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Toxoplasma is a major infectious human parasite lethal to immunodeficient patients. This study identifies an apicoplast lipid transporter essential for parasite survival, which diverges from known chloroplast transporters.

Weak antilocalization is a signifier of electrical transport via topologically non-trivial surface states of a topological insulator, but it is often masked by dopant-induced scattering. Kim et al.overcome such difficulties to identify coherent transport via the topological surface states of bismuth selenide.

Manipulating the topological phases of quantum materials is necessary to fully leverage their potential for future electronics. Here, the authors experimentally demonstrate the controllable transition from a weak to a strong topological insulator phase through the in-situ application of high strain.

A pangenome of the Cannabis genus including 193 genomes demonstrates high variability in most of the genome but low diversity in cannabinoid synthesis genes and provides a resource for future genetic studies and crop optimization.

The two dimensional magnetoplasmon edge state has been observed for a long time, but its nature is yet to be uncovered. Here, Jin et al. report that such a state is actually topological protected, analogous to the chiral Majorana edge state in a p-wave topological superconductor.

Declining Arctic sea ice is increasing polar bear land use. Here, the authors follow 20 different polar bears on land over 3 years and measure daily energy expenditure finding that despite behavioural and diet plasticity the bears are at risk of starvation.

In this study, Aggarwal and colleagues perform prospective sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 isolates derived from asymptomatic student screening and symptomatic testing of students and staff at the University of Cambridge. They identify important factors that contributed to within university transmission and onward spread into the wider community.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.

Zorya uses a membrane-anchored H⁺-driven rotary motor ZorAB to sense phage invasion and to recruit the intracellular effectors ZorC and ZorD that execute anti-phage defence.

The authors report a strongly temperature-dependent thermal conductivity at low temperature, consistent with topological bosonic modes in a Chern-insulator-like model.

A national prospective study of patients requiring hospitalization for COVID-19 demonstrates global cognitive deficits at 1 year, associated with elevated brain injury markers and reduced gray matter volume.

This study characterizes the world’s largest seagrass ecosystem in The Bahamas by integrating spatial estimates with remote sensing and performing extensive ground-truthing of benthic habitat with 2,542 diver surveys, as well as data obtained from instrument-equipped tiger sharks, which have strong fidelity to seagrass ecosystems.

Multi-ancestry meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies for self-reported physical activity during leisure time, leisure screen time, sedentary commuting and sedentary behavior at work identify 99 loci associated with at least one of these traits.

Genetic and testing data from England show that the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern B.1.1.7 has a transmission advantage over other lineages.

COVID-19 can be associated with neurological complications. Here the authors show that markers of brain injury, but not immune markers, are elevated in the blood of patients with COVID-19 both early and months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly in those with brain dysfunction or neurological diagnoses.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

Inventory data from more than 1 million trees across African, Amazonian and Southeast Asian tropical forests suggests that, despite their high diversity, just 1,053 species, representing a consistent ~2.2% of tropical tree species in each region, constitute half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees.

Post-international travel quarantine has been widely implemented to mitigate SARS-CoV-2 transmission, but the impacts of such policies are unclear. Here, the authors used linked genomic and contact tracing data to assess the impacts of a 14-day quarantine on return to England in summer 2020.

The specifics of the pediatric immune response that gives rise to antibodies capable of neutralising diverse HIV-1 strains is not fully understood. Here the authors characterise the immune environment of Simian-HIV infected paediatric macaques and link to antibody neutralisation induction.

Openshaw and colleagues find myeloid inflammation and complement activation signatures in patients with long COVID who were previously hospitalized.

It is unknown how GPR161, an orphan receptor involved in Hedgehog signaling, is activated. This study identifies a sterol that promotes GPR161-driven cAMP signaling but shows that cAMP is dispensable for Hedgehog pathway repression.

The use of single cell sequencing has enabled more detailed analysis of the immune response to infection. Here the authors characterise the immune response to malaria infection in an endemic region using single cell transcriptomics indicating regulatory signatures associated with infection.

Weyl semimetals exhibit a rich variety of transport phenomena, but it usually takes low temperatures and a strong magnetic field to realize them. Here, Quirk et al. show that when the ferromagnetic Weyl semimetal Co₂MnGa is polished to micron thicknesses, it develops a remarkable resistance anisotropy that has opposite directions on opposing crystal faces. They show that this unusual transport property, which is robust at room temperature and in a strong magnetic field, may be generated by distinct conducting states on the surfaces of these thin crystals.

The Omicron variant evades vaccine-induced neutralization but also fails to form syncytia, shows reduced replication in human lung cells and preferentially uses a TMPRSS2-independent cell entry pathway, which may contribute to enhanced replication in cells of the upper airway. Altered fusion and cell entry characteristics are linked to distinct regions of the Omicron spike protein.

Certain specific antigens have been shown to activate T cells in an MHC independent manner. Here the authors show a phycoerythrin reactive mouse TCR which recognises native protein and characterise the molecular nature of this interaction and that this specific TCR can be selected in the thymus.

Acclimation of tree photosynthesis to warming may be affected by elevated CO₂. Here, the authors show that mature boreal conifers may be able to maintain leaf-level C uptake under warming and elevated CO₂ even if optimum temperature of photosynthesis does not track increased temperature.

Pathogenic Rickettsia species are arthropod-borne, obligate intracellular bacteria that invade host cells, replicate in the cell cytosol, and spread from cell to cell. Here, Borgo et al. identify a Rickettsia phospholipase enzyme that is important for infection by helping the bacteria escape from host cell vacuoles into the host cytosol, preventing targeting by autophagy, and promoting bacterial motility and spread to other cells.

DNA methylation profiling of 565 meningiomas highlights three groups associated with distinct molecular, clinical and therapeutic features.

A machine learning approach is presented to identify dominant patterns in disease progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. The nonlinearity of ALS progression has important clinical implications.

In this immunological ancillary study of the PREVAC trial, the authors show that approved Ebola virus vaccines induce memory T-cell responses that persist during the five year follow-up after initial vaccination.

Piezoelectric materials which are non-toxic and eco-friendly are of interest. Here, the authors report on the creation of collagen-mimetic peptides which can be self-assembled into piezoelectric materials and study the design characteristics required for optimized power generation.

The electrons in 2D materials like graphene are described by the relativistic Dirac equation. Here the authors present a lattice of evanescently coupled waveguides that emulates a wide range of Dirac excitations and study the type-II edge states that emerge in this photonic system.

A decrease in atmospheric methane levels might have triggered the progressive rise of atmospheric oxygen about 2.4 billion years ago, but the cause of this methane decrease remains uncertain. Kurt Konhauser and colleagues report a decline in the oceanic nickel-to-iron ratio about 2.7 billion years ago, which they attribute to a reduced flux of nickel to the oceans; this decline would have stifled the activity of methane-producing organisms that require nickel to function.

There are two main pathways to rid a cell from accumulated protein misfits, the ubiquitin-proteasome system and autophagy. When the ubiquitin proteasome system breaks down, as is the case in a fly model for neurodegenerative disease, autophagy is able to compensate for this loss. HDAC6, a microtubule-associated-histone deacetlyase that interacts with polyubiquitinated proteins, seems to be the link.

The cell biological mechanisms that govern myelin sheath extension remain incompletely understood. Here, the authors find that calcium signaling in oligodendrocytes is required for the actin-dependent extension of myelin sheaths.

The stability of halide perovskite solar cells, determined by film morphology, is paramount to their commercialization. Here, the authors introduce a high-temperature DMSO-free method that enables better control of the grain size, texturing, orientation and crystallinity to achieve improved device operational stability.

A computational approach to generate reference-free protein families from the sequence space in metagenomes reveals an enormously diverse functional space.

m⁶A-LAIC-seq quantifies the levels of N⁶-methyladenosine in isoforms of the same gene in a cell-type-specific manner.