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Estimating respiratory infection rates in the community is challenging as testing is usually limited to people with more severe infections. Here, the authors develop a statistical method to estimate infection rates using data from a community survey that performed lateral flow testing in England and Scotland in 2023-24.

Tissue stiffness mediated by Piezo1 is shown to regulate the expression of diffusive guidance cues in the developing Xenopus laevis brain, revealing a crosstalk between mechanical signals and long-range chemical signalling.

How the brain supports speaking and listening during conversation of its natural form remains poorly understood. Here, by combining intracranial EEG recordings with Natural Language Processing, the authors show broadly distributed frontotemporal neural signals that encode context-dependent linguistic information during both speaking and listening..

Five-year survival data and biomarker analysis of the PRADO extension cohort of the phase 2 OpACIN-neo trial, in which patients with high-risk stage III melanoma received neoadjuvant ipilimumab and nivolumab and underwent pathologic response-directed surgery and adjuvant therapy, show 71% event-free survival and 88% overall survival, with tumor mutational burden, IFNγ signature and PD-L1 expression associated with favorable outcomes.

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.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) plays an important role in decarbonization pathways to meet climate goals, but some methods are land-intensive. Multimodel analysis reveals conflicts between biodiversity and CDR that are distributed unevenly, and shows that synergies are crucial to meet climate and conservation goals.

An integrated optical parametric amplifier on thin-film lithium niobate achieves more than 17 dB gain with less than 200 mW input power.

During development of eutherian females, one of the X-chromosomes is silenced. Here, authors show that alleles on the inactive X-chromosome are dynamically expressed along neural differentiation enhancing resilience of female neural tissue.

It has been proposed that language meaning is represented throughout the cerebral cortex in a distributed ‘semantic system’, but little is known about the details of this network; here, voxel-wise modelling of functional MRI data collected while subjects listened to natural stories is used to create a detailed atlas that maps representations of word meaning in the human brain.

Genomic analyses of DNA from modern individuals show that, about 800 years ago, pre-European contact occurred between Polynesian individuals and Native American individuals from near present-day Colombia, while remote Pacific islands were still being settled.

Affinity-proteomics platforms often yield poorly correlated measurements. Here, the authors show that protein-altering variants drive a portion of inter-platform inconsistency and that accounting for genetic variants can improve concordance of protein measures and phenotypic associations across ancestries.

At single-cell resolution, Tarkhov et al. delineate stochastic and co-regulated components of epigenetic aging, revealing a simultaneous loss of regulation at the epigenetic and transcriptional levels in aging.

DNA methylation and gene expression data integration identify aging-related genes in blood that predict health outcomes, offering new insights into aging biology and potential therapeutic targets.

Oximes are used in many scientific and industrial domains, ranging from organic synthesis through biotechnology to materials science. Here the authors introduce an approach that enables the synthesis of oximes from hydrocarbons via the oxidative oximation of methylene C-H bonds — the most prevalent molecular unit in the world of molecules.

Cell-to-cell variability limits efficient microbial production. Here, the authors track single cells to reveal enzyme noise as the main source of bioproduction variation, and by coupling growth to pathway performance, they selectively enrich high producers and substantially boost overall titres.

Transcription factor osr2 is identified as a specific marker and regulator of mural lymphatic endothelial cell (muLEC) differentiation and maintenance, and muLECs and border-associated macrophages share functional analogies but are not homologous, providing an example of convergent evolution.

A wearable paper-based microfluidic device tracks cortisol in sweat via gold nanoflower colorimetric assays and captures circadian rhythms, stress responses and jet lag disruptions.

A label-free, DNA-based proximity ligation assay that uses ligatable staple pairs enables the longitudinal quantification of DNA origami structural stability dynamics in vivo, with single-helix resolution for both wireframe and lattice designs.

The long-term existence of diverse virulent phages within cultures of Escherichia coli and others challenges the virulent–temperate dichotomy and points to non-canonical phage lifestyles.

The authors report on engineering metazoan fatty acid synthase variants with tunable selectivity to obtain short- and medium-chain fatty acids, alcohols and aldehydes. Pairing these optimized enzymes with a yeast strain designed for efficient β-oxidation yields high production levels of medium-chain fatty acids.

Here the authors show that persistent antigen stimulation drives the generation of CD8⁺ tissue-resident exhausted T cells with distinct developmental origins, function and therapeutic responsiveness when compared to CD8⁺ tissue-resident memory T cells.

In this Stage 2 Registered Report, Tibon et al. showed using fMRI that neural activity associated with successful memory retrieval did not differ between semantic and episodic memory, using a task with features matched across these conditions.

Uropathogenic Escherichia coli infection of a murine prostate organoid model reveals a bacterial FimH–host prostatic acid phosphatase adhesin-receptor interaction enabling invasion and replication within the host tissue.

Genomic analyses applied to 14 childhood- and adult-onset psychiatric disorders identifies five underlying genomic factors that explain the majority of the genetic variance of the individual disorders.

Exercise has considerable health benefit, including modulation of the immune system. Here the authors compare the molecular make-up of peripheral blood immune cells at resting state and upon a single bout of two different aerobic exercise modes by proteomics and show that although both exercise modes trigger similar changes, the effect is more pronounced after high intensity interval training.

How the environment regulates neuronal maturation during brain development is poorly understood. Here, Kreysing et al. identify brain stiffness as a key factor and determine a mechanotransduction pathway linking tissue mechanics to neuronal maturation.

MicroRNAs regulate gene expression through selective pairing with target mRNAs. Here, the authors reveal distinct, mutually exclusive binding modes of miRISC at the 5′ seed and 3′ non-seed regions, advancing understanding of RNA silencing mechanisms.

A model of intrahost poliovirus replication shows that, after several rounds of replication, pocapavir, a poliovirus capsid inhibitor, collapses viral density, preventing intracellular interactions that allow drug-susceptible viruses to sensitize resistant ones. These results suggest that a low dosage of pocapavir may be beneficial in poliovirus treatment.

A protocol for cryogenic 3D correlative focused ion beam milling using an integrated fluorescence light microscope and montage cryo-ET for nonadherent and adherent mammalian cells, as well as primary Drosophila melanogaster neurons.

DNA damage can arise from natural cellular processes, but how cells prevent resulting mutations is unclear. Here, the authors show that the enzyme Polκ protects mouse tissues from mutations caused by endogenous guanine lesions, revealing how DNA repair and damage tolerance pathways cooperate to maintain genome integrity.

Whether 5-formylcytosine (f5C) is an epitranscriptomic mark is controversial. This study reveals pitfalls in previous f5C-detection methods. Instead, they developed FIBo-seq and find no f5C in mammalian RNA beyond the known mitochondrial tRNA^Met.

The zebra finch robust nucleus of the arcopallium (RA) directs singing by providing descending projections to brainstem motor neurons. The authors show that electrophysiological characteristics of RA neurons rely on resurgent Na+ currents that emerge early during song development only in males.

Selective oxidation of biomass-derived precursors has been reported but requires elevated temperatures and pressures of O₂ and strongly alkaline conditions. This study develops an antenna–reactor plasmonic photocatalyst (RuPt on TiN) for the selective conversion of HMF to FDCA using near-infrared irradiation in the absence of base.

Mapping of the neutrophil compartment using single-cell transcriptional data from multiple physiological and patological states reveals its organizational architecture and how cell state dynamics and trajectories vary during health, inflammation and cancer.

Large-scale analyses of bird species traits reveal that land-use change reduces resilience of key ecological functions more than previously thought.

Mammalian oocytes and embryos undergo major epigenetic changes. Here, genome-wide mapping of the histone variant H2A.Z across mouse oogenesis and early embryogenesis reveals distinct maternal, embryonic and persistent enrichment patterns, linking histone variant dynamics to epigenetic inheritance, repeats and developmental reprogramming.

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.

The question of how to define a species has a long history and continued relevance for ongoing biological and conservation research. This Review describes the history of the species problem, and explores how novel evolutionary pressures and constraints of the Anthropocene might be complicating species definitions even further.