Snippets from Nature’s past.

Radar images reveal clues to the history of a largely unexplored region.

Policy debates concerning transgender people are embroiled in the culture wars. Let data and science — not politicians — guide laws.

Distantly related plants have structurally similar immune receptors.

NASA smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid on purpose. Plus, Germany has placed a big bet on biodiversity and a plant beloved by the ancient Greeks and Romans might have been rediscovered at last.

One in eight US professors trained at just five universities. Plus, the Webb space telescope’s stunning images of Neptune and the winners of this year’s Breakthrough prizes.

Conservation scientist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka looks after the health of mountain gorillas and livestock in southwest Uganda and teaches local residents how to avoid illness.

Quantum platform combines optical lattices with optical tweezers.

Researchers are hunting through waste water for heavily mutated SARS-CoV-2 variants that could be the next Omicron.

But urgent progress is needed to secure the global deal to save the environment.

US institutions and states are revamping hiring practices in an attempt to increase transparency about past misconduct in academia.

Evidence that settlers, not invaders, transformed the genetic make-up of people in early medieval England. Plus, the first drones with onboard 3D printers, and how birds and bats boost chocolate production.

An absent copy of one gene results in brain-cell changes that greatly improve a mouse’s ability to distinguish between tones of different frequency.

A method that adds a heat treatment after 3D printing of titanium alloys could allow for fast fabrication of strong parts.

NASA’s DART mission is on course to slam into the asteroid Dimorphos on Monday.

A protein that boosts energy metabolism in immune cells might help to prevent tuberculosis infections taking hold.

The text-analysis tool could be used to help detect bogus research submitted to journals.

A new centre will invest in shots for a range of infectious diseases so the country is ready for future outbreaks.

Survey finds that students and postdocs report verbal and sexual abuse, unpaid labour and dangerous work conditions.

Primeval droppings show that some animals that lived in what is now Greenland do not appear in the fossil record.

Imaging technique shows in 3D how bees build out a comb’s elaborate hexagonal cells.

Judge acquits Feng ‘Franklin’ Tao on three of four charges — another blow for the US government’s former China Initiative programme.

President Jair Bolsonaro is up for re-election, but his policies failed to slow the coronavirus’s spread.

DeepMind’s system for predicting the 3D structure of proteins is among five recipients of science’s most lucrative awards.

The ability to programme new modes of catalysis into proteins would allow the development of enzyme families with functions beyond those found in nature. To this end, genetic code expansion methodology holds particular promise, as it allows the site-selective introduction of new functional elements into proteins as non-canonical amino acid side chains.1-4 Here, we exploit an expanded genetic code to

Naturally evolved enzymes, despite astonishingly large variety and function diversity, operate predominantly through thermochemical activation. Integrating prominent photocatalysis modes into proteins such as triplet energy transfer could create artificial photoenzymes that expand the scope of natural biocatalysis.1-3 Here, we exploit genetically reprogrammed, chemically evolved photoenzymes embedded

Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 21 September 2022

Teams of aerial robots mounted with 3D printers could work together to build emergency shelters and greener homes.