Search

Japonica subspecies has a lower nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) than that of indica rice. Here, the authors show that natural variations in the NIN-like protein 4 (OsNLP4) encoding gene are responsible for the divergence and introgression of the indica OsNLP4 allele into elite japonica cultivar can increase NUE and grain yield.

Colonic goblet cell-associated passages allow translocation of live bacteria to other organs in early life, potentially leading to beneficial impacts.

Near-infrared mechanoluminescence can be used in biostress imaging, but is subject to limitations in terms of the pre-irradiation process and low intensity. Here, the authors have circumvented these limitations by constructing an MgO/MgF₂:Cr³⁺ heterojunction piezo-photonics system.

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.

The experimental demonstration of many-body signal amplification in a solid-state, room-temperature quantum sensor is reported.

Li et al. identify a previously uncharacterized transcription factor dumpless1 as a critical effector of ecdysone signaling in stretch follicle cell, bridging somatic-germline communication through the integrin βPS-Rho1-p-MLC axis to facilitate dumping.

The electronic behaviour of complex oxides such as LaNiO₃ depends on many intrinsic and extrinsic factors, making it challenging to identify microscopic mechanisms. Here the authors demonstrate the influence of oxygen vacancies on the thickness-dependent metal-insulator transition of LaNiO₃ films.

Liang et al. estimate the prevalence of text modified by large language models in recent scientific papers and preprints, finding widespread use (up to 17.5% of papers in computer science).

Electrocatalytic co-reduction of CO₂ and nitrate to synthesize urea is a sustainable and promising option to the alternative conventional Bosch-Meiser. Here, the authors report a CeO_x-integrated diatomic electrocatalyst overcomes the traditional trade-off between urea yield and Faradaic efficiency.

The authors achieve a high electrocaloric effect in barium titanate ceramics with a defect dipole engineering strategy. As a result, defect dipole engineering enables BaTiO₃ to achieve an electrocaloric effect over a wide temperature range.

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) since the Last Interglacial is reconstructed, showing orbital-scale shifts in ACC position driven by eccentricity and precession, possibly counteracting the predicted southward shift due to global warming.

Matthieu Reymond and colleagues show that natural genetic variants at the SRF3 locus underlie genetic incompatibilities between European and central Asian accessions of Arabidopsis.

Here, the authors structurally and biochemically characterise the YcfA-YcfC enzyme system, crucial for biosynthesis of the anticancer and antimicrobial agent 6-thioguanine.

Understanding the growth dynamics of GBMs can help expand therapeutic options. Here, authors use a cross-species computational approach to compare GBM cells to healthy neural stem cells, identifying predictors and modulators of tumour growth, including the Wnt antagonist, SFRP1, which stalls growth in preclinical xenograft models.

Lo and colleagues report that double-positive thymocytes from neonates express less Zap70 and show reduced Ca^2⁺/NFAT signaling compared to double-positive thymocytes from older thymi. This diminished Ca^2⁺ signaling alters negative selection for self-reactive TCRs, resulting in a cell-intrinsic temporal window for regulatory T versus conventional T cell development in the thymus.

Khetarpal et al. show that the metabolic regulator PGC-1α is essential in heart muscle cells for exercise-driven cardiac growth, and that suppression of the stress-induced myokine GDF15 is required to enable cardiomyocyte adaptations to training.

The contribution of the extracellular matrix and its degradation to the aging process is not well understood. Here, the authors show that degraded elastin fragments, which increase in the circulation with age, promote aging, while counteracting elastin fragment signals alleviates inflammation, promotes healthy aging and extends lifespan.

Selecting for varieties of commercial crops with enhanced nutritional quality is important in agriculture. Here, the authors identify alleles of a gene in tomatoes that give rise to increased levels of vitamin E and find that the promoter of the gene is differentially methylated.

Available wheat genomes are annotated by projecting Chinese Spring gene models across the new assemblies. Here, the authors generate de novo gene annotations for the 9 wheat genomes, identify core and dispensable transcriptome, and reveal conservation and divergence of gene expression balance across homoeologous subgenomes.

Whether higher-order visual areas exhibit a fine-grained functional organization remains poorly understood. Here, the authors use high-resolution fMRI to reveal that category-selective regions in macaques are organized into mesoscale functional units which form distinct long-range mesoscale functional networks.

Cavity phonon-polaritons are a potential platform for controlling phonons. Here, the authors demonstrate multimode ultrastrong coupling between two optical phonon modes embedded in terahertz nanoslot cavities.

Excessive apoptotic cell death and defective efferocytosis drive loss of tolerance and autoimmunity; however, a direct role for macrophage-specific defects in autoimmunity is underexplored. Here, the authors identify macrophage WDFY3 as a negative regulator of autoimmunity by enhancing efferocytosis and reducing MHC-II-mediated antigen presentation, T cell activation, and cytokine dysregulation.

Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

UCHL5 is a deubiquitinating enzyme that cleaves Lys-48-linked polyubiquitin chains. Here, the authors discover through in-vivo CRISPR-Cas9 screens that Uchl5 is involved in immune evasion and modulation of extracellular matrix deposition in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

The ability to resist compaction has widespread implications for reverse osmosis (RO) membrane technology. Here the authors present a class of thin-film crosslinked composite reverse osmosis membranes that resist physical compaction at ultrahigh pressures.

A super-pangenome analysis incorporating 123 newly sequenced bryophyte genomes reveals that bryophytes exhibit a larger number of unique and lineage-specific gene families than vascular plants.

Trained and validated on multimodal data from 14.5 million images from multicountry datasets, a foundation model is shown to increase diagnostic and referral accuracy of clinicians when used as an assistant in a trial involving 16 ophthalmologists and 668 patients.

In a multicenter, randomized trial of patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction and recent decompensation, treatment with volenrelaxin, a long-acting form of human relaxin, was associated with worsening congestion across multiple endpoints as compared to placebo.

A reinforcement learning-based virtual reality system, implementing a series of sport sessions with coaching, was as effective as standard physical activity in reducing fat mass in adolescents, with positive effects on cognition.

Cross-linkable co-SAMs improve hole-selective SAM stability, preventing defects and thermal degredation in perovskite solar cells, enabling 26.92% efficiency with high heat durability, and guiding the design of more efficient and durable solar cells.

FHIRM-TPM 3.0 is a miniature microscope for multicolor two-photon imaging in freely moving mice. In addition to the multicolor imaging abilities achieved with the help of a specially designed optical fiber, the microscope is also compatible with multiple lenses for a choice of field of view and resolution.

Logical operations can be performed fault-tolerantly with only a constant number of syndrome extraction rounds for a broad class of quantum error correction codes, including the surface code with magic state inputs and feedforward, to achieve ‘transversal algorithmic fault tolerance’.

Lithium metal batteries offer high energy density for electric vehicles but face challenges with fast charging. This study investigates pyran-based electrolytes containing various substituted anions, revealing that weakly Li⁺-associating anions enhance fast-charging performance.

The predicted increase in frequency of droughts and rising temperatures in Europe will lead core populations of a temperate plant to an evolutionary dead-end unless they acquire genetic alleles that are present only in extreme edge Mediterranean, Scandinavian, or Siberian populations.

The photoinduced hidden metallic state in 1T-TaS₂ has so far been stabilized only at cryogenic temperatures. Now it is shown that accessing an additional mixed-phase long-lived metastable state can stabilize the hidden phase at higher temperatures.

Functional mapping of cortical asymmetry across seven fMRI tasks shows that asymmetry and bilateral brain activation are positively associated, with bilateral activation being a stronger predictor of task accuracy.

Here the authors reveal a study of 486,956 Han Chinese individuals showing that most people with genetic variants affecting drug response do not have the predicted adverse events, highlighting the challenges of implementing pharmacogenetics in clinical practice.

Li-Fraumeni syndrome leads to an increased predisposition to tumour development. Here, the authors develop a support vector machine model to predict early cancer risk in individuals using peripheral blood DNA methylation profiles.

The authors consider the future risks of warming and drying to water-sensitive anuran species. They show that increased aridity of anuran habitats and drought exposure under climate change, combined with warming, can substantially reduce anuran activity.

The quark structure of the f₀(980) hadron is still unknown after 50 years of its discovery. Here, the CMS Collaboration reports a measurement of the elliptic flow of the f₀(980) state in proton-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 8.16 TeV, providing strong evidence that the state is an ordinary meson.

Integrated multi-omic analyses using samples from the TRACERx study highlight cross-talk between DNA hypermethylation and genomic lesions in non-small cell lung cancer.

Self-assembled multidomain supramolecular peptide hydrogels that engage in dynamic covalent bonding with small-molecule drugs and biologics are shown to offer sustained release, extend the activity, and maintain safe and potent drug levels in vivo.

The synthesis of crystalline 2D polymers typically relies on reversible dynamic covalent reactions, but achieving 2D polymers through irreversible carbon-carbon coupling reactions remains a formidable challenge. Here, the authors present an on-liquid surface synthesis method for constructing diyne-linked 2D polymers.

Nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization is an effective pathway to increase soil carbon sequestration through microbial necromass accumulation and plant-derived carbon inputs, as shown by a 180-year soil fertilization experiment, ¹⁴C labelling, metagenomics and metabolomics.

Delphi-2M forecasts a person’s future health, covering more than 1,000 diseases, provides insights into co-morbidity dynamics and generates synthetic data for the training of AI models that have never seen actual data.

Net-zero bioplastics are possible when combined with high recycling rates. This study presents a mixed polyester recycling process integrated with monomer separation and purification for both fossil- and bio-based plastics. Techno-economic and life cycle analyses confirm its environmental and commercial advantages, advancing the path toward circular, low-emission polyester plastics.