In this episode:
To protect themselves against viral infection, bacteria often use CRISPR-Cas systems to identify and destroy an invading virus’s genetic material. But viruses aren’t helpless and can deploy countermeasures, known as anti-CRISPRs, to neutralise host defences. This week, a team describe a new kind of anti-CRISPR system, based on RNA, which protects viruses by mimicking part of the CRISPR-Cas system. The researchers hope that this discovery could have future biotechnology applications, including making CRISPR-Cas genome editing more precise.
Research article: Camara-Wilpert et al.
Carved inscriptions suggest a queen named Thyra was the most powerful person in Viking-age Denmark, and the discovery of a puffed-up exoplanet that has just 1.5% the density of Earth.
Research Highlight: Runes on Viking stones speak to an ancient queen’s power
Research Highlight: ‘Super-puff’ planet is one of the fluffiest worlds ever found
Climate-change induced melting of Greenland’s vast ice sheet would contribute to 7m of sea level rise. But it has been difficult to calculate how the ice sheet will respond to future warming. This week, a team suggest that abrupt ice loss is likely if the global mean temperature is between 1.7 °C and 2.3 °C above pre-industrial levels. Keeping temperature rise below 1.5 °C could mitigate ice loss, if done within a few centuries, but even a short overshoot of the estimated threshold could lead to several metres of sea-level rise.
Research article: Bochow et al.
A massive reproducibility exercise reveals over 200 ecologists get wildly-diverging results from the same data, and how melting simulated lunar-dust with lasers could help pave the Moon.
Nature News: Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists get different results from same data sets
Nature News: How to build Moon roads using focused beams of sunlight
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Flies can move their rigid, omnidirectional eyes – a little
Racism in Health: the harms of biased medicine
Ancient DNA reveals family of Neanderthals living in Siberian cave
Human brain organoids implanted into rats could offer new way to model disease
Virtual library of LSD-like drugs could reveal new antidepressants
Nature's Take: How the war in Ukraine is impacting science
Audio long read: What scientists have learnt from COVID lockdowns
A trove of ancient fish fossils helps trace the origin of jaws
Huge dataset shows 80% of US professors come from just 20% of institutions
Complex synthetic cells bring scientists closer to artificial cellular life
Missing foot reveals world’s oldest amputation
Audio long read: Hybrid brains – the ethics of transplanting human neurons into animals
How to make water that's full of holes
Do protons have intrinsic charm? New evidence suggests yes
Nature's Take: what's next for the preprint revolution
Why low temperatures could help starve tumours of fuel
Massive Facebook study reveals a key to social mobility
Coronapod: the open-science plan to unseat big Pharma and tackle vaccine inequity
How humans adapted to digest lactose — after thousands of years of milk drinking
How researchers have pinpointed the origin of 'warm-blooded' mammals
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