Articles

Recent observations of silicic eruptions show that they can be both effusive and explosive at the same time. Here the authors use scaled experiments to demonstrate that magma in effusive eruptions will fracture during flow to the Earth’s surface, accommodating mixed eruption styles.

Drought resistant plants typically have reduced growth. Here the authors show that overexpression of the BRL3 brassinosteroid receptor confers drought tolerance and accumulation of osmoprotectant metabolites without penalizing growth, demonstrating that drought response and growth can be uncoupled.

Electron spins in nitrogen vacancy centres are perturbed by nearby nuclear spins, making it possible to infer some of the nuclear spins' properties. Here the authors demonstrate a technique that can determine the location of nuclear spins in three-dimensional space using only one electron spin.

The biogeographic drivers of reptile diversity are poorly understood relative to other animal groups. Here, using a dataset of distributions of African squamates, the authors show that environmental filtering explains diversity in stressful habitats while competition explains diversity in benign habitats.

Group II introns are large, self-splicing RNAs that catalyze their own excision from pre-mRNA molecules. Here the authors determine the 3.7 Å crystal structure of the group II intron in the stage immediately before the second step of splicing and present a complete model for the second step of group II intron splicing.

DNA phosphorothioation (PT-DNA) is a DNA backbone sulfur modification that is recognized by the type-IV restriction endonuclease ScoMcrA. Here the authors provide insights into sulfur recognition by solving the crystal structure of the PT-DNA bound sulfur-binding domain (SBD) from ScoMcrA and they further show that SBD homologs are widely spread among prokaryotes.

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) is a target for insulin sensitizing drugs. Here the authors combine NMR, X-ray crystallography and MD simulations and report a structural mechanism for eliciting PPARγ inverse agonism, where coactivator binding is inhibited and corepressor binding promoted, which causes PPARγ repression.

Changes in ECM are of predictive value in pancreatic and colorectal cancer prognosis. Here, the authors perform a pan-cancer analysis and find a subset of ECM genes that is linked to TGF-β signalling signature and is correlated with immunotherapy failure.

Elderly males are often affected by benign prostatic hyperplasia and associated lower urinary tract symptoms (BPH/LUTS), but their link to prostate cancer risk is not well defined. Here, a genome-wide association study of BPH/LUTS patients from Iceland and the UK found 23 significant variants at 14 loci, and 15 of these variants associate with prostate specific antigen, which is linked to prostate cancer risk.

Marine cyanophages infect oceanic cyanobacteria that are important contributors to global primary production. By using an experimental evolution approach, here the authors show that adaptation to sub-optimal cyanobacterial hosts result in genomic diversification of cyanophage populations.

Complex networks can be a useful tool to investigate problems in social science. Here the authors use game theory to establish a network model and then use a machine learning approach to characterize the role of nodes within a social network.

Long-lived excitons in a two-dimensional metal-organic crystal can be produced by visible light and detected by infrared radiation. Here, the authors show that the excitonic state of a biomimetic macrocycle can be ‘read’ by measuring the vibrations of an adsorbed ligand.

The costimulatory T-cell receptor 4-1BB is an immuno-oncology target. Here the authors present the ligand bound 4-1BB receptor crystal structure in addition to the structures of 4-1BB bound with two therapeutic antibodies and verify the antibody binding sites by mutational analysis, which is of interest for further 4-1BB therapeutics development.

Cilia formation requires Intraflagellar transport (IFT) to move ciliary building blocks and signaling components into the cilium. Here authors use in vitro reconstitution and electron microscopy on IFT172 and reveal its ability to remodel large membrane surfaces into small vesicles.

IL-2 is used systemically for cancer therapy but it is associated with severe toxicity. Here, the authors design a recombinant vaccinia virus expressing membrane-bound IL-2 that shows therapeutic efficacy alone or in combination with checkpoint inhibitors in colon cancer-bearing mice.

Marine sedimentary records and the proxies within play a central role in unlocking our understanding of past climates, yet interpreting the signals they contain can be complex. Here, the authors reveal and discuss the complex effects of hydrodynamics on carbon accumulation in the sediments off the Iberian margin.

TAp73 is a structural homolog of the tumor suppressor p53. Here they show that TAp73 is critical for promoting glycolysis as it stimulates the transcriptional expression of liver type of phosphofructokinase-1 (PFKL), which catalyzes the committed step in glycolysis.

Gut microbiota impact host metabolism and gut microbiome composition reflects dietary habits. Here the authors show that, in animals fed obesogenic diets, changes in gut microbiota precede changes in glucose homeostasis. Importantly, long term exposure of the host to the changed microbiota is required to impair glucose homeostasis.

The peri-arbuscular membrane (PAM) mediates mutually-beneficial nutrient exchange between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Here the authors identify ARK1, a PAM-specific receptor-like kinase from rice that sustains AM symbiosis post-arbuscule development.

Controlling the Néel vector switching is crucial to the antiferromagnetic spintronics but so far limited to 90° reorientations. Here the authors report electrical Néel vector reversal and its detection in a fully compensated collinear antiferromagnet (AF) by exploiting the broken time reversal and spatial inversion symmetries of the AF.