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Cell division is governed by the positioning of a cytoskeletal structure called the spindle. Two methods, one based on laser ablation and the other on fluid flow assessments, are now shown to be useful tools for studying spindle positioning.

Environmental enrichment has functional and molecular effects on mammalian hippocampus. Here, Zhang and colleagues show that environmental enrichment of mice is correlated with dorsal-ventral asymmetry in transcription and DNA methylation of the dentate gyrus.

Staphylococci are spherical bacteria that divide in sequential orthogonal planes. Here, the authors use super-resolution microscopy to show that staphylococcal cells elongate before dividing, and that the division septum generates less than one hemisphere of each daughter cell, generating asymmetry.

Plunge into a profusion of brilliant summer reads suggested by regular reviewers and editors, far away from the lab and lecture hall.

Studying spindle formation in fission yeast, Cooper and colleagues discover a role for the meiotic telomere bouquet in supporting centromere assembly.

High-resolution radio imaging of the γ-ray-emitting nova V959 Mon, hosted by a white dwarf and its binary companion, shows that gaseous ejecta are expelled along the poles as a wind from the white dwarf, that denser material drifts out along the equatorial plane, propelled by orbital motion, and that γ-ray production occurs at the interface between these polar and equatorial regions.

Here, the authors produce an updated termite classification with genomic scale analyses, highlighting thirteen family-level lineages and resilience of their classification to future termite research.

Electrons in atoms exhibit many-body collective behaviours that can be studied by highbrightness X-rays from FELs. Here, the authors examine two-photon above threshold ionization of xenon and find that nonlinearities in the response uncover that more than one state underpins the 4dgiant resonance.

Precise chromosome segregation during mitosis requires coordination of stable chromosome bi-orientation with anaphase onset, however the underlying mechanism is not clear. Here the authors show that inner centromere localization of the chromosomal passenger complex maintains centromeric cohesion on bi-oriented chromosomes and allows mitotic checkpoint silencing.

Enceladus’s tiger stripes at the south pole formed in cascade and spaced equally after the first fracture—probably Baghdad Sulcus—was created by the release of accumulated tensile stress, caused in turn by secular cooling.

During the Cenozoic the Arctic Ocean change from a restricted freshwater regime towards more saline modern ocean conditions is supposedly driven by the subsidence of the Greenland-Scotland Ridge. Here, the authors derive a threshold for this shift, constrained by the characteristic depth of wind mixing.

Cholinergic interneurons act at nicotinic receptors to depress dopamine release, interrupting its relationship to dopamine neuron firing and supporting an inverse scaling of dopamine release according to cholinergic activity.

The mitochondrial symbiont, Candidatus Midichloria mitochondrii, exists in the hard tick Ixodus ricinus, the main vector for Lyme disease. Here, the authors use FIB-SEM to characterise mitochondrial morphology and bacterial interactions in the context of oocyte maturation and endosymbiosis.

Authors show that Antarctic glaciers deliver high particle loads to the ocean, rich in iron that is potential food for marine algae. Microscopy techniques reveal this iron interacts with carbon. Ocean tracers show this glacial iron reaches far offshore.

NOTCH3 signalling is shown to be the underlying driver of the differentiation and expansion of a subset of synovial fibroblasts implicated in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis.

Cross-modality mapping extends to 3D with image-varifold based technologies for partial matching, spatial resampling, and feature selection to efficiently represent and integrate high-dimensional spatial-omics data with tissue-scale imaging.

Cytoplasmic flows in the fruit fly oocyte can reorganize cellular components. These structured vortical flows arise through self-organizing dynamics of microtubules, molecular motors and cytoplasm.

Global-scale analyses of marine, terrestrial and freshwater assemblages found that temporal rates of species replacement were faster in locations with faster temperature change, including warming and cooling, and vulnerable assemblages were especially responsive.

Biosynthesis of peptidoglycan requires carefully orchestrated transpeptidation reactions to maintain the structural integrity of this essential component of the bacterial cell wall. Now, rotor-fluorescent d-amino acids have been shown to enable real-time tracking of these transpeptidation reactions in live bacterial cells. These powerful tools allow visualization of peptidoglycan biosynthesis with high spatiotemporal resolution.

New microgrid recordings on the human hippocampal surface reveal that oscillations travel in reversing directions. The route of travel at a given moment was related to behavior and topographic patterns of activity strength, suggesting directions may be biomarkers of hippocampal cognitive processes.

An analysis of a high-resolution global temperature data set shows that temperate and polar regions are becoming more tropical in their temperature variation profiles, potentially affecting organisms and impacting human agriculture and health.

After generating a dataset on plumage colouration for over 4,500 bird species, the authors show that tropical species are more colourful than temperate species, confirming a long-held but difficult-to-prove belief.

The centromere is required for the segregation of chromosomes. Here, the authors report the organization and dynamic of holocentric chromosomes, each containing 7 to 11 evenly spaced megabase-sized centromere-specific histone H3-positive units.

Fluorescent d-amino acid incorporation reveals host–prey cell wall modification during Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus predation including pore formation and l,d-transpeptidase-mediated prey strengthening.

Collective motion arises from the coordination of individuals and entails the adjustment of their respective velocities. Yet, how individuals achieve this coordination is often not understood. For migrating cells and motorized agents, Riedl et al. show that the synchronization of the intrinsic oscillator through nearest neighbour coupling establishes the necessary feedback leading to a uniform speed within the collective.

An analysis of 38 ancient genomes from the aurochs, the extinct ancestor of modern cattle, provides insight into the population ancestry and domestication of this species.

In a model system crosslinked by motors, cytoskeletal polymers slide past each other at speeds independent of their polarity. This behaviour is best described within an active-gel framework that deviates from the dilute limit set by existing theory.

A retrobiosynthetic algorithm that relates known antibiotics by the similarities of their biosynthetic pathways to cluster them into distinct classes. Focusing on the telomycins helps to define the mechanism of action of this antibiotic class.

DuMPLING (dynamic μ-fluidic microscopy phenotyping of a library before in situ genotyping) enables screening of dynamic phenotypes in strain libraries and was used here to study genes that coordinate replication and cell division in Escherichia coli.

Lung cancers often harbour loss-of-function mutations inSMARCA4. Here, the authors demonstrate a vulnerability of SMARCA4-deficient lung cancers for Aurora kinase A inhibition associated with mitotic defects.

The bacterial Tad pilus extends and retracts using a single bifunctional ATPase CpaF. Here, the authors employ cryo-EM, fluorescent microscopy, and AlphaFold modelling to propose how a rotary mechanism of CpaF catalysis drives Tad pilus assembly.

A device that consists of a square array of independent direct current loops on top of a film of yttrium iron garnet can generate a complex reconfigurable magnetic medium and be used to solve inverse-design problems experimentally without the use of numerical simulations.

Assessing the resilience of groundwater resources can be challenging in data-sparse regions. Tritium observations and machine learning can be employed to fill gaps where traditional monitoring is insufficient and provide insight into aquifer vulnerability to pollution.

Using a dataset that included 341,846 species in 391 angiosperm floras worldwide, this study finds that the global phylogenetic structure of angiosperms shows clear and meaningful relationships with environmental factors and that current climatic variables have the highest predictive power for phylogenetic metrics reflecting recent evolutionary relationships.

Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) is seen as a promising method for CO₂ removal as it alters the surface carbon equilibrium, driving the transfer of CO₂ into the ocean. Here the authors computationally map the spatiotemporal efficiency of OAE to identify locations and timing for optimal OAE deployment.

The diversity hotspots hypothesis attributes the overall increase in global diversity during the Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras to the development of diversity hotspots under prolonged conditions of Earth system stability and maximum continental fragmentation.

The E. coli MinCDE system oscillates between cell poles to position the main division protein FtsZ. Here authors use in vitro reconstitution to show that MinDE oscillations also regulate unrelated membrane proteins spatiotemporally into patterns and gradients by forming a moving physical barrier.

Could a partnership between a small town and a large utility help to transform the Australian electricity grid?

Laser microdissection and microarrays are used to assess 900 precise subdivisions of the brains from three healthy men with 60,000 gene expression probes; the resulting atlas allows comparisons between humans and other animals, and will facilitate studies of human neurological and psychiatric diseases.