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Researchers have significantly enhanced the single-photon emission of atomic defects in single-crystal diamond by coupling the photons to microring resonators — a technique that may represent a powerful addition to the integrated quantum photonics toolkit.

Molecular systems featuring a spin-optical interface offer a promising platform for quantum sensing, thanks to their low-cost synthesis and tunability. Here the authors use pentacene-doped molecular crystals for pressure and temperature sensing with improved temperature and record pressure sensitivities.

Genetic mapping in mice identified Homer1a as a key modifier of attention. Developmental downregulation in the prefrontal cortex enhances inhibitory tone, neural signal to noise and adult attentional performance, revealing a new control mechanism and target.

The variability in clinical outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection is partly due to deficiencies in production or response to type I interferons (IFN). Here, the authors describe a FIP200-dependent lysosomal degradation pathway, independent of canonical autophagy and type I IFN, that restricts SARS-CoV-2 replication, offering insights into critical COVID-19 pneumonia mechanisms.

Specific pain-sensing nociceptors and chemosensory tuft cells form a circuit to promote type 2 immune responses in the intestine.

Here, the authors examine the mechanisms behind cheatgrass’s successful invasion of North American ecosystems. Their genetic analyses and common garden experiments demonstrate that multiple introductions and migrations facilitated cheatgrass local adaptation.

The impact of ACKR3 constitutive activity is unknown. Here, the authors suppress basal ACKR3 activity using inverse agonistic nanobodies to stabilize an inactive conformation and revealing a role for ACKR3 in basal cell motility.

The properties of materials can be drastically modified under extreme pressure. Here the authors investigate ramp-compressed sodium to 5 million atmospheres with in situ X-ray diffraction and optical reflectivity, revealing a complex temperature-driven polymorphism and suggesting the formation of a previously predicted electride phase.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common cause of vision loss with a large genetic risk in older individuals. Here, for a high-risk AMD subtype, the authors identify an association with a chromosome 10 risk region containing a long non-coding RNA.

TDP-43 dysfunction in ALS/FTD causes faulty splicing of the KCNQ2 ion channel, leading to toxic protein buildup, neuron hyperactivity and a potential new biomarker and treatment target using RNA-based therapies.

Understanding the fundamental mechanisms of photocurrent generation is important for photodetector design. Now, the anisotropy of the thermal properties of Weyl semimetals is shown to generate circulating photocurrents.

Wang et al. compare human and large language model (LLM) creativity via Divergent Association Task, finding that humans perform slightly better on average. Efforts to enhance LLM performance, such as adopting genius personas or using strategic prompts, show mixed results.

Covalent KRAS inhibitors show initial responses but resistance limits durability. Here drug-induced hapten peptides are identified and characterized, enabling production of high affinity, cross-HLA T cell engagers that stabilize low density hapten peptide MHCs to drive tumor-specific killing.

An all-optical manipulation of the Berry phase based on stimulated Raman adiabatic passage is demonstrated in an individual nitrogen–vacancy centre in diamond. The adiabatic control is 100 times faster than that demonstrated before in atomic systems.

Pink-beam synchrotron X-ray tomography combined with mechanical loading at nanometric precision enables the in situ imaging of intact untreated joints, resolving strains at sub-100 nm resolution.

An ‘intracrine’ signaling mechanism is proposed whereby a G-protein-coupled receptor (free fatty acid receptor 4) senses locally released fatty acids on intracellular membranes associated with lipid droplets to efficiently regulate lipolysis in adipocytes.

Viruses generally have compact genomes, resulting in many viral mRNAs with short 5’ untranslated regions. An antiviral complex exploits this feature of viral mRNAs to selectively inhibit viral protein synthesis and repress viral replication.

Here the authors conduct a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of telomere length, used diverse approaches to identify genes underlying association signals, and experimentally validated POP5 and KBTBD6 as regulators of telomere length in human cells.

The authors use nitrogen-vacancy centre magnetometry to explore layer number and magnetic field evolution of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic domains in the A-type antiferromagnet CrPS₄.

Acute febrile illness is common in sub-Saharan Africa and causative agents are often unknown. Here, the authors perform metagenomic sequencing on samples from patients with acute febrile illness in Uganda for which no diagnosis was available through routine diagnostic screening.

Creative experiences such as dance, music, drawing, and strategy video games might preserve brain health. The authors show that regular practice or short training in these activities is linked to brains that look younger and work more efficiently.

Three-dimensional DNA frames can be created with controlled valence and coordination for the assembly of ordered arrays of biological and inorganic nanomaterials.

Cognitive variability with age has been examined in 21,051 recallable volunteers and has highlighted a potential role of microglia and glycogen metabolism in the individual differences in general cognitive ability.

Commensal Candida albicans enhances the virulence and dissemination of Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium.

Together with an accompanying paper presenting a transcriptomic atlas of the mouse lemur, interrogation of the atlas provides a rich body of data to support the use of the organism as a model for primate biology and health.

The authors demonstrate control of antiferromagnetic order using helical light.

Systematic base-editing and computational screens identify specific cysteine residues on VPS35 in the retromer complex as key sensors that decrease mitochondrial translation in response to reactive oxygen species signals.

How fMRI resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) in fronto-limbic circuits relates to neural activity is unclear. Here the authors show that rs-FC in these circuits is related to local field potential coherency in the alpha band.

The emergence of quantum emitters in 2D materials has led to the quest for methods and designs enabling their controllable spatial positioning. Here, the authors use strain engineering to fabricate a deterministic array of quantum emitters in WSe₂with nanometre positioning accuracy.

Mitochondrial diseases lead to chronic health impairment, aggravated by infections and other environmental exposures. Here authors show, in a mouse model of polymerase gamma (Polg)-related mitochondrial disease, that Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection prompts innate immune hyperreactivity via interferon-mediated upregulation of caspase11 and guanylate-binding proteins, leading to lung inflammation.

Allele-preferential transcription factor binding can influence pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma risk loci function. Here, the authors show allele-specific JunB and JunD binding at chr1p36.33 and propose a role for KLHL17 in protein homeostasis by mitigating inflammation.

Susan Slager and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). They identify nine loci newly associated with CLL.

Van der Waals heterostructures enable fabrication of materials with engineered functionalities. Here, the authors demonstrate precise control over the interaction between layers by application of pressure with a scanning tunnelling microscopy tip.

Biomineralization processes have inspired the design of synthetic silica structures in vitro. Here, the authors use a living diatom to fabricate organo-silica constructs and are able to incorporate thiol moieties into the diatom frustule without the loss of nano-scale architectural features.

Pilcher et al. present a single-cell transcriptomics-based immune atlas of participants with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, reporting on the association of cell types, gene expression and intercellular interactions with disease progression phenotypes.

A case–control study investigating the causes of recent cases of acute hepatitis of unknown aetiology in 32 children identifies an association between adeno-associated virus infection and host genetics in disease susceptibility.

This Review covers recent progress in quantum technologies with optically addressable solid-state spins. A possible path to chip-scale quantum technologies through advances in nanofabrication, quantum control and materials engineering is described.

Charge transfer is facilitated in molecular systems through orbital coupling. Here the authors use core-hole-clock spectroscopy to show that electron transfer from an argon atom caged in a fullerene can be up to two orders of magnitude faster than for the isolated atom.

Analysis of 97,691 high-coverage human blood DNA-derived whole-genome sequences enabled simultaneous identification of germline and somatic mutations that predispose individuals to clonal expansion of haematopoietic stem cells, indicating that both inherited and acquired mutations are linked to age-related cancers and coronary heart disease.

Bond et al. show that inducible PolG mutation in muscle causes mtDNA damage and muscle wasting. This is driven by the integrated stress response (ISR) and reduction in folate intermediates, linking impaired folate metabolism with ISR/disease induction.

Electron-spin resonance spectroscopy can detect radical species in live cells, but the method suffers from limitations of spin-label stability and selectivity. Here, flavoproteins are employed as genetically encoded spin probes to reveal structural features of bacterial chemotaxis proteins in cell.

This study explores apelin receptor’s role in cardiovascular function, identifying residues critical for binding through genetic variants, AlphaFold2 modelling and base editing in cardiomyocytes. Co-crystallization with biased agonist CMF-019 shows a unique binding mode versus endogenous peptides.

Here, Zerio et al. use cryo-electron microscopy to show how the helicase domain of DNA polymerase θ aligns broken DNA strands by matching short sequences, a process linked to cancer. These findings may guide future therapies targeting error-prone DNA repair.

Quantum teleportation moves the quantum state of a system between physical locations without losing its coherence, an essential criterion for emerging quantum information applications. Now, electron-spin-state teleportation in covalent organic electron donor–acceptor–stable radical molecules is demonstrated using entangled electron spins produced by photo-induced electron transfer.

Analysis of 46 newly sequenced or re-sequenced Tausch’s goatgrass (Aegilops tauschii) accessions establishes the origin of the bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) D genome from genetically and geographically discrete Ae. tauschii subpopulations.

A multimodal analysis of patients with 22 different immune-mediated monogenic diseases versus matched healthy controls leads to the development of the immune health metric, which could be implemented broadly to predict responses to aging, vaccination and other immune perturbations.