Volume 586 Issue 7831, 29 October 2020

Genomics on the continent is finally getting the attention it deserves from international donors — but more funding needs to come from national and regional sources, too.

The next rainy season in East Africa is forecast to fail, jeopardizing food security for millions of people. Act now.

Technique allows scientists to complete a timeline for gene activity in a single cell.

Compounds in the detritus that entombed the ancient city might be degrading its murals.

Little bat-like dinosaurs could glide — but only just.

Elephant seals help to show that tongues of ultra-frigid seawater are relatively common in the Southern Ocean.

The latest science news, in brief.

Proponents of the trials say they can be run safely and help to identify effective vaccines, but others have questioned their value.

It’s too soon to say whether COVID is seasonal like the flu — but where clusters aren’t under control, infections will continue to swell.

Readers cite climate change and the pandemic as their chief worries in the election.

With record numbers of postal ballots expected because of the pandemic, Nature dives into the data.

Europe’s political shake-up is approaching — for researchers, key factors such as immigration and funding hang in the balance.

A handful of experiments are raising questions about whether clumps of cells and disembodied brains could be sentient, and how scientists would know if they were.

Early fossils with guts, segmented bodies and other sophisticated features reveal a revolution in animal life — before the Cambrian explosion.

Heartbreak, sacrifice, genetics and venture philanthropy — this book has it all.

Riveting biography of Andrew Wakefield is a cautionary lesson in the legacy of hubris.

Ecologist who transformed the study of natural communities.

Importing millions of tonnes of crops and meat each year undercuts farming standards in the European Union and destroys tropical forests.

Steps that peers and institutions can take to make laboratories, conferences and lecture halls safe and inclusive spaces.

Nadia Rosenthal oversees the production of genetically engineered mice that help researchers understand more about a range of diseases, including COVID-19.

The Philae spacecraft was meant to anchor itself to the surface of the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, but instead bounced into a hidden grotto. The telltale markings of its passage reveal details of the comet’s fragile boulders.

Homologous recombination is a mechanism for DNA repair that enables the exchange of genetic information between DNA molecules. Structural analysis reveals how the protein RecA orchestrates this process.

A study of the industrial catalyst titanium silicalite-1 suggests that the conventional view of the structure of its active sites is wrong. The findings might enable further optimization of related industrial catalysts.

Targets for ecosystem restoration are usually specified in terms of the total area to be restored. A global analysis reveals that the benefits and costs of achieving such targets depend greatly on where this restoration occurs.

In this Perspective, authors from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) present a vision for human genomics research for the coming decade.

Polarization observations of the fast radio burst FRB 180301 with the FAST radio telescope show diverse polarization angle swings, consistent with a magnetospheric origin of the emission.

When the Philae lander bounced on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, it exposed primitive icy-dust material within cometary boulders; the intrinsic strength and porosity of this material is reported.

High-throughput calculations are performed to predict approximately 130 magnetic topological materials, with complete electronic structure calculations and topological phase diagrams.

A combination of spectroscopy, microscopy and theoretical calculations shows that the reactivity of titanium silicalite-1 as an epoxidation catalyst is due to the presence of dinuclear titanium sites.

Metal-free borylation of C(sp³)–H bonds by violet-light-induced hydrogen atom transfer is reported, demonstrating high selectivity for the substitution of methyl C–H bonds over other weaker C–H bonds.

Newly available atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements from six sites across China during 2009 to 2016 indicate a larger land carbon sink than previously thought, reflecting increased afforestation.

Multicriteria optimization identifies global priority areas for ecosystem restoration and estimates their benefits for biodiversity and climate, providing cost–benefit analyses that highlight the importance of optimizing spatial planning and incorporating several biomes in restoration strategies.

Persistent neural activity in the mouse hypothalamus encodes aversive emotional states related to specific threatening stimuli.

The IFITM3 innate immunity protein directly binds presenilin near the active site and upregulates γ-secretase activity and the production of amyloid-β, and IFITM3 is upregulated in patients with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Whole-genome sequencing analyses of African populations provide insights into continental migration, gene flow and the response to human disease, highlighting the importance of including diverse populations in genomic analyses to understand human ancestry and improve health.

Exome sequences from the first 49,960 participants in the UK Biobank highlight the promise of genome sequencing in large population-based studies and are now accessible to the scientific community.

By integrating healthcare and exome-sequencing data from parent–offspring trios of patients with developmental disorders, 28 genes that had not previously been associated with developmental disorders were identified.

Analysis of 97,691 high-coverage human blood DNA-derived whole-genome sequences enabled simultaneous identification of germline and somatic mutations that predispose individuals to clonal expansion of haematopoietic stem cells, indicating that both inherited and acquired mutations are linked to age-related cancers and coronary heart disease.

A genome-wide association study identifies 17 genetic loci that are associated with the risk of myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), and shows that the modulation of haematopoietic stem cell function drives MPN risk.

Two out of 15 dogs from households with confirmed human cases of COVID-19 were asymptomatically infected with SARS-CoV-2 and showed antibody responses to the virus.

A approach termed ‘receptor inhibition by phosphatase recruitment’ is described for attenuating both tonic and ligand-activated cell-surface receptor signalling.

Single-cell analysis of blood vessels in the alveolus, the site of chronic disease and virus-induced lung injury, reveals two intermingled endothelial cell types with specialized gas exchange and stem cell functions.

In xenograft tumour models in mice, modulation of dietary serine, serine palmitoyltransferase or phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase activity enables control of the endogenous synthesis of deoxysphingolipids, sensitizing the tumours to metabolic stress and slowing their progression.

In-cell structural studies in Saccharomyces cerevisiae reveal that the configuration of the Nup159 complex is a key determinant of the mRNA export function of the nuclear pore complex, and suggest a model in which nuclear pore complexes are degraded via the autophagy machinery.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of the bacterial recombination protein RecA with DNA, and of RecA–D-loop complexes, provide insights into the double-stranded DNA opening, homology search and strand-exchange processes of homologous recombination.

Structures of the iron transporter ferroportin and the peptide hormone hepcidin suggest how iron homeostasis is tightly regulated.