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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.

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.

Light and redox switches are of interest for responsive materials, actuators and robotics. Here the authors integrated a redox- and photoresponsive switch into a polymer hydrogel enabling reversible redox-switching with high spatio-temporal precision.

Programming stimulus responsiveness into living systems enables advanced biocomputation. Here, the authors autonomously compile proteins with defined topology that can be site-specifically tethered to and conditionally released from biomaterials and cells following user-specified Boolean logic.

Experiments and modelling unravel mechanisms of nitrous oxide production from nitrate, the primary nitrous oxide production pathway in oxygen minimum zones. Results highlight the critical role of microbial interactions in regulating this pathway.

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.

The roles of distinct dopaminergic neuron subpopulations and the circuit projections driving their activity during threat behaviors remain incompletely understood. Here, the authors demonstrate that substantia nigra pars lateralis dopamine neurons receive selective, robust excitation from auditory and temporal association cortices, which, combined with rapid action potential firing, contributes to auditory threat conditioning.

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.

Exercise promotes recovery after stroke, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Here, the authors show that regulatory T cells enable exercise-induced repair by reducing neuronal hyperexcitability via interleukin-10, linking immunity to functional regeneration.

The social exposome—lifelong social and economic adversity—can shape brain health and dementia risk. Here, the authors show that an adverse social exposome is linked to poorer clinical, cognitive, and brain changes in Latin American older adults.

Indonesian cattle are unique due to their history of admixture involving both zebu and banteng. Here, Wang et al. identify ~3.5 million novel introgressed SNP variants and provide a genomic map of banteng introgression within and across many cattle breeds, each with unique introgression histories.

Using a zebrafish-based screen, Civiletto and colleagues identify the herb-derived metabolites thymol and carvacrol as activators of autophagy and mitophagy, demonstrating their therapeutic potential in C. elegans and mouse models.

Huot et al. investigate the differences in natural killer (NK) cells in lymph nodes during pathogenic and nonpathogenic simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection of cynomolgus macaques and African green monkeys (AGMs), respectively. Their findings suggest that NK cells are specifically recruited to follicles in AGMs and regulate SIV replication in the lymph node.

Spatial cell distribution within a tissue microenvironment is a rapidly advancing field. Here, authors assess three commercially available single-cell resolution spatial transcriptomics approaches (CosMx, MERFISH, and Xenium) to inform which technology outperforms for immune profiling of solid tumors using patient samples.

A purpose-built implantable system based on biomimetic epidural electrical stimulation of the spinal cord reduces the severity of hypotensive complications in people with spinal cord injury and improves quality of life.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

External Control Arm methods for clinical trials were developed to compare the efficacy of a treatment to a control group that is built with data from external sources. Here, the authors present FedECA, a privacy-enhancing method for analyzing treatment effects across institutions, streamlining multi-centric trial design and thereby accelerating drug development while minimizing patient data exposure.

Here the authors apply machine learning approaches to Alzheimer’s genetics, confirm known associations and suggest novel risk loci. These methods demonstrate predictive power comparable to traditional approaches, while also offering potential new insights beyond standard genetic analyses.

Managing power exhaust in fusion reactors is a key challenge, especially in compact designs for cost-effective commercial energy. This study shows how alternative divertor configurations improve exhaust control, enhance stability, absorb transients and enable independent plasma regulation.

Natural products and their synthesis have always fascinated organic chemists, frequently providing the inspiration and testing ground for new synthetic methods. This Review considers examples of natural products that were prepared first synthetically and predicted to be natural products prior to their isolation from nature.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

Li et al. discovered that the cytotoxic synthetic small molecule BRD1732 is directly ubiquitinated in cells. Ubiquitination of BRD1732 is E3 ligase dependent and leads to inhibition of proteasomal degradation.

The authors reveal that Snail-mediated repression reshapes transcriptional bursting by introducing a long-lived OFF state through enhancer-driven cooperativity. Live imaging and modeling show how active repression dynamically sculpts gene expression to guide coordinated cell specification.

By studying dynamic folding intermediates on the human ribosome, Pellowe et al. show that newly made domains help each other to fold but do not stably interact until synthesis is complete, avoiding interdomain misfolding.

The Perseverance rover detected polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons preserved within sulfates in the fan and floor of Jezero crater on Mars, offering new insights into past habitability and the preservation of organic matter on Mars.

Antarctica is increasingly popular as a site for tourism and scientific research. The growth of marine traffic and the presence of major research stations have increased the anthropogenic deposition of heavy metals into this fragile ecosystem.

Olfactomedin-2 is a pleiotropic glycoprotein emerging as a regulator of energy homeostasis via the hypothalamus. The present findings functionally connect adipose-specific OLFM2 to obesity, and highlight its significance in maintaining adipocyte commitment to avoid metabolic disease.

The authors identify pre-TCR as a key biomarker and therapeutic target in T-ALL. Targeting it with an anti-pTα antibody–drug conjugate inhibits leukemia-initiating cells and tumor growth in mice, offering promise for relapsed/refractory T-ALL treatment.

The LHCb experiment at CERN has observed significant asymmetries between the decay rates of the beauty baryon and its CP-conjugated antibaryon, thus demonstrating CP violation in baryon decays.

Mepolizumab (anti-IL-5 therapy) has been shown to reduce type 2 inflammation in asthma. Here the authors use bulk transcriptomics from nasal samples before and after mepolizumab treatment to assess the changes and associations with treatment outcomes.

Mass number measurements of the molecular species produced when ions of actinium (Ac) and nobelium (No) are exposed to trace amounts of H₂O and N₂ demonstrate direct species identification using an atom-at-a-time technique for heavy elements.

Determining how replication forks move across the human genome is critical for the effective use of agents that target replication stress. Here, the authors present DNAscent, an AI supported assay for DNA replication stress in human cells using Nanopore sequencing data.

This study reveals that excitatory–inhibitory imbalance in Alzheimer’s disease is diverse including both impaired long-range synaptic integration and altered local excitability, with distinct links to β-amyloid and tau pathology.

Orthogonal chimeric receptors containing intracellular domains for IL-4R, IL-20R, IL-22R and GCSFR reprogram T cells to promote distinct natural and synthetic cell states with functional and therapeutic implications.

BindCraft, an open-source, automated pipeline for de novo protein binder design with experimental success rates of 10–100%, leverages AlphaFold2 weights to generate binders with nanomolar affinity without the need for high-throughput screening.

Genetic diversity between clinical and environmental fungal isolates of Aspergillus flavus is poorly studied. Here, the authors analysed genomic data from a global set of clinical and environmental A. flavus isolates and report that clinical prevalence is associated with population structure.

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

A horizon scan of international respondents identifies and discusses ten developing challenges in Antarctic conservation, revealing an increased emphasis on challenges related to governance, geopolitics and economics compared to a similar scan from 2012.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

Known genetic loci account for only a fraction of the genetic contribution to Alzheimer’s disease. Here, the authors have performed a large genome-wide meta-analysis comprising 409,435 individuals to discover 6 new loci and demonstrate the efficacy of an Alzheimer’s disease polygenic risk score.

An analysis of data from the Sherlock-Lung study provides insight into the mutational processes that contribute to lung cancer in never smokers, and looks at the possible role of factors such as air pollution and passive smoking.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) regulates the extracellular composition of the central nervous system (CNS), but it is not known whether its properties differ across CNS regions. Here, the authors show in mice that the BBB exhibits regional specializations, and that such specializations can be important for the function of specific neural circuits.

A high-bandwidth neuromotor interface offers performant out-of-the-box generalization across people.

Genotype and exome sequencing of 150,000 participants and whole-genome sequencing of 9,950 selected individuals recruited into the Mexico City Prospective Study constitute a valuable, publicly available resource of non-European sequencing data.

Diet diversity across northern hemisphere ecosystems affects seabird responses to climate change, with breeding productivity declining in the Arctic and North Atlantic but not in the Pacific from 1993 to 2019, based on 138 time series of breeding success and linear mixed effects models.