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This paper conducted a priority-setting exercise to identify ten questions that define the future direction of blue carbon science. It highlights key gaps, emerging challenges and opportunities for advancing climate mitigation, ecosystem management and evidence-based policy.

Submillimetre-bright galaxies at high redshift are the most luminous, heavily star-forming galaxies in the Universe, but cosmological simulations of such galaxies have so far been unsuccessful; now a cosmological hydrodynamic galaxy formation simulation is reported that can form a submillimetre galaxy that simultaneously satisfies the broad range of observed physical constraints.

The excitatory neuron diversity and specialized connectivity of complex, multilayered mammalian neocortex are driven by mammalian-specific cis-regulatory elements bound by ZBTB18, deletion of which disrupts gene expression and results in projection patterns resembling those of non-mammalian brains.

Measurements of cold molecular gas from galaxies with stellar masses and star formation rates similar to those of the main progenitor of the Milky Way 8.5 billion years ago show similar physics of star formation to that seen now.

A triple meta-analysis evaluates the effectiveness of transcranial electrical stimulation for obsessive–compulsive disorder treatment through three meta-analytic methods, revealing a moderate therapeutic effect and identifying specific interventions that enhance therapeutic outcomes, guiding future treatment optimization strategies.

Inventory data from more than 1 million trees across African, Amazonian and Southeast Asian tropical forests suggests that, despite their high diversity, just 1,053 species, representing a consistent ~2.2% of tropical tree species in each region, constitute half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees.

Plant traits drive ecosystem dynamics yet are challenging to map globally due to sparse measurements. Here, the authors combine crowdsourced biodiversity observations with Earth observation data to accurately map 31 plant traits at 1 km² resolution.

Biogenic–anthropogenic interactions increase the formation and prevalence of secondary organic aerosol coatings on urban black carbon in Nanjing, China. These coatings amplify radiative effects, according to a model–data analysis for 2023.

Data provided by Amazonian peoples are used to estimate the value of wild animals as a source of food, including its spatial distribution and nutritional value, providing information that will be key for improved management of forest ecosystems in the region.

This study estimates construction-related emissions and carbon budgets for over 1,000 cities worldwide. Through quantitative analysis and an accessible open dashboard, this study empowers city stakeholders to craft science-based strategies for aligning future construction growth with climate goals.

A selection of individuals from the biotech ecosystem give their views on the challenges facing the sector over the coming years.

Geospatial estimates of the prevalence of anemia in women of reproductive age across 82 low-income and middle-income countries reveals considerable heterogeneity and inequality at national and subnational levels, with few countries on track to meet the WHO Global Nutrition Targets by 2030.

A restoration prioritization approach applied to the Brazilian Atlantic Forest biodiversity hotspot considers 362 scenarios for synergies and trade-offs between ecological and economic costs, benefits and scales.

MetaGraph enables scalable indexing of large sets of DNA, RNA or protein sequences using annotated de Bruijn graphs.

Lipocartilage has been identified as a novel adipose-related cartilage subtype generated by lipochondrocytes, which produce intracellular lipid vacuoles that provide structural rigidity to the outer ear. Now, a protocol for reproducible isolation of lipocartilage and lipochondrocytes in mice is reported.

Affinity-selection platforms are powerful tools in early drug discovery, but current technologies such as DNA-encoded libraries (DELs) are limited by synthesis complexity and incompatibility with nucleic acid binding targets. Here, the authors present a barcode-free self-encoded library (SEL) platform that enables direct screening of over half a million small molecules in a single experiment.

This research quantifies hospital admissions in Shanghai for mental and behavioral disorders linked to humid heat, projecting a 68.2% increase by the 2090s under high greenhouse gas emissions and emphasizing the importance of mitigation strategies to reduce future morbidity burdens.

Fine-scale geospatial mapping of overweight and wasting (two components of the double burden of malnutrition) in 105 LMICs shows that overweight has increased from 5.2% in 2000 to 6.0% in children under 5 in 2017. Although overall wasting decreased over the same period, most countries are not on track to meet the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025.

As host nation of Rio+20, Brazil should choose the right course for its own development, say Fabio Scarano, André Guimarães and José Maria da Silva.

Giant planets on wide, eccentric orbits—like the putative Planet Nine—may form from dynamical planetary instabilities when stars are embedded in their natal stellar clusters. Simulations suggest a 1–5% chance of such planets forming in exoplanetary systems and up to 40% in the Solar System.

Here the authors overcome the temperature increase in integrated optomechanical systems, harnessing two-dimensional optomechanical crystal geometry. These results set the ground for microwave-to-optical transducers with entanglement rates overcoming the decoherence rates of state-of-the-art superconducting qubits.

Inbreeding depression has been observed in many different species, but in humans a systematic analysis has been difficult so far. Here, analysing more than 1.3 million individuals, the authors show that a genomic inbreeding coefficient (FROH) is associated with disadvantageous outcomes in 32 out of 100 traits tested.

Bhattacharjee and Schaeffer et al. map exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) in 94 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), finding increased EBF practice and reduced subnational variation across the majority of LMICs from 2000 to 2018. However, only six LMICs will meet WHO’s target of ≥70% EBF by 2030 nationally, and only three will achieve this in all districts.

Here the authors reveal that a strong bottleneck and slow growth of ancestral effective population size in Papua New Guinean populations can be mistaken for admixture with an earlier out-of-Africa population.

A dataset of the genomes of 363 species from the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project shows increased power to detect shared and lineage-specific variation, demonstrating the importance of phylogenetically diverse taxon sampling in whole-genome sequencing.

Literature produced inconsistent findings regarding the links between extreme weather events and climate policy support across regions, populations and events. This global study offers a holistic assessment of these relationships and highlights the role of subjective attribution.

DNA single-strand breaks in neurons accumulate at high levelsin functional enhancers.

Experimental measurements of high-order out-of-time-order correlators on a superconducting quantum processor show that these correlators remain highly sensitive to the quantum many-body dynamics in quantum computers at long timescales.

Quantifying forest degradation and biodiversity losses is necessary to inform conservation and restoration policies. Here the authors analyze a large dataset for the Atlantic Forest in South America to quantify losses in forest biomass and tree species richness, functional traits, and conservation value.

A primary element of modern wildfire management is to aggressively suppress small fires before they become large, but benefits can be offset by the fact that these practices promote older forests that are more ‘flammable’. Here the authors show that this downside puts numerous human communities at elevated risk of fires in boreal Canada.

Association analyses in over 1 million individuals identify 535 new loci influencing blood pressure traits. The results provide new insights into blood pressure regulation and highlight shared genetic architecture between blood pressure and lifestyle exposures.

Granitic continental crust in the Archaean formed from a basaltic source that was enriched in silica due to interaction with the early oceans before melting, according to silicon isotope analyses on rocks from the Kaapvaal craton.

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

Increasing nitrogen use efficiency is the most effective strategy to reduce undernourishment while respecting the nitrogen boundaries in regions such as China and India. This supply-side effort plays a more important role in alleviating food insecurity than demand-side efforts such as diet shifts and reduced waste when introducing regional nitrogen targets.

John Chambers, Jaspal Kooner, Pim van der Harst, Shyong Tai, Paul Elliott, Jiang He, Norihiro Kato and colleagues performed a genome-wide association study of blood pressure phenotypes in individuals of European, East Asian and South Asian ancestry. They find trait-associated SNPs at 12 loci, some of which are associated with methylation at nearby CpG sites.

Analysis of ground-sourced and satellite-derived models reveals a global forest carbon potential of 226 Gt outside agricultural and urban lands, with a difference of only 12% across these modelling approaches.

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is characterized by substantial clinical heterogeneity. Here, the authors report the genome-wide chromatin accessibility maps for 88 CLL samples from 55 patients using ATAC-seq, and 10 matched RNA-seq datasets, providing a resource for studying epigenome deregulation in CLL.

In participants with obesity and chronic kidney disease without diabetes, once-weekly administration of semaglutide 2.4 mg led to a reduction in albuminuria, body weight and systolic blood pressure compared with placebo, with no changes to creatinine or cystatin-C estimated glomerular filtration rate or measured glomerular filtration rate during the 24-week follow-up period.

Efficient, large-scale genomic analysis is facilitated on the cloud by a computational tool with error-diagnosing and self-healing capabilities.

In this disease mapping study, the authors estimate disability-adjusted life year rates for three of the major causes of mortality for children under five 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. They identify significant heterogeneity at the subnational level, highlighting the need for a targeted intervention approach.

Asian soybean rust caused by Phakopsora pachyrhizi is an important plant pathogen, but an accurate genome assembly for this fungus has been lacking. This study sequenced three independent P. pachyrhizi isolates and generated reference quality assemblies and genome annotations, representing a critical step for further in-depth studies of this pathogen and the development of new methods of control.

Oborská-Oplová et al. report a conserved mitochondrial avoidance segment in the cytosolic ribosomal protein uS5 that prevents mistargeting of uS5 to the mitochondrial matrix and ensures cytosolic ribosomal assembly.

The complexity of spatial omics data presents analytical challenges and demands substantial computing resources. Here, the authors introduce Sopa, a technology-invariant, memory-efficient pipeline with a unified visualizer for all image-based spatial omics.

Genome-wide association analysis of irritable bowel syndrome identifies genetic susceptibility loci and highlights shared pathways with mood and anxiety disorders.

Investigations in wild bats and non-human primates in Brazil and Costa Rica inform about diverse Morbillivirus ecology in neotropical bats and host jumps, and about zoonotic potential of morbilliviruses in Latin America.

Analysis of chromatin state and accessibility in mouse tissues from twelve sites and eight developmental stages provides a comprehensive view of chromatin dynamics.

Severe sepsis has a high mortality rate. Here, the authors provide genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data across four sepsis-causing pathogens and identify a signature of global increase in fatty acid and lipid biosynthesis as well as cholesterol acquisition.