a bat flying in a cave

Diversity in bat communities predicts coronavirus prevalence

Magdalena Meyer, Dominik Melville and colleagues study coronavirus infections in bats, and find that coronavirus prevalence is higher in less diverse bat communities.

Announcements

  • sugar crystal through a microscope

    Our editors highlight articles they see as particularly interesting or important in these new pages spanning all research areas.

  • Metrics image

    Nature Communications has a 2-year impact factor of 17.7 (2021), article downloads of 85,307,200 (2021), and 8 days from submission to the first editorial decision.

  • On 14 May, in collaboration with Communications Medicine, we will host a webinar on adoptive cell therapies for cancer. Panellists will discuss developments and challenges in the field (including introduction on tumour-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy, CAR-T cells, CAR-natural killer cells and CAR-macrophages) for cancer treatment. The event will be live-streamed but a recording will be available.

  • The continent of Africa

    Nature Communications, Communications Medicine and Scientific Reports are launching an open call for papers to support and showcase research related to all aspects of health in Africa. We aim to promote high-quality research that advances our understanding of health issues in Africa, and advocates for better healthcare on the continent in line with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for SDGs.

    Open for submissions

Advertisement

Latest Research articles

  • Biological cofactors such as dihydronicotinamides are exploited by extant enzymes as hydride transfer agents and electron carriers but are generally inefficient to facilitate any reactions on their own. Here, the authors report short peptide-based amyloid nanotubes featuring exposed arrays of cationic and hydrophobic residues that can bind small hydride transfer agents (NaBH4) to facilitate efficient reduction of ester substrates in water.

    • Ayan Chatterjee
    • Surashree Goswami
    • Dibyendu Das
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Lee et al. developed ultrathin metallic (metal filling ratios of > 70 %) metamaterials that exhibit perfect transmission at a specific radar frequency. These characteristics enable microwave transparent, low-sheet-resistance radar heaters for safe autonomous driving in extreme weather.

    • Eun-Joo Lee
    • Jun-Young Kim
    • Sun-Kyung Kim
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Transition-metal catalyzed cross-electrophile coupling (XEC) is a powerful tool for the construction of molecules but XEC between carbon electrophile and chlorosilanes to access organosilicon compounds remains underdeveloped. Here the authors disclose a highly efficient cobalt-catalyzed cross-electrophile alkynylation of a broad range of unactivated chlorosilanes with alkynyl sulfides as a stable and practical alkynyl electrophiles.

    • Donghui Xing
    • Jinlin Liu
    • Liangbin Huang
    ArticleOpen Access
  • All-solid-state lithium-based batteries require high stack pressure during operation. Here, we investigate the mechanical, transport, and interfacial properties of Li-rich magnesium alloy and show enhanced performance at low pressure and ambient temperature for alloy-based electrodes with less than 5 at% Mg content.

    • Jack Aspinall
    • Krishnakanth Sada
    • Mauro Pasta
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Researchers demonstrate that image-processing metasurfaces can be dynamically reconfigured by using phase-change materials. The work might lead to novel tunable devices for compact optical computing for applications in AR/VR and bio-medical imaging.

    • Michele Cotrufo
    • Shaban B. Sulejman
    • Andrea Alù
    ArticleOpen Access

Subjects within Physical sciences

Subjects within Earth and environmental sciences

  • The precise onset, temporal progression and spatial extent of neuron-tumor crosstalk in brain with Glioblastoma (GBM) are not fully understood. Here authors, using a genetic GBM mouse model, show widespread glutamate accumulation, chronic neural activity disruption between cells and brain areas, depending on tumor expansion rate and genotype with altered tumor and neural activity dynamics when adding glypican6.

    • Jochen Meyer
    • Kwanha Yu
    • Jeffrey Noebels
    ArticleOpen Access
  • The structure of the Golgi and the localization of glycosylation enzymes remain largely elusive. Here, the authors use super-resolution microscopy to show that the Golgi is composed of small dynamic units which have rapidly moving zones of glycosylation enzymes.

    • Akihiro Harada
    • Masataka Kunii
    • Akihiko Nakano
    ArticleOpen Access
  • Bacterial-fungal interactions can stimulate the production of specialised microbial metabolites. Here, Richter et al. use co-culture experimental evolution to show that the presence of a fungus selects for increased surfactin production in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, which inhibits fungal growth and facilitates the competitive success of the bacterium.

    • Anne Richter
    • Felix Blei
    • Ákos T. Kovács
    ArticleOpen Access

Subjects within Biological sciences

Subjects within Health sciences

Subjects within Scientific community and society

  • Shigella, an important human pathogen, can secrete effector proteins to invade host cells and evade mechanisms of cell-autonomous immunity. In a new manuscript published in Nature Communications, Xian et al. report that the Shigella kinase effector OspG promotes the ubiquitination of septin cytoskeletal proteins to evade cage entrapment.

    • Ana T. López-Jiménez
    • Gizem Özbaykal Güler
    • Serge Mostowy
    CommentOpen Access
  • Aqueous zinc batteries are currently being explored as potential alternatives to non-aqueous lithium-ion batteries. In this comment, the authors highlight zinc’s global supply chain resilience and lower material costs yet caution about its higher mass requirement for comparable charge storage.

    • Alessandro Innocenti
    • Dominic Bresser
    • Stefano Passerini
    CommentOpen Access
  • Nature Communications has been striving to support Early Career Researchers (ECRs) through different pilot schemes including the peer review mentoring programs and co-review mentoring initiative. The 2nd Rising Stars workshop, held at the Henry Royce Institute on the 9th of February, 2024, aims to celebrate and support rising stars within underrepresented groups in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects and this greatly aligns with the aspirations in our journal. In this conversation, the experiences and advice shared by representatives from various disciplines in the workshop are translated to a wider audience in Nature Communications. Dr Alex Ramadan (Lecturer at the University of Sheffield), Dr Lucy Whalley (Assistant Professor at Northumbria University), Dr Maddison Coke (Senior Experimental Officer at the University of Manchester), and Dr Yi Liu (Lecturer at Loughborough University) discuss the opportunities and challenges they face towards their career with work-life balance, family and caring responsibility, and diversity and inclusion in their workplace, and share their experiences on how mentorship supports their personal and professional growth.

    Q&AOpen Access
  • Roll-to-Roll (R2R) coating is a technology that potentially enhances throughput, reduces costs, and accommodates flexible substrates for fabricating various types of solar cells and modules. Here, authors discuss the R2R revolution to tackle the industrial leap for perovskite photovoltaic devices.

    • Ershad Parvazian
    • Trystan Watson
    CommentOpen Access
  • Developmental stress can detrimentally affect adult female reproductive behavior, influencing sexual receptivity and fertility. Recent work has demonstrated neuronal nitric oxide (NO) synthase (nNOS)-promoted NO release in the ventromedial hypothalamus as a nexus between pre-pubertal stress and adult sexual behavior in mice.

    • Konstantina Chachlaki
    CommentOpen Access
  • Cellular and organismal aging have been consistently associated with mitochondrial dysfunction and inflammation. Accumulating evidence indicates that aging-related inflammatory responses are mechanistically linked to compromised mitochondrial integrity coupled with mtDNA-driven CGAS activation, a process that is tonically inhibited by mitophagy.

    • Emma Guilbaud
    • Kristopher A. Sarosiek
    • Lorenzo Galluzzi
    CommentOpen Access
N/A

Quantum

In this page, we highlight research papers in the areas of quantum information, computation and communication, quantum technologies, and fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics.
Focus

Advertisement

Nature Careers

Science jobs

Advertisement