Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 02 July 2020

Chemokines and their receptors mediate cell migration, which influences multiple fundamental biological processes and disease conditions, such as inflammation and cancer1. Although ample efforts have been invested into the structural investigation of the chemokine receptors and receptor–chemokine recognition2–4, less is known about endogenous chemokine-induced receptor activation and G protein coupling

Emissions of sulfur hexafluoride soared over the 40 years to 2018, despite some countries’ efforts to curb its use.

Conservation scientist Claudine Loisel is spellbound by the stained-glass splendours that survived a devastating fire at Paris’s famous cathedral.

A recent fire at a natural history museum in Minas Gerais is forcing some researchers to relive the pain of losing priceless specimens and artefacts.

Time to prepare for another mission.

Gravitational-wave detector goes quantum to overcome the limits of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Plus: why it’s so hard to know when we will reach herd immunity to COVID-19, and how flying snakes glide through the air.

Indirect imaging of potential-energy landscapes in materials.

When waves propagate through a weak disordered potential with correlation length larger than the wavelength, they form channels (branches) of enhanced intensity that keep dividing as the waves propagate1. This fundamental wave phenomenon is known as branched flow. It was first observed for electrons1,2,3,4,5,6 and for microwave cavities7,8, and it is generally expected for waves with vastly different

Mutations in proteolipid protein 1 (PLP1) result in failure of myelination and neurological dysfunction in the X-linked leukodystrophy Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD)1,2. Most PLP1 mutations, including point mutations and supernumerary copy variants, lead to severe and fatal disease. PLP1-null patients and mice, however, can display comparatively mild phenotypes, suggesting that PLP1-suppression

The latest science news, in brief.

Fibroblast, epithelial and endothelial cells aid organ-specific defence.

Endogenous proteins tracked across the blood-brain barrier.

The European Union must improve how it collects forest data, which are essential to its ambitions in biodiversity and climate change.

Effects of vacuum fluctuations in a gravitational-wave detector.

Dental enamel is a principal component of teeth1, and has evolved to bear large chewing forces, resist mechanical fatigue and withstand wear over decades2. Functional impairment and loss of dental enamel, caused by developmental defects or tooth decay (caries), affect health and quality of life, with associated costs to society3. Although the past decade has seen progress in our understanding of enamel

Forests provide a series of ecosystem services that are crucial to our society. In the European Union (EU), forests account for approximately 38% of the total land surface1. These forests are important carbon sinks, and their conservation efforts are vital for the EU’s vision of achieving climate neutrality by 20502. However, the increasing demand for forest services and products, driven by the bioeconomy

The interiors of giant planets remain poorly understood. Even for the planets in the Solar System, difficulties in observation lead to large uncertainties in the properties of planetary cores. Exoplanets that have undergone rare evolutionary processes provide a route to understanding planetary interiors. Planets found in and near the typically barren hot-Neptune ‘desert’1,2 (a region in mass–radius

The mammalian immune system implements a remarkably effective set of mechanisms for fighting pathogens1. Its main components are haematopoietic immune cells, including myeloid cells that control innate immunity, and lymphoid cells that constitute adaptive immunity2. However, immune functions are not unique to haematopoietic cells, and many other cell types display basic mechanisms of pathogen defence3

Oral antiretroviral agents provide life-saving treatments for millions of people living with HIV, and can prevent new infections via pre-exposure prophylaxis1,2,3,4,5. However, some people living with HIV who are heavily treatment-experienced have limited or no treatment options, owing to multidrug resistance6. In addition, suboptimal adherence to oral daily regimens can negatively affect the outcome

Valence electrons contribute a small fraction of the total electron density of materials, but they determine their essential chemical, electronic and optical properties. Strong laser fields can probe electrons in valence orbitals1,2,3 and their dynamics4,5,6 in the gas phase. Previous laser studies of solids have associated high-harmonic emission7,8,9,10,11,12 with the spatial arrangement of atoms

Plant hormones coordinate responses to environmental cues with developmental programs1, and are fundamental for stress resilience and agronomic yield2. The core signalling pathways underlying the effects of phytohormones have been elucidated by genetic screens and hypothesis-driven approaches, and extended by interactome studies of select pathways3. However, fundamental questions remain about how information

Mammalian cells reorganize their proteomes in response to nutrient stress through translational suppression and degradative mechanisms using the proteasome and autophagy systems1,2. Ribosomes are central targets of this response, as they are responsible for translation and subject to lysosomal turnover during nutrient stress3,4,5. The abundance of ribosomal (r)-proteins (around 6% of the proteome;

The vascular interface of the brain, known as the blood–brain barrier (BBB), is understood to maintain brain function in part via its low transcellular permeability1,2,3. Yet, recent studies have demonstrated that brain ageing is sensitive to circulatory proteins4,5. Thus, it is unclear whether permeability to individually injected exogenous tracers—as is standard in BBB studies—fully represents blood-to-brain

The mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) is a key metabolic hub that controls the cellular response to environmental cues by exerting its kinase activity on multiple substrates1,2,3. However, whether mTORC1 responds to diverse stimuli by differentially phosphorylating specific substrates is poorly understood. Here we show that transcription factor EB (TFEB), a master regulator of lysosomal

The cortex organizes sensory information to enable discrimination and generalization1,2,3,4. As systematic representations of chemical odour space have not yet been described in the olfactory cortex, it remains unclear how odour relationships are encoded to place chemically distinct but similar odours, such as lemon and orange, into perceptual categories, such as citrus5,6,7. Here, by combining chemoinformatics

The measurement of minuscule forces and displacements with ever greater precision is inhibited by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which imposes a limit to the precision with which the position of an object can be measured continuously, known as the standard quantum limit1,2,3,4. When light is used as the probe, the standard quantum limit arises from the balance between the uncertainties of the

Ribosomes accurately decode mRNA by proofreading each aminoacyl-tRNA that is delivered by the elongation factor EF-Tu1. To understand the molecular mechanism of this proofreading step it is necessary to visualize GTP-catalysed elongation, which has remained a challenge2,3,4. Here we use time-resolved cryogenic electron microscopy to reveal 33 ribosomal states after the delivery of aminoacyl-tRNA by

Nuclear processes, such as V(D)J recombination, are orchestrated by the three-dimensional organization of chromosomes at multiple levels, including compartments1 and topologically associated domains (TADs)2,3 consisting of chromatin loops4. TADs are formed by chromatin-loop extrusion5,6,7, which depends on the loop-extrusion function of the ring-shaped cohesin complex8,9,10,11,12. Conversely, the cohesin-release

Scientists carrying out routine monitoring in China have found that pigs are widely infected with a virus with the potential to trigger a pandemic. Plus, cosmic rays could explain why DNA is right-handed, and quantum computers work better when no one’s around.

In locally interacting quantum many-body systems, the velocity of information propagation is finitely bounded and a linear light cone can be defined. Outside the light cone, the amount of information rapidly decays with distance. When systems have long-range interactions, it is highly nontrivial whether such a linear light cone exists. Herein, we consider generic long-range interacting systems with

In quantum many-body systems with local interactions, quantum information and entanglement cannot spread outside of a , which expands at an emergent velocity analogous to the speed of light. Local operations at sufficiently separated spacetime points approximately commute—given a many-body state |ψ⟩, 𝒪x(t)𝒪y|ψ⟩≈𝒪y𝒪x(t)|ψ⟩ with arbitrarily small errors—so long as |x−y|≳vt, where v is finite. Yet

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Reptiles’ writhing extends their time aloft.

Panellists offer advice on productivity, parenting under lockdown and mental well-being, with more webcasts planned.

Letter to the Editor

For the inaugural Spinoff Prize, Nature sought out the most exciting science-based companies to have emerged from academic labs in the past three years. Here are the selected firms: 12 finalists, and 32 ‘ones to watch’.

Letter to the Editor

A virus identified in China can infect human airway cells and seems to have infected pig-farm workers.

A proposal for one, simple goal, equivalent to the 2 °C climate target, needs to be thoroughly assessed.