Search

In a randomized controlled trial that included 97 participants, 69% patients with Crohn’s disease (CD) allocated to a fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) achieved clinical response, and over 60% reached remission, outperforming the control group. The FMD also reduced markers of intestinal inflammation, suggesting this dietary intervention could serve as adjunctive treatment for CD.

This study finds that native tree extinctions and alien naturalizations are pushing forests towards fast-growing, resource-demanding species. This global shift could affect carbon storage and ecosystem stability, highlighting the need to protect slow-growing trees.

The growing market demand for peptides is drawing more attention to their industrial synthetic procedures, which rely on large amounts of toxic solvents. Here the authors suggest practical steps that bring fully water-based peptide synthesis closer to reality.

Phase-stabilized frequency combs are critical for optical precision measurements. They have now been realized in a chip-scale format with CMOS compatible electrical control

Comparative genomics and high-resolution mass spectrometry reveal the biosynthetic gene clusters, and vast chemical diversity of natural products that they encode, in Photorhabdus and Xenorhabdus, bacteria that interact with hosts as symbionts and entomopathogens.

Laser-plasma accelerators can produce giga electronvolt energy electrons over centimetre scales, but their properties depend on the initial injection into the accelerator. Corde et al.study self-injection of electrons into the plasma wake and identify both transverse and longitudinal injection mechanisms.

The Ocean Equity Index provides a systematic, twelve-criteria framework to assess and improve equity in ocean initiatives, projects and policies, producing structured data that guide evidence-based decisions and support more equitable outcomes for coastal communities and ecosystems.

In a phase 1b/2 trial, an off-the-shelf vaccine using gorilla adenoviral and modified vaccinia Ankara vectors with over 200 mutated peptides known to be present in persons with mismatch-repair-deficient tumors is safe and elicits neoantigen-specific T cells in individuals with Lynch syndrome.

Researchers studied the blood-based metabolome of over 23,000 people from ten ethnically diverse cohorts. They identified 235 metabolites associated with future risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). By integrating genetic and modifiable lifestyle factors, their findings provide insights into T2D mechanisms and could improve risk prediction and inform precision prevention.

Exploring strong-field laser interaction requires pulses that are both energetic and short. Here, the authors demonstrate a mid-IR soliton-like pulse compression in a mm-long YAG crystal, reaching the multi-millijoule energy range and showing pulse filamentation in atmospheric air.

Gas-phase actinium monofluoride (AcF) has been produced and spectroscopically studied at the CERN-ISOLDE radioactive ion beam facility; the results highlight the potential of ²²⁷AcF for exceptionally sensitive searches of CP violation.

Modelling of high-temperature diffusion requires accurate treatment of thermal effects. Here, the authors introduce a method to calculate Gibbs energies of diffusion transition states to uncover the mechanisms of non-Arrhenius diffusion behavior.

With rich, multi-layered baseline data and long-term follow-up through linkage, the HELIOS Study provides a resource to investigate the behavioural, environmental, genomic, and molecular factors impacting health in Asian populations.

This study surveyed key informants across 26 countries on burning plastic for waste management and energy needs. It finds high awareness of this practice, with potential drivers including inadequate waste collection and a lack of affordable fuels.

This multicenter study demonstrates use of dried and capillary blood as a minimally invasive, scalable approach for Alzheimer’s biomarker testing in research, with potential as a widely scalable population-based research approach, especially in resource-limited settings.

CAR-T cell efficacy is often limited by the inability to maintain a memory T cell program. Here, the authors show that intrinsic CXCR4 expression enhances CAR-T cell persistence and memory differentiation in acute myeloid leukemia.

Battery electrode binders are hard to image but strongly affect battery performance. Here, authors use silver and bromine staining to reveal common cellulose- and rubber-based binders in graphite and Si negative electrodes and identify processing that reduces electrode resistance.

A wafer-scale self-rolled-up membrane platform is developed for radio-frequency on-chip passive components like inductors and capacitors on a 4-inch sapphire wafer. The authors demonstrate compact metal self-rolled-up membrane inductors with improved inductance and higher quality factor achieved by post-electroplating.

Here the authors systematically benchmark 13 polygenic score (PGS) methods in UK Biobank European and African populations, revealing factors that affect prediction accuracy. They also introduce an automated platform for standardized and reproducible PGS computation.

In this study, the authors perform a comprehensive series of analyses to assess the role of disruptions in brain state dynamics in major depressive disorder, using data from the UK Biobank.

Achieving efficient violet, yellow, and red emission in a single robust, scalable host is challenging. The authors achieve this by constructing Gd³⁺-mediated cluster traps in alkaline-earth fluorochlorides to reduce energy loss during electron migration.

Examples of materials with non-trivial band topology in the presence of strong electron correlations are rare. Now it is shown that quantum fluctuations near a quantum phase transition can promote topological phases in a heavy-fermion compound.

Membrane ion channels can be responsive to a variety of stimuli such as pressure, temperature, or pH. Here, the authors show that simply shining 365 nm light activates a native potassium channel in rodent pain-sensing neurons, delivering powerful analgesia without drugs or genetic manipulations.

Novae, a self-supervised graph attention network, is a foundation model excelling at a diverse spectrum of spatial transcriptomics modeling and analysis tasks.

Taveneau et al. leverage artificial-intelligence-driven protein design to create inhibitors that control RNA-targeting enzymes in cells, revealing a strategy to rapidly design off-switches for RNA-editing systems.

Fast charging of high-energy batteries is limited by electrolyte instability under rising overpotential. A self-adaptive electrolyte overcomes this by dynamically expanding its stability window during charging, enabling efficient zinc- and lithium-metal battery operation.

Here, the authors report magneto-mechano-electric energy generation based on Mn-doped PIN–PMN–PT single crystals. Their device provides sufficiently high and stable output power density for efficient self-powered operation of wireless IoT systems and other large-scale energy harvesting applications.

Several transmission-blocking vaccine candidates based on Pfs230 and Pfs48/45 are in clinical development, but it remains unclear whether they will demonstrate high efficacy. Here, the authors develop a stabilized chimeric antigen presenting potent epitopes from Pfs230 and Pfs48/45 in a single construct and demonstrate induction of transmission-reducing antibodies when female mice are immunized with the antigen in a self-assembling protein nanoparticle formulation.

Multi-template PCR enables parallel DNA amplification but suffers from sequence-specific biases. Here, the authors develop a 1D-CNN model predicting amplification efficiency directly from the DNA sequence and discover adapter-mediated self-priming as a key cause of uneven amplification during PCR.

A measurement strategy is described that is able to read out the parity of minimal two-site Kitaev chains in real time, by coupling two Majoranas and resolving their quantum capacitance.

Radiation reaction (RR) on particles in strong fields is the subject of intense experimental research, but previous efforts lacked statistical significance due to the extreme regimes required. Here, the authors report a 5σ observation of RR and obtain strong, quantitative evidence favouring quantum models over classical, using an all-optical setup where electrons are accelerated by a laser in a gas jet before colliding with a second, intense pulse.

Macrophages play an important role in repair and regeneration of damaged nerves in spinal cord injury (SCI). Here, Guo et al. investigate effects of endoplasmic reticulum-mitochondria crosstalk on macrophage phenotype and develop a targeted nanorobot inhibiting the Ero1α/MAMs/mtCa²⁺ axis, promoting M2 polarization and neural repair as a therapeutic strategy to treat SCI.

This Perspective discusses current evidence on clonal hematopoiesis dynamics in humans and compares mathematical models used to predict CH progression, highlighting their implications for the clinical management of individuals with precursor states.

Alternative polyadenylation is involved in plant responses to various stresses. Here, the authors show how a cis-natural antisense RNA promotes proximal polyadenylation of its cognate SlSPX5 gene in response to phosphate starvation in tomato.

Population-scale WGS reveals genetic determinants of persistent EBV DNA, linking immune regulation—especially antigen processing and MHC class II variation—to EBV persistence and heterogeneous disease associations.

Single-walled carbon nanotubes can be self-assembled into cross junctions using DNA origami, establishing these structures as programmable nanobreadboards.

The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex encodes the value, salience and valence of learned stimuli along distinct neural dimensions, and the geometry of these representations shapes motivated behaviours in mice.

Single-cell RNA sequencing and assay for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing profiling of human retinal samples from diverse ancestries create an epitranscriptomic atlas characterizing over 130 cell types. Integration with genome-wide association study and expression quantitative trait loci data provides further insights into gene regulation and disease etiology.

pH is a critical regulator of (bio)chemical processes and therefore tightly regulated in nature. Now, proteins have been shown to possess the functionality to drive pH gradients without requiring energy input or membrane enclosure but through condensation. Protein condensates can drive unique pH gradients that modulate biochemical activity in both living and artificial systems.

Polymer crystals have a range of melting temperatures, therefore simultaneous melting and crystallization can take place. New crystals are seeded from some of the initial crystalline material, and as the orientation of the second-generation material is correlated with the starting crystal, orientated arrays of polymer crystals are produced.

Here they demonstrate a therapeutic intervention elevating levels of CYP450-derived lipids to control the expansion of intermediate monocytes in tissue and peripheral blood, presenting a first in class therapeutic approach for treating chronic inflammatory disease.

RNA-binding protein TDP-43 contains a region forming a dynamic α-helical multimer that accounts for its functional role, evolutionary conservation, and disruption in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, making for a possible therapeutic target.

A hidden Markov model that uses probabilistic retrospective inference allows for up to one month of unsupervised recalibration in an online cursor-based intracortical brain–machine interface.

Limiting dietary methionine protects against kidney fibrosis by blocking the TGF-β– Smad3–Hoxc8/P-TEFb pathway, identifying Hoxc8 as a central driver of fibrosis and a potential therapeutic target for chronic kidney disease.

A global synthesis of >600 studies finds that across agro-ecosystems, grasslands and forests in temperate and tropical zones, increasing plant diversity has a consistently positive effect on plant performance and the suppression of antagonists.