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Chemical recycling of plastic wastes is of great significance for sustainable development, which also represents challenges and opportunities for synthesis of value-added chemicals. Here, the authors report a general strategy to degrade polyesters via directly breaking the C-O bond by nucleophilic substitution of halide anion of ionic liquids.

A genome-wide association study meta-analysis combined with multiomics data of osteoarthritis identifies 700 effector genes as well as biological processes with a convergent involvement of multiple effector genes; 10% of these genes express the target of approved drugs.

The iron carbide active phase is easily oxidized by the water produced during Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, which leads to a deterioration in catalytic performance. Here, the authors present a strategy to protect iron carbide by applying surface hydrophobization.

The Legionella effector MavC catalyses the ubiquitination of the E2 enzyme UBE2N in the host cell through a transglutamination reaction, which can be inhibited by the Legionella effector Lpg2149. Here, the authors provide mechanistic insights into these processes by determining the crystal structures of the MavC/UBE2N/Ub ternary complex, the MavC/UBE2N-Ub product complex and the MavC/Lpg2149 complex.

The tumour microenvironment in signet ring cell carcinoma (SRCC) remains to be characterised. Here, the authors perform single-cell RNA sequencing and reveal distinct features compared to moderately/poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma.

Evidence for the treatment of patients with mild-to-moderate COPD is limited. Here, the authors show that long-term treatment with high-dose N-acetylcysteine neither significantly reduced the annual rate of total exacerbations nor improve lung function in patients with mild-tomoderate COPD.

Chemical recycling of polyester wastes is of great significance for sustainable development. Here the authors report a Ru and Mo dual-atom catalyst for reconstructing polyester wastes into diols in water under mild conditions.

High-quality reference genomes facilitate analysis of genome structure and variation. Here Duet al. create a near-complete assembly of the indicarice genome by combining single molecule sequencing with mapping data and fosmid sequences and identify genetic variants by comparison with other rice genomes.

Ionic liquids have been employed in dissolution and chemical degradation of waste polymers. Here the authors report a cation-anion confined hydrogen-bonding catalysis strategy to deconstruct poly(succinates) into N-substituted succinimides over ionic liquids.

Xiangdong Fu and colleagues show that variation in DEP1, which encodes a G protein subunit known to influence rice panicle architecture, underlies a major quantitative trait locus for nitrogen-use efficiency. These findings suggest that modulating heterotrimeric G protein activity could contribute to environmentally sustainable increases in rice grain yield.

Understanding the mutation landscape of cancer may enable the development of more targeted therapies. Here, the authors sequence a panel of genes in a large Asian cohort and compare to American cohorts and find 64% of the Asian patients have actionable mutations.

A workflow integrating tools from bioinformatics, structural biology and synthetic biology has been developed that enables the rapid design of pili-enabled living materials. This approach allows mining of pili-producing nonpathogenic chassis, understanding of the pili structure and assembly, and engineering of pili-enabled living materials in a systematic and sequential manner.

A strategy that combines freeze-casting and salting-out treatments produces strong, tough, stretchable and fatigue-resistant poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogels.

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are increasingly being explored for electrocatalytic oxygen evolution, which is half of the water splitting reaction. Here the authors show that, under reaction conditions, mixed metal oxyhydroxides form at the nodes of bimetallic MOFs, which are highly catalytically active.

Deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) is an established characterization technique used to study electrically active defects in 3D semiconductors. Here, the authors show that DLTS can also be applied to monolayer semiconductors, enabling in-situ characterization of the energy states of different defects and their interactions.

Logic operations and reconfigurable circuits are demonstrated that can be directly implemented using memory elements based on floating-gate field-effect transistors with monolayer MoS₂ as the active channel material.

Determining the arrangement of ligands on a nanoparticle is challenging, given the limitations of existing characterization tools. Here, the authors describe an accessible method for resolving ligand shell morphology that uses simple MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry measurements in conjunction with an open-access Monte Carlo fitting program.

The variation in the properties of rare earth (RE) steels is shown to stem from the presence of oxygen-based inclusions, and only under very-low-oxygen conditions can RE elements perform a vital role in purifying, modifying and micro-alloying steels.

To suppress the polysulfide shuttling effect in Li-S batteries, here the authors report a carbon/sulfur composite cathode with a wrapping layer that overcomes the trade-off between limiting polysulfide diffusion and allowing electrolyte infiltration, and affords extraordinary cycling stability.

Nerve/glial antigen 2 (NG2) glia can sense synaptic inputs from neurons. Here, the authors show NG2 glia form functional GABAergic synapses by regulating inhibitory synaptic transmission onto adjacent hippocampal interneurons, and activation of NG2 glia induces anxiety-like behaviour in a mouse model of chronic social defeat stress.

Efficient capture of iodine has important applications in nuclear waste processing. Here a class of imidazolate-derived ionic liquids are shown to chemically capture up to 17.5 grams of iodine per gram of ionic liquid at useful temperatures.

Finely tuned optogenetic control of engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae enhances the biosynthesis of valuable products such as isobutanol in laboratory-scale fermenters.