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Inhibitors of mitochondrial transcription that target human mitochondrial RNA polymerase provide a chemical biology tool for studying the role of mitochondrial DNA expression in a wide range of pathologies.

Low-k dielectric materials are essential to allow continued electronics miniaturization, but their low thermal conductivity limits performance. Here, two-dimensional covalent organic frameworks are shown to combine high thermal conductivity with a low dielectric constant.

The capillarity-driven uptake of liquids by porous solids can be experienced in daily life, e.g., when a sponge imbibes water. Here, the authors demonstrate that this process can be switched on and off reversibly when nanoporous gold takes the role of the sponge and an electric potential is used to control the surface tension.

The Earth co-orbital asteroid Kamo‘oalewa, which is a target of the Chinese Tianwen-2 mission, may have a lunar origin instead of an asteroidal one. Dynamical constraints from numerical simulations suggest that it could be an escaping fragment from the lunar Giordano Bruno crater.

JWST observations reveal more than 17 nested dust shells that formed in the colliding winds of the massive binary WR 140 that enrich the surrounding interstellar medium with organic compounds and carbon-rich dust.

Observations of a meteoroid coming from the Oort cloud show that it is made of rocky and not icy material, constraining the ratio of rocky to icy objects impacting Earth from the Oort cloud to \({6}_{-5}^{+13}\)%.

The authors combine multi-layered omics with clinical and biochemical features from individuals affected with methylmalonic aciduria, a rare inherited disease affecting succinyl-CoA synthesis, revealing that anaplerotic rewiring is a targetable feature.

Ocean oxygenation regulates respired carbon storage and atmospheric CO₂. This study applied a novel analysis using magnetic nanoparticle fossils and found glacial Indian Ocean oxygen decline and carbon accumulation to explain recent climate cycles.

Using JWST, more than 40 individual stars have been detected in a distant galaxy, dating back to when the Universe was only half of its current age. The stars appear to be red (super)giants that are magnified by factors of hundreds.

The exosome is responsible for mRNA degradation, which is an important step in the regulation of gene expression. Here the authors report that homozygous missense mutations in the exosome subunit, EXOSC8, may cause neurodegenerative disease in infants through the dysregulation of myelin expression.

Trois pays africains figurent dans le top 5 des pays où les scientifiques ont le plus confiance.

Spatial gene expression provides insights into disease mechanisms. Here, authors benchmark eleven methods predicting spatial gene expression from histology images across five datasets and external validation, providing insights into clinical utility, challenges, and future directions.

BamA carries out the essential process of folding outer membrane β-barrels in Gram-negative bacteria and is a potential antibiotic target. Here, the authors discover macrocyclic peptide inhibitors that trap BamA in distinct structural conformations.

A study finding an oestrogen-sensing signalling pathway that promotes melanoma metastasis only in female mice emphasizes the importance of recognizing sex-specific factors in cancer management.

The resonant chain of the TRAPPIST-1 planets is dynamically fragile, as small perturbations during its lifetime would have disrupted it. N-body simulations show that the system could not have interacted with more than 0.05 Earth masses of material after its formation. Thus, any water in the planets must come from the planets’ original accretion.

Animal migrations are extensive and crucial for ecosystem health but are in decline. This study identifies 1,787 sites and links among them for 109 marine species, highlighting the need for international cooperation and providing policymakers with essential knowledge for effective conservation.

Optical observations of Dimorphos, a satellite of the asteroid 65803 Didymos, before, during and after the impact of the DART spacecraft, from a network of citizen science telescopes across the world are reported.

Defined levels of SARS-CoV-2-specific binding and neutralizing antibodies elicited by the COVID-19 vaccine ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 are identified as correlates of protection against symptomatic infection.

Notch signalling is deregulated in several cancers; therefore, strategies targeting this pathway are currently being explored. Here the authors report a pro-apoptotic function of Notch3 in endothelial cells; consequently, when Notch3 is silenced in stroma cells, tumour growth and angiogenesis are increased.

Malawi experienced a large cholera outbreak in 2022-2023 that was associated with high morbidity and mortality and distributed across all 29 districts of the country. This study describes the epidemiological and genomic features of the outbreak and attempts to understand the reasons for its severity.

Recent advances in gene editing and precise regulation of gene expression based on CRISPR technologies have provided powerful tools for the understanding and manipulation of gene functions. Here the authors develop an intracellular evolution platform to identify novel CRISPR-associated RNA aptamers for intracellular proteins.

Plants with the capability to reproduce easily without mates and pollinators could have an advantage when colonizing new territory. Here, Razanajatovoet al. use a global database to infer that flowering plants capable of selfing have become naturalized in a larger number of regions than those that must outcross.

Non-uniform metal deposition and dendrite formation reduce the efficiency, safety and life of batteries with metal anodes. The influence of these factors in a sodium electrolyte now shows how a molten-salt-like structure at the electrode surface results in dendrite-free metal cycling at higher rates.

The causes of the Upper Pleistocene megafauna extinction in Australia and New Guinea are debated, but fossil data are lacking for much of this region. Here, Hocknull and colleagues report a new, diverse megafauna assemblage from north-eastern Australia that persisted until ~40,000 years ago.

Analysis of whole-genome sequences of 25,465 individuals of European ancestry shows that rare variants contribute substantially to the heritability of height and body mass index.

A genome-wide-association meta-analysis of 18,381 austim spectrum disorder (ASD) cases and 27,969 controls identifies five risk loci. The authors find quantitative and qualitative polygenic heterogeneity across ASD subtypes.

Multiancestry genome-wide association analyses identify new risk loci for stroke and stroke subtypes. Fine mapping and bioinformatics analyses of these risk loci point to mechanisms not previously implicated in stroke pathophysiology.

Using cryo-electron microscopy, the structural mechanism by which non-coding bridge RNA confers target and donor DNA specificity to IS110 recombinases for programmable DNA recombination is explored.

Asteroids with unstable rotation could be the origin of the observed excess of slow-rotating asteroids. By fitting the gap in the spin–size distribution, this work shows that rubble-pile asteroids experience stronger tidal effects than previously thought.

A synergistic dopant-additive combination strategy using methylammonium chloride as the dopant and a Lewis-basic ionic-liquid additive is shown to enable the fabrication of perovskite solar modules achieving record certified performance and long-term operational stability.

Sprenger et al. find that cytosolic pyrimidine levels regulate the release of mitochondrial DNA and activation of cGAS–STING.

Here, de Vries et al. perform a pre-clinical characterization of the antimalarial compound MMV693183: the compound targets acetyl-CoA synthetase, has efficacy in humanized mice against Plasmodium falciparum infection, blocks transmission to mosquito vectors, is safe in rats, and pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modeling informs about a potential oral human dosing regimen.

CAR T cell success requires targeting tumors, but these cells can get trapped in other tissues, such as in the lungs, where they can cause pathology. Here, the authors use a loss-of-function CRISPR screen to identify regulators of CAR T cell tumor trafficking and engineer CAR T cells accordingly to overcome this limitation.

Not all forest cover is of equal quality. Here, the authors ask whether forest cover or forest structural complexity influences extinction risk in tropical rainforest vertebrates, finding that forest structural conditions are more important than cover alone in terms of buffering species against extinction and population declines.

Closely-spaced anisotropically-engineered single-domain nanomagnets may be exploited to encode and transmit binary information. Here, Gu et al. use time-resolved X-ray microscopy to image signal propagation at the intrinsic nanomagnetic switching limit in permalloy nanomagnet chains.

The interface between complex oxides can show effects such as superconductivity or magnetism that can be controlled through parameters such as carrier density. Here, the authors use magnetic force microscopy to study the magnetism at the interface between LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃and its dependency on charge carriers.

A study using local compressibility measurements reports fractional Chern insulator states at low magnetic field in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, and establishes the applied magnetic field as a means to tune the Berry curvature distribution.

Impairment at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) is an early sign of ALS. Here, the authors show that the RNA-binding protein HuD causes NMJ and apoptosis phenotypes in human iPSC and Drosophila ALS models, highlighting a possible role in disease onset.

Singlet fission may one day allow solar cells to produce two excited electrons with one photon. Now, by comparison of the time-resolved photoluminescence and sensitized triplet–triplet annihilation of a tetracene derivative, it has been shown that—contrary to previous reports—the excimer state is a trap, and not a necessary intermediate for singlet fission.

Swanton and colleagues present a clonal expression signature, ORACLE, which, in combination with clinicopathological and molecular risk factors, can predict survival of patients with lung adenocarcinoma, and they prospectively validate its prognostic value.

Yang et al. show that transcription–replication collisions lead to large tandem duplications, which are frequent in female-enriched, upper gastrointestinal tract and prostate cancers and are associated with poor survival and mutations in specific genes, such as CDK12.

High-throughput electron tomography has been challenging due to time-consuming alignment and reconstruction. Here, the authors demonstrate real-time tomography with dynamic 3D tomographic visualization integrated in tomviz, an open-source 3D data analysis tool.