The 2005 finding of cells and blood vessels in dinosaur bone launched a systematic search for fossil remnants of biomolecules, creating innovations in methods and applications.

Excavations at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, reveal evidence of the systematic use of animal bones as a raw material for prehistoric tools.

Inherited repeat mutations in the HTT gene expand in neurons over decades before crossing a toxic threshold, revealing a long time window for therapy.

The bioplastic was malleable, but is more expensive to produce than are plastics made from fossil fuels.

First glimpse of the colour of mammals who lived alongside dinosaurs. Plus, what anti-vaccine rhetoric in the US government will mean for the country’s health and, in a world first, a man has survived with a titanium heart for 100 days.

Insights from the Nature Index show that the boom in research related to affordable and clean energy is not a global trend.

The European physics laboratory CERN is planning to build a mega collider by 2070. Critics say the plan could lead to its ruin.

New metric assesses how AI is getting better at completing long tasks — but some researchers are wary of long-term predictions.

A ‘datacentric’ approach will allow consumers and producers to make informed decisions that aid the transition to clean power.

Clean-energy research might be booming in Asia, but the energy transition has an uncertain future.

Big data is key for the quality control needed to advance the field.

A description of the terminology and methodology used in this supplement, and a guide to the functionality that is available free online at natureindex.com.

The effects of a proposed green-energy facility in Chile could be devastating for some of the most powerful instruments available to astronomers.

Major investments to fuel AI’s power demands are not the only way big tech is having an influence.

An antisocial network.

Investment in renewables is hitting new heights, but uneven funding and geopolitical uncertainty are clouding the boom.

Mitochondrial pyruvate carrier (MPC) is a mitochondrial inner membrane protein complex essential for uptake of pyruvate into matrix as the primary carbon source for tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle1,2. Here, we report six cryo-EM structures of human MPC in three different states: three structures obtained at different conditions in intermembrane space (IMS)-open state with highest resolution of 3.2 Å

Snippets from Nature’s past.

The protein keratin, the principle ingredient of wool and feathers, can be repurposed as strong, flexible plastic.

Genomic analysis suggests that the ancestors of lizards on Fiji today rafted from North America some 30 million years ago.

Some attendees of a packed presentation were curious about the prospect of the first ‘topological’ qubits, but left with questions unanswered.

Attacks on vaccines and the cancellation of research into what causes vaccine hesitancy puts people in harm’s way.

Iguanas from the Americas might have rafted 8,000 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean to Fiji. Plus, that US scientists are being told to avoid mentions of ‘mRNA vaccines’ in NIH grant applications.

Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

SpaceX and other companies plan to launch tens of thousands of satellites, which could mar astronomical observations and pollute the atmosphere.

Why failing to control defunct satellites leaves everyone at risk from their impacts.

Memorable ‘tripartite’ phrases in titles make studies more likely to be read and cited.

National agencies too often use spurious reasons to deny researchers unfettered access to resources that are key to understanding past and future climate change.

Satellites connect people around the world but they also interfere with astronomers’ views of the cosmos. There are ways to reduce these tensions.

Spending on research, including at the NIH, will see modest cuts this year. But the threat of big reductions in future remain.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) primarily infects macrophages. In vitro without antibiotics, wild-type Mtb hastens death of the macrophages, but the processes leading to rapid cell death are not well understood. Our earlier work indicated that the death of Mtb-infected mouse macrophages in vitro is markedly exacerbated by induction of interferon-β (IFN-β) [L. Zhang et al., J. Exp. Med. 18 , e20200887

The deep subsurface soil microbiome encompasses a vast amount of understudied phylogenetic diversity and metabolic novelty, and the metabolic capabilities and ecological roles of these communities remain largely unknown. We observed a widespread and relatively abundant bacterial phylum (CSP1-3) in deep soils and evaluated its phylogeny, ecology, metabolism, and evolutionary history. Genome analysis

The phenological timing of leaf out in temperate forests is a critical transition point each year that alters the global climate system, which in turn, feeds back to plants, driving leaf out to occur nearly 3 d earlier per decade as temperatures rise. To improve predictions of leaf out timing, urban heat islands (UHIs) or densely developed areas that are hotter than surrounding undeveloped regions

To understand infectious disease dynamics, we need to understand the inextricably intertwined nature of the ecology and evolution of pathogens and hosts. Epidemiological dynamics of many infectious diseases have highlighted the importance of considering the demographics of the societies in which they spread, particularly with respect to age structure. In addition, the waves of the recent COVID-19 pandemic

Staphylococcus aureus is a Gram-positive pathogen responsible for numerous antibiotic-resistant infections. Identifying vulnerabilities in S. aureus is crucial for developing new antibiotics to treat these infections. With this in mind, we probed the function of GdpS, a conserved Staphylococcal membrane protein containing a cytoplasmic GGDEF domain. These domains are canonically involved in cyclic-di-GMP

NuA4 is the only essential acetyltransferase in yeast that can catalyze the acetylation of the histones H2A, H2A.Z, and H4, thereby affecting gene transcription. However, the acetylation process of NuA4, such as how NuA4 acetylates H4 and H2A.Z differently, remains largely elusive. Here, using cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) single particle analysis, we present seven cryo-EM structures of piccolo

Mitochondrial respiratory complexes I to IV and the F 1 F o -ATP synthase (complex V) are large protein assemblies producing the universal cellular energy currency adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Individual complexes have been extensively studied in vitro, but functional co-reconstitution of several mammalian complexes into proteoliposomes, in particular, the combination of a primary pump with the ATP

Platelets, known for maintaining blood balance, also participate in antimicrobial defense. Upon severeacute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, platelets become hyperactivated, releasing molecules such as cytokines, granule contents, and bioactive lipids. The key effector biolipids produced by platelets include 12-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (12-HETE) and 12-hydroxyeicosatrienoic

An emerging concept for identification of different types of spin liquids [C. Broholm et al. , Science 367 , eaay0668 (2020)] is through the use of spontaneous spin noise [S. Chatterjee, J. F. Rodriguez-Nieva, E. Demler, Phys. Rev. B 99 , 104425 (2019)]. Here, we develop spin noise spectroscopy for spin liquid studies by considering Ca 10 Cr 7 O 28 , a material hypothesized to be either a quantum or

Diatoms, a highly successful group of photosynthetic algae, contribute to a quarter of global primary production. Many species are motile, despite having no appendages and a completely rigid cell body. Cells move to seek out nutrients, locate mating partners, and undergo vertical migration. To explore the natural diversity of diatom motility, we perform a comparative study across five common biofilm-forming

Meiotic recombination is a prominent force shaping genome evolution, and understanding why recombination rates vary within and between species has remained a central, though challenging, question. Variation in recombination is widely thought to influence the efficacy of selection in purging transposable elements (TEs), prevalent selfish genetic elements, leading to widely observed negative correlations

Conventional computational models of climate adaptation frameworks inadequately consider decision-makers’ capacity to learn, update, and improve decisions. Here, we investigate the potential of reinforcement learning (RL), a machine learning technique that efficaciously acquires knowledge from the environment and systematically optimizes dynamic decisions, in modeling and informing adaptive climate

Mechanical stretch can activate long-lived changes in fibroblasts, increasing their contractility and initiating phenotypic transformations. This activation, critical to wound healing and procedures such as skin grafting, increases with mechanical stimulus for cells cultured in two-dimensional but is highly variable in cells in three-dimensional (3D) tissue. Here, we show that static mechanical stretch

The slime of velvet worms (Onychophora) is a protein-based bioadhesive that undergoes rapid, yet reversible transition from a fluid into stiff fibers used for prey capture and defense, but the mechanism by which this phase transition functions is largely unknown. Here, integrating transcriptomic and proteomic approaches with AI-guided structure predictions, we discover a group of evolutionarily conserved

Transmembrane channel-like protein 1 (TMC1), a pore-forming component of the mechano-electrical transducer (MET) channel in cochlear outer hair cells, is subject to numerous mutations causing deafness and hair cell death. We studied mice harboring semidominant mutations Tmc1 p.T416K, p.M412K, and p.D569N, which all display functional MET channels at postnatal day (P)6 but become deaf by P21. Early

The human cerebral cortex exhibits intricate interareal functional synchronization at the macroscale, with substantial individual variability in these functional connections. However, the spatial organization of functional connectivity (FC) variability across the human connectome edges and its significance in cognitive development remain unclear. Here, we identified a connectional axis in the edge-level