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This study reveals that during a series of learning tasks, the macaque brain represents the shared (e.g. the decision strategy) and task-unique information (e.g., sensory inputs) in a near-orthogonal manner, thereby supporting reuse of the shared component to facilitate learning, while remain flexible to changes in specifics.

Conotoxins are disulfide-rich therapeutic peptides with high affinity and selectivity for ion channels, yet their optimization is hindered by limited sequence diversity and laborious engineering. Here, the authors introduce CreoPep, a deep learning-based generative framework that integrates a progressive masking strategy and an augmentation pipeline that combines physics-based energy screening with temperature-controlled multinomial sampling, rationally designing and generating diverse and potent conotoxin variants.

Central thalamic patterns index recovery in patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) across different severities, etiologies and ages, revealing a shared mechanism underlying consciousness recovery in DoC and informing treatment strategies.

Enhancing the arsenal of E3 ligases is important for PROTACs development. Here, the authors identify a non-inhibitory aptameric ligand to CRL2^ZYG11B E3 ligase, and develop a general, modular, and straightforward aptamer-based PROTAC platform, termed ZATAC, providing insights for untapped E3 ligases.

The authors uncovered the electric-field-induced deformation mechanisms of nanostructured electrodes, elucidating the interaction between the electric field and the electrode material at the atomic scale.

Porous polydimethylsiloxane elastomers produced by phase separation methods often suffer from limited tribological and mechanical properties. Here, the authors describe the synthesis of porous elastomers with borate driven heterogeneous networks, improving tribological properties, with controllable pore structure and mechanical performance.

High-resolution crystal structures of the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV in complex with ACE2 provide insights into the binding mode of these coronaviruses and highlight essential ACE2-interacting residues.

R-loops are DNA-RNA hybrids that can cause genome instability if not properly controlled. Here, the authors show that the RNA helicase Brr2 prevents harmful circRNA-associated R-loops, thereby safeguarding transcription and cell division.

It is unclear how early-life urbanicity influences adult neurobehavioral traits. This study reveals that earlier menarche mediates the relationship between early-life urbanicity and adult neurobehavioral traits associated with mental disorders.

A cross-ancestry GWAS meta-analyses of brainstem structures identify 713 associations. It reveals shared/distinct genetic architectures across ancestries/substructures and overlaps with neuropsychiatric disorders and physiological functions.

Here the authors uncover how a floppy tail in a protein acts as a remote switch, flipping activity on or off by tweaking internal motion, which reveals a powerful new way proteins regulate themselves without direct contact.

Some small mRNA isoforms regulate cellular responses to stress. Here, Li et al. identify UFD1s, a stress responsive micro-RNA that encodes a conserved microprotein that regulates ubiquitination of full length UFD1, promotes autophagy and fatty acid oxidation, and acts to alleviate NASH progression in mice.

The spread of wheat and barley involves evolutionary and human adaptation but has been difficult to date properly. Findings from a cave site suggest a much earlier transfer of cereal grains across Eurasia.

This paper shows that desertification combating practices decline incomes of farmers and herders, and China needs to adapt its ecological programmes to address the impacts of climate change and create positive synergies to combat desertification.

Apple is one of the most important fruit crops. Here, the authors perform deep genome resequencing of 117 diverse accessions and reveal comprehensive models of apple origin, speciation, domestication, and fruit size evolution as well as candidate genes associated with important agronomic traits.

A comprehensive phylogeny and taxonomy for the medically and ecologically important genus Artemisia remain unavailable. Here, the authors combine genomic data with morphological analyses to reconstruct the most comprehensive phylogeny and taxonomy of global Artemisia.

The blocking layer atop perovskite film cannot completely prevent ion movement due to trade-off with carrier transport. Here, authors develop a composite layer and use poly(N-vinylcarbazole) as the hole transport material, achieving certified steady-state efficiency of 25.7% for stable solar cells.

Using two cohorts, Liu, Ge, Xiao, Lu and colleagues perform plasma metabolomics and lipidomics, linking reduced sarcosine to sarcopenia diagnosis. In mice, they demonstrate that sarcosine enhances muscle repair, boosts adipose thermogenesis and preserves muscle mass via macrophage modulation.

Heterogeneity in gene expression and epigenetic states exists across individual cells. Here, the authors develop scCAT-seq, a technique for simultaneously performing ATAC-seq and RNA-seq within the same single cell.

In a study of antibodies isolated from patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, antibodies that potently neutralized the virus competed with angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 for binding to the receptor-binding domain of the viral spike protein, suggesting that antibodies that disrupt this interaction could be developed to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Here, the authors combine structural, binding, mutational in vitro and in vivo assays to characterize neutralizing antibodies derived from IGHV3-53/3-66 against SARS-CoV-2, finding one antibody, named P5A-3C8, to exhibit protective efficacy in a golden Syrian hamster model of infection while showing the emergence of mutations at position 417 of the Spike protein that confer resistance.

β-Hydrogen elimination is a fundamental reaction in palladium catalysis, however, the eliminated β-hydrogen is usually attached to a sp³-carbon. Here, the authors report a palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction involving a β-vinylic hydrogen elimination from an allylic palladium intermediate.

DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs), a highly deleterious form of DNA damage, are associated with multiple types of broken ends. Here, the authors identify a XRCC4-like factor that functions in the non-homologous end-joining DNA repair pathway to repair DSBs with complex broken ends.

A new artificial intelligence model, DeepSeek-R1, is introduced, demonstrating that the reasoning abilities of large language models can be incentivized through pure reinforcement learning, removing the need for human-annotated demonstrations.

Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 S protein can provide a treatment strategy for COVID-19. Here, Guo et al. provide the crystal structure of a SARS-CoV2 neutralizing antibody isolated from a convalescent patient and highlight the therapeutic efficacy in a rhesus monkey model of an engineered version with optimized pharmacokinetic and safety profile.

Two monoclonal antibodies isolated from a patient with COVID-19 are shown to interfere with SARS-CoV-2–receptor binding, and one displays potent action against this virus in vitro and in a rhesus macaque model.

Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are vital for genome integrity and fertility. Here the authors reveal that spatial clustering of piRNA genes in Caenorhabditis elegans promotes transcription through phase separation and deSUMOylation, uncovering a SUMOylation-regulated mechanism for piRNA production in heterochromatic genomes.

Here, the authors compare the crystal structures and investigate the neutralization mechanisms of three neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 and find that one antibody, P2C-1F11, closely mimics binding of receptor ACE2 and displays the most potent neutralizing activity in vitro, as well as conferring protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in Ad5-hACE2-sensitized mice.

Little is known about the regulation of RNA interference (RNAi). Shan et al. constructed a reporter system to monitor RNAi activity and identified a small molecule that increases RNAi by facilitating the interaction between small RNAs and a protein involved in small RNA loading and processing.

This study identifies the evolutionarily conserved Exportin 4 as an essential regulator in the nuclear export of circRNAs. Defective circRNA export results in R-loop formation and DNA damage in cells, as well as testis and neurological defects in mice.

While Bell inequalities have been violated several times—mostly in photonic systems—their violations within particle physics experiments are less explored. Here, the BESIII Collaboration showcases Bell-violating nonlocal correlations between entangled hyperon pairs.

Monitoring the diversity of viruses infecting animals is important for assessing zoonotic risk. Here, the authors use metatranscriptomics to characterise the viromes of small mammals, pangolins, and zoo animals in China to identify potentially zoonotic viruses.

The identification of a new subclass of circular RNAs that are predominantly nuclear and promote transcription of their parental genes reveals a new regulatory function for these noncoding RNAs.

A primate-specific insertion of an Alu element in 5S-OT, a lncRNA transcribed from 5S rRNA loci, allows 5S-OT to regulate alternative splicing via RNA-RNA pairing and recruitment of the splicing factor U2AF65.

Mobility impairment reduces autonomy and social participation. Here, the authors discuss how wearable technologies are transforming assisted mobility towards more adaptive, intuitive, and user-centered solutions.

Here the authors experimentally realize the electrical tuning of branched flow of light in nematic liquid crystals. The statistical properties and the polarization effect of the branched flow of light in the film are systematically studied adding fundamental insights on branched flow of light.

A high-quality reference genome for the plant Liriodendron chinense places magnoliids as sister to the clade consisting of eudicots and monocots. Population genomic analyses unravel the evolution of two distinct species in the genus Liriodendron.

The authors identify nanobodies from immunized alpaca with broadly neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2 variants, and major sarbecoviruses. One representative nanobody binds to a highly conserved epitope on RBD and protects K18-hACE2 mice from Omicron and Delta infection.

The scaffold protein Miranda is required for the asymmetric segregation of the RNA binding protein Staufen to ganglion mother cells during Drosophila neuroblast division. Jia et al. map the interaction between these proteins and present a crystal structure of the interacting domains.

The authors introduce a loss-enhanced magneto-optical effect and sublinearly amplify the frequency response of a non-Hermitian optical cavity under different background magnetic fields. This effect is exploited to detect subtle magnetic field variations against a strong background with enhanced system response and sensitivity.

The semileptonic decay channels of the Λc baryon can give important insights into weak interaction, but decay into a neutron, positron and electron neutrino has not been reported so far, due to difficulties in the final products’ identification. Here, the BESIII Collaboration reports its observation in e+e- collision data, exploiting machine-learning-based identification techniques.

Here the authors characterize a monoclonal antibody from a COVID-19 convalescent patient that interferes with SARS-CoV-2 spike binding to ACE2 and has prophylactic and therapeutic activity in non-human primates. Antibody-dependent enhancement of infection is prevented by mutating the Fc region of the antibody.

Reducing the radiation dose for medical CT scans can provide a less invasive imaging method, but requires a method for reconstructing an image up to the image quality from a full-dose scan. In this article, Wang and colleagues show that the deep learning approach, combined with the feedback from radiologists, produces higher quality reconstructions than or similar to that using the current commercial methods.

Muons are conventionally produced from cosmic rays or with a proton accelerator. Now a proof-of-principle experiment demonstrates the feasibility of muon production with a laser-driven electron beam with gigaelectronvolt energy in a lead converter target.

The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is limited by the scaling relationship in the conventional oxygen associative pathway. In this study, single p-block atoms and interstitial H are incorporated into Pd metallenes favoring the direct dissociation mechanism, leading to high alkaline ORR performance.

SUMOylation of the host protein Pelota is known to contribute to host restriction of potyvirids. Here potyvirids-encoded RNA polymerases are shown to competitively interact with the SUMO E2 conjugating enzyme SCE1 and thereby function as SUMOylation decoys to repress plant defense.