Articles in 2026

The growing demand for therapeutic peptides has intensified concerns about the sustainability of current synthetic processes, which typically rely on excess reagents and, most critically, large volumes of solvents. In the pursuit of more sustainable practices, scientists now report a water-based synthetic protocol.

The growing market demand for peptides is drawing more attention to their industrial synthetic procedures, which rely on large amounts of toxic solvents. Here the authors suggest practical steps that bring fully water-based peptide synthesis closer to reality.

Metals shortage threatens climate goals by affecting adoption of key technologies for the energy transition. Optimizing technology mixes is now shown to limit the supply-constrained energy transition metals to only copper, lithium, and vanadium, though economy-wide resource sobriety remains urgent.

Linking humans, animals, plants, environments and ecosystems to forge healthier lives on a healthier planet clearly aligns with sustainability objectives. A collection of research and opinion presents ideas on the way forward to support such alignment.

Land-use change, among other anthropogenic factors, has led to increased levels of zoonotic disease transmission. The authors assess how land-use change and restoration activities impact zoonotic disease transmission, providing an online tool useful for One Health-oriented restoration planning.

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.

Excessive antimicrobial use can increase the threat of antimicrobial resistance; however, how such use is embedded in global trade is still unclear. Authors here estimate global livestock antimicrobial footprints through global supply chains to better understand and manage antimicrobial use.

In recent decades, zoonotic disease outbreaks have become increasingly frequent, necessitating strategies to improve the accuracy of predictive modelling. This Review discusses the importance of macroecological variables in such modelling efforts to improve preparedness for future potential outbreaks.

Human impacts on marine ecosystems are increasing the likelihood of pathogenic outbreaks, harmful algal blooms and coral stress. Here the authors develop a CRISPR biomonitoring tool that can help detect key marine species that are important to public health, the aquaculture sector and marine ecosystems.

The leather industry is at a pivotal moment on its path towards sustainability. Although many bio-based leather alternatives can reduce environmental impact, we need clear definitions of such alternatives to guide materials innovations that truly bring them into the mainstream, sustainable market, as highlighted in a recent court ruling.

Accurate projections of heating and cooling needs are vital for planning energy use and achieving the sustainable development goals. A global dataset now maps global heating and cooling degree days, finding future hotspots, rising cooling demand and early shifts in energy needs with major global impacts.

Global household material use is highly unequal: the top 10% drive roughly a third of footprints and most of the overshoot beyond safe limits. Curbing affluent overconsumption, while securing decent material floors, should be a central policy lever to cut material demand quickly and fairly.

Global material use is rising unsustainably, but its distribution across individuals remains unclear. A study now reveals deep inequality in household material footprints, especially for non-renewable resources, and suggests that curbing overconsumption among the wealthy is key to sustainability.

River protection in the United States remains scant, with just over one-tenth of river length in the contiguous states protected at viable levels, often by land-based protection measures that fail to capture the full diversity of the nation’s river systems. There is an urgent need for policies that safeguard, strengthen and expand freshwater protections to secure rivers that sustain both people and nature.

The threat of species extinction is a major problem resulting from various anthropogenic pressures. Here the authors use deep learning models and ecological network theory to study the impacts of human pressures on terrestrial vertebrate habitat hotspots now and under future scenarios of global change.

Although river protection is core to social and environmental well-being, the extent to which river conservation policies are effective is difficult to assess. This study reveals that, under all relevant protection mechanisms in the contiguous USA, only 12% of rivers are adequately protected.

People tend to perceive their personal risk from climate change as lower than the risk faced by others, which can demotivate engaging in mitigation actions. A meta-analysis now quantifies this perception gap, showing that its global and regional variation depends on who the ‘other’ is.

Reactive carbon capture enables CO₂ conversion into valuable chemicals without the typically separate energy-intensive CO₂ recovery step. In this work, the authors suggest minimizing its performance trade-offs via indirect bicarbonate conversion within a porous solid electrolyte reactor.

Direct air capture is a promising technology to mitigate the rising atmospheric CO₂ concentrations contributing to climate change. Here a covalent organic framework with high CO₂ capacity and cycling stability is reported to be capable of selectively and rapidly removing CO₂ from open air.