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APOL9a/b proteins coat mouse intestinal bacteria with high specificity, and genetic abolition of ceramide-1-phosphate synthesis pathways in the symbiote Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron significantly decreases this binding of APOL9a/b to the bacterium.

An avian influenza H7N9 virus causes severe human disease, including acute and often lethal respiratory failure. Here, the authors report that plasma levels of angiotensin II, a regulatory peptide of the renin–angiotensin system, are associated with disease severity and fatal outcome in infected patients.

Lignin valorization has long been hindered by the challenge of precisely controlling product selectivity. Here, the authors construct a robust electrocatalytic system that enables pH-driven switching between depolymerization and hydrogenation pathways with high selectivity.

Disturbed lipid metabolism is a feature of diabetic kidney disease (DKD). Here the authors report that ceramide synthase 6 (CerS6) in podocytes contributes to the pathogenesis of diabetic kidney disease (DKD) in male mice by inducing mitochondrial DNA leakage, activating the cGAS-STING pathway and promoting inflammation.

This study finds that during acute viral infection of the CNS, meningeal lymphatic vessels (MLVs) can transport virus from the CNS to draining cervical lymph nodes. VEGF-C-induced expansion of functional MLVs facilitated virus clearance.

C4 photosynthesis serves as a prominent example of convergent evolution in complex traits. Here, the authors construct chromosome-scale genome assemblies for five Flaveria species and investigate the genomic evolution of C4 photosynthesis. Their findings emphasize the roles of retrotransposition and transcriptional regulation in shaping C4 traits.

In a prespecified interim analysis of the randomized, double-blind phase 3 COMPASSION-15 trial, patients with advanced HER2-negative gastric/GEJ cancer treated with the anti-PD-L1/CTLA-4 bispecific Ab cadonilimab plus chemotherapy showed significantly improved overall survival compared with patients treated with placebo plus chemotherapy as first-line treatment.

A revised estimate of Chinese carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement production is presented, based on updated energy consumption and clinker production data and two new sets of measured emission factors for Chinese coal.

Post-translational addition of O-linked N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) to proteins is associated with stress responses in eukaryotes. Here, the authors identify a protein that acts as an O-GlcNAc transferase for modification of multiple proteins and regulates antioxidative stress responses in the bacterial pathogen Yersinia pestis.

Despite common use as a diabetes mellitus supplement, chromium(III)’s pharmacological effects remain unknown. We identified the Cr(III)-proteome in cells with a metalloproteomic approach and uncovered ATP synthase as a vital target to relieve hyperglycaemia stress.

Designing molecules in drug design is challenging as it requires optimizing multiple, potentially competing qualities. Wu and colleagues present a prompt-based molecule optimization method that can be trained from single-property data.

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.

This paper shows that desertification combating practices decline incomes of farmers and herders, and China needs to adapt its ecological programmes to address the impacts of climate change and create positive synergies to combat desertification.

KarmaDock, a deep learning approach, is proposed to improve the speed, accuracy and pose quality of molecular docking and is validated on multiple datasets and a real-world virtual screening.

Attempts to explain molecular property predictions of neural networks are not always compatible with chemical intuition based on chemical substructures. Here the authors propose the substructure mask explanation method to tackle this challenge.

Membranes are at the heart of various technologies for water, energy and other sustainability relevant areas. Here the authors show a synthetic route to a polymeric membrane that breaks the conductivity–selectivity trade-off and enables exciting performance in a vanadium flow battery.

Generating novel molecules that bind to specific protein targets is a challenging but important task in computational drug design. Zhang and colleagues present a molecular generation method based on hierarchical auto-regression.

The epigenetic landscape of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) at genome-wide high resolution is incompletely studied. Here, the authors performed an integrated multi-omics analysis of ESCC and non-tumor tissues to define the genome-wide methylome landscape and epigenetic alterations to uncover oncogenic drivers of ESCC.

The conversion of carbon dioxide into multi-carbon alcohols would enable the synthesis of sustainable liquid fuels with high energy densities. Now, vacancy-engineered core–shell copper-based catalysts are able to shift the selectivity of electrochemical CO₂ reduction into alcohols instead of alkenes, as obtained with bare-copper catalysts.

CRISPR-Cas9 is widely used for genome engineering but structural data for the DNA cleavage step are still incomplete. Here, the authors present the cryo-EM structure of a ternary Cas9-sgRNA-target DNA complex, perform MD simulations and discuss implications for the Cas9 DNA cleavage mechanism.

Elevated maternal homocysteine (Hcy) increases the risk for neural tube defects (NTDs) but how this arises is unclear. Here, the authors show that high levels of Hcy on histone H3K79Hcy correlate with NTDs, causing abnormal gene expression (for example Cecr2, Smarca4 and Dnmt3B) linked to neural tube closure.

Low-temperature manganese-based denitrification catalysts require a balance between high reduction reactivity and selectivity. Here aluminium in a mesoporous molecular sieve induces the growth of manganese oxide to obtain an iron-manganese catalyst which achieves high efficiency at temperatures of 150–300 °C.

Millions of Chinese smallholder farmers were persuaded to adopt enhanced management practices, which led to a greater yield, reduced nitrogen fertilizer use and improved environmental performance throughout China.

The authors report on attempts to increase the yield of smallholder farms in China using ten practices recommended by the Science and Technology Backyard for farming maize and wheat at county level.

Hongbing Shen and colleagues identify three new susceptibility loci for lung cancer in the Chinese population. Their follow-up analyses suggest that two of these loci interact multiplicatively with smoking dose to influence lung cancer risk.

Osx facilitates bone metastasis of breast cancer by upregulating the expression of a cohort of genes that contribute to steps in the metastatic cascade. These genes include MMP9, VEGF, as well as IL-8, PTHrP, and MMP13. MMP9 is a newly identified target of Osx.

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