Search

Ecosystems that provide fresh water for cities also impact sediment flows, flood mitigation and hydropower provision. This Article looks at over 300 cities globally to gauge the interactions of natural ecosystems with built infrastructure.

Exposure to inflammation drives hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) aging, limiting their self-renewal capacity and differentiation. Here, the authors explore the mechanistic link between inflammation and HSC aging. Using mouse models, they identify the innate immune RNA sensor MDA5 as a key mediator of HSC aging and show that MDA5 loss ameliorates the aging phenotype by improving proteostasis in aged HSCs.

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.

This paper uses multiomics to profile a large cohort of meningioma samples to highlight the role of the tumor microenvironment in driving the epigenetic changes underpinning tumor classification and prediction of outcome.

The toxin-antitoxin pair MqsR and MqsA are linked to biofilm formation, quorum sensing and motility, but their specific role in these and other cellular processes is unclear. The demonstration that MqsA directly represses transcription of rpoS, encoding the master regulator of the stress response, provides a unifying explanation.

Critically lists tend to ignore the fact that most metals are largely used in alloy form. Here the authors analyze four key metrics and show that six critical metals can be singled out for enhanced concern – Dy, Sm, V, Nb, Te, and Ga.

The STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory demonstrates evidence of spin correlations in \(\Lambda \bar{\Lambda }\) hyperon pairs inherited from virtual spin-correlated strange quark–antiquark pairs during QCD confinement.

Stable adipocytes resist lipolysis in healthy states but are highly susceptible to a catecholamine-independent, neurosystemic pathway-driven catabolic state.

Lamin A/C in the nuclear lamina is identified as a regulator of cysteine catabolic flux, necessary for cell fate decisions and function.

T-cell–mediated rejection (TCMR) remains a major cause of kidney transplant failure with incompletely understood mechanisms. Here the authors use single-nucleus RNA sequencing, spatial transcriptomics and immunofluorescence to show that injured kidney epithelial cell states associate with poor transplant outcomes after T-cell–mediated rejection.

MedHELM, an extensible evaluation framework including a new taxonomy for classifying medical tasks and a benchmark of many datasets across these categories, enables the evaluation of large language models on real-world clinical tasks.

As Nature Aging celebrates its fifth anniversary, the journal asks some of the researchers who contributed to the journal early on to reflect on the past and the future of aging and age-related disease research, the impact of the field on human health now and in the future, and what challenges need to be addressed to ensure sustained progress.

A measurement strategy is described that is able to read out the parity of minimal two-site Kitaev chains in real time, by coupling two Majoranas and resolving their quantum capacitance.

“How iodine-bearing molecules contribute to atmospheric aerosol formation is not well understood. Here, the authors provide a new gas-to-particle conversion mechanism and show that clustering of iodine oxides is an essential component of this process while previously proposed iodic acid does not play a large role.”

A simple transport model infers a material’s electronic dimensionality from standard transport measurements, revealing temperature-, doping- and alloying-driven shifts between low-dimensional and 3D transport in SrTiO₃, Bi₂O₂Se and Pb_1-xSn_xTe.

Elhan et al. show that ATG2A acts with DGAT2, the enzyme producing triacylglycerol (TAG), in lipid droplet growth. By delivering diacylglycerol to lipid droplets, ATG2A not only fuels TAG production but also promotes the recruitment of DGAT2 to droplet surfaces.

The second sound is an entropy oscillation propagating with constant pressure. Here the authors demonstrate the variation of the second sound wave in the crossover from the Bose-Einstein condensate to the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid using 6Li.

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).

There is compelling mechanistic rationale for combining PARP inhibitors with topoisomerase I (TOP1) inhibitors but hindered by dose-limiting toxicities. Here this group proposes a dose-escalation strategy integrating tumor-targeted TOP1 inhibitor with optimized PARP inhibitor scheduling, and evaluate the safety and efficacy in a phase 1 trial of 24 patients with advanced solid tumors.

Vaulet et al. developed and validated four continuous indices from histological lesion scores to assess kidney transplant rejection, offering an alternative to the Banff categories that reflect the continuous nature of rejection.

This Perspective synthesizes insights from the past use of nature markets to identify design factors that are necessary if such markets are to achieve their environmental aims—although qualitative scoring of existing markets against these rules identifies pervasive gaps.

Engineering the perovskite–electrical contact interface with sodium heptafluorobutyrate reduces interfacial defects and improves charge transport in perovskite solar cells. Functionalized devices deliver a certified power conversion efficiency of 26.96%, which is fully retained after 1,200 h of continuous operation under 1-sun illumination.

This study explores pathways of emissions and mitigation compatible with four climate boundaries—planetary boundaries for the climate system. The results highlight the importance of peak emission timing, limitation of carbon budgets as a sole indicator and trade-offs between mitigation options.

The authors summarize changes in circuits after spinal cord injury and current strategies to target these circuits in order to improve recovery, but also advocate for new concepts of reorganizing circuits informed by multi-omic single-cell atlases.

Cancer immunotherapy benefits from antibody-lectin chimeras that block glyco-immune checkpoints.

ATP release through large-pore channels is essential for cell communication. Here, the authors reveal how structural flexibility in the PANX1 pore enables selective passage of molecules like ATP and identify mefloquine as a positive modulator acting through a newly identified binding site.

Breakage of both chromosomal DNA strands creates unique problems for DNA repair. Here, Luthman et al. show that for some broken ends, the two strand breaks are repaired in parallel, while for other ends one strand must be repaired before the other.

Joint initiatives by state and non-state actors launched at climate summits are expected to enhance climate governance. However, those launched at earlier summits often perform better, as do initiatives in areas such as transport, energy and industry and ones with robust institutional arrangements.

A Ryugu sample shows hydrothermal alteration (230–400 °C), linking returned material to Hayabusa2 spectral data and supporting Ryugu’s formation via a disruptive impact event, bridging spacecraft and sample observations.

A long-read metagenomics method empowers faecal microbiota transplantation studies by precisely tracking bacteria from donors to recipients, distinguishing co-existing strains and revealing genomic changes that may reflect adaptation in the new hosts.

In this study, the authors determine the structure of a Type I-A retron from E. coli FORC82 and reveal the functional interplay between Reverse Transcriptases (RTs) and Structural Maintenance of Chromosomes (SMC) ATPases.’

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

Aligning foundation models with human judgments enables them to more accurately approximate human behaviour and uncertainty across various levels of visual abstraction, while additionally improving their generalization performance.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) variability and its phenotypic consequences aren’t well studied in relation to viral replication fitness and disease severity. Here, the authors identify a replication-enhancing domain in non-structural protein 5A, linking high replication fitness to severe disease outcomes, with implications for understanding HCV pathogenesis in immunocompromised patients.

The lack of stable and versatile bicyclo[1.1.1]pentyl reagents hinders their broader adoption as aryl bioisosteres in drug discovery. Now, a stable, bifunctional iodobicyclo[1.1.1]pentylmethyl thianthrenium (IBM-TT⁺) reagent is developed for modular bicyclo[1.1.1]pentane bioisostere production.

It has been argued that air temperatures over mountain glaciers are decoupled from surrounding warming, which could slow down melting. Here the authors show that this effect will weaken with future glacier retreat, leading to a recoupling of temperatures from the 2030s onwards.

Treekitkarnmongkol, Katayama, Sankaran et al. identify RASH3D19 as a downstream target for KRAS signalling through miR-301a, which in turn leads to RAS activation and tumorigenesis. Targeting RASH3D19 inhibits growth of KRAS-mutant tumour cells in vivo.

Pl@ntBERT is a language-based AI model that learned the ‘syntax’ of plant assemblages, predicting likely species and inferring habitats by modelling biotic relationships.

This work uses gene expression and single cell analyses to group extrapulmonary tuberculosis patients into three immune types, revealing immune pathways driving pathogenesis and markers that could improve diagnosis and guide tailored treatments.

This study identifies 95 interrelated barriers to building decarbonization, showing that social, political, and behavioral factors, alongside technical ones, inhibit the adoption of low carbon solutions across the sector.

Yushan Yan from the University of Delaware and Versogen, Inc. talks to Nature Chemical Engineering about his path to developing and scaling up PiperION, a globally leading anion-exchange membrane for electrochemical applications.

Antimicrobial resistance continues to be a critical One Health challenge, despite research and policy progress. Building on the past decade of research, this Perspective provides an integrative roadmap for addressing antimicrobial resistance by leveraging the complexities of human and environment interactions.

CRISPR activators are powerful tools for controlling gene expression, but they suffer from inconsistent efficacy and high toxicity. Here, authors develop a high-throughput method to test thousands of CRISPR activators, revealing distinct principles of activator biology and delivering improved tools.