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Here they show that NELFA is critical for human naïve pluripotency and can drive cells into an 8C-like state that expresses zygotic genome activation genes, offering valuable insights into early human embryogenesis.

Magrinelli et al. link biallelic PSMF1 variants to phenotypes from parkinsonism to perinatal lethality, implicating proteasomal and mitochondrial dysfunction. PI31 loss in fly and mouse models causes age-dependent motor deficits and neurodegeneration.

This study reveals how Toxoplasma gondii exits host cells to spread infection. Researchers found that a key protein, MIC11, works with parasite perforin to disrupt membranes—a mechanism conserved even in the feline stages of infection.

Extracellular vesicles from lung epithelial cells deliver ACE2 and TMPRSS2 to recipient cells, enabling SARS-CoV-2 infection beyond receptor-expressing cells and expanding viral tropism.

This study develops a platform that enables simultaneous, multiplexed tracing of 30 nitrogen isotope-labelled metabolites, uncovering differences in pyrimidine synthesis pathway choice between primitive and differentiated cells.

Global travel hubs could be key in future pandemic surveillance efforts. Here, using a global metapopulation model calibrated to epidemiology, phylogeography and air travel, the authors show that traveler-focused genomic surveillance at key hubs can speed up detection of SARS-CoV-2 variants under resource constraints.

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.

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.

Separating the anthropogenic forced thermodynamic and dynamic components from internal variability in winter precipitation trends in the mid-latitudes shows that thermodynamic effects agree with models and observations but the role of dynamic response remains uncertain.

This study shows that capillary blood sampling at home using fingerprick testing is feasible and provides reliable biomarkers for Alzheimer’s Disease. They correlate with cognition and can identify people at highest risk of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Glaucoma is a common cause of vision loss. Here the authors show that elevated intraocular pressure disrupts the blood retinal barrier (BRB) and contributes to retinal ganglion cell death in mouse glaucoma models, and detect similar BRB disruption in human glaucoma donor eyes.

The study identifies novel genetic variants linked to core cerebrospinal fluid Alzheimer’s Disease biomarkers using a genome-wide analysis, showing how endophenotypes can identify genes and disease mechanisms not captured by case-control studies.

X-ray crystal structures of a tRNA synthetase bound to wild-type and mutant alanine tRNAs reveal the structural basis for selectivity.

Raam, Li, Gu and colleagues identify neural mechanisms underlying group huddling in mice during cold exposure. They find that the prefrontal cortex encodes decisions to huddle and that silencing neural activity in some animals causes partners to compensate in response.

Southern Ocean microbial communities are less well studied. Here, the authors generate a circumpolar-scale gene catalog from 218 metagenomics samples revealing broadscale uniqueness and water-mass–specific adaptations of the Southern Ocean microbiome.

The authors resolve 63 structurally diverse haplotype structures for the 22q11.2 deletion syndrome region. Deletion risk differs depending on structure; individuals of African ancestry are enriched for inverted repeats that predispose to inversion.

Reducing or stopping immunosuppression in recipients of allografts has the potential to spare them from increased risk of infection, malignancy and cardiovascular events. Here, the authors report the results of a phase-I clinical trial evaluating the use of donor-derived dendritic cells as means to achieve operational tolerance in living-donor liver transplantation.

Matthieu Reymond and colleagues show that natural genetic variants at the SRF3 locus underlie genetic incompatibilities between European and central Asian accessions of Arabidopsis.

XRISM spectroscopy of the nucleus of the Circinus galaxy indicates elemental abundances suggestive of a dominant enrichment from core-collapse supernovae with progenitors below 20 solar masses; more massive stars may directly collapse into black holes.

This study examines long-term changes in species richness across tropical forests in the Andes and Amazon. Hotter, drier and more seasonal forests in the eastern and southern Amazon are losing species, while Northern Andean forests are accumulating species, acting as a refuge for climate-displaced species.

ATF6α activation in human and preclinical models of hepatocellular carcinoma is significantly associated with an aggressive tumour phenotype characterized by reduced survival, glycolytic reprogramming and local immunosuppression.

Accurate forecasting of tropical precipitation is dependent on our understanding of the hydrological cycle. Here, the authors present a speleothem-derived record of Mesoamerican precipitation variability since the 1930s, and show that multi-decadal declines in rainfall coincide with major volcanic eruptions.

LHAASO has detected γ-ray emission with a spectrum extending to 2 PeV from the pulsar wind nebula (PWN) powered by PSR J1849-0001, indicating an extreme particle acceleration efficiency and challenging the current particle acceleration theories.

Starburst galaxies are seen to host galaxy-scale winds, which are super-fast and could be powered entirely by the thermal pressure of gas heated by supernovae.

Myelodysplastic neoplasms (MDS) comprise a heterogeneous group of malignancies that can lead to ineffective haematopoiesis, cytopenias and, potentially, progression to acute myeloid leukaemia. In this Review, the authors describe the epidemiology of MDS, which appears to be rising, as well as advances in diagnosis, risk stratification and clinical management.

Floquet engineering is emerging as a tool to control quantum materials. Here it is applied using non-resonant optical fields to coherently dress Hubbard excitons in Sr₂CuO₃, driving wavefunction rotations between bright and dark states.

dG•dT and rG•rU ‘wobble’ mispairs in DNA and RNA transiently form base pairs with Watson–Crick geometry via tautomerization and ionization with probabilities that correlate with misincorporation probabilities during replication and translation.

GTP-triggered release from drug carriers has huge potential in cancer therapy but current carriers suffers from off target release due to ATP also acting as a trigger. Here, the authors report on the development of a microtubule capsule which is engineered to be responsive to only GTP not ATP and demonstrate targeted drug delivery.

The diabetes drug metformin and its degradation product guanylurea are major pharmaceutical contaminants in waste and surface water. Here, a Ni2+-dependent enzyme that hydrolysed metformin to guanylurea and its evolutionary predecessor are presented.

In a prospective multi-centre cohort in China, people living in areas of high soil selenium had a 35% increased risk of incident diabetes over a 3-year study period, with a stronger effect seen for men.

Contrary to previous assumptions, nitrogen burial – not denitrification – dominates nitrogen loss in fjords, accounting for up to 18% of oceanic nitrogen burial. Deoxygenation may yet alter the future partitioning of nitrogen loss in these systems.

Decreased brain volumes and increased NfL levels can be observed earlier than disease diagnosis in short-tandem-repeat-associated neurological diseases.

Splice sites must be correctly identified for introns to be removed from pre-mRNAs and for expression of the correct mRNA isoforms. Here, the authors elucidate how the human U1 snRNP splicing factor recognizes 5′ splice sites and how a splicing modulating drug can enhance splice site recognition.

Vascular smooth muscle cells undergo complex transitions to multiple disease-related phenotypes in coronary artery disease. Using vascular smooth muscle lineage-traced single-cell RNA and ATAC sequencing, the authors map molecular spatiotemporal patterns of murine atherosclerosis and discover molecular mechanisms of TCF21-mediated coronary artery disease risk.

Melanocytic nevi are small, pigmented benign skin tumours. This large-scale genome-wide association study for nevus count identifies novel genomic regions, highlighting pathways beyond pigmentation and offers new insights into melanoma risk and biology.

In contrast to HIV, simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIV) do not cause disease in their hosts, and the reasons for this are unclear. Here, Joas et al. incorporate two putative HIV virulence factors into SIV and study effects in infected monkeys, suggesting that species-specific host factors are responsible for HIV pathogenesis.

Ageing reprograms the evolutionary trajectory of KRAS-driven lung adenocarcinoma, limiting primary tumour growth while promoting metastatic dissemination through epigenetic activation of the integrated stress response, and a therapeutic opportunity in older patients is revealed.

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.

Faria-Teixeira, Carvalho et al. present a machine learning model designed to identify novel diagnostic groups for skeletal Class III malocclusion using cephalometric radiographs from 655 patients. The presented model identifies six distinct subphenotypes that generalise across ethnicities and correlate with treatment selection.