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RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) is typically considered as an essential enzyme. Here the authors show that natural degradation of RNAPII drives chromatin reorganization in growing oocytes, preparing the chromatin for genome activation after fertilization.

Japonica subspecies has a lower nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) than that of indica rice. Here, the authors show that natural variations in the NIN-like protein 4 (OsNLP4) encoding gene are responsible for the divergence and introgression of the indica OsNLP4 allele into elite japonica cultivar can increase NUE and grain yield.

Large-effect variants in autism remain elusive. Here, the authors use long-read sequencing to assemble phased genomes for 189 individuals, identifying pathogenic variants in TBL1XR1, MECP2, and SYNGAP1, plus nine candidate structural variants missed by short-read methods.

Humanity’s Last Exam, a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, is designed to be an expert-level closed-ended academic benchmark with broad subject coverage.

Photocatalytic water splitting using a single particulate photocatalyst is a cost-efficient approach for sustainable hydrogen production. Here, the authors report a nanoscale Ba_xSr_1-xTaO₂N solid-solution photocatalyst exhibits an apparent quantum efficiency of 13.5% for H₂ evolution at 420 nm.

Most kiwifruit species are vulnerable to high levels of heat stress. Here, the authors report natural variation at the GATA transcription factor binding site of EGY3 gene mediates chloroplastic ROS homeostasis to confer kiwifruit thermotolerance.

This study reports that de novo germline missense variants in SF3B1, distinct from the somatic variants frequently observed in cancer, cause a neurodevelopmental disorder and disrupt global RNA splicing.

Acute-on-chronic liver failure is a complex condition with varied definitions. Using unbiased clustering, the study identifies two distinct subtypes with markedly different 30-day mortality risks and highlights key determinants.

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

Wafer bonding has allowed the synthesis of twisted interfaces which support polar discontinuities in ferroelectric lithium niobate. Two-dimensional sheet conductivity arises but is suppressed when twist angles lead to interfacial lattice aperiodicity.

While excitonic semiconductors offer appealing optical properties, their application for competitive optoelectronic devices has remained limited. Here, the authors report the realization of broadband exciton-polariton photodiodes based on a layered excitonic semiconductor, WS₂, contacted by tin-doped indium oxide in an open optical cavity design, showing ~MHz bandwidth at room temperature.

This study demonstrates a low-energy photon device based on the kagome metal RbV₃Sb₅. It demonstrates that Fermi surface reconstruction, driven by a phase transition, leads to the emergence of van Hove singularities near the Fermi level.

Liquid-based direct air capture relies on natural gas combustion to drive calcination. Here, the authors present a solar-driven hydrogen-fluidized solar calciner integrated with on-site CO₂ conversion to produce sustainable aviation fuel. The analysis shows its economic feasibility.

Here, the authors develop AMPLiT a tool for screening antimicrobial peptides in metagenomic datasets, and apply it to human coprolite metagenomes, finding that Segatella copri, an ancient prevalent human gut bacterium declined in modern populations, harbors unexplored antimicrobial reservoir, offering an alternative approach against modern pathogenic infections.

Mapping global alluvial channel patterns reveals a hidden dominance of anabranching channels, constituting nearly half of the total reach length globally.

Optical switching of a moiré Chern ferromagnet is demonstrated in twisted molybdenum ditelluride bilayers using continuous-wave circularly polarized light, paving the way for dissipationless spintronics and quantized Chern junction devices.

The authors demonstrate that stable partial polarization control achieves more than 10¹⁰ write cycles in ferroelectric AlScN. Further, reducing capacitor diameter increases breakdown voltage, boosting endurance.

There is a lack of effective therapies for patients with non-V600E BRAF mutant cancer. Here, the authors report limited response in a phase II trial investigating the combination of binimetinib (MEK inhibitor) and encorafenib (BRAF inhibitor) for the treatment of non-V600E BRAF mutant cancer and subsequently investigate resistance mechanisms and combination therapeutic strategies in patient-derived models.

Global Burden of Disease estimates show that between 1990 and 2023, the prevalence and burden of drug use disorders, inclusive of amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine and opioid use, have been increasing in high-income countries, particularly in the USA.

Spin transport properties of magnetically ordered materials have been well studied. Here, the authors report an anomalous spin signal exhibiting spin transport over 480 microns in the frustrated hyperkagome magnetic insulator Gd₃Ga₅O₁₂.

Integrating semiconductor p-n junctions with magnetic materials yields van der Waals heterojunctions as an ideal low-power spintronic platform. Zhu et al. report an abnormal zero-bias spin voltage effect arising from non-equilibrium spin diffusion.

Liu et al. report Chinese normative lifespan brain charts showing later neurodevelopmental milestones than those detected in Western cohorts. Individual deviations from these norms are valuable in assessing clinical risk and outcomes.

The authors study epitaxial thin films of the pyrochlore-sublattice compound LiTi2O4 by RIXS and ARPES. They observe cooperation between strong electron correlations and strong electron-phonon coupling, giving rise to a mobile polaronic ground state in which charge motion and lattice distortions are coupled.

Here, the authors identify distinct, autism-specific diet microbiome interactions, showing how unhealthy diets and synthetic emulsifiers drive dysbiosis. The findings pave the way for microbiome-aware dietary strategies for autism.

CDK4/6 inhibitors are promising treatments for ER+ breast cancer, however resistance remains a challenge. Here, the authors analyse the NeoPalANA cohort and indicate that a 33 gene signature was predictive of response to neoadjuvant anastrozole and palbociclib.

The role of protein UFMylation in cancer remains to be understood. Here, the authors show that UFM1-specific ligase 1 and AKT positively regulate each other through UFMylation and phosphorylation, facilitating lipid synthesis and breast tumor growth.

A global synthesis of >600 studies finds that across agro-ecosystems, grasslands and forests in temperate and tropical zones, increasing plant diversity has a consistently positive effect on plant performance and the suppression of antagonists.

STING–type-I interferon pathway regulates the immunogenicity of several cancer types, including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Here the authors describe that glutamine metabolism in the tumour microenvironment dampens the STING–type-I interferon pathway by epigenetically silencing the expression of BATF2, which functions as a tumour suppressor.

A van der Waals heterostructure made from atomic layers of ferroelectric CuCrP₂S₆ and ferromagnetic Fe₃GeTe₂ can offer reversible, non-volatile ferroelectric control of two-dimensional magnetism.

The role of oxytocin in modulating astrocytes during stress behaviour is not fully understood. Here the authors show that in the amygdala, oxytocin modulates stress related behaviour by transient Gαi-dependent retraction of astrocytic processes, followed by enhanced neuronal sensitivity to extracellular potassium.

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..

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study reveal declines in chronic respiratory disease mortality between 1990 and 2023—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the burdens on people affected remain substantial.

Applications of optical laser-based techniques are limited by the long wavelengths of the lasers. Now, observations of phonons and thermal transport at nanometre length scales are reported with an all-hard X-ray transient-grating spectroscopy technique.

Population-scale WGS reveals genetic determinants of persistent EBV DNA, linking immune regulation—especially antigen processing and MHC class II variation—to EBV persistence and heterogeneous disease associations.

In this longitudinal cohort study, Wang et al. examine how depression and recall of adverse childhood experiences interact over time among Chinese university students.

Short-circuiting during fast charging through lithium dendrite intrusion into electrolytes is a major challenge in solid-state batteries. Here, using thermally annealed 3-nm-thick Ag coatings, lithium penetration into brittle electrolyte Li_6.6La₃Zr_1.6Ta_0.4O₁₂ is inhibited at local current densities of 250 mA cm⁻² due to an increase in surface fracture toughness.

Single-cell RNA sequencing and assay for transposase-accessible chromatin using sequencing profiling of human retinal samples from diverse ancestries create an epitranscriptomic atlas characterizing over 130 cell types. Integration with genome-wide association study and expression quantitative trait loci data provides further insights into gene regulation and disease etiology.

This study introduces a flexible, wearable system using a liquid metal dynamic wetting strategy to capture palm and finger movements in real time with high precision, showing potential for applications in XR, teleoperation, and robotics.

Flooding threatens urban economies via direct damages and supply-chain disruptions. Losses grow nonlinearly: wealthier cities incur larger absolute losses, while poorer cities face higher relative impacts, highlighting tailored resilience measures.

Root-knot nematodes locate host plants by sensing microbial volatiles shaped by plant defence metabolites, revealing a surprising ecological link between plant chemistry, soil microbes and parasite behaviour in the rhizosphere.

cellSTAAR advances noncoding rare variant association analysis by integrating single-cell genomics data.

Jahn-Teller distortions alter molecular structures, but are usually only probed on the basis of electronic signatures. Here, the authors demonstrate that tip-enhanced Raman imaging in real space can map the associated vibrational changes in a single molecule.

Negative refraction—light bending opposite to conventional refraction—and a hyperlens effect is observed in an excitonic system in the two-dimensional magnet CrSBr. The effect is mediated by the magnetic order of the material.

The CMS Collaboration reports the measurement of the spin, parity, and charge conjugation properties of all-charm tetraquarks, exotic fleeting particles formed in proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

Vassy, Dornisch and colleagues developed a genomics-based prostate cancer risk model to support a randomized clinical trial of precision screening in a national healthcare system.

Magnetic heliknotons are hopfions embedded in helical spin backgrounds. Current-induced nucleation and Hall-effect-free motion of isolated magnetic heliknotons is demonstrated in the chiral magnet FeGe.

A combination of biochemical, cell biological and electron microscopy analyses reveal a ‘nucleotide code’ that coordinates Lis1–dynein binding stoichiometry, which in turn governs Lis1’s ability to relieve dynein autoinhibition.

The xylosyltransferase isoenzymes XT1 and XT2 catalyze the first glycosylation step in the biosynthesis of proteoglycans. Now, bump-and-hole engineering of XT1 and XT2 enables substrate profiling and modification of proteins as designer proteoglycans to modulate cellular behavior.

The 4D Nucleome Project demonstrates the use of genomic assays and computational methods to measure genome folding and then predict genomic structure from DNA sequence, facilitating the discovery of potential effects of genetic variants, including variants associated with disease, on genome structure and function.