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The latest research from Nature: 17 September 2020



Volume 585 Issue 7825

A pandemic is no time to cut the European Research Council’s funding
Keep collaboration open when doors are closing


WORLD VIEW
Study the role of hubris in nations’ COVID-19 response
Martha Lincoln
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

This issue's Research Highlights
Selections from the scientific literature.

Parenting brain switch, vanishing journals and COVID-19 in kids

NEWS

Scientists relieved as coronavirus vaccine trial restarts — but question lack of transparency
David Cyranoski, Smriti Mallapaty
The underdog coronavirus vaccines that the world will need if front runners stumble
Ewen Callaway
US university workers fight a return to campus as COVID-19 cases grow
Emma Marris
US political crackdown spurs fears of Chinese brain-drain
Andrew Silver
The Arctic is burning like never before — and that’s bad news for climate change
Alexandra Witze

FEATURES
The lasting misery of coronavirus long-haulers
Michael Marshall
How COVID-19 can damage the brain
Michael Marshall

MULTIMEDIA
Genes chart Vikings' spread across Europe
Mapping the migration of the Vikings, and the world’s smallest ultrasound device.




The European Research Council (ERC) presents “COVID-19: Spotlight on Frontier Research” - free online session, moderated by Nature’s editor-in-chief Magdalena Skipper, with four top scientists who bring innovative, sometimes unexpected, solutions to coronavirus health crisis. Join the event in virtual hub 10 at the EU R&I Days on Tuesday 22 September. Register at https://research-innovation-days.ec.europa.eu/register


The lifelong studies that hold clues to what today’s kids might have in store
Barbara Maughan
The poisonous history of chemotherapy
Heidi Ledford

Scientists use big data to sway elections and predict riots — welcome to the 1960s
Jill Lepore

Coronavirus diaries: give your brain a break from science busywork, it deserves it
John Tregoning
Don’t be a prig in peer review
Jeff C. Clements

WHERE I WORK
From high-altitude balloons to Moon missions
James Mitchell Crow

Red blood cell tension protects against severe malaria in the Dantu blood group
The rare blood group Dantu is known to protect against severe malaria, and a mechanism is proposed here: Dantu red blood cells have a high membrane tension that prevents invasion by malaria parasites.
Silvia N. Kariuki, Alejandro Marin-Menendez, Viola Introini et al.

Evolution of the endothelin pathway drove neural crest cell diversification
CRISPR–Cas9-mediated disruption of the endothelin signalling pathway in the sea lamprey Petromyzon marinusand the frog Xenopus laevis were used to delineate ancient and lineage-specific roles of endothelin signalling and provide insights into vertebrate evolution.
Tyler A. Square, David Jandzik, James L. Massey et al.

Homeostatic mini-intestines through scaffold-guided organoid morphogenesis
Miniature gut tubes grown in vitro from mouse intestinal stem cells are perfusable, can be colonized with microorganisms and exhibit a similar arrangement and diversity of specialized cell types to intestines in vivo.
Mikhail Nikolaev, Olga Mitrofanova, Nicolas Broguiere et al.

The brain rhythms that detach us from reality
The rhythmic activity of a single layer of neurons has now been shown to cause dissociation — an experience involving a feeling of disconnection from the surrounding world.
Ken Solt, Oluwaseun Akeju

Prokaryotic viperins produce diverse antiviral molecules
Aude Bernheim, Adi Millman, Gal Ofir et al.

Deep posteromedial cortical rhythm in dissociation
Dissociative states in mouse and human brains are traced to low-frequency rhythmic neural activity—with distinct molecular, cellular and physiological properties—in the deep retrosplenial cortex and the posteromedial cortex.
Sam Vesuna, Isaac V. Kauvar, Ethan Richman et al.

Reprogramming roadmap reveals route to human induced trophoblast stem cells
A single-cell transcriptomics roadmap of human dermal fibroblasts reprogrammed to primed and naive pluripotency reveals a route for the direct reprogramming of somatic cells into induced trophoblast stem cells.
Xiaodong Liu, John F. Ouyang, Fernando J. Rossello et al.

Metabolic trait diversity shapes marine biogeography
A tight coupling between metabolic rate, efficacy of oxygen supply and the temperature sensitivities of marine animals predicts a variety of geographical niches that better aligns with the distributions of species than models of either temperature or oxygen alone.
Curtis Deutsch, Justin L. Penn, Brad Seibel

Bridging of DNA breaks activates PARP2–HPF1 to modify chromatin
The PARP2–HPF1 histone-modifying complex bridges two nucleosomes to align broken DNA ends for ligation, initiating conformational changes that activate PARP2 and enable DNA damage repair.
Silvija Bilokapic, Marcin J. Suskiewicz, Ivan Ahel et al.

Plasticity of ether lipids promotes ferroptosis susceptibility and evasion
The cellular organelles peroxisomes contribute to the sensitivity of cells to ferroptosis by synthesizing polyunsaturated ether phospholipids, and changes in the abundances of these lipids are associated with altered sensitivity to ferroptosis during cell-state transitions.
Yilong Zou, Whitney S. Henry, Emily L. Ricq et al.

Stimulus-specific hypothalamic encoding of a persistent defensive state
Persistent neural activity in the mouse hypothalamus encodes aversive emotional states related to specific threatening stimuli.
Ann Kennedy, Prabhat S. Kunwar, Ling-yun Li et al.

Both naive and memory B cells respond to flu vaccine
Influenza vaccination induces a protective memory immune response. The finding that human naive and memory B cells enter vaccine-induced germinal-centre structures suggests that both cell types aid this memory response.
Lauren B. Rodda, Marion Pepper

Structural basis for the action of the drug trametinib at KSR-bound MEK
Zaigham M. Khan, Alexander M. Real, William M. Marsiglia et al.

NEWS & VIEWS
Light-activated neurons deep in the brain control body heat
Gary J. Schwartz

Developing cells remember where they came from, thanks to keratin filaments
Mateusz Trylinski, Buzz Baum

Planet discovered transiting a dead star
...​

Bob Wilson