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Global analysis of obesity trends from 1980 to 2024 in 200 countries and territories using data from 4,050 population-based studies reveals that framing obesity as a single global epidemic masks the highly varied dynamics across countries and age groups.

How the brain supports speaking and listening during conversation of its natural form remains poorly understood. Here, by combining intracranial EEG recordings with Natural Language Processing, the authors show broadly distributed frontotemporal neural signals that encode context-dependent linguistic information during both speaking and listening..

Accurate determination of population size for highly-mobile marine animals is often prohibitively difficult. Here, Bravingtonet al.estimate the abundance of southern bluefin tuna using a method based on the number of parent-offspring pairs detected genetically in samples from the catch.

Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

This study identifies distinct transposable element subfamilies as genetic determinants of stemness properties in normal and leukemic stem populations with clinical implications for patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

Natural genetic variation of photosynthesis is an underexplored resource for plant genetic improvement. Here, the authors find allelic variations of YS1 affect Arabidopsis photosynthesis acclimation using genome-wide association study, reverse genetics, and quantitative complementation approaches.

Liu, Gad et al. develop an approach to purify the endoplasmic reticulum and integrate genetic, structural, molecular and cell biological analyses to identify SLC33A1 as an endoplasmic reticulum oxidized glutathione (GSSG) exporter in mammalian cells.

Higher-order interactions are shown to contribute to the decrease in species diversity from low to high latitudes in global forests, potentially explaining why this intricate phenomenon cannot be adequately explained by pairwise interactions alone.

A national classification system of wetland hydrologic connectivity to streams, which could be applied globally, demonstrates and advances current understanding of how wetland connectivity affects surface water quality.

For Nature Aging’s fifth anniversary, we acknowledge the essential work that is done by our colleagues, without which Nature Aging’s monthly publication would not be possible. We speak with some of our internal colleagues about the process of making a journal every month. Rebecca Roberts is a production editor at Springer Nature, Mark McGranaghan is a senior sub editor, Lauren Snape is an art editor and Amanda Karmolinski is a senior editorial assistant. In this Q&A, Rebecca, Mark, Lauren and Amanda pull back the curtain and tell us about the various roles that go into putting it all together.

Compiling data on floral introductions and European colonial history of regions worldwide, the authors find that compositional similarity of floras is higher than expected among regions once occupied by the same empire and similarity increases with the length of time the region was occupied by that empire.

In this individual participant data meta-analysis, and across 321,345 smartphone-ratings of affective well-being and nearly 1 million hours of physical activity measurement, Rehder et al. clarify the nature and extent of activity–well-being relations and document their relevance in humans’ everyday life.

In this study, the authors model the current mechanical properties of the seafloor of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, and find those rocks to be too strong to allow the kind of fracturing that, on Earth, enables rock–water chemical reactions on which chemosynthetic life relies.

Analysis of 258 ancient genomes from southern Germany reveals a major demographic shift during the late fifth century, yet family structures persisted from Late Roman times, demonstrating cultural continuity despite profound demographic reorganization.

Fluorochemicals improve our quality of life, but there is an increasing concern over their production and the negative impact on health and the environment. Now chemical recycling of fluorochemicals via base-induced defluorination has been demonstrated, and the resulting potassium fluoride has been used to synthesize organic and inorganic compounds.

Gram-negative bacteria use diverse virulence factors to infect eukaryotic cells. Here, the authors perform structure-function analyses on the S. negevensis deSUMOylase SnCE1 and provide mechanistic insights how lysine acetylation reprograms virulence adjusting it to the host cells’ metabolic state.

By studying 23 neurodevelopmental disorder genes across model systems and brain cell types, the authors uncovered shared downstream effects that converge on synaptic biology, epigenetic regulation and mitochondrial function.

Donahue et al. show that ageing is associated with changes in ER morphology. ER-phagy drives age-associated ER remodelling through tissue-specific factors.

Robustness checks and reproduction of analyses with existing and updated data based on 110 articles in economics and political science journals with data and code-sharing requirements found high levels of robustness and reproducibility and determined that robustness was not dependent on author characteristics or data availability.

Urea, the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer, has unknown impacts on freshwater ecosystems. This study demonstrates that urea additions in Canadian prairie agricultural reservoirs triple phytoplankton abundance without increasing cyanobacterial toxins, revealing considerable nitrogen loss to the atmosphere and highlighting potential global water quality degradation in phosphorus-rich agricultural regions.

In this phase 2 trial, combination treatment with elraglusib, a cell-permeable ATP-competitive inhibitor of glycogen synthase kinase-3β, and gemcitabine plus nab-paclitaxel (GnP), in patients with previously untreated metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma led to prolonged overall survival compared with GnP only.

The existing ENCODE registry of candidate human and mouse cis-regulatory elements is expanded with the addition of new ENCODE data, integrating new functional data as well as new cell and tissue types.

In mice, a circuit between the spinal cord and various regions of the brain, centring on spinal-cord-projecting neurons in the rostral ventromedial medulla, has a key role in driving chronic pain.

Climate change can alter when and how animals grow, breed, and migrate, but it is unclear whether this allows populations to persist. This global study shows that shifts in seasonal timing are key to helping vertebrate species maintain population growth under global warming.

We remember some events while others slip from our minds. The results of a new study indicate how records of sensory experiences might be consolidated into long-term memory.

Time-restricted eating (TRE) and daily calorie restriction both led to significant weight loss in women with polycystic ovary syndrome compared to controls. Thus, TRE is a safe and effective alternative to calorie restriction for weight management in this population.

Here, Wulczynski et al. find fewer small-intestinal fiber-degrading bacteria in CeD patients, independent of the gluten-free diet, while inulin-supplemented diet in gluten-sensitized mice facilitates microbial saccharolytic function and SCFAs, accelerating mucosal healing in the small intestine.

Salladay-Perez and colleagues explore senescence induction in human and mouse macrophages using multiomic profiling. They characterize a p21⁺TREM2⁺ senescent macrophage population, which they functionally implicate in inflammaging and liver disease.

Exits and entrances.

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

Arterial development is critical for proper blood flow, but the mechanisms mediating this process at the organ level remain unclear. Here, they show that a subpopulation of endothelial cells is important for formation of arterial endothelium in the intestine.

Analysis of nuclear and mitochondrial genomes from archaeological canid remains found across Europe and Anatolia shows that a genetically homogeneous dog population was already widely distributed across the region by 15,000 years ago.

Cytoplasmic dsRNA co-localizes with TDP-43 inclusions in Alzheimer’s disease brain cells, driving neurotoxic interferon signaling. JAK inhibitors and TYK2 blockade rescue this toxicity, identifying TYK2 as a target for TDP-43-linked AD and ALS.

From 2014–2017, marine heatwaves caused global mass coral bleaching, where the corals lose their symbiotic algae. The authors find, this event exceeded the severity of all prior global bleaching events in recorded history, with approximately half the world’s reefs bleaching and 15% experiencing substantial mortality.

In this phase 1 trial, treatment of patients with fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma with a therapeutic peptide vaccine targeting the fusion kinase DNAJB1–PRKACA, which is the driver of the disease, together with nivolumab and ipilimumab, was safe and led to encouraging preliminary clinical responses, and translational analysis showed activation of immune responses.

The gut microbiome-kidney crosstalk has been previously linked with metabolic and kidney diseases. Here, the authors show that microbial amino acid metabolism interacts with host kidney function to influence cardiorenal physiology in the early stages, with potential implications for long-term risk of cardiovascular disease in human populations.

Histological analysis of the human pancreas provides insight into initiation and progression of type 1 diabetes (T1D). Here the authors utilize pancreatic tissue sections across different disease stages and apply whole slide imaging and digital pathology to identify endocrine cell composition, immune cell burden and spatial islet relationships in health and over the course of T1D.

Inhibition of the histone methyltransferase NSD2 and the androgen receptor in preclinical models can reverse lineage plasticity to suppress tumour growth and promote cell death in multiple subtypes of castration-resistant prostate cancer.

A wearable that continuously measures the concentration of a drug is demonstrated in humans.

This overview of the ENCODE project outlines the data accumulated so far, revealing that 80% of the human genome now has at least one biochemical function assigned to it; the newly identified functional elements should aid the interpretation of results of genome-wide association studies, as many correspond to sites of association with human disease.

Soil fauna is an important but often neglected component of terrestrial food webs. Here the authors use a large dataset of stable isotope observations to analyse how soil animal trophic diversity varies across climates and land-use types and identify potential biotic mechanisms.

The authors report the measurement of the Little-Parks effect in the unconventional superconductor candidate 4Hb-TaS₂. They find a π-shift in the transition-temperature oscillations and an ehancement of T_c as a function of the out-of-plane field when a constant in-plane field is applied, consistent with a multi-component order parameter.

HECT-type ubiquitin ligases control many cellular processes but remain poorly characterised in their full-length form. Here, the authors present a biochemical analysis and cryo-EM structures of the cancer-associated ligase HECTD3 revealing an interesting domain architecture and mechanistic insights.