA-sequencing data for three organs across five mammalian species and a bird enables the comparison of translatomes and transcriptomes, revealing patterns of co-evolution of these two expression layers.

In the mouse visual cortex, the excitatory and inhibitory presynaptic neurons of individual layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons are spatially offset to generate direction-selective responses.

In zebrafish, the expression levels of the neuropeptide Pth2 change as exposure to conspecifics is limited or increased, and these changes track the presence of individuals and group density through mechanical stimulations induced by the movements of other fish.

NAD⁺ is shown to be a ligand of the armadillo/heat repeat motifs (ARM) domain of SARM1, and it is suggested that this binding of NAD⁺ mediates self-inhibition of SARM1.

Multilayer 3D reconstitution of bladder stem cells with stromal cells enables recapitulation of the architecture and molecular functions of bladder tissue.

A long-term culture method for organoids derived from single adult human lung cells is used to identify progenitor cells and study SARS-CoV-2 infection.

High-phylogenetic-resolution microbiome mapping by fluorescence in situ hybridization (HiPR-FISH) enables the spatial mapping of hundreds of species of microorganisms and shows how microbial networks in the mouse gut are affected by antibiotic treatment.

Eight structures of human neutralizing antibodies that target the SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor-binding domain are reported and classified into four categories, suggesting combinations for clinical use.

Galactosaminogalactan of Aspergillus fumigatus acts as a pathogen-associated molecular pattern that activates the NLRP3 inflammasome, which is crucial for anti-fungal host defence.

Inhibiting the PCSK9 protein, a regulator of cholesterol metabolism, enhances immune checkpoint therapy in mouse models of cancer, in a manner that depends on the regulation of antigen-presenting MHC I molecules.

A rapid labelling and immunopurification-based method is used to isolate melanosomes and profile their labile metabolites, revealing that MFSD12 has a key role in cysteine import into melanosomes and lysosomes.

Lymphatic endothelium secretes factors needed for heart growth and repair such as RELN, which helps with heart regeneration and cardioprotection after myocardial infarction.

Inhibitors of mitochondrial transcription that target human mitochondrial RNA polymerase provide a chemical biology tool for studying the role of mitochondrial DNA expression in a wide range of pathologies.