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Here the authors characterize the evolutionarily conserved role of the Arp2/3 actin nucleation complex in double-strand break mobility in budding yeast. Arp2/3 has important roles in end resection and Mec1-mediated DNA damage checkpoint activation.

The structure-function relationships of a β-helix, a folding motif formed by parallel β-strands arranged in a helical repetitive pattern, remain poorly understood and underexploited. Here, the authors reconstitute a protein β-helix by design from an elementary sequence of 18 amino acids, which self-assembles into a self-contained multifunctional motif exhibiting a range of biological functions.

Net-zero policies can put pressure on land use, which can conflict with preserving natural landscapes, cultural sites and agricultural areas. Now a study integrates national energy models with proactive and collaborative planning to design net-zero pathways that conserve natural capital and address diverse concerns.

Here the authors show that loss of TANGO2, a gene linked to an autosomal recessive disorder characterised by developmental delay, rhabdomyolysis, cardiac arrhythmias and metabolic disturbances, disrupts mitochondrial and cytoskeletal structure by impairing its interaction with CRYAB, leading to desmin aggregation and desminopathy, causing cardiomyopathy, muscle weakness, and metabolic dysfunction in mice and human cells.

Analysing data on egg size and planktonic duration from >750 marine species with a larval period, the authors show that temperature, life-history and oceanographic processes interact to shape peaks of dispersal at low and high latitudes.

Freely falling granular streams break up into characteristic droplet patterns similar to liquid flows, but the clustering mechanism remains unresolved. Here, imaging and microscopy data reveal that tiny cohesive forces are responsible, corresponding to a granular surface tension some 100,000 times weaker than in ordinary liquids.

This paper describes the use of optical microendoscopy to visualize sarcomeres and their micron-scale motions in live mice and humans, revealing unanticipated local variations in sarcomere lengths. Imaging of human sarcomeres is expected to enable advances in biomechanical modelling, orthopedic therapeutics, and the understanding and treatment of neuromuscular disorders

A miniature epifluorescence microscope that can be carried by a freely-moving adult mouse allows cellular-level imaging of neuronal spiking or measurement of microcirculation during normal behavioral activities.

In vivo chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell engineering uses targeted delivery systems to generate CAR-T cells directly in patients, bypassing ex vivo manufacturing. This Review examines emerging viral and lipid nanoparticle platforms, early clinical proof of concept and potential applications beyond cancer.

Neuroinflammation is understudied in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Ma et al. found that clonally expanded CD8 + T cells accumulate in the brains of PD patients and interact with specific astrocytic support cells, which may fuel harmful neuroinflammation.

Chromosomes are coated in proteins and RNA called the mitotic chromosome periphery. Here, broadband microrheology analysis has shown that this coat has dynamic, liquid-like properties and provides an external structural constraint.

Wang, Tang and colleagues develop the low-signal signed iterative random forest pipeline to investigate epistasis in the genetic control of cardiac hypertrophy, identifying epistatic variants near CCDC141, IGF1R, TTN and TNKS loci, and show that hypertrophy in induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes is nonadditively influenced by interactions among CCDC141, TTN and IGF1R.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

The Mass Spectrometry Query Language (MassQL) is an open-source language that enables instrument-independent searching across mass spectrometry data for complex patterns of interest via concise and expressive queries without the need for programming skills.

Flexible electronic devices are widely considered to have significant potential for a range of applications. Here the authors present a bendable and transparent memory based on graphene electrical contacts and silica as the memory element.

Lipoprotein uptake dependent on sulfated glycosaminoglycans linked to cell-surface proteoglycans is a key determinant of ferroptosis sensitivity in cancer.

A preclinical covalent compound, CMX410, contains a aryl fluorosulfate warhead that targets the acyltransferase domain of Mtb Pks13, an essential enzyme in cell-wall biosynthesis, making it a promising candidate for tuberculosis treatment regimens.

Neuromodulators that activate Gq-coupled receptors exert powerful control over brain function. Here, the authors develop a fluorescence lifetime sensor capable of imaging protein kinase C activity—a major effector of the Gq pathway—at cellular resolution in vivo.

Aardvark Weather, an end-to-end machine learning model, replaces the entire numerical weather prediction pipeline with a machine learning model, by producing accurate global and local forecasts without relying on numerical solvers, revolutionizing weather prediction with improved speed, accuracy and customization capabilities.

Black phosphorus (BP) is considered a promising van der Waals material for the realization of mid-infrared detectors. Here, the authors report the realization of flexible infrared imagers based on solution-processed BP photodiodes on thin plastic substrates, showing long term stability and mechanical robustness.

Adaptive optics (AO) corrects eye aberrations for sharp imaging, but their dynamics in clinical scenarios are much higher than expected. Ultrafast AO improves aberration correction and retinal imaging performance in these cases.

The authors reveal that the ocean right above the sloping seafloor flows on average downhill and that this downhill flow recirculates upward in the overlying water column using ocean velocity observations and numerical ocean simulations.

An optically addressable fluorescent-protein spin qubit is realized using enhanced yellow fluorescent protein; the qubit can be coherently controlled at liquid-nitrogen temperatures and the spin detected at room temperature in cells.

Shape morphing is crucial for soft robotics, but conventional methods often induce unwanted in-plane strain and rigidity. Authors propose pneumatic torsion strips inspired by Möbius strips, enabling localized, strain-free bending with tunable elastic energy for shape morphing.

Here, Robert-Paganin et al. show that myosin A from Plasmodium falciparum is critical for red blood cell invasion and that non-canonical interactions and regulated phosphorylation are important for force generation during parasite invasion.

A method, RARE-seq, for sensitive detection of cell-free RNAs in blood is demonstrated to have diverse clinical applications including diagnosing and characterizing human cancers, and tracking response to RNA therapeutics.

Sydnor et al. developed a new tractography atlas of thalamocortical structural connections and applied it to three youth samples. They uncovered coordinated development between thalamic connectivity and hierarchical cortical plasticity in humans.

Multiphoton laser-scanning microscopy paired either with stationary line scans across a vessel or moving line scans across a network of vessels allows the profiling of key parameters that describe red blood cells.

A particle rotating in a fluid generates vorticity around itself. Now the dynamics of a collective of such spinners suspended in a liquid is shown to display flocking and three-dimensional active chirality.

Authors demonstrate crack control of 3D printed composite architectures by leveraging crystallographic concepts of filament orientation in macroscale ‘grains’, enhancing structural complexity.

Here the authors show that human pancreatic islets adapt during pregnancy with increased α-cell area and GLP-1 abundance, while key differences from islet adaptations in mouse pregnancy include unchanged β-cell PRLR abundance and absent β-cell 5-HT_2B receptor expression.

Dual sequencing of the epigenome and genome could have broad implications in oncology.

Fully enclosed, controlled-environment growth chambers can accelerate plant development. Such ‘speed breeding’ reduces generation times to accelerate crop breeding and research programmes, and can integrate with other modern crop breeding technologies.

Confident molecular identification is key for studying complex biochemistry. Here, the authors employ Quantum-Cascade Laser-based Mid-infrared imaging for rapid identification of ROIs, followed by MALDI imaging prm-PASEF for in-depth lipid identifications directly on complex tissues.

Challenging long-held assumptions, this research reveals that people can learn to control bionic hands just as effectively, and in some ways better, using arbitrary control strategies compared with control strategies that mimic the human body.

Wood density is a key control on tree biomass, and understanding its spatial variation improves estimates of forest carbon stock. Sullivan et al. measure >900 forest plots to quantify wood density and produce high resolution maps of its variation across South American tropical forests.

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

Cancers evolve as they progress under differing selective pressures. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, the authors present the method TrackSig the estimates evolutionary trajectories of somatic mutational processes from single bulk tumour data.

Circadian clocks enable organisms to anticipate daily cycles, while being robust to molecular and environmental noise. Here, Eremina et al. show how the cyanobacterial clock buffers genetic and environmental perturbations through its core phosphorylation loop, and demonstrate that known clock regulators are dispensable for clock robustness.

Closed-loop brain stimulation of the human hippocampal theta rhythm produces lasting enhancement of network communication. This implicates theta rhythms in human hippocampal network communication and provides a possible route to memory modulation.