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Neuroscientist who helped to reveal how the brain processes visual information.

Methods for the systematic synthesis and evaluation of large numbers of transition metal complexes at a time are still limited. Here, the authors report a high-throughput method to create and test hundreds of metal complexes, revealing potent new metalloantibiotics and a highly active iridium catalyst.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

This work identifies ERECTA–EPFL genes as major regulators of maize meristem activity and the development of maize shoots and ears. The findings highlight genetic targets that influence kernel row number and plant architecture to increase maize yield.

Chemical language models trained on known metabolites can identify previously unknown metabolites from mass spectrometry-based metabolomics data with high accuracy.

Zhang, Lahry, Cipurko et al. show that the microbial metabolites queuine and preQ₁ modify the same host tRNA. PreQ₁-tRNA reduces cell proliferation, slows tumour growth, decreases the translation of ribosomal proteins and is cleaved by IRE1 on the ER ribosome.

In this study, authors employ fragment-based lead discovery to identify WRN inhibitors. The fragment hits reveal an additional allosteric pocket and uncover a previously uncharacterized structural conformation of the WRN helicase domain with unique orientations of the ATPase domains

The authors present the results of a phase I/II clinical trial using autologous CD133+ bone marrow stem cell therapy to restore fertility in patients with Asherman Syndrome. The intervention was safe and showed promising results for the restoration of menstruation and reproductive function.

Surgical sterilization alone cannot control global stray and feral domestic cat populations. Here, Godin et al. show that a single-dose injectable female sterilant administered before puberty safely and completely prevents pregnancy after maturity.

Yücel et al. examine how skin and hair characteristics impact functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) signal quality and provide recommendations for inclusive use of fNIRS.

Daedalus is inventing 'Lampglo' dye, along with spectacles that cut out the frequency of a particular light source. These should have a variety of uses, for example in enabling spectacle-wearers to see Lampglo-coloured cars but not dazzling headlamps or streetlights.

Picks include a quantum pioneer, a co-discoverer of Ebola and a bioethicist-turned-activist.

High-depth sequencing of non-cancerous tissue from patients with metastatic cancer reveals single-base mutational signatures of alcohol, smoking and cancer treatments, and reveals how exogenous factors, including cancer therapies, affect somatic cell evolution.

Drug tolerance can delay treatment response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. Here, the authors identify transcription factors and their effector genes that impact tolerance and hypersusceptibility and may serve as potential new drug targets.

Mosquitoes are major vectors for the transmission of many serious pathogens. This study uses genome-wide CRISPR screens in the mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, to reveal new insights into mosquito fitness and the function of clodronate-liposome mediated immune cell ablation.

Water-vapor interfaces have been studied with many techniques, yet open questions persist about their electronic and molecular structure. Here, the authors demonstrate the application of soft x-ray second harmonic generation to study the water surface by leveraging attosecond pulses at the LCLS and a flat liquid sheet microjet, providing insights on the H-bond structure.

Here, the authors present archaeology of the Namorotukunan site in Kenya’s Turkana Basin that demonstrates adaptive shifts in hominin tool-making behaviour spanning 300,000 years and increasing environmental variability. They contextualize these findings with paleoenvironmental proxies, dating, and geological descriptions.

This study supports neurofilament light chain protein (NfL) in both cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood as an early marker of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease but suggests that NfL in CSF may be better suited than blood for monitoring clinical trial outcomes in symptomatic patients.

Mapping of the neutrophil compartment using single-cell transcriptional data from multiple physiological and patological states reveals its organizational architecture and how cell state dynamics and trajectories vary during health, inflammation and cancer.

Achieving nonlinear optical response of free-space planar solid devices in the few-photon regime will provide several technological advances. Here, the authors demonstrate a self-hybridised perovskite metasurface with strong nonlinear absorption at record low incident powers, by means of cavity critical coupling engineering

Materials that can alter their structure in response to light have potential as functional materials such as motors and actuators. Here the authors describe a low-cost system capable of rapid, reversible and wavelength-selective responses to light.

Moutsopoulos, Williams and colleagues show oral mucosal barrier tissues exhibit dynamic zonal immune cell environments, including tonic inflammatory features in healthy individuals and development of tertiary lymphoid structures with the potential to support local antibody production in periodontitis.

PMTs are fungal O-mannosyltransferases embedded in the ER membrane. Here, structures of the Pmt4 homodimer reveal distinct features of this PMT family and uncover an additional cytosolic binding site for the Dol-P-Man substrate lipid.

Quantifying ecosystem dynamics is critical in the face of rapid environmental change. This study uses airborne eDNA to quantify changes in organism abundances across the tree of life and reveal a regional decline in biodiversity over three decades.

Here, as part of the Sherlock-Lung study, the authors profile the microbiomes of 940 lung cancers in never smokers finding no significant associations with demographic and clinical features, suggesting lung bacteria are unlikely to have a sizable role in lung cancer.

Lung adenocarcinomas bearing the ID2 mutational signature display increased LINE-1 retrotransposon activity, which contributes to their fast evolutionary dynamics and aggressive phenotype.

Klose and colleagues show that the neuropeptide vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) acts on LGR5⁺ epithelial stem cells in the gut to restrain their proliferation and differentiation to secretory cell types. This VIP–VIPR1 interaction acts to limit type 2 immune responses.

Specific pain-sensing nociceptors and chemosensory tuft cells form a circuit to promote type 2 immune responses in the intestine.

The combination of computational design, laboratory-based screening and biophysical validation enables the de novo generation of variable heavy-chain antibody fragments and antibodies that precisely target chosen disease-related molecules.

The authors report an enhancement of the superconducting onset temperature in nanometer-thin YBa₂Cu₃O₇-δ films grown on substrates with nanofaceted surfaces. They theoretically show that the enhancement is mainly driven by electronic nematicity and unidirectional charge density waves, and further suggest that the nanofacets themselves may promote these effects.

Recent advances in the synthesis of graphene fragments that possess unpaired π-electrons and display high-spin ground states have unlocked possibilities to explore exotic physical phenomena related to magnetism. Here, the authors demonstrate the magnetic bistability of a diradical nanographene that allows direct spin manipulation at the single-molecule level.

Early high-resolution images of two 2021 novae reveal eruptions unfolding in multiple stages with colliding outflows that produce shocks and gamma rays, reshaping our understanding of stellar explosions.

1,2-Diols and 1,2-amino alcohols are widely found in bioactive compounds. Now it has been shown that alcohols can be converted, via alkoxy sulfonium salts, to alkoxy radicals that add to alkenes to give 1,2-diol and 1,2-amino-alcohol derivatives. The photocatalytic method can be run on a kilogram scale using a photoflow system.

Here they develop PLOTTED, a novel imaging-based method for extracting chromatin conformation information from 3D data. This method provides visualization tools to assess spatial differences, illustrating the interplay between chromatin conformation and gene expression.

Genomic analysis of Plasmodium DNA from 36 ancient individuals provides insight into the global distribution and spread of malaria-causing species during around 5,500 years of human history.

This work applies high-resolution fMRI with real-time pupillometry in 5xFAD transgenic mice to verify pupillary biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In particular, the pupil-driven fMRI maps identify dysfunction of neuromodulatory pathways affected by AD degeneration.

Hepatocyte organoids derived directly from human tissue enable long-term hepatocyte expansion and can be combined with portal mesenchyme and cholangiocyte organoids to form a donor-specific periportal liver assembloid system.

In this study, the authors develop NTAC, Neuronal Type Assignment from Connectivity, using synaptic connectivity alone to identify cell types with high accuracy within minutes on a standard CPU.

Robbie Waugh and colleagues report that the EARLINESS PER SE (EPS2) locus is associated with spring growth habit and environmental adaptation in barley. Resequencing the barley homolog of CENTRORADIALIS, located within the EPS2 locus, in 216 spring and 207 winter barley accessions identified haplotypes at HvCEN that correspond with winter or spring growth habit.

Metasurfaces and metamaterials (or meta-optics) and their optoelectronic hybrid integration are set to drive the next era of computing, sensing and communications. As electronic systems reach fundamental limits, optical-enabled artificial intelligence emerges as a way forward, with meta-optics enabling speed, efficiency and scalability. We argue the need for comprehensive national innovation strategies to exploit the value of meta-optics in the photonics industry.

Trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) is a HER2-targeted antibody drug conjugate. Through integrated laboratory and clinical studies, the authors identify significant ERBB2 (the gene that encodes the HER2 protein) mutational heterogeneity in patients with urothelial cancer and co-mutation and amplification of ERBB2 as a potential biomarker of exceptional response to T-DXd.

Data collected from zoos and aquariums worldwide show that hormonal contraception or permanent surgical sterilization in mammals increase life expectancy, with different mechanisms in males and females.

The universality of the energetic equivalence rule has long been debated. Here, the authors show that across 183 soil invertebrate food webs, size–density and energy use varied with trophic level, energy measure, and food web structure, showing that ecosystem energetics depend on context and trophic complexity.

Zeng et al. applied single-particle cryo-electron microscopy to native samples isolated from the human parasite Toxoplasma gondii, determining multiple structures of key components of the conoid, a cone-shaped organelle essential for host cell invasion.

Exploiting the energy transfer between the host triplet states and spin doublet exciton states of a radical organic emitter enables near-infrared organic light-emitting diodes with an external quantum efficiency up to 9.6% at an emission wavelength of 800 nm.