Articles

Polarization control is of paramount importance for various applications. Here, the authors enable extreme control over light polarization spanning the entire Poincaré sphere by combining coherent control of wave phenomena and the physics of bound states in the continuum.

Bites by elapid snakes can result in life-threatening paralysis caused by α-neurotoxins blocking the neuromuscular nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. Here, the authors determine the cryo-EM structure of this receptor in complex with a short-chain α-neurotoxin.

Scale formation may have detrimental effects on the properties and functions of materials’ surfaces. Here the authors report the high scaling resistance of hexagonal boron nitride and relate it to the atomic level structure and interaction with water molecules.

The spatial configuration of nanostructure building blocks determines the physical and optical properties of their superstructures. Here, the authors report on complex nanoparticles in which different geometric forms of nanoframes are nested into a single entity by multistep chemical reactions.

Colorectal cancer can lead to the development of peritoneal metastases, which are associated with worse disease outcome. Here, the authors characterize peritoneal metastases from 52 patients using RNA-seq and mutational sequencing and show a distinct molecular subtype.

In E. coli, disruption of TopoI and RNAP interaction decreases cells viability and leads to hypernegative DNA supercoiling and R loops accumulation. TopoI and DNA gyrase bind around transcription units and TopoI recognizes cleavage sites by a specific motif and negative supercoiling.

Graph-based genome reference representations have seen significant development, motivated by the inadequacy of the current human genome reference to represent the diverse genetic information from different human populations and its inability to maintain the same level of accuracy for non-European ancestries. Here the authors present the case for iteratively augmenting tailored genome graphs for targeted populations and demonstrate this approach on the whole-genome samples of African ancestry.

In vitro library screening is a powerful approach to identify functional biopolymers, but only covers a fraction of possible sequences. Here, the authors use experimental in vitro selection results to train a conditional variational autoencoder machine learning model that generates biopolymers with no apparent sequence similarity to experimentally derived examples, but that nevertheless bind the target molecule with similar potent binding affinity.

Egress of Plasmodium from host erythrocytes is mediated by effector proteins. Aspartic protease plasmepsin X (PM X) regulates the activity for many of these effectors, is essential for replication and is a promising drug target. Here, Mukherjee et al. map the self-cleavage sites of PM X, show that the N-terminal part of its prodomain is required for intracellular trafficking and correlate the maturation and subcellular activity of PM X in microneme, exoneme and rhoptry organelle function.

Gene fitness and essentiality analyses using in vivo cancer models are challenging due to multiple confounders. Here, the authors develop a quantitative approach to study CRISPR-transduced patient-derived xenografts, which they use to analyse in vivo gene fitness in breast cancers and the biological features that influence uncertainty in fitness estimation.

Ectopic lipid accumulation and inflammation are the essential signs of NASH. Here, the authors show that hepatic WTAP is a key integrative repressor of ectopic lipid accumulation and inflammation during NASH progression, and hepatic deletion of Wtap promotes both of them, leading to NASH

The anterior cingulate cortex allows an animal to update its behaviour when the environment changes. In this work, the authors identify a pathway from cingulate to secondary motor cortex, critical for updating motor rules following behavioural errors.

Born et al. describe interdomain allostery in the two domain peptidyl-prolyl isomerase Pin1 upon binding of two ligands. These ligands couple population shifts of extended and compact states to changes in the catalytic site of Pin1.

In classical nucleation theory, structural order in the liquid phase is not considered. But simulations of supercooled liquids now show that crystal-like liquid preordering play an essential role in nucleation and growth processes - calling for extensions of the classical theory.

To fully understand the potential shortcomings of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, it is necessary to delineate the properties of the antibodies elicited, during immunization, and also infection. Through investigation of the SARS-CoV-2 spike-reactive B cell repertoire, authors identify following infection, a subset of B cells enriched and almost exclusively target a non-neutralizing S2 epitope present in aberrant forms.

Poly(ADP) ribose polymerase (PARP) activity promotes, but is not required for, chromosome break repair by polymerase theta-mediated end joining (TMEJ). PARP activity promotes TMEJ by stimulating resection, a process that controls pathway choice.

Guanylate-binding proteins (GBPs) recognize pathogen containing vacuoles, leading to lysis of this intracellular niche and induction of inflammasomes. Here, Cao et al. show that Y. pestis, the causative agent of plague, secret two functionally redundant E3 ligase, YspE1 and YspE2, into the host’s cytosol to ubiquitinate multiple GBPs for proteasomal degradation to subvert host immune defense. This capability appears to be newly acquired by Y. pestis during evolution, since its closely related progenitor Y. pseudotuberculosis is unable to do so.

The field of dense active matter has been the fount of many intriguing phenomena. Here, authors show that nonreciprocal interactions can emerge between active particles due to a dynamical feedback between their motility and the corresponding slow remodelling of a dense passive compressible medium.

Localised high-concentration electrolyte is key to prevent uneven growth of lithium metal by forming a mechanically stable solid-electrolyte interphase. Here, the authors identify the suitable physicochemical properties for non-solvating co-solvents that improve the performance of lithium metal battery.

Selectively generating “skipped” dienes, where two carbon–carbon double bonds are separated by a saturated carbon center, is an interesting problem in organic chemistry, with few reliable, catalytic methods currently available. Here, the authors report branched selective hydroallylation of terminal alkynes with allylic bromides to form skipped dienes, via cobalt catalysis.