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Green roofs enhance urban ecosystem services, but the long-term vegetation health and design’s impact is underexplored. This study shows a temporal increase in vegetation health and identifies key factors and thresholds that support sustained vegetation health, offering guidance for effective green roof planning and design.

A technique called condense-seq has been developed to measure nucleosome condensability and used to show that mononucleosomes contain sufficient information to condense into large-scale compartments without requiring any external factors.

This study discovers human SERF2 as a key partner in stress granule formation by binding specific RNA G-quadruplexes. SERF2 and these RNAs provide a detailed structural model of protein-RNA interactions driving liquid-liquid phase separation in condensates.

Panoptes, an anti-phage defence system against virus-mediated immune suppression, is revealed.

Li, Burgos-Bravo and colleagues report that NDF phase separation regulates FACT condensation, which enhances transcription by generating a localized biochemical environment that promotes nucleosome disassembly while preserving chromatin integrity by retaining histones.

Two bead-based approaches for CRISPR diagnostics increase sensitivity and deployability in resource-constrained settings.

A fresh approach to protein design that incorporates excited intermediate states enables precise control over the lifetime of protein interactions, with potential applications in cell-signalling modulation and in biosensors and synthetic circuits.

Klein and colleagues characterize 04_A06, a new V_H1-2-encoded broadly neutralizing antibody that has marked breadth and potency against extended multiclade HIV-1 pseudovirus panels and can maintain full viral suppression in HIV-1-infected humanized mice.

Cryo-electron microscopy structures of three large ornate natural bacterial RNA molecules reveal their quaternary structures and intra- and intermolecular interactions that stabilize them.

In a prospective study enrolling 1,222 patients from 22 emergency departments, a device using a machine-learning-based signature of blood mRNAs demonstrated clinically acceptable performance to diagnose bacterial and viral infections and to predict the all-cause need for critical care interventions within 7 days, with benchmark to established biomarkers and risk scores.

The mechanisms that determine whether fibrosis occurs during chronic skin inflammation are poorly understood. Here, the authors show that chronic inflammatory skin diseases characterized by skin fibrosis share activation of EGFR-STAT1 signaling in pathologic fibroblasts as a disease defining signaling mechanism.

Light and temperature provide critical information guiding developmental transitions in plants. This study shows that blue light signals via PHOT2 and low temperature signals via CAMTA2 are linked, transducing a combined signal regulating flowering.

The authors identify defective viral particles, in people with non-suppressible HIV-1, that can replicate through superinfection and interfere with the wild-type virus. However, they show no evidence of these preventing disease progression in the individuals studied.

Dihydrouridine (D) is an abundant RNA modification but its functions are currently unclear. Here, authors develop CRACI, a sensitive method for transcriptome-wide, single-base D mapping, identifying sites across mammalian and plant transcriptomes and identifying DUS2L as a mitochondrial D writer.

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

Genetic manipulation of blastoids reveals the role of recently emerged transposable elements and genes in human development.

Crystal structures of HIV Env trimer with native glycosylation in complex with neutralizing antibodies reveal a glycan shield of high-mannose and complex-type N-glycan and indicate a path for germline-targeting vaccine design.

NSF hydrolyzes ATP to disassemble SNARE complexes. Here, the authors find NSF colocalizes with syntaxin nanodomains, reveal disassembly of syntaxin oligomers and other pre-fusion cis-SNARE complexes by NSF, and show how sequential hydrolysis drives disassembly.

Across species, how aging leads to progressive spatial memory decline is not fully understood. This study reports dysfunctional spatial coding by aged entorhinal grid cells and networks related to impaired spatial memory and identifies implicated neuronal gene expression changes.

Bacterial deaminase toxins are weapons used in interbacterial antagonism and valuable tools in genome engineering. Here, the authors show how a single-stranded DNA-specific deaminase toxin, SsdA, deaminates cytosines in a sequence context-independent fashion and its utility in base editing.

This paper presents TDAC-seq, a targeted chromatin-accessibility-profiling method using cytidine deaminases and long-read sequencing, to resolve the effects of CRISPR edits on single chromatin fibers.

The Zika viral protease NS2B-NS3 is a crucial target for antiviral drug development due to its role in processing viral polyproteins. Here, the authors utilize crystallographic fragment screening and deep mutational scanning to identify binding sites for resistance-resilient inhibitors.

At single-cell resolution, Tarkhov et al. delineate stochastic and co-regulated components of epigenetic aging, revealing a simultaneous loss of regulation at the epigenetic and transcriptional levels in aging.

Researchers use a chimeric approach to reveal the first near-atomic resolution structures the yellow fever virion, showing key differences between vaccine and virulent strains that affect how antibodies recognise and neutralise the virus.

Transcription–replication conflicts can threaten genome stability. Here, the authors show that RNA polymerase II (Pol II) is a stronger roadblock to a DNA fork in the head-on orientation, and an RNA–DNA hybrid can form in front of Pol II, creating a topological lock trapping Pol II at the fork.

Impure glycerol is obtained as a significant by-product of biodiesel production. Now it is shown that this crude glycerol can be reacted with water over very simple basic or redox oxide catalysts to produce methanol in high yields, together with other useful chemicals, in a one-step low pressure process.

Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 continue to evolve 6 to 12 months after infection in patients who have recovered from COVID-19, increasing in potency and breadth with time.

Genome-wide CRISPR screens map how genes support survival and contribute to diverse biological functions. Here, the authors use antiCRISPR to enhance genome-wide CRISPR screening in Drosophila and generate higher-resolution maps of cell fitness, toxin, and drug-resistance.

The ρ-type GABAA receptors are potential therapeutic targets in several neurological conditions. Here, authors elucidate interactions of it with three therapeutic drugs, offering mechanistic insights and a prospective basis for further pharmaceutical development.

This study shows that p300/CBP-dependent H2B acetylation is crucial for maintaining transcription of oncogenic gene programs in androgen receptor-driven prostate cancer.

How the brain combines sensory with non-sensory information is unknown. Here, the authors find that sensory input from the thalamus to the apical dendrites of the main cortical output neurons enables the first stage of this combination process.

Using mouse pancreatic cancer models, Tsanov et al. show that reactivation of SMAD4 at metastatic sites promotes tumor growth in the lung through RUNX1 but restrains metastatic growth through KLF4 in the liver, influenced by organ-specific epigenetic states.

A significant challenge in modern drug development is the comprehensive profiling of covalent inhibitors. Here, the authors develop COOKIE-Pro, an unbiased method for quantifying the binding kinetics of irreversible covalent inhibitors on a proteome-wide scale.

Small cell lung cancer cells form functional synapses with glutamatergic neurons, receiving synaptic transmissions and deriving a proliferative advantage from these interactions.

Conditional ablation experiments show that key components of the synaptonemal complex protect double Holliday junction recombination intermediates to ensure their resolution into crossover products, which are required for accurate chromosome segregation during meiosis.

Miyoshi and colleagues propose STELLA-SPIM microscopy to visualise single MYO7A molecules in live murine inner ear hair cells. Their data suggest that MYO7A traffics as a dimer within stereocilia to assemble the mechanoelectrical transduction machinery.

Green spaces are known to help cool cities, but they contribute humidity while reducing heat—and both matter. Using smart sensors mounted on bicycles, this study finds that daytime temperature reductions in urban green spaces are largely offset by humidity increases but that urban vegetation causes a net reduction in humid heat at night.

Reddy et al. used ancestral protein reconstruction, cryo-electron microscopy and functional assays to elucidate how a secondary active transporter evolved to harness the energy of sodium gradients to power the concentrative uptake of its substrate.

Natural variation in hecw-1 encoding an E3 ubiquitin ligase influences the avoidance of pathogenic bacteria by Caenorhabditis elegans and forms a molecular basis for behavioural variation.

Massively parallel reporter assay in primary human CD4⁺ T cells and bulk and single-cell CRISPR-interference screens identify candidate causal variants linked to autoimmune disease risk that modulate T cell gene expression and proliferation.

Cryo-EM structures of the full-length Junin virus and Machupo virus spike glycoprotein complexes stabilized in the prefusion conformation. Analyses reveal features that regulate glycoprotein pH-dependent membrane fusion activity.

Functional roles of the parvicellular part of the ventral posteromedial nucleus/gustatory thalamus are not fully understood. Here authors found that gustatory thalamus mediates aversive behaviors and responds to noxious stimuli and fear memory. Gustatory thalamus receives input from the parabrachial nucleus and innervates neurons in the insular cortex and rostral lateral amygdala.

Glutamatergic and GABAergic (γ-aminobutyric acid-producing) cortical neuronal activity drives proliferation of small lung cell cancer via paracrine interactions and through synapses formed with tumour cells.

Determinants of Vibrio cholerae transmission are incompletely understood. Here, the authors use an infant mouse model to show that events in the intestine govern inter-animal transmission and that bacterial motility along with cholera toxin-driven diarrhea are critical for pathogen spread.

Chen et al. show that PEX39 cooperates with PEX7 in the peroxisomal import of proteins containing a PTS2 site and uncover an (R/K)PWE motif in PEX39 and PEX13 that binds to PEX7 and facilitates the import of PTS2-containing proteins.

LipCo biosynthesis in humans depends exclusively on a de novo pathway involving LIPT2, LIAS, and LIPT1. In this work authors present structures of LIAS captured in multiple catalytic states, revealing critical conformational changes associated with the reaction. The structures of the LIAS–H_pro complex define molecular interactions essential for complex formation. These structures enabled the mapping of amino acid changes associated with non-ketotic hyperglycemia.

The functional organization of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) for guiding eye movements has remained unknown. Here, the authors use functional ultrasound neuroimaging to reveal small, tuned clusters in PPC that reliably encode where we look over months to years.

Self-organised waves propagate throughout the alga Caulerpa. Light temporal patterns control the waves and algal morphology, potentially tying light-synchronized self-oscillations to one of the mysteries of single-cell development, morphogenesis.