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Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) frequency and risk factors vary considerably across regions and ancestries. Here, the authors conduct a multi-ancestry genome-wide association study and fine mapping study of HNSCC subsites in cohorts from multiple continents, finding susceptibility and protective loci, gene-environment interactions, and gene variants related to immune response.

Research on sustainable diets has primarily focused on human and planetary health, neglecting workers in food value chains. This study quantifies the risk of forced labour embedded in five different diets in the USA, underscoring the need to integrate such risk in sustainable diet transition efforts.

BamA is the catalytic core of the BAM complex, which inserts proteins into bacterial outer membranes. Here, the authors show that hinge flexibility between BamA’s β-barrel and POTRA domains is vital, demonstrating how evolution has fine-tuned the BamA sequence and structure for function.

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.

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.

Here the authors perform a trans expression quantitative trait locus meta-analysis study of over 3,700 people and link a USP18 variant to expression of 50 inflammation genes and lupus risk, highlighting how genetic regulation of immune responses drives autoimmune disease and informs new therapies.

Wünnemann et al. generate a subcellular resolution spatial map of the murine heart after myocardial infarction, revealing that immune cells can infiltrate the organ through the endocardium.

In this study, the authors use a maternal infection mouse model to show that Zika virus infection during pregnancy reshapes offspring immunity in a sex-specific manner, weakening neutrophil defenses and heightening vulnerability to infections and inflammation later in life.

The authors spatially and functionally map innate lymphoid cells in the human female genital tract at homeostasis, uncovering tissue-specific and subset-specific distribution and functions, and rapid antiviral responses following HIV exposure.

Genome-wide association meta-analyses of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptom measures and clinical diagnoses identify new risk loci, highlight putative effector genes and yield improved polygenic risk scores.

In non-endemic settings, congenital transmission is the primary infection route for Chagas disease. Here, the authors demonstrate that, in the Italian setting, targeted screening of at-risk pregnant women is a cost-effective strategy for prevention of disease in women and newborns.

This study found higher RSV antibody levels were associated with lower RSV risk in children outside the hospital. An earlier rise in incidence and higher incidence rates were observed among children <5 years compared to older children and adults.

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.

Chemical doping allows for boosting the conductivity in conjugated polymers but the relationship between doping and the polymers’ complex, multiscale morphology remains elusive. Here the authors report that supramolecular chirality, which up to now had not been considered a parameter relevant to doping, significantly boosts the underpinning redox reaction in conjugated polymer thin films.

A year-long experiment in a wet tropical forest found that 4 ^oC of warming boosted soil CO₂ emissions by 42-204%. These high rates suggest tropical soils may release more carbon under future warming than climate models predict.

Sex differences are well established in the prevalence and symptoms of depression. Here, the authors identify a novel X chromosome variant, greater genetic risk, and stronger links to metabolic traits in females, highlighting the importance of sex-aware approaches.

Here the authors combine a deep generative model with structure-based drug design and prospectively validate functionally active, nanomolar, A_2A adenosine receptor ligands and solve their crystal structures to close the Artificial Intelligence Structure-Based Drug Design loop.

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.

This systematic review and meta-analysis of 53 randomized controlled trials finds that educational interventions can help students reduce cognitive biases, with a small but statistically significant overall effect.

The number of individuals in a given space influences animal interactions and network dynamics. Here the authors identify general rules underlying density dependence in animal networks and reveal some fundamental differences between spatial and social dynamics.

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.

The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task in mice.

A survey across 90 societies reveals that variation and change in everyday norms are explained by a single value dimension: the priority societies place on individualizing versus binding moral concerns.

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).

Lowering the levels of coagulation factor XII may prevent thrombosis without increasing the risk of bleeding. Here, Haj et al. use a large human dataset to show that this is the case for people carrying mutations that lower the levels of factor XII.

Iridoids are terpenoid metabolites found in thousands of plants. Using single-cell transcriptomics, the authors discovered an unexpected enzyme that has been neofunctionalized to catalyse the cyclization required to form the iridoid scaffold.

17β-oestradiol establishes an anti-ferroptotic state in female kidney tubules.

Ecosystems filter environmental variability through internal regulatory mechanisms, resulting in more predictable carbon fluxes than the weather conditions they experience. Here, the authors find that more productive ecosystems exhibit higher temporal complexity in their carbon cycling. This short-term complexity appears to be increasing over time, potentially indicating greater ecosystem responsiveness to environmental stimuli.

In mammals, the enzyme TGDS produces UDP-4-keto-6-deoxyglucose, which binds to the catalytic pocket of UDP-xylose synthase, thereby regenerating the essential NAD⁺ cofactor of UDP-xylose synthase in conditions of low NAD⁺.

In this Consensus Statement, a consortium of microbiome scientists discuss current sequencing data sharing policies and propose the use of a Data Reuse Information (DRI) tag to promote equitable and collaborative data sharing.

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.

Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of mouse hypothalamus and behavioural experiments show that specific hypothalamic networks regulate conflicting feeding versus parenting behaviours of female mice.

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.

The discovery that DNA methylation of different CpG sites can serve as digital barcodes of clonal identity led to the development of EPI-Clone, an algorithm that enables single-cell lineage tracing through cellular differentiation at scale.

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.

The authors show that the cell-penetrating peptide DG9 enhances PMO delivery to skeletal and cardiac muscles via multiple endocytic pathways. DG9-PMO significantly boosts dystrophin restoration and cardioprotection, addressing a key challenge in the therapy of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Acoustically activatable nanocarriers made by incorporating 5% sucrose into liposomes release drug with low-intensity ultrasound, providing a readily clinically translatable system for both central and peripheral noninvasive neuromodulation.

Magic state distillation is achieved with logical qubits on a neutral-atom quantum computer using a dynamically reconfigurable architecture for parallel quantum operations.

A study reports whole-genome sequences for 490,640 participants from the UK Biobank and combines these data with phenotypic data to provide new insights into the relationship between human variation and sequence variation.