Selected, recent articles from across the Nature Portfolio that document the recent progress in understanding the biology of EV-mediated cell–cell communication and advances in clinical translation of EVs.

In this article series, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology explores the pathways that preserve genomic integrity by detecting and repairing damage in different types of cellular DNA, highlighting new control mechanisms in the DNA damage response and the implications of disrupted repair pathways for disease.

In this article series, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology focuses on recent technological and technical advances and on their impact on diverse areas of molecular and cell biology. The articles highlight important biological issues, describe the technologies and techniques that were developed to tackle them and discuss the wealth of knowledge that using them has produced.

The articles in this series discuss new insights that have been gained into how ‘old and new’ modifications are regulated and recognized, and how they crosstalk with one another to control fundamental biological processes.

One of the fundamental biological processes in life is the cell cycle leading from DNA replication to cell division. While it has been studied for decades and our knowledge has matured, sophisticated experimental approaches have rejuvenated the field. In addition, cell cycle regulators have emerged as cancer therapy targets. This collection showcases ground-breaking cell cycle papers and reviews, ranging from basic discoveries to clinical applications.

Research interest is growing in profiling noncoding RNAs and understanding their biological functions in health and disease contexts.

Plants are continuously exposed to a variety of stresses from their environment; to thrive, plants must be capable of raising a wide range of responses to those stresses. Deeper understanding of plant stress responses will provide new opportunities for increasing plant resilience and improving crop productivity in the face of climate change and emerging food shortages. In this Focus, we present three Reviews discussing the roles of reactive oxygen species, hormones and small RNAs in plant abiotic- and biotic-stress responses. We also include a selection of Journal Clubs and Research Highlights, as well as recent related research articles from other Nature Portfolio journals. Together, we aim to draw attention to the diversity and versatility of mechanisms governing plant resilience and immunity.

This Collection showcases recent articles from Nature Cell Biology, Nature Metabolism and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology covering cellular to systemic metabolic regulation. This selection accompanies the Nature Conference “Metabolic Communication Across Biological Scales” and provides a resource about current trends and directions in this field.

This series of articles by Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology highlights different aspects of the biogenesis of various RNA species.

This article series brings together Reviews that focus on key advances in understanding membrane biology as well as the regulation and functions of their lipid components, including their roles as bioactive molecules and their interplay with metabolism.

In this article series, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology looks at the progress that has been made in identifying resident stem cells in different tissues and in characterizing these often-heterogeneous stem cell pools, as well as in understanding the intrinsic mechanisms and interactions with stem cell niches (the specialized microenvironments in which they reside) that regulate stem cell function.

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian "for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch."