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This study finds that plastic mulch substantially increases crop yields but also contaminates soils and pollutes the environment. The authors propose biodegradable films, AI-driven farming, and policy reforms to address the productivity–sustainability trade-offs.

Here, Yang-Jensen et al. demonstrate that a scalable microbial protein lysate from Methylococcus capsulatus Bath reshapes gut microbiota and T cells and, via fermentation-driven GLP-2 receptor mimicry, protects against gastrointestinal inflammation while providing sustainable protein nutrition

Phage therapy is an alternative treatment against biofilm-associated infections. In this case report, phage-antibiotic therapy was used to treat a vascular graft infection caused by a refractory fluoroquinolone non-susceptible Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

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.

Avian influenza jumped from wild birds into dairy cattle. Here, the authors report that two mutations in the viral polymerase helped the virus to quickly adapt to cattle. Mutations increased the polymerase activity and made the virus better at replicating in human cells.

Direct RNA sequencing suffers from chimera artifact contamination. Here, the authors develop DeepChopper, a genomic language model that detects artifacts with high accuracy, enabling more reliable transcriptome analysis.

Deep brain stimulation tuned to cue-reactivity within the nucleus accumbens region reduced drug cravings, heralding an evocation-based programming strategy for opioid use disorder.

PRC2 operates as two holocomplexes, PRC2.1 and PRC2.2, with EPOP serving as a PRC2.1-specific accessory subunit. Here the authors show that EPOP inhibits PRC2.1 by disrupting its dimeric structure, thereby weakening chromatin association to prevent excessive gene repression during early differentiation.

Enzymes are highly selective and sustainable catalysts for chemical synthesis, but their optimization is often limited by the difficulty of identifying functional starting points. This study shows that using the GenSLM protein language model to design TrpB variants can yield stable, active enzymes with broad substrate promiscuity, outperforming natural and evolved counterparts and demonstrating the potential of generative models to accelerate biocatalyst discovery.

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.

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.

Kim, Wang, Clow and colleagues show that long-range chromatin loops bringing distal enhancers or super-enhancers together with promoters are cohesin dependent and cell type specific, whereas most short-range and promoter-centric transcriptional loops are cohesin independent and constitutive.

Cryogenic electron microscopy structures of human Ostα/β uncover a unique transport pathway featuring two substrate-binding sites connected by an amphipathic helix-gated conduit, and electrophysiological studies demonstrate voltage-sensitive, bidirectional transport, showing its efflux role in vivo.

Cystine levels in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) tumour microenvironment are deficient, despite its crucial role for cancer cell maintenance. Here, the authors show that adaptation to cystine limitation stress promotes PDAC growth through induces metabolic reprogramming to promote PDAC tumor growth, while conferring a vulnerability in lipid metabolism targetable by lomitapide.

Here, the authors document the evolutionary dynamics of angiosperm pollen, using pollen morphology and time calibrated phylogeny. They identify two surges in pollen disparity in the mid-Cretaceous and Paleogene that are associated with environmental changes and important pollen adaptations.

Butyrophilin 2A2 is a member of the B7 costimulatory family that is expressed on antigen presenting cells and is linked to the regulation of T cells. Here the authors implicate butyrophilin 2A2 in enhancement of CD45 phosphatase activity within the immunological synapse during T cell activation, leading to expansion of regulatory T cells and reduction of proinflammatory Th17 CD4 T cells.

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.

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.

A label-free, DNA-based proximity ligation assay that uses ligatable staple pairs enables the longitudinal quantification of DNA origami structural stability dynamics in vivo, with single-helix resolution for both wireframe and lattice designs.

The yin–yang codec transcoding algorithm is proposed to improve the practicality and robustness of DNA data storage.

Insulin signaling plays a crucial role in coordinating skeletal development with whole‑body energy metabolism. Here, the authors use phosphoproteomics to show insulin-signaling rewiring in aged, insulin-resistant bone and identify defective phosphorylation of AFF4 as a key mechanism for regulating gene-specific transcriptional activation.

Newly developed mouse models that enable cell-specific analyses of proteostasis dynamics across the lifespan of the mice reveal key aspects of neuronal proteostasis with ageing.

The Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative recruited and genotyped more than half a million Taiwanese participants, almost all of Han Chinese ancestry, and performed comprehensive genomic analyses and developed polygenic risk score prediction models for numerous health conditions.

Floquet engineering is often limited by weak light–matter coupling and heating. Now it is shown that exciton-driven fields in monolayer semiconductors produce stronger, longer-lived Floquet effects and reveal hybridization linked to excitonic phases.

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.

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.

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.

Quantum low-density parity-check error correction codes are anticipated to deliver high performance, but require long-range qubit–qubit interactions. Two of these error correction codes have now been successfully implemented on a superconducting device.

Here the authors perform longitudinal sampling of lymphoid organs along with fate mapping and matched single-cell RNA sequencing and TCR sequencing to define the developmental dynamics of follicular regulatory T (T_FR) cells. They find that T_FR cells undergo clonal expansion and progressive differentiation in a process that requires follicular helper T cells.

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.

Two-dimensional metal halide perovskites exhibit diverse structures, but tuning their intralayer structure is challenging. Now, ammonium-terminated bidentate linkers have been used to develop 2D perovskites. These materials exhibit superior thermal resistance and improved photovoltaic performance compared with their Ruddlesden–Popper and Dion–Jacobson counterparts.

Metabolite signatures were identified for subtypes of dietary carbohydrate, including added sugar, whole grain and refined grain, and showed different associations with type 2 diabetes, providing an objective measure of dietary risk.

Generation of orbital currents in a non-magnetic material can be useful to build efficient orbitronic devices. Now, the interplay of chiral phonons and electrons is shown to produce orbital currents in α-quartz.

De novo and inherited dominant variants in genes encoding U4 and U6 small nuclear RNAs are identified in individuals with retinitis pigmentosa. The variants cluster at nucleotide positions distinct from those implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders.

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.

Improved vaccines and antivirals are needed for many enveloped viruses. Here, the authors identify sulfur-based small molecules that disrupt viral membrane properties, inhibiting fusion and entry, and safely inactivate influenza virus. The resulting inactivated influenza vaccine is protective in mice.

Proton-exchange membrane water electrolysers rely on iridium to catalyse their anodic reaction, and while ruthenium is a less costly alternative due to its similar activity, it is not as stable. Now, a hierarchical machine-learning catalyst discovery workflow, termed mixed acceleration, is put forward to predict catalyst synthesis, activity and stability, and identify promising RuO_x-based water oxidation catalysts.

Bark decomposition could significantly affect global carbon and nutrient cycling. Here, the authors report the global trend of bark decomposition rates, identify the key drivers in different climate regions, and predict the response of bark decomposition to future climate change.

Medication non-adherence represents a healthcare challenge, generating over $100 billion in additional costs annually in the USA. Here, the authors developed a resorbable and ingestible system designed for assessing medication adherence.

Figure 1. Schematic illustration of capsule based, biodegradable medication adherence tracking system with envisioned scenario for clinical use. A, Bio-RFID capsule administration. B, Shielding coating dissolution and payload release C, Monitoring of the Tag ID and frequency range, recording of the payload for tracking adherence. D, Dissolution and biosorption of the coating, tag and the capsule.

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

When a wave packet traces a conical intersection, its phase must change a sign. The authors show direct experimental and computational evidence of this geometric phase effect for the hydrogen exchange reaction H + D₂ → HD + D.

The [1,2]-Wittig rearrangement of allylic ethers is traditionally considered to proceed via formation and recombination of radical pairs. Now it has been shown that an alternative reaction cascade, involving initial enantioselective [2,3]-rearrangement followed by base-promoted anionic fragmentation–recombination that proceeds with high enantiospecificity, allows a catalytic enantioselective [1,2]-Wittig process.

Engineered Escherichia coli strains expressing a colibactin antitoxin, ClbS, on the surface prevent the genotoxic effects of colibactin released by genotoxin-producing bacteria in the mouse gut.

Ionic liquid additives increase the power conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cells, but their effect on perovskite crystallization remains unclear. Xu et al. provide mechanistic insights and demonstrate improved operational stability under continous illumination and 90 °C thermal stress.

Influenza A virus infection causes a dramatic upregulation of ADP-ribosylation that as part of the cellular antiviral response, a process that is counteracted by the viral NS1 protein.

Lung adenocarcinomas bearing the ID2 mutational signature display increased LINE-1 retrotransposon activity, which contributes to their fast evolutionary dynamics and aggressive phenotype.