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Patients with kidney failure undergoing maintenance hemodialysis have poor long-term survival. Here the authors use affinity-based proteomics to identify circulating risk factors for mortality in patients with kidney failure on hemodialysis.

Targeted drug delivery in vivo is a complex challenge, and understanding the characteristics that define the behavior of delivery vehicles in vivo is vital for advancing delivery vehicle design. Here the authors use a library of polymeric delivery vehicles and high-throughput tools to study the structure-function relationships guiding the physiological fate of nanomedicines.

The authors model the emergence of climate-driven changes in Antarctic sea ice, phytoplankton, krill, fish and penguins. They show earlier emergence for higher trophic levels, as well as highly seasonal and regional responses.

Eight decades of forest plot monitoring show a pervasive increase in tree mortality across Australia’s forest biomes driven by climate change, jeopardizing their role as enduring carbon sinks.

A narrow ‘Goldilocks zone’ of oxidation levels during exoplanetary core formation allows both nitrogen and phosphorus to remain in the mantle. Earth lies within this zone, but more oxidized or reduced exoplanets may lock these elements in their cores, limiting habitability.

The evolution of a slow life history may be due to reduced extrinsic mortality and allometric effects. Here, the authors suggest that adaptations endotherms needed to return to marine life are associated with longer reproductive lifespans and delayed development, favouring a slow-paced life strategy.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet responded to different natural forcing mechanisms than the East Antarctic Ice Sheet through the mid-Pliocene due to a greater sensitivity to oceanic feedbacks, according to iceberg-rafted debris records and ice-sheet modelling experiments.

Our annual survey highlights startups taking on gene therapy, adoptive immune cell therapy, gene editing, and drugs targeting RNA modifications and the unfolded protein response. Ken Garber, Esther Landhuis, Melanie Senior, Cormac Sheridan and Laura DeFrancesco report.

Using proximity-based screening, protein engineering, and structural analysis, this study describes the development of a p62-based biodegrader for the clearance of organelles and aggregated proteins by autophagy-targeted degradation.

The authors use an agent-based model to investigate the potential of reactive vaccination strategies for COVID-19 outbreak mitigation. They find that distributing vaccines in schools and workplaces where cases are detected is more impactful than non-reactive strategies in a wide range of epidemic scenarios.

The authors propose a Generalized Latent Equilibrium framework for fully local credit assignment in physical, dynamical neuronal networks such as the brain. By exploiting dendritic structure and prospective coding in cortical neurons, it enables an online approximation of backpropagation through space and time.

Plant community responses to climate change tend to be lagged in forests, but could be faster in grasslands. Here, the authors integrate long-term experimental data with >1 million occurrence records for >300 species, finding grassland community shifts towards species associated with warmer and drier conditions at a pace that aligns with that of climate change.

Immuno-oncology was hotly pursued by investors in 2015, along with drug delivery platforms. In the agbiotech world, a systems biology company set up shop.

Robotics and electrical stimulation offer complementary benefits in neurorehabilitation. Here, the authors show that a hybrid ES-exoskeleton enables overground gait with minimal setup and therapist effort and reduces motor demand.

Scientists disagree about area-based conservation’s role in addressing biodiversity loss. This Perspective examines how conservation scientists, land systems scientists and political ecologists approach these debates differently and argues that environmental data justice frameworks can bridge epistemic divides, helping researchers to develop more effective and equitable conservation interventions.

A proteomic aging clock, developed using data from the UK Biobank and validated using data from the China Kadoorie Biobank and FinnGen, predicts the incidence of 18 major chronic diseases, as well as multimorbidity and all-cause mortality.

The authors show that increased Xist RNA levels can induce de novo silencing of genes that normally escape X inactivation. SPEN depletion prevents the silencing of escape genes upon Xist RNA overexpression in neural progenitors.

Application volume is outpacing available funding, intensifying competition and worsening pressure on the peer-review system. But those who win grants are now getting more.

A high-resolution, global atlas of mortality of children under five years of age between 2000 and 2017 highlights subnational geographical inequalities in the distribution, rates and absolute counts of child deaths by age.

Analyses of single-cell transcriptomic data from patients with VEXAS syndrome combined with xenotransplantation experiments in a mouse model of the disease provide insights on the mechanisms of clonal dominance of mutated cells leading to bone marrow failure

Survey data collected across ten low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America compared with surveys from Russia and the United States reveal heterogeneity in vaccine confidence in LMICs, with healthcare providers being trusted sources of information, as well as greater levels of vaccine acceptance in these countries than in Russia and the United States.

The authors use systematic monitoring across the former USSR to investigate phenological changes across taxa. The long-term mean temperature of a site emerged as a strong predictor of phenological change, with further imprints of trophic level, event timing, site, year and biotic interactions.

Recent estimates of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) intake are generally unavailable. Here the authors show a global SSBs intake of 2.7 servings/week in 2018 in adults (range: 0.7 South Asia, 7.8 Latin America/Caribbean); intakes were higher among males, younger, more educated, and urban adults.

As Finland’s climate warms, cold-adapted moths are disappearing in the north while warm-loving species move in from the south. This shift in insect communities highlights the threat climate change poses to cold-adapted species.

The authors combine horizontal and vertical climate velocities to understand how marine species shift in response to climate change. They show that vertical velocity, which is often overlooked, better explains climate responses, with implications for species adaptation and fishing resources.

Using well-calibrated statistical methods the authors jointly analyze Undiagnosed Diseases Network genomes, identifying known and novel disease genes. Software is publicly available to support future cross-cohort rare disease discovery efforts.

Phylogenomic analysis of 7,923 angiosperm species using a standardized set of 353 nuclear genes produced an angiosperm tree of life dated with 200 fossil calibrations, providing key insights into evolutionary relationships and diversification.

Recreating the structural complexity of meat has been a major challenge in developing alternative proteins. Here, the authors present two injectable metamaterials that mimic the multi-scale properties of fat and muscle, enabling a cost-effective process for injection molding of whole cuts.

Predicting species responses to climate change may be complicated by the influence of other factors. Here, the authors report that warming is linked to terrestrial and freshwater community shifts towards warm-adapted species overall, but body size, thermal niche breadth, species richness and baseline temperature modulate the trends.

Genomic, single-cell transcriptomic and epigenetic analyses show that chaetognaths, following extensive gene loss in the gnathiferan lineage, relied on newly evolved genes and lineage-specific tandem duplications, not caused by a whole-genome duplication event, to shape their distinctive body plan.

In the proof-of-concept phase 2 ROME trial, comprehensive genomic profiling followed by molecular tumor board evaluation and randomization of patients with metastatic solid cancer to receive personalized therapy or standard of care led to a significantly higher objective response rate and longer progression-free survival in patients who received personalized therapy.

Inbreeding depression has been observed in many different species, but in humans a systematic analysis has been difficult so far. Here, analysing more than 1.3 million individuals, the authors show that a genomic inbreeding coefficient (FROH) is associated with disadvantageous outcomes in 32 out of 100 traits tested.

High-temperature superconductors hold much promise but are troublesome beasts.

The Arctic winters are changing fast. In February 2025, Svalbard endured rain, thawing tundra, and pooling meltwater. The Comment by Bradley and coauthors describes how winter warming is reshaping polar ecosystems—and why this resembles the new Arctic.

The authors analyse four decades of distribution data for various taxonomic groups to understand the shift of species within their climatic niches and the changing influences of different climate factors. The diverse and diverging climate imprints raise concerns about future ecosystem integrity.

Loss-of-function mutations in Myosin Binding Protein C3, MYBPC3, are the most common genetic cause of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Here, the authors present an AAV9-based gene therapy system with an optimized expression cassette with minimal promoter and cis-regulatory elements that can ameliorate cardiac functions and prolong survival in a murine MYBPC3-deficient model.

A dataset of coding variation, derived from exome sequencing of nearly one million individuals from a range of ancestries, provides insight into rare variants and could accelerate the discovery of disease-associated genes and advance precision medicine efforts.

In this Consensus Statement, an international panel of experts present an overview of the latest developments in the field of cholangiocarcinoma. A set of consensus recommendations and research priorities is provided.

Whole-genome sequence analysis identifies five independent risk loci for Lewy body dementia and demonstrates overlapping genetic architecture with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Part 4: A very public humiliation.

In a mouse model of breast cancer, a low-protein diet induces engulfment activities and mTORC1 signalling in tumour-associated macrophages to suppress engulfment-dependent mTORC1 signalling in MYC-overexpressing cancer cells through cell competition, serving as an innate immune defence mechanism to slow tumour growth.