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‘Populations residing near nuclear power plants may experience low-level chronic exposure to ionizing radiation through environmental release pathways. In here the authors find higher cancer mortality rates in U.S. counties closer to operational nuclear power plants, with the strongest relative risks observed in older adults.’

Although river protection is core to social and environmental well-being, the extent to which river conservation policies are effective is difficult to assess. This study reveals that, under all relevant protection mechanisms in the contiguous USA, only 12% of rivers are adequately protected.

How white matter develops along the length of major tracts in humans remains unknown. Here, the authors identify fundamental patterns of human white matter development along distinct axes that reflect brain organization.

After spinal cord injury, lesion-remote astrocytes acquire heterogeneous, spatially restricted reactivity states that shape neuroinflammation, neural repair and neurological recovery.

The APOE-ε4 allele is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but it is not deterministic. Here, the authors show that common genetic variation changes how APOE-ε4 influences cognition.

Using inbred medaka strains, the authors mapped 59 genetic loci linked to heart rate. Gene editing validated conserved genes affecting heart rate and morphology, highlighting the power of isogenic strains in uncovering mechanisms of cardiac traits and disease.

The study reports the discovery of a persistent bow shock around a diskless magnetic accreting white dwarf, revealing a powerful energy-loss mechanism that challenges current models of accretion and compact binary evolution.

Previous studies suggested that glycogen metabolism played a role in beiging of subcutaneous adipocytes. This work identifies a β-adrenergic–driven transcriptional program that promotes glycogen synthesis and turnover during thermogenic activation of adipocytes. PGC1α and estrogen-related receptors (ERRs) cooperatively sustain this program by regulating chromatin accessibility and gene expression.

Here the authors compare genetic testing strategies in rare movement disorders, improve diagnostic yield with genome analysis, and establish CD99L2 as an X-linked spastic ataxia gene, showing that CD99L2–CAPN1 signaling disruption likely drives neurodegeneration.

A single intravenous dose of the psychedelic dimethyltryptamine, combined with psychological support, produces rapid and lasting reductions in depressive symptoms in adults with major depressive disorder.

From 2014–2017, marine heatwaves caused global mass coral bleaching, where the corals lose their symbiotic algae. The authors find, this event exceeded the severity of all prior global bleaching events in recorded history, with approximately half the world’s reefs bleaching and 15% experiencing substantial mortality.

In this study, the authors present optimization and efficacy testing of apolipoprotein-based lipid nanoparticles for delivering various nucleic acid therapeutics in vivo to immune cells and their progenitors in the bone marrow.

The lowest-frequency gravitational wave background may be shaped by supermassive black hole binaries that scatter nearby stars or dark matter. In this case, the NANOGrav 15-year dataset favours dense galactic centres with 10⁶ solar masses per cubic parsec.

A rationally designed assay detects granzyme A activity by integrating peptide-based GzmA-targeted inhibitors and probes with chemiluminescent reporters to monitor inflammatory bowel disease.

The long-term natural history of long-COVID is not well understood. In this population-based cohort study from Scotland, the authors describe symptom prevalence and health-related quality of life up to 18 months after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test and compare with matched test-negative controls.

Although genome editing has transformed plant research, delivering editing reagents remains challenging. This study reports the use of viral vectors to deliver engineered eTnpBc, achieving high levels of somatic and heritable editing in plants.

Population-level analyses and in vitro experiments show that a specific genetic variant of cyclin D3 inhibits the growth of the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum in erythrocytes, and suggest that its high frequency in Sardinia was driven by past endemic malaria.

JWST’s COSMOS-Web survey is used to create an ultra-high-detail dark matter map, revealing hidden filaments, clusters and distant structures. By tracing features out to z = 2, this map shows how dark and luminous matter build the cosmic web across cosmic time.

This study detects Chlamydia pneumoniae in human retina and brain, increasing with AD severity. Retinal pathogen load with Aβ₄₂ may predict AD stage. In models, infection drives Aβ deposition and NLRP3 activation, worsening pathology and cognition.

Despite high morbidity and mortality, there are currently no approved vaccines for protection against Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus. Here the authors develop a ferritin nanoparticle-based MERS-CoV vaccine that elicits high levels of neutralizing antibodies in mice, non-human primates, and alpacas and prevents infection in an alpaca challenge model.

Plasma p-tau217 tests used to develop clocks that predict when cognitively unimpaired individuals would develop symptoms of Alzheimerʼs disease.

A molecular-level understanding of structural evolution upon electrochemical doping in organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors is required. A pronounced reduction in mass and thickness is observed in an n-type ladder polymer upon doping with protic cations owing to water expulsion.

WIN332 is an HIV-1 Env protein designed to elicit a new class of Asn332-glycan-independent antibodies (type II) to the V3-glycan site of Env. WIN332 immunization rapidly induces type-II V3-glycan antibodies with low inhibitory activity indicative of a neutralization activity in macaques.

Plasma samples from 324 Black and 1,547 white participants underwent analysis with C2N Diagnostics’ Precivity AD test for Aβ42 and Aβ40. Compared to white individuals, Black individuals had higher average plasma Aβ42/40 levels at baseline, consistent with a lower average level of amyloid pathology.

Vassy, Dornisch and colleagues developed a genomics-based prostate cancer risk model to support a randomized clinical trial of precision screening in a national healthcare system.

Genetic variants of TREX1, a negative regulator of type I interferon responses, have been linked previously to non-monogenic systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Here the authors analyze UK Biobank multi-omics data to show that, while a derived oligoprotein interferon signature associates with increased SLE risk, TREX1 variants do not.

Natural and sexual selection can be in opposition favouring different trait sizes, but disentangling these processes empirically is difficult. Here Okada et al. show that predation on males shifts the balance of selection in experimentally evolving beetle populations, disfavoring a sexually-selected male trait but increasing female fitness.

Using the single-cell Deep Visual Proteomics technique, the authors develop a resource providing spatially resolved proteomic analysis of individual cells in human liver tissue.

Annunziato, Quan and Donckele et al. identify G3BP2 (Ras–GAP SH3 domain-binding protein 2) as a molecular glue-induced neosubstrate of the CRL4^CRBN E3 ubiquitin ligase. The CRBN–glue neosurface uses a molecular surface mimicry mechanism to recruit and degrade G3BP2 in a compound-dependent manner.

Humanity’s Last Exam, a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, is designed to be an expert-level closed-ended academic benchmark with broad subject coverage.

Polymer thin films that emit and absorb circularly polarised light are promising in achieving important technological advances, but the origin of the large chiroptical effects in such films has remained elusive. Here the authors demonstrate that in non-aligned polymer thin films, large chiroptical effects are caused by magneto-electric coupling, not structural chirality as previously assumed.

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.

Brown et al. show that mouse islet progenitors with different transcriptomes produce distinct β-cell subtypes and maternal diet alter the subtype proportions. Similar β-cell subsets exist in humans, with a subset enriched in genes related to β cell function reduced in diabetes.

FAME is a biobank-scale method that tests whether the effect of an SNP on a quantitative trait is modulated by an individual’s polygenic background. FAME can also be used to estimate of the proportion of variance explained by such marginal epistasis effects

Genome-wide association analyses using data from 19 biobanks identify variants influencing risk of thyroid diseases and yield polygenic risk scores associated with features of aggressive thyroid cancer.

The authors show that plasma AT(N) biomarkers can distinguish Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration in diverse Latin American populations. Using machine learning and integrating neuroimaging, significant diagnostic accuracy was achieved, enhancing clinical assessments of these conditions in Latin America.

Thendral et al. describe a mitophagic programme that removes deleterious mtDNA during the oocyte-to-zygote transition in Caenorhabditis elegans, promoting mitochondrial health and offspring survival. Loss of this mitophagy leads to mutant mtDNA accumulation.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

Analysis of the somatic and transcriptomic profile of 123 acral melanoma samples from Mexican patients helps understand tumour origins and prognosis, and highlights the importance of including samples from diverse ancestries in cancer genomics studies.

Ribas and colleagues report the results of a phase 2 clinical trial of neoadjuvant PD-1 blockade in patients with surgically resectable desmoplastic melanoma.

The famous nebula Barnard 68 has been used as a giant cosmic-ray detector: cosmic-ray-excited vibrational H₂ emission has been observed by JWST, giving a direct measurement of the CR ionization rate.

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.

Obesity leads to pathological expansion of white adipose tissue driving vascular dysfunction. Here, the authors utilize single-cell RNA sequencing to elucidate endothelial heterogeneity and demarcate key differences in obesity-associated vascular alterations in subcutaneous and visceral white adipose tissue.

An alternative mating system, termed parasex, produces progeny with high levels of genotypic diversity and is able to fulfil the roles of meiosis when it is absent in the fungal pathobiont Candida albicans.

A planet in a retrograde orbit around a star with a close-in white dwarf companion reveals the role of binary stellar evolution in the formation and evolution of planets.

An algorithm that combines deep learning, Bayesian optimization and computer vision techniques can be used to autonomously tune a semiconductor spin qubit from a grounded device to Rabi oscillations.

The distinct architecture of the Escherichia coli membrane transporter LetA mediates lipid trafficking across the bacterial envelope in partnership with the tunnel-like complex LetB.