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Wood density is an important plant trait. Data from 1.1 million forest inventory plots and 10,703 tree species show a latitudinal gradient in wood density, with temperature and soil moisture explaining variation at the global scale and disturbance also having a role at the local level.

Termites, the largest lineage of non-hymenopteran social insects, are important decomposers of plant organic matter in the tropics. Here, the authors sequence the genomes of 45 termites and two cockroach outgroups and investigate the influence of diet on the evolution of termite genomes.

Using wood in cascading applications provides stronger near-term cooling benefits through material substitution than sending it directly to bioenergy, while also offering temporary carbon storage according to a dynamic life cycle analysis

The degradation of dead wood by basidiomycete fungi relies on Fenton chemistry under aerobic conditions. Here, Röllig et al. show that these fungi can also thrive and degrade wood in anoxia, switching from a Fenton chemistry-based process to the secretion of plant cell wall-active enzymes.

Wood density is a key control on tree biomass, and understanding its spatial variation improves estimates of forest carbon stock. Sullivan et al. measure >900 forest plots to quantify wood density and produce high resolution maps of its variation across South American tropical forests.

This paper analyzes climate change mitigation potential of forest management practices under wood demand scenarios, finding that increasing wood use can be beneficial only with increased productivity and use efficiency.

Inventory data from 90 lowland Amazonian forest plots and a phylogeny of 526 angiosperm genera were used to show that taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity are both predictive of wood productivity but not of biomass variation.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

Cascading and especially circular wood uses enhance climate-change mitigation achieved by forestry. In combination, these measures could cumulatively mitigate 258.8 million tonnes CO₂e by 2050 in the UK but implementation barriers must be overcome.

The authors conduct a national inventory on individual tree carbon stocks in Rwanda using aerial imagery and deep learning. Most mapped trees are located in farmlands; new methods allow partitioning to any landscape categories, effective planning and optimization of carbon sequestration and the economic benefits of trees.

A systematic analysis of lignin biosynthetic genes to quantitatively understand their effect on wood properties is still lacking. Here, the authors integrate transcriptomic, proteomic, fluxomic and phenomic data to quantify the impact of perturbations of transcript abundance on lignin biosynthesis and wood properties.

Afforestation is an important greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation strategy but the efficacy of commercial (harvested) forestry is disputed. Here the authors apply dynamic life cycle assessment to show that new commercial conifer forests can achieve up to 269% more GHG mitigation than semi-natural forests, over 100 years.

DNA damage burden and inadequate repair in CUX2⁺ cortical layer 2/3 excitatory neurons contributes to selective vulnerability in neuroinflammatory injury.

Tree longevity is thought to increase in harsh environments, but global evidence of drivers is lacking. Here, the authors find two different pathways for tree longevity: slow growth in resource limited environments and increasing tree stature and/or slow growth in competitive environments.

The molecular mechanisms underlying natural transformation remain poorly understood. Here, the authors use optical tweezers to show how the periplasmic DNA receptor ComEA drives the inward pulling of DNA by switching between oligomerization states.

Global Burden of Disease analysis found that in 2023, suboptimal diet was estimated to be responsible for 4 million deaths and 97 million morbidity burdens from ischemic heart disease.

Species’ traits and environmental conditions determine the abundance of tree species across the globe. Here, the authors find that dominant tree species are taller and have softer wood compared to rare species and that these trait differences are more strongly associated with temperature than water availability.

The transcription factor ATF4 is shown to regulate double-stranded DNA repair within vulnerable CUX2⁺ upper-layer 2/3 cortical neurons, enabling their survival during development.

A new type of fungal lytic polysaccharide monooxygenase (LPMO) catalyzes the oxidative degradation of xylan components of cellulosic biomass and offers potential in wood biorefining.

The microstructure of natural materials such as bone and wood makes them strong and tough. Chemists are also good at crystallizing fine particles, but a flexible adhesive is needed to bind them together. Daedalus thinks he has the answer.

Analyses of snRNA genes in a French cohort of people with rare disorders, with validation through international collaboration, identify monoallelic and biallelic variants in RNU2-2 as frequent causes of neurodevelopmental disorders with epilepsy.

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.

Paracrine signalling between tuft cells and enterochromaffin cells is a key mode of immune–sensory and gut–brain communication, and accounts for the pattern of gastrointestinal symptoms that occurs during parasite infections.

Tracking oceanic microbial populations in situ over time is challenging. Here, the authors use autonomous underwater vehicles to show how microbes at the deep chlorophyll maximum respond to diel cycles and isopycnal uplift by a cyclonic eddy.

The Amazon faces worsening droughts, yet little is known about large-scale variation in the physiological limits of Amazon trees. Here, the authors reveal family-level conservatism in embolism resistance and estimate that Brazilian and Guiana shield forests are more resistant than Western Amazonia forests.

Global forest loss continues with no evidence of reduction by certification or protection. Non-fire forest loss was positively associated with industrial roundwood and fuelwood production, and negatively associated with GDP per capita (2013–2023)

The CMS experiment at CERN reports one of the highest-precision measurements of the W boson mass, finding it in line with standard model predictions and at odds with recent anomalous measurements.

Here, the authors present aDNA from 49 grape pips spanning the Bronze Age to Medieval period in France and surrounding areas. They find evidence of long-distance exchange of domestic varieties through vegetative clones and one Medieval sample that is nearly identical to modern Pinot Noir.

Australian archaeological finds of 12,000-year-old fireplaces and artefacts match nineteenth-century GunaiKurnai ritual practices. They represent approximately 500 generations of cultural transmission of this ritual.

A dispersive sensing technique, termed the radiofrequency electron cascade, can perform singlet-triplet readout of two exchange-coupled electron spins in a natural silicon planar metal–oxide–semiconductor quantum-dot array.

Multi-year field experiments across six continents suggest that insects have an important contribution to decomposition and carbon release from forest deadwood.

The remarkable deformability of wood in a moist environment resembles that of ductile metals. A combination of traditional mechanical tests and cutting-edge diffraction experiments reveal the molecular mechanism that determines such behaviour.

The CO2 fertilisation effect in forests remains controversial. Here, the authors disentangle the effect of CO2 on forest wood volume from other environmental factors, showing that elevated CO2 had a positive effect on wood volume in planted and natural US temperate forests.

It is important to understand the cost-effectiveness of natural regeneration and plantations, which are common reforestation methods for mitigation. The authors estimate and map abatement costs for the two approaches across low- and mid-income countries, helping to guide reforestation initiatives.

Unlike Amazonian forests, African forests have maintained their carbon sink until recently but by 2030 the African carbon sink will have shrunk by 14 per cent and the Amazonian sink will reach almost zero.

Urbanization disrupts oak tree microbiomes by reducing beneficial fungi and increasing plant and human pathogens across leaves, roots and soils, with consequences for tree health, urban climate mitigation and potential human exposure to pathogens.

Eight decades of forest plot monitoring show a pervasive increase in tree mortality across Australia’s forest biomes driven by climate change, jeopardizing their role as enduring carbon sinks.

Biological nitrogen fixation may impose stronger constraints on the carbon sink in natural terrestrial biomes and represent a larger source of agricultural nitrogen than is generally considered in analyses of the global nitrogen cycle.