Search

Gold has a vital role in human society and the global economy, but its production currently causes high levels of environmental pollution. This work reports an approach that can effectively produce gold from both primary and secondary resources without the use of toxic substances such as mercury or cyanide.

A scanning electron microscope operated at 20 keV with distortion corrected ptychography achieves sub-ångström resolution, thus offering a compact and lower-cost alternative TEM imaging method that is well-suited to 2D materials and small proteins.

Little is known about the transition of a metal nanoparticle from the plasmonic to excitonic state. Here, the authors map this evolution in atomically precise gold nanoparticles, a critical step for understanding the origins of surface plasmon resonance, metallic bonding, and catalytic behaviour.

Gold nanostructures have shape-dependent properties, making synthetic control over their morphology critical. Here, the authors use dynamic compression to obtain a variety of gold nanoarchitectures, which are formed at very fast timescales by the controlled coalescence of spherical particle arrays.

Limited diagnostic capacity for asymptomatic individuals hinders malaria elimination efforts in Africa. Here, the authors present a near point-of-care method based on colorimetric LAMP detection that outperforms expert microscopy and commercial rapid diagnostic tests for Plasmodium detection in asymptomatic and submicroscopic individuals.

The role of fungi in the biogeochemical cycling of gold remains unclear. Here the authors show that fungi can initiate gold oxidation under supergene conditions, thereby impacting gold mobilisation and secondary deposit formation in terrestrial environments.

In seed-mediated synthesis, small particulate precursors are added to a growth solution to initiate heterogeneous nucleation, allowing access to well-defined colloidal nanostructures. Here, the authors identify that one of the most commonly studied seed solutions is populated by atomically precise gold nanoclusters with 32 atoms.

Renally clearable gold quantum clusters that are stabilized by the milk metalloprotein alpha-lactalbumin and display multicolour fluorescence aid the detection, resection and treatment of breast cancer in mice.

The σ-type cyclopropenium cations (CPCs) are unstable species and currently underdeveloped. Now, an iodine(III)-based cyclopropenyl transfer reagent has been developed, which can generate electrophilic cyclopropenyl-gold(III) species as equivalents of σ-type CPCs. The synthetic potential has been demonstrated by the transfer of σ-type CPCs to terminal alkynes and vinylboronic acids.

Heat-responsive polymers grafted onto gold nanocages serve as a nanoscale delivery system for biologically important compounds. Laser irradiation of the nanocages heats the polymers by means of the photothermal effect; the polymers then change conformation and compounds are released. The polymers return to their original configuration when the laser is switched off, stopping further release.

This work introduces a solvent-free method to directly synthesise MOF glasses without needing a crystalline precursor, enabling device integration, magnetic studies, and functional tuning.

Mechanistic studies of reductive elimination that forms aryl–aryl bonds from simple mono- and dinuclear gold phosphine complexes are disclosed. The observed rates for reductive elimination are unusually fast, even at temperatures as low as –52 °C, providing insight into the fundamental reactivity of oxidized organogold complexes.

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.

This study shows that deep-learning-based co-folding models often produce physically unrealistic structures and are unsusceptible in their predictions to significant binding site modifications, demonstrating bias towards training data and underscoring the need for stronger integration of physical principles.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

Large scale CO₂ electrolysis to produce CO has mainly been performed in neutral and alkaline media. Here, we show that it can also be realized in acidic media, with faradaic efficiencies of 80–90%, and 30% better energy efficiency than obtained in neutral media.

This study demonstrates GHz-speed electro-optic modulation using ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals, offering dual-phase shifting, poling-free operation, low loss, and CMOS compatibility-enabling scalable hybrid silicon-organic photonics.

Although bulk defects can influence the performance of electrocatalysts used for energy conversion, their structural origins are still unclear. The effects of bulk defects on CO₂ electroreduction and H₂ evolution activity on Au electrodes are now elucidated.

Type IX secretion system (T9SS) is required for protein export in the Bacteroidota. Here, the authors obtain structure of T9SS PorKN ring which resembles a cogwheel that may have a rotational movement and is disulfide bonded to outer membrane beta-barrel PorG.

Analyses of newly discovered hand and foot bones of a Paranthropus boisei specimen provide insight into possible tool use and other palaeobiology characteristics among Plio-Pleistocene hominin species.

Viruses generally have compact genomes, resulting in many viral mRNAs with short 5’ untranslated regions. An antiviral complex exploits this feature of viral mRNAs to selectively inhibit viral protein synthesis and repress viral replication.

Experiments on nanoparticles with highly uniform sizes show how acoustic vibrations are damped through a combination of intrinsic and viscous damping by the surrounding fluid.

Dietary cysteine enhances intestinal stem cell-mediated intestinal repair following injury by promoting CD8 T cell-regenerative immune responses.

A microinterfacial solvothermal polymerization strategy is developed for irreversible coupling reactions to form porous crystalline sp-carbon-conjugated covalent organic frameworks with diverse topologies. These two-dimensional frameworks exhibit enhanced conductivity and tunable magnetic properties.

Here, the authors provide molecular insight into the remarkable ability of Tardigrades to withstand high levels of radiation by demonstrating that their Dsup protein interacts with multiple surfaces of the nucleosome to protect the genome from oxidative DNA damage.

They determine four cryo-EM structures of NiV polymerases from different strains and establish RdRp enzymatic assays for anti-NiV drug discovery. A back-priming RdRp activity and the binding between RdRp core and CD domains in NiV L were identified.

Opposing forces generated by exopolysaccharide trail binding versus type IV pilus retraction generate a high cyclic diGMP–high cyclic AMP state in Pseudomonas aeruginosa that promotes social motility.

This study reveals that an outer membrane protein from the predator Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus forms a pentameric assembly that traps a lipid monolayer within. This allows the discovery of two superfamilies, distributed across a wide range of bacteria, likely to adopt a similar architecture.

Multifunctional imaging probes are important in bionanotechnology. In this paper, the authors show that nanoparticles with magnetic cores, thin gold shells and an organic spacer layer support a novel magnetomotive photoacoustic imaging mode, and enhance contrast with respect to conventional imaging techniques.

Metal–ligand cooperative catalysis involves both the metal and the ligand moieties present in a complex interacting with substrates. Cooperative catalysis is central to the mechanisms of hydrogenases, lactate racemase and alcohol dehydrogenase. This Perspective describes these enzymes, as well as the small-molecule mimics inspired by these elaborate natural catalysts.

What being outsmarted by a tropical plant taught Matthew Betts about science.

Vibrational weak and strong light–matter coupling in infrared nanocavities modifies chemical processes. Now it has been shown that this coupling can control thermally driven reactions through enhanced radiative energy transport.

Raman imaging offers great potential in biomedical imaging due to the combination of specificity and sensitivity. Here, the authors show nanoparticles functionalized with a chalcogenopyrylium reporter molecule, giving bright probes with low limits of detection for in vivoimaging.

Flores et al. show that brain-penetrant eIF2B agonists suppress ISR activation in cellular and mouse models of ALS and reduce ISR biomarkers in humans, enabling further clinical studies of ISR inhibition in individuals with neurological diseases

Neutral helium microscopy is a completely nondestructive, surface-sensitive imaging technique. Here, the authors demonstrate sub-resolution contrast using an advanced facet scattering model to reconstruct the topography of technological thin films in the ångström range.

Debio 1453, a FabI inhibitor, shows potent activity against antibiotic-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae, rapidly killing bacteria in vitro and clearing infection in mice, supporting its potential for treating drug-resistant gonorrhoea.

Microsoft researchers found a biological zero-day vulnerability — and created a software patch.

Genome-wide association meta-analysis across individuals of diverse ancestries identifies risk loci for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. The associated variants implicate plausible biological pathways and improve estimates of disease risk.

Many protein–protein interactions depend on Short Linear Motifs (SLiMs). In this study, the authors use large-scale binding assays, deep mutational scanning, and structural analysis to map SLiMs recognised by human cyclins and uncover the rules that determine their specificity and affinity.

This study shows that epigenetic gene body DNA methylation regulates transcription and accounts for much of its variance in the Arabidopsis population, efficiently identifies genes regulating diverse traits and may facilitate local adaptation.

The authors present SVclone, a computational method for inferring the cancer cell fraction of structural variants from whole-genome sequencing data.

The regulatory landscape controlling Hoxd gene expression in tetrapod digit development was probably co-opted from a pre-existing cloacal regulatory mechanism, as evidenced by the effects of genetic deletion experiments in zebrafish fin, cloaca and mouse urogenital development.

Federated learning (FL) algorithms have emerged as a promising solution to train models for healthcare imaging across institutions while preserving privacy. Here, the authors describe the Federated Tumor Segmentation (FeTS) challenge for the decentralised benchmarking of FL algorithms and evaluation of Healthcare AI algorithm generalizability in real-world cancer imaging datasets.

Distinguishing between different proteins that each bind to the same type of glycan is challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate that an enzymatically synthesised library of Lewis^x ‘glycofluoroforms’ that feature site-specific fluorination can discriminate closely related proteins.

Slow light effects are interesting for telecommunications and quantum photonics applications. Here, the authors use coupled exciton-surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in a hybrid monolayer WSe₂-metallic waveguide structure to demonstrate a 1300-fold reduction of the SPP group velocity.

An analysis of 2,954 genomes from 38 cancer subtypes identified 19,166 retrotransposition events in 35% of samples. Aberrant LINE-1 retrotranspositions can lead to the deletion of tumor-suppressor genes as well as the amplification of oncogenes.

The signatures of strong and intermediate plasmon-emitter coupling can be confused if scattering measurements alone are performed. Here, the authors use scattering and photoluminescence to demonstrate weak, intermediate, and strong coupling between single quantum dots and plasmons at room temperature.