From division to 'divergence': to understand wood growth across timescales, we need to (learn to) manipulate it.

Wood formation is the Rosetta stone of tree physiology: a traceable, integrated record of physiological and morphological status. It also produces a large and persistent annual sink for terrestrial carbon, motivating predictive understanding. Xylogenesis studies have greatly expanded our knowledge of the intra-annual controls on wood formation, while dendroecology has quantified the environmental drivers of multi-annual variability.

Sex-Specific HLA Alleles Contribute to the Modulation of COVID-19 Severity.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, responsible for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), exhibits a spectrum of clinical manifestations, ranging from asymptomatic to severe pulmonary dysfunction or death. The variability in COVID-19 severity has largely been attributed to the host's genetic characteristics, suggesting a polygenic genetic architecture, without significant strong evidence of sex-related genetic differences. In this Italian retrospective case-control study, we investigated the association between COVID-19 severity (severe vs.

Higher latewood to earlywood ratio increases resistance of radial growth to severe droughts in larch.

As drought has caused great losses of tree growth across the world, the mechanism of how trees adapt to drought has been extensively investigated. However, how trees change their late- to earlywood ratio (LER) to adapt to severe drought events remains poorly understood. We used a network of Larix principis-rupprechtii earlywood and latewood width data from 1979 to 2018, covering most of the distribution of planted larch across North China, to investigate how latewood proportion affected trees' resistance to drought.

Fading regulation of diurnal temperature ranges on drought-induced growth loss for drought-tolerant tree species.

Warming-induced droughts caused tree growth loss across the globe, leading to substantial carbon loss to the atmosphere. Drought-induced growth loss, however, can be regulated by changes in diurnal temperature ranges. Here, we investigated long term radial growth responses of 23 widespread distributed tree species from 2327 sites over the world and found that species' drought tolerances were significantly and positively correlated with diurnal temperature range-growth loss relationships for the period 1901-1940.