Volume 609 Issue 7929, 29 September 2022

Policy debates concerning transgender people are embroiled in the culture wars. Let data and science — not politicians — guide laws.

The little mammals are accomplished vocalists — but some males are more accomplished than others.

As food prices rise because of Russia’s war on Ukraine, nations are likely to cope by converting forests and grasslands to farm fields, modelling shows.

A protein that boosts energy metabolism in immune cells might help to prevent tuberculosis infections taking hold.

The flexible device is sensitive to changes of just 10 micrometres in a mouse’s tumour size.

Imaging technique shows in 3D how bees build out a comb’s elaborate hexagonal cells.

Primeval droppings show that some animals that lived in what is now Greenland do not appear in the fossil record.

Groundwater stores on the Tibetan plateau have risen recently, but the bad news is that thawing snow and ice are the source.

The latest science news, in brief.

Researchers are hunting through waste water for heavily mutated SARS-CoV-2 variants that could be the next Omicron.

Perseverance has collected four rock samples from an ancient river delta where organisms might have thrived.

‘Jarring’ study reveals hiring bias at US institutions.

A severe heatwave in parts of China exacerbated a drought and fuelled wildfires.

DeepMind’s system for predicting the 3D structure of proteins is among five recipients of science’s most lucrative awards.

Brazilians will choose their new president on 2 October and Jair Bolsonaro is running for a second term. Critics say he has damaged the country’s science, people’s well-being and its threatened ecosystems.

When programmes expand, new complexities and indirect consequences must be studied.

US institutions and states are revamping hiring practices in an attempt to increase transparency about past misconduct in academia.

Conservation scientist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka looks after the health of mountain gorillas and livestock in southwest Uganda and teaches local residents how to avoid illness.

Scarce evidence indicates that key evolutionary steps for jawed vertebrates occurred during or before the Silurian period, 444 million to 419 million years ago. Fossil finds pull back the curtain on this interval.

An experimental platform that uses two different tools for controlling neutral atoms with laser light combines speed with scalability. The approach provides a crucial step towards realizing innovative quantum algorithms and simulations.

Can artificial cells be built from basic components? Systems that have complex architectures and functions evocative of natural cells have been prepared by recycling the contents of bacterial cells in synthetic droplets.

How certain subgroups of a childhood brain tumour called a medulloblastoma arise has been unclear. Evidence now implicates a cell type found only in developing human brains as the originator of these tumours.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Observations reveal the presence of large volumes of ionized gas surrounding four galaxy clusters. The properties of these ‘megahaloes’ are distinct from those of similar haloes near the clusters, implying different formation mechanisms.

Gaps in the fossil record mean that the origins of ancient animals such as jellyfish and corals have remained a mystery. Now, a long-awaited fossil discovery reveals key features of this group during the early stages of its evolution.

The nomenclature for human multicellular models of nervous system development and disease, including organoids, assembloids and transplants, is discussed and a consensus framework is presented.

For four galaxy clusters it is shown that the radio halo emission is embedded in a much larger emission that extends over 2–3 Mpc, filling the volume of the clusters.

By analysing Hubble Space Telescope/Cosmic Origins Spectrograph spectra, evidence is provided for the presence of a Magellanic Corona surrounding the Large Magellanic Cloud, as predicted given its high mass.

The universal control of six qubits in a ²⁸Si/SiGe quantum dot array is demonstrated, achieving Rabi oscillations for each qubit with visibilities of 93.5–98.0%, implying high readout and initialization fidelities.

Magnetically tunable three-dimensional photonic crystals are used to achieve the experimental demonstration of Chern vectors and their topological surface states, showing the Chern vector to be an intrinsic bulk topological invariant in three-dimensional topological materials.

By introducing a further modal dimension to transform a two-dimensional photonic waveguide array, a photonic topological insulator with protected topological surface states in three dimensions, enabled by a screw dislocation, is demonstrated.

Observations by transmission electron microscopy of deforming niobium and tungsten at low temperature shows that anomalous slip in body-centred cubic metals arises from the unusually high mobility of multi-junctions, which is a source of softening.

The ability to resolve single atoms in a liquid environment is demonstrated by combining a transmission electron microscope and a robust double graphene liquid cell, enabling studies of adatom motion at solid–liquid interfaces.

Data from multiple satellite sensors show that Antarctica lost almost 37,000 km² of ice-shelf area from 1997 to 2021, and that calving losses are as important as ice-shelf thinning.

Two new species of well-preserved jawed fishes with complete bodies from the early Silurian period (Telychian age, around 436 million years ago) of Chongqing, South China are described: a jawed stem gnathostome, Xiushanosteus mirabilis, and a chondrichthyan, Shenacanthus vermiformis.

Articulated remains of Tujiaaspis vividus reveal that galeaspids—extinct jawless vertebrates—had precursors to paired pectoral fins that consisted of paired, continuous pectoral–pelvic lateral fins that passively generated lift.

Direct evidence for the presence of jawed vertebrates in the early Silurian (around 439 million years ago) is provided by isolated tooth whorls of the gnathostome Qianodus duplicis from Guizhou province, China.

Fanjingshania renovata possesses dermal shoulder girdle plates and fin spines similar to those of a subset of stem chondrichthyans, but also has osteichthyan-like resorptive shedding of scale odontodes and an absence of odontogenic tissues in its spines.

An approach called cell state transition assessment and regulation uses diverse multiomics data to map cell states, model their transitions, and understand the signalling networks that control them.

Glucose signalling via TOR controls growth and differentiation through regulation of genome-wide histone methylation via FERTILIZATION-INDEPENDENT ENDOSPERM (FIE).

A new phylogenomic method is developed that can detect recombinations in virus lineages in pandemic-scale datasets.

Using HIV Env protein immunogen priming in rhesus monkeys followed by a long period without further immunization, we demonstrate germinal centre B cells lasting at least 6 months, showing promise in regard to difficult vaccine targets.

The lysosomal transmembrane protein CLN3 is required for the lysosomal clearance of glycerophosphodiesters in mice and in human cells, suggesting that the loss of CLN3 causes Batten disease in children due to defects in glycerophospholipid metabolism.

Multi-omic mapping shows that group 3 and group 4 medulloblastomas have a common, human-specific developmental origin in the cerebellar rhombic lip, providing a basis for their ambiguous molecular features and overlapping anatomical location, and for the difficulty of modelling these tumours in mice.

Derailed differentiation of human-specific progenitors of the developing cerebellar rhombic lip is the cause of group 4 medulloblastoma, the most common childhood brain tumour. 

A bacteriogenic strategy for constructing membrane-bounded, molecularly crowded, and compositionally, structurally and morphologically complex synthetic cells provides opportunities for the fabrication of new synthetic cell modules and augmented living/synthetic cell constructs.

The nuclear mitotic apparatus protein NuMA helps to protect genes from oxidative damage by occupying regions around transcription start sites, binding DNA repair factors and promoting transcription following damage.

Cryogenic electron microscopy analyses reveal a new, compact structure of telomeric chromatin, providing mechanistic insight into telomere maintenance and function.

Cryo-EM structures provide insight into how the antifolate methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug, is recognized by the reduced folate carrier.