Nature Of Book

[Chadwick Bosse]

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Nature Communications has been striving to support Early Career Researchers (ECRs) through different pilot schemes including the peer review mentoring programs and co-review mentoring initiative. The 2nd Rising Stars workshop, held at the Henry Royce Institute on the 9th of February, 2024, aims to celebrate and support rising stars within underrepresented groups in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects and this greatly aligns with the aspirations in our journal. In this conversation, the experiences and advice shared by representatives from various disciplines in the workshop are translated to a wider audience in Nature Communications. Dr Alex Ramadan (Lecturer at the University of Sheffield), Dr Lucy Whalley (Assistant Professor at Northumbria University), Dr Maddison Coke (Senior Experimental Officer at the University of Manchester), and Dr Yi Liu (Lecturer at Loughborough University) discuss the opportunities and challenges they face towards their career with work-life balance, family and caring responsibility, and diversity and inclusion in their workplace, and share their experiences on how mentorship supports their personal and professional growth.

To build pathways to constructive and engaging peer review for the next generation of scientists, we invite all our reviewers to co-review with an Early Career Researcher in their group and let us know. We will ensure ECRs are recognised for their contribution.

Africa is undergoing a demographic transition1 that has led to significant reductions in the number of individuals living in extreme poverty, and to positive shifts in related health outcomes, across its diverse populations2. Building on these successes requires a consideration of intersecting factors that impact health metrics, which is the focus of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals3. To support researchers in their efforts towards reaching these goals, Nature Communications, Communications Medicine and Scientific Reports invite submissions of papers that advance our understanding of all aspects of health in Africa.

On 14 May, in collaboration with Communications Medicine, we will host a webinar on adoptive cell therapies for cancer. Panellists will discuss developments and challenges in the field (including introduction on tumour-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy, CAR-T cells, CAR-natural killer cells and CAR-macrophages) for cancer treatment. The event will be live-streamed but a recording will be available.

Nature Communications, Communications Medicine and Scientific Reports are launching an open call for papers to support and showcase research related to all aspects of health in Africa. We aim to promote high-quality research that advances our understanding of health issues in Africa, and advocates for better healthcare on the continent in line with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for SDGs.

Companion diagnostics using biomarkers are promising for guiding radiotherapy, but biopsy-based techniques normally fail to detect real-time variations in target response and tumor heterogeneity. Herein, the authors report an activated afterglow/MRI probe as a companion diagnostics tool for dynamically assessing biomarker apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1(APE1) during radiotherapy in vivo.

Electrochemistry offers tunable, cost effective and environmentally friendly alternatives to carry out redox reactions but the use of organoiodine compounds as electrocatalysts is largely underdeveloped. Here, the authors report an environmentally benign iodine(I/III) electrocatalytic platform for the in situ generation of dichloroiodoarenes for different reactions within a continuous flow setup.

In a time-resolved Coulomb explosion imaging study using ultrafast extreme ultraviolet pulses, combined with theoretical simulations, authors reveal unexpected asymmetric rearrangement of carbon dioxide dimer ion, including a CO3 moiety formation.

The authors propose a residual carrier modulation scheme to overcome laser phase noise in coherent optical systems. The method improves bitrate and spectral efficiency by 41% using low-cost lasers, and showcase potential in cost-sensitive scenarios.

Global future carbon removal efforts could largely be concentrated in Asia. Here, this study shows that multi-gigatonnes expectation of carbon removal could have adverse impact on the energy-land-water system of countries and regions within the continent.

In a study of short-term drought, the authors show an effect of plant mediation on the active rhizosphere microbiome of common bean, but not switchgrass. They conclude that microbiome responses are crop-specific and have possible decoupling of plant exudation and microbiome response.

Hydrological risks drive migration more than socioeconomic factors. Vulnerable groups often stay in high-risk areas or migrate nearby. The study reveals an S-shaped migration pattern influenced by settlement resilience and adaptability.

In situ particle-scale measurements show that black carbon absorption enhancement asymptotes to 2.0 inside a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. This value denotes the upper limit of absorption enhancement for thickly coated black carbon in the atmosphere.

ATE1 is an essential gene in mammals and is recognized as a master regulator of cells. Here, the authors describe structural insights into human ATE1, revealing mechanisms that regulate arginylation activity in cells.

In this study, the authors investigate the dissemination and evolution of vaccination-induced antibody lineages in macaques and show that members of neutralizing lineages acquire different breadths allowing recognition of both previously encountered and not encountered viral variants.

Guide RNA folding affects functionality of CRISPR-Cas transcriptional control systems. Here, the authors report computational gRNA design together with creation of synthetic CRISPRa promoters for orthogonal expression control and demonstrate the application in pteridine and human milk oligosaccharide production in E. coli.

Bacteriocins are antimicrobial peptides that are naturally produced by many bacteria. In this work, authors develop a bacteriocin secretion platform, and test, in a proof-of-concept study, antimicrobial efficacy against Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium.

Here the authors perform a high-throughput screen to identify compounds that stimulate or repress the splicing of neuronal microexons. One of these compounds rescues the splicing of several microexons in the brains of mice haploinsufficient for Srrm4.

The heterogeneous characters of fibrotic scars after spinal cord injury remains unclear. Here, the authors show the heterogeneous distribution, source and function of meningeal fibroblasts and perivascular fibroblasts in fibrotic scars.

This manuscript evaluates forecasts of laboratory-confirmed influenza hospital admissions, a new target for influenza forecasting in the United States. Across two influenza seasons, the FluSight ensemble is robust compared to submitted models.

Malawi experienced a large cholera outbreak in 2022-2023 that was associated with high morbidity and mortality and distributed across all 29 districts of the country. This study describes the epidemiological and genomic features of the outbreak and attempts to understand the reasons for its severity.

Using satellite observations, communities in the U.S. containing warehouses experience more truck traffic and increased health-harming pollution with a disproportionate number of racial and ethnic minorities living in these communities.

The authors showcase a directional information modulation scheme based on a programmable metasurface, which opens a new route to ensure physical-layer security and serves as a stepping stone toward endogenous secure communications.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites) no longer respond to antimicrobials, rendering these specific treatments ineffective. Subsequently, this narrows the options for clinical treatment and increases the risk of complications, hospital admissions, and mortality rates. Ultimately, infections become more difficult to treat. The concern of AMR is not new, yet the COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted this global burden and raised questions regarding the preparedness for the fight against increasing cases of AMR. In a joint collaboration, Nature Communications, Nature Microbiology, Nature Medicine, Communications Medicine and Scientific Reports have launched a Collection and call for papers, inviting submissions of papers that advance our understanding of all aspects of AMR, as outlined in the Collection scope.

Neurotechnology is becoming an integral part of clinical practice. In this Comment, the authors advocate for more scrutiny and attention when describing new neurotechnologies with particular attention to the surgical risks involved and the invasiveness.

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