Volume 602 Issue 7896, 10 February 2022

A major milestone was reached last week when scientists in South Africa reproduced Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. COVID-19 patents must now be shared.

We need better numbers if we are to manage the pandemic.

Indigenous people in what is now Peru partially re-assembled human skeletons, perhaps after desecration by European tomb robbers.

Orcas in one area of the southern Indian Ocean now snatch some 180 tonnes of valuable Patagonian toothfish from fishing lines every year.

US kitchen appliances that burn natural gas emit much more methane than previously realized.

Shigella bacteria, which kill more than 200,000 people every year, are evolving resistance to crucial antibiotics.

Molecule that incorporates a light-sensitive ruthenium compound can store solar energy, then release it later to form hydrogen fuel.

Scientists sift through samples from more than 25,000 people to identify a host of mutations that could make tumours more aggressive.

Data from more than 150,000 households show that jabs for adults drastically reduce young family members’ risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The latest science news, in brief.

Only half of participants who were exposed to the coronavirus developed infections, most with mild symptoms.

Public-health specialists are debating the need for a shot targeting the variant, now causing a record-breaking surge in COVID-19 cases.

Several teams hope to use pulsars in the Milky Way to detect ripples in space-time made by distant supermassive black holes.

Two of the first people treated with CAR-T-cell cancer therapies are still in remission 12 years on.

A report by activists found that half of debunked online disinformation targeting three prominent scientists remains live and unlabelled.

The quantum computer revolution could break encryption — but more-secure algorithms can safeguard privacy.

Separating urine from the rest of sewage could mitigate some difficult environmental problems, but there are big obstacles to radically re-engineering one of the most basic aspects of life.

Inequitable access to the fruits of research during the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the urgency — and feasibility — of overhauling the R&D system.

As companies compete for talent, a candidate’s attitude can matter more than their credentials.

Despite an ongoing civil war and economic crisis, museum manager Fahd Albarraq and his colleagues want Yemenis to continue visiting the museum’s collection.

Sérgio Rocha breeds fast-growing marijuana plants at Viçosa University.

Driving a racing car requires a tremendous amount of skill. Now, artificial intelligence has challenged the idea that this skill is exclusive to humans — and it might even change the way automated vehicles are designed.

Grafting has long been used to join tissues of different plants in horticulture and research. Methods have now been devised to extend the technique to plants called monocotyledons, which include major crops such as cereals and bananas.

Measurements indicate that electrons move in loops between the atoms of an intriguing class of superconducting material. Such dynamics breaks key symmetries of the crystal lattice — suggesting the material hosts a rare state of matter.

Nature’s pages feature the discovery of a key defence response, and a collection of items from an inventor highlights developments in photography.

The nervous and immune systems interact in a bidirectional manner. It emerges that inflammation in the body activates brain cells that, when later reactivated, can trigger a recapitulation of the inflammatory response.

An X-ray source is detected at the expected position of the white dwarf star G29–38, which enables the calculation of the accretion rate of planetary material without using stellar atmosphere models.

Using the game Gran Turismo, an agent was trained with a combination of deep reinforcement learning algorithms and specialized training scenarios, demonstrating success against championship-level human racers.

Evidence is presented for the association of triatomic molecules near the Feshbach resonance in an ultracold gas comprising a mixture of ²³Na⁴⁰K molecules and ⁴⁰K atoms, along with an estimation of the binding energy of the triatomic molecules.

Real-space visualization of the magnetic fields in antiferromagnetic haematite is achieved using atomic-resolution differential phase contrast scanning transmission electron microscopy in a magnetic-field-free environment.

Analysing the structure of a PbTiO₃ epitaxial layer sandwiched between SrRuO₃ electrodes led to observation of a topology with two periodic modulations that form an incommensurate polar crystal, providing an analogue to incommensurate spin crystals.

An investigation of muon spin relaxation shows time-reversal symmetry-breaking charge order, intertwined with correlated superconductivity, due to orbital currents in the kagome superconductor KV₃Sb₅.

A chemically complex alloy that exhibits a high elastic strain limit and low internal friction is described; it also has an Elinvar effect (invariant elastic modulus) over a large temperature range, up to 627 °C.

Molecular dynamics simulations show that the light elements hydrogen, oxygen and carbon become highly diffusive like liquid in solid iron under the inner-core conditions, leading to a reduction in the seismic velocities.

Bayesian analysis of datasets comprising genomes from multiple mammalian species can efficiently and precisely decipher their evolutionary timeline.

Haploinsufficiency in three genes associated with risk of autism spectrum disorder—KMT5B, ARID1B and CHD8—in cell lines from multiple donors results in cell-type-specific asynchronous development of GABAergic neurons and cortical deep-layer excitatory projection neurons.

In rhesus monkeys, learning of a motor task is accompanied by uniform changes in preparatory activity in motor cortex that are orthogonal to the force-predictive neural state subspace.

Intra- and inter-specific grafting is possible in most orders of monocotyledonous plants, and this process could be used to combat diseases that affect crops, such as Panama disease in bananas.

A mechanism involving intracellular recycling of the morphogen Decapentaplegic (Dpp) underlies the scaling of the Dpp gradient in the Drosophila wing disc, and this is modulated by the extracellular factors Pentagone and Dally.

Experiments in a hamster model of COVID-19 and human airway epithelial cells show that the spike N501Y mutation is the major determinant of increased fitness of the B.1.1.7 Alpha variant of SARS-CoV-2.

The P681R mutation in the spike protein renders the Delta variant more pathogenic than prototypic SARS-CoV-2 in infected hamsters, and facilitates spike protein cleavage and enhances viral fusogenicity.

The Alpha variant of SARS-CoV-2 outcompetes progenitor SARS-CoV-2 in upper respiratory tract replication competition in vivo.

A distinct class of broadly neutralizing antibodies to the influenza virus target a membrane-proximal anchor epitope of the haemagglutinin stalk domain.

Mechanisms explaining the milder clinical syndrome that is observed in children with SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Unphosphorylated PINK1 of Pediculus humanus corporis forms a dimerized state before undergoing trans-autophosphorylation, and phosphorylated PINK1 undergoes a conformational change in the N-lobe to produce its phosphorylated, ubiquitin-binding state.

Structural and spectroscopic studies show how a B₁₂-dependent radical SAM enzyme catalyses unique and challenging alkylation chemistry, including protein post-translational modification required for methane biosynthesis.

X-ray crystal structures of TokK, a cobalamin- or B₁₂-dependent radical SAM methylase, provide insight into how these enzymes use sequential radical-mediated methylations to assemble the C6 side chain of carbapenem antibiotics.