Volume 603 Issue 7901, 17 March 2022

If researchers want to have maximum impact, women must be at the table.

Research-reform advocates must beware unintended consequences.

To navigate the long road to net zero, energy researchers must grapple with the lessons of history.

Obese mice exposed to short bouts of heat therapy shed significant amounts of weight.

Look to a shark’s posture, not its eyes, to gauge whether it’s asleep.

Screening method detects Zika and chikungunya viruses using materials that fit onto easily transported paper test cards.

Synthesis of the COVID-19 antiviral molnupiravir is easier and more efficient when a bacterial enzyme is on the job.

Nearly 6,000 measurements from rivers big and small allow scientists to estimate carbon emissions from Earth’s waterways.

Two species of tropical coral kept growing even as the water in their tanks became hotter and more acidic.

Efforts to protect at-risk forests are projected to make up for the forest lost to an enormous mine.

The latest science news, in brief.

Acquitted nanotechnology researcher Anming Hu returns to his lab after two years — and is still grappling with the aftershocks of his ordeal.

Fights over who invented the gene-editing technology are becoming more complex, and could carry on for years.

Advances in the technique have bolstered its reputation as a tool for investigating faked artwork.

Court ruling says that the academic-networking website is responsible for papers uploaded by its users — but ResearchGate plans to appeal the decision.

Controversial lawsuit has put the US government’s ability to slash carbon emissions on the line.

Researchers are building a human ‘pangenome’ that would represent the entirety of human genetic variation. But not everyone is ready to sign on.

From graphite to graphene and government, Mildred Dresselhaus fought for equity all the way.

The Plan S architect, scourge of paywalls, reveals how the policy sausage got made.

Geneticist who demonstrated the universality of life’s code.

Global public-health pioneer and equity advocate.

Build a major genomics resource on the continent to help breeders and conservationists.

Two years since COVID-19 forced labs to shut down, group leaders describe how academic research has changed, perhaps forever.

Julia Casanueva enhances the sensitivity of the Virgo interferometer to better detect distant stellar explosions.

An analysis of carbon stored in the plants and soil of an African savannah suggests that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations — and thus global warming — might be less affected by frequent fires than we thought.

It is textbook knowledge that some bacteria can generate methane enzymatically. A study now provides evidence that an alternative, non-enzymatic mode of methane production could occur in all metabolically active cells.

High-precision measurements of exotic atoms containing antimatter are shown to be equally precise when the atoms are immersed in superfluid helium. Such immersion could be used for other atoms in studies of dark matter.

A long-standing goal of biology is the ability to predict gene expression from DNA sequence. A type of artificial intelligence known as a neural network, combined with high-throughput experiments, now brings this goal a step closer.

An assessment of the land-to-ocean cycling of carbon through inland waters, estuaries, tidal wetlands and continental shelf waters provides a perspective on the global carbon cycle and identifies key knowledge gaps.

The spectral lines of antiprotonic helium atoms are shown to retain their sub-gigahertz linewidth upon submersion in a bath of superfluid helium, enabling the hyperfine structure to be resolved.

A hybrid quantum-classical algorithm for solving many-electron problems is developed, enabling the simulation, with the aid of 16 qubits on a quantum processor, of chemical systems with up to 120 orbitals.

Using continuous microwave application without substantial heating, Floquet–Andreev states in graphene Josephson junctions are realized, and their energy spectra are measured directly by superconducting tunnelling spectroscopy.

A dandelion-inspired wireless solar-powered sensing device weighing 30 milligrams that transmits data through radio backscatter achieves dispersal over a wide area by travelling on the breeze, and successfully lands upright.

The fabrication of copper thin films with ultraflat surfaces and only occasional mono-atomic steps, which show semi-permanent resistance to oxidation over long periods, is reported and the mechanism explained using first-principles calculations.

Leveraging enzymatic selectivity, a single reaction stream provides a single diastereomer of the cyclic dinucleotide MK-1454, a promising immune-oncology drug candidate, without the use of protecting groups or chiral auxiliaries.

A direct estimate is provided of the whole-ecosystem carbon response to fire suppression in a mesic African savanna, showing limited increase in carbon storage despite a large increase in tree cover.

By generating a land use and land cover change emissions dataset using visibility data from two key deforestation regions, analysis of the data suggests a decrease in the CO₂ airborne fraction since 1959.

A framework for studying and engineering gene regulatory DNA sequences, based on deep neural sequence-to-expression models trained on large-scale libraries of random DNA, provides insight into the evolution, evolvability and fitness landscapes of regulatory DNA.

A sequence licking task reveals a set of key cortical regions for the coding of movement sequences in mice.

Follicle-stimulating hormone acts directly on hippocampal and cortical neurons to accelerate amyloid-β and Tau deposition and impair cognition in mice displaying features of Alzheimer’s disease.

A non-canonical tricarboxylic acid cycle is required for changes in cell state.

Methane formation by a ROS-mediated process is linked to metabolic activity and is identified as a conserved feature across living systems.

T cell responses to spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) are broadly similar to the responses to ancestral, Beta (B.1.351) and Delta (B.1.617.2) spike protein in vaccinated, infected and unvaccinated individuals.

Current vaccines induce broadly cross-reactive cellular immunity against SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron, and provide protection against severe disease despite a substantially reduced neutralizing antibody response.

Pathways of glycan-mediated B cell suppression during pregnancy are important for promoting fetomaternal tolerance.

In bacteria, a newly identified endonuclease activated by ribosome collisions truncates mRNA to trigger rescue of stalled ribosomes.

Bacterial MutS2, a paralogue of the DNA mismatch-repair protein MutS, is found to bind collided ribosomes and function in translational quality control.

A bacterial enzyme is characterized and demonstrated to have Ni²⁺-dependent activity and high specificity for free guanidine enabling the bacteria to use guanidine as the sole nitrogen source for growth.

An alternative approach to metalloprotein design shows that it is possible to overcome the restrictions of the Irving–Williams series and achieve both flexibility and specificity in the binding of metal ions.

Combining NMR spectroscopy-derived pseudocontact shifts (PCSs) with Carr–Purcell–Meiboom–Gill (CPMG) relaxation dispersion enables protein structure determination of lowly populated high-energy states that are essential for macromolecular function.