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Extreme heat events are increasing due to climate change, which may reduce insect abundance. This study suggests that insect pests can buffer the impacts of heat waves via fine-scale behavioural thermoregulation, markedly promoting pest population growth and aggravating crop yield losses globally.

Vidmar et al. use cryo-EM to reveal how bacterial RNA polymerase (RNAP) and topoisomerase I (TopoI) cooperate. TopoI switches conformation, senses DNA supercoils near RNAP and relaxes them. Mutations disrupting this process alter bacterial motility and operon polarity.

Insufficient electron injection remains a limiting factor for the performance of stretchable organic light-emitting diodes. Here designs for both electron transport layer and cathode in stretchable organic light-emitting diodes are reported to achieve efficient electron injection.

ARMH2 is identified as a previously unknown cytosolic component of the sperm-specific CatSper channel, critical for its normal assembly and pH/calcium sensitivity. Loss of ARMH2 impairs sperm hyperactivation and causes severe subfertility.

There are limited vaccines available for Ebola virus and none for broad protection from filoviruses. Here, the authors rationally design vaccines using nanoparticles and stabilized Ebola virus and other filovirus glycoproteins, characterize antibody epitopes and profile lymph node and antibody responses in mice.

The predicted increase in frequency of droughts and rising temperatures in Europe will lead core populations of a temperate plant to an evolutionary dead-end unless they acquire genetic alleles that are present only in extreme edge Mediterranean, Scandinavian, or Siberian populations.

DNA damage response inhibitors are a promising cancer therapy. Here, the authors show that combined PARP and ATR inhibition triggers ZBP1-dependent PANoptosis in cancer and normal cells, revealing a mechanism to balance efficacy and toxicity in DDR inhibitor therapies.

The authors show that the CD4 mimetic CJF-III-288 stabilizes HIV-1 Env in an asymmetric “open” State-3 conformation, guiding anti-CoRBS antibodies to boost ADCC against infected cells and delay viral rebound in vivo, underscoring therapeutic promise.

Yersinia pseudotuberculosis senses fungal tyrosol signalling through EnvZ–OmpR which triggers T6SS activation and antifungal effector release to reduce fungal competitors in the mouse gut.

The tolerogenic activity of type 1 conventional dendritic cells (cDC1s) is determined by EPOR, which is preferentially expressed in cDC1s and induces antigen-specific FOXP3-expressing regulatory T cells.

The study shows that the HIV-1 Nef protein stabilizes actin, thereby preventing R12C release and priming of RIG-I–like receptors. HIV-1 containing a mutant Nef unable to bind the actinmodulating kinase PAK2, triggers enhanced interferon responses.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

Diabetic retinopathy is a major cause of blindness, yet ways to predict who will be affected remain limited. Here, the authors show that patterns of blood proteins can reveal disease mechanisms and enable powerful early prediction across diverse populations.

Copper isotopes in the martian mantle are heavier than those in chondritic precursors, indicating that sulfides extracted isotopically light copper into the core during planetary differentiation. This process resulted in a sulfur-poor mantle and a sulfur-rich core, accounting for the observed depletion of chalcophile elements in the mantle. Isotopic evidence and modeling further reveal the history of martian differentiation, providing new insights into the early evolution of Mars.

A cavity optomechanics model accounting for the intrinsic dynamics of the interaction between plasmons and molecular vibrations reveals a parametric amplification mechanism that may provide an explanation for features recently observed in nonlinear Raman spectroscopy experiments.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is associated with epithelial metabolic derangements which exacerbate gut inflammation. Here the authors report that colonoids from children with ulcerative colitis exhibit hypermetabolism and cellular stress primarily driven by lipid dysregulation. Pharmacological inhibition of PPAR-a, a transcriptional regulator of lipid metabolism, alleviates epithelial stress and inflammation.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

Working memory improves during adolescent brain development. Zhu et al. tracked monkeys through adolescence, revealing that maturation of white matter tracts and refinement of neural firing patterns sharpen working memory precision.

Subduction of sediment, derived from weathered continental crust, can enrich the mantle in critical metals and volatiles. Melting of such enriched mantle produces alkaline magmas that may form major rare-earth deposits.

Despite exhibiting ferroelectric features, SrTiO₃ fails to display long-range polar order at low temperatures due to quantum fluctuations. An ultrafast X-ray diffraction experiment now probes polar dynamics of this material at the nanometre scale.

Mineral carbonation could enable gigatonne-scale CO₂ removal. Here, the authors use molecular simulations to map a full CO₂ mineralization pathway at a wetting surface, revealing key reactive sites and optimal pH conditions for efficient carbonation.

Nanocrystal assembly is key to creating complex architectures. Here, the authors show that tuning competitive ion adsorption alters anisotropic surface potentials and electrostatic torques, directing facet attachment to enable alternative mesoscale designs.

The study reveals that CSLD5-mediated cell wall synthesis in plant meristems regulates tissue mechanics, influencing growth and gene expression. Targeting CSLD5 expression in specific cell layers can restore growth defects and enhance crop yield, offering a strategy for breeding high-yield plants.

Transformations from carbenes to olefins have generally been realized with transition metal-catalysed enantioselective methods or artificial metalloenzymes. Here the authors apply asymmetric counteranion-directed photoredox organocatalysis for the highly enantioselective cyclopropanation of styrenes and aliphatic dienes.

Daily climate 45 million years ago is reconstructed using fossil snail shells, revealing monsoon-like conditions in Europe. The findings help predict how future warming could affect rainfall and seasons.

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.

Using exome sequencing data from one of the largest cohorts of children with cerebral palsy, the genetic diagnostic rates of single-nucleotide and copy number variants were assessed and a sizeable fraction found to be clinically actionable.

In this study the authors consider the structural variants (SVs) present within cancer cases of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. They report hundreds of genes, including known cancer-associated genes for which the nearby presence of a SV breakpoint is associated with altered expression.

Materials in large magnetic fields can be driven into the quantum limit, where electrons occupy only the lowest Landau level and the response is determined by interactions. Here the authors go beyond this limit by emptying one or two of bismuth’s electronic valleys, depending on the field direction.

An analysis of data from the Sherlock-Lung study provides insight into the mutational processes that contribute to lung cancer in never smokers, and looks at the possible role of factors such as air pollution and passive smoking.

This study uncovers how light polarization governs ultrafast charge transfer between gold and gallium nitride (GaN), revealing a low-loss, nonthermal electron pathway that could advance solar energy conversion and optoelectronic technologies.

It is important to understand the combined effects of multiple changes on the ocean. Here the authors use time of emergence to highlight the increases in impacts of individual and compound changes globally from the surface to the deeper ocean, identifying areas most affected.

The role of rare pathogenic/likely pathogenic (P/LP) germline variants in pediatric central nervous system (CNS) tumour development remains poorly understood. Here, the authors investigate the prevalence and clinical significance of germline P/LP variants in cancer predisposition genes across 830 CNS tumour patients.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis study of blood lipid levels in roughly 1.6 million individuals demonstrates the gain of power attained when diverse ancestries are included to improve fine-mapping and polygenic score generation, with gains in locus discovery related to sample size.

The quark structure of the f₀(980) hadron is still unknown after 50 years of its discovery. Here, the CMS Collaboration reports a measurement of the elliptic flow of the f₀(980) state in proton-lead collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 8.16 TeV, providing strong evidence that the state is an ordinary meson.

Engineering the perovskite–electrical contact interface with sodium heptafluorobutyrate reduces interfacial defects and improves charge transport in perovskite solar cells. Functionalized devices deliver a certified power conversion efficiency of 26.96%, which is fully retained after 1,200 h of continuous operation under 1-sun illumination.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

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.

An analysis of 2,954 genomes from 38 cancer subtypes identified 19,166 retrotransposition events in 35% of samples. Aberrant LINE-1 retrotranspositions can lead to the deletion of tumor-suppressor genes as well as the amplification of oncogenes.

Label-free quantitative proteomics by data dependent acquisition offers high protein identification rates but is often limited by missing values. Here, the authors develop a quantification workflow that substantially reduces missing values while maintaining high identification rates and quantification accuracy.