The extracellular space is a critical environment for discriminating self versus non-self nucleic acids and initiating the appropriate immune responses through signaling cascades to relay information ...

In 1985, experiments revealed the quantum behaviour of a macroscopic degree of freedom: the phase difference across a Josephson junction. The authors recount the history of this milestone for the development of superconducting quantum circuits.

This Review by Imianowski et al. outlines the various contributions that regulatory T cells, present in the tumour microenvironment, make towards tumour progression and highlight the ways in which they represent attractive next-generation immunotherapeutic targets.

Nature Medicine - Large-scale longitudinal health records reveal consistent association of varicella-zoster virus reactivation with dementia.

Plasmids are now the primary vectors of antimicrobial resistance, but our understanding of how human industrialisation of antibiotics influenced their evolution is limited by a paucity of data predati...

Yin et al. show that paternal exercise improves offspring endurance capacity and metabolic health via sperm microRNAs that reprogram gene expression in early embryos, revealing how exercise benefits c...

Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi discovered cells that protect the body from autoimmune diseases.

Saber et al. show that the lipase DDHD2 provides endogenous saturated fatty acids to support fatty acid oxidation and energy production, proteostasis and membrane trafficking balance.

Formate (the anion of formic acid) is a short-chain monocarboxylic acid. In eukaryotes, it represents the predominant transferable form of one-carbon (1C) units between the mitochondrial and cytosolic compartments. At the cellular level, formate is generated mainly through serine catabolism. At the whole-body level, it is derived from multiple amino acids, anaerobic fermentation by gut bacteria, and the detoxification of methanol and formaldehyde.

Although the anti-inflammatory benefits of exercise are well-documented, the specific mechanisms responsible for these advantages remain uncertain. N-lactoyl-phenylalanine (Lac-Phe), a major metabolit...

Inflammation is an essential response to infection and injury, but unregulated inflammation is damaging and must be limited by negative feedback signalling. Inflammasome signalling drives local inflam...

A genome-wide CRISPR screen helps to identify the Epstein–Barr virus receptor desmocollin 2 for primary epithelial cell infection. Additional infection assays revealed that desmocollin 3 also aids infection.

Previous research has suggested that pDCs are required for an effective antiviral immune response, but direct experimental evidence to support this is lacking. Here Ngo et al. develop a pDC knockin mouse model and find that pDCs are dispensable for an antiviral immune response to mouse cytomegalovirus and may be detrimental during influenza or SARS-CoV-2 infection.