Volume 613 Issue 7945, 26 January 2023

As researchers dive into the brave new world of advanced AI chatbots, publishers need to acknowledge their legitimate uses and lay down clear guidelines to avoid abuse.

The Ebola outbreak in Uganda was a wake-up call. We need preventive vaccination.

Genetic variants that confer fire resistance could replace the artificial flame retardants currently added to textiles.

A now-extinct species of large reptile lived on Madagascar, where its relatives still reside.

Repeating bursts of X-rays lead scientists to a black hole that eats in spurts.

People with hay fever have a higher proportion of a certain bacterial species in their noses.

Fewer stars are visible worldwide now than a decade ago, according to measurements by community scientists.

A device made using 3D printed components is a snap to assemble.

A US$9-million programme during the 2020 presidential race only slightly altered voter turnout, but even a small effect could be consequential in a tight race.

Journals have begun retracting publications with suspicious links to sites trading in author positions.

Publication requires complainants to disclose financial conflicts in the wake of controversy over Cassava Sciences’ experimental treatment simufilam.

At least four articles credit the AI tool as a co-author, as publishers scramble to regulate its use.

Guidance document calls on agencies to draft protective scientific-integrity policies for White House review within two months.

The government has abandoned its ‘zero-COVID’ policy and researchers from inside and outside the country are organizing to meet.

Scientists call for the National Science Foundation to add a question about sexual orientation to its 2023 workforce surveys.

Detailed radio observations turn up previously unseen remnants of dying stars in the Galaxy.

With a slew of tools to trick out immune cells, researchers are expanding the repertoire of CAR-T therapies.

Scientists deploy networking, collaboration and long-term thinking to win private donor dollars.

Nature’s pick of tools and techniques that are poised to have an outsized impact on science in the coming year.

Boyan Slat founded and operates a business that seeks to reduce ocean plastic pollution by 90%.

Messenger RNA has 64 possible triplet sequences, or codons, three of which usually terminate protein synthesis. But some organisms can use all codons to specify amino acids, thanks in part to a surprising feature of a transfer RNA.

A trio of tracers has debunked a long-held model of the origins of spring water on Mount Fuji, revealing interactions between shallow and deep aquifer layers, and providing a fresh approach for probing mountain groundwater flow.

CRISPR–Cas is a bacterial defence system that can attack invading DNA to protect host cells, or help to insert DNA safely into the genome. Structures of this latter type of CRISPR–Cas system have now been visualized.

The study of how chemical reactions work is key to the design of new reactions, but relies on hard work and expert knowledge. A machine-learning tool has been developed that could change the way this challenge is approached.

A computational resource can identify candidate protein targets for almost all members of a major class of kinase enzyme in humans, with implications for understanding cell signalling in health and disease.

This Perspective reviews the evidence for and against the existence of a fetal microbiome and concludes that detected microbial signals are most likely the result of contamination, suggesting that the ‘sterile womb’ hypothesis is correct.

An experiment is described in which the conversion of a single photon in a multimode cavity into a shower of low-energy photons was attempted, but failed owing to many-body localization and violation of Fermi’s golden rule.

The direct observation of in-plane charged domain walls in BiFeO₃ ferroelectric films a few nanometres thick, their deterministic creation, manipulation and annihilation by applied voltage, as well the demonstration of their memristive functionality is reported.

By using sub-cycle light transients to induce optical field emission of electron pulses from tungsten nanotips and a weak replica of the same transient, investigation of attosecond emission dynamics in real time is demonstrated.

Innovations in device design, material fabrication and deep learning are described, leading to a wearable ultrasound transducer capable of dynamic cardiac imaging in various environments and under different conditions.

Because open-circuit voltage deficit is greater in wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells, the authors introduce diammonium molecules to modify perovskite surface states and achieve a more uniform spatial distribution of surface potential, enabling record voltage all-perovskite tandem solar cells.

A 3D printing platform comprising a rotational multimaterial printhead is demonstrated, enabling the fabrication of helically architected filaments and lattices with programmable subvoxel control.

Mechanistic elucidation through currently available kinetic analysis is limited by mathematical approximations and human interpretation, here a deep neural network model has been trained to analyse ordinary kinetic data and automatically elucidate the corresponding mechanism class.

The authors show that, in a chronic social defeat stress rodent model, a subset of male and female mice avoided social interaction with non-aggressive, same-sex juvenile mice and did not develop context-dependent social reward following these encounters.

Vaccinated people express discriminatory attitudes towards unvaccinated individuals across cultures.

Mass spectrometry and structural studies demonstrate the specific changes in protein composition that accompany the transition of ribosomes in zebrafish and Xenopus eggs from a dormant to an active state during early embryogenesis.

Members of the DUF368-containing and DedA transmembrane protein families have conditional roles in undecaprenyl phosphate translocation in Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria and may have a widely conserved function in the biogenesis of microbial cell surface glycopolymers.

A study identifies two broadly conserved families of flippases that catalyse the transport of undecaprenyl phosphate in bacteria and could function to recycle dolichol phosphate in eukaryotes and archaea.

Pre-existing high-affinity antibodies alter germinal centre and memory B cell selection by lowering the activation threshold for B cells and through direct masking of their cognate epitopes, thereby permitting a diverse set of abundant lower-affinity clones targeting alternate epitopes to participate in the immune response.

γδ T cells contribute to the response to immune checkpoint blockade treatment in patients with HLA-class-I-negative DNA mismatch repair-deficient colon cancers. .

Analyses of in-frame stop codons in protein-coding genes of Blastocrithidia nonstop with all three stop codons reassigned reveal a mechanism for UGA reassignment in eukaryotes involving shortening of the tRNA anticodon stem and a mutant eRF1 release factor.

Analysis of the kinase activity of 300 protein Ser/Thr kinases reveals that the substrate specificity of the kinome is substantially more diverse than expected and is driven extensively by negative selectivity

Bitopic functionalized ligands based on fentanyl can target the sodium ion-binding site of the mu-opioid receptor and selectively modulate downstream signalling pathways, potentially leading to safer analgesics.

Structural studies of the CRISPR-associated transposon comprising Cas12k, TnsC, TnsB and TniQ from Scytonema hofmannii using cryo-electron microscopy reveal insights into the architecture and mechanism of RNA-guided DNA transposition.

Structural studies of Escherichia coli transcription intrinsic termination complexes representing distinct intermediates using cryo-electron microscopy provide insights into the steps and mechanism of transcription termination.