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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.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) plays an important role in decarbonization pathways to meet climate goals, but some methods are land-intensive. Multimodel analysis reveals conflicts between biodiversity and CDR that are distributed unevenly, and shows that synergies are crucial to meet climate and conservation goals.

The origin and dispersal of Homo erectus, a long-lived and geographically widespread human ancestor, are unclear despite a rich fossil record. Here, the authors reconstruct the face from a Homo erectus cranium from Gona, Ethiopia, dated to 1.5-1.6 million years ago, providing insights into the evolutionary transition from early Homo to H. erectus.

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.

The impact of variants of uncertain significance (VUS) on protein function and cancer risk remain unclear. Here, the authors focus on the functional impact of VUS of the PALB2 gene and identify defects in DNA damage repair by homologous recombination associated with increased risk of breast cancer.

How landscapes are arranged affects soil pathogenic fungi worldwide. The authors reveal the global pattern and pronounced scale-dependency of landscape complexity and land-cover quantity on soil pathogenic fungal diversity.

The authors present the results of a phase I/II clinical trial using autologous CD133+ bone marrow stem cell therapy to restore fertility in patients with Asherman Syndrome. The intervention was safe and showed promising results for the restoration of menstruation and reproductive function.

Species’ traits and environmental conditions determine the abundance of tree species across the globe. Here, the authors find that dominant tree species are taller and have softer wood compared to rare species and that these trait differences are more strongly associated with temperature than water availability.

DNA data storage is an alternative to silicon-based data storage, but it demands advanced encryption and readout techniques. Here, the authors present an enhanced DNA origami cryptography protocol for data storage, using DNA-PAINT super-resolution imaging and unsupervised clustering to retrieve information in DNA cryptography.

The authors propose a universal descriptor for thermal conductivity based solely on the atomic number in the primitive cell and sound velocity, enabling rapid and scalable materials screening.

Paiardini and colleagues describe a subset of lymph node HIV- and SIV-specific TOX^hiTCF1⁺CD39⁺CD8⁺ T cells that coexhibit stem- and effector-like phenotypic and transcriptional profiles and associate with reduced viral burden.

Machine-learning algorithms trained on 25,000 geolocated soil samples are used to create high-resolution global maps of mycorrhizal fungi, revealing that less than 10% of their biodiversity hotspots are in protected areas.

Federated learning (FL) algorithms have emerged as a promising solution to train models for healthcare imaging across institutions while preserving privacy. Here, the authors describe the Federated Tumor Segmentation (FeTS) challenge for the decentralised benchmarking of FL algorithms and evaluation of Healthcare AI algorithm generalizability in real-world cancer imaging datasets.

This study investigates the effects of forestation on temperature in Europe using climate model experiments. The findings indicate that conversion from coniferous to broadleaved trees in currently forested areas can provide cooling for summer hot extremes.

A genome-wide association study including over 76,000 individuals with schizophrenia and over 243,000 control individuals identifies common variant associations at 287 genomic loci, and further fine-mapping analyses highlight the importance of genes involved in synaptic processes.

The authors analyzed the whole-exome sequences of over 16,000 individuals and found that very rare variants predicted to disrupt the SETD1A gene confer substantial risk for schizophrenia. Damaging variants in SETD1A were also associated with diverse, severe developmental disorders, providing an important genetic link between schizophrenia and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Wood density is an important plant trait. Data from 1.1 million forest inventory plots and 10,703 tree species show a latitudinal gradient in wood density, with temperature and soil moisture explaining variation at the global scale and disturbance also having a role at the local level.

A comparison of alpha diversity (number of plant species) and dark diversity (species that are currently absent from a site despite being ecologically suitable) demonstrates the negative effects of regional-scale anthropogenic activity on plant diversity.

Defective neurotransmission is a hallmark of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Here, the authors show that local presynaptic Munc13-1synthesis is defective in SMA and that modification of the Munc13-1 mRNA rescues presynaptic architecture and excitability.

In a post-approval study including more than 17,000 patients on the safety of pulsed field ablation, a new method for treatment of atrial fibrillation, the procedure was found to have a low rate of adverse events but was associated with some unexpected rare complications that will need further study.

As presented at the ESMO Congress 2025: Results of the phase 2/3 AGITG DYNAMIC-III trial show that de-escalated chemotherapy based on ctDNA-negative status in patients with stage III colon cancer did not meet non-inferiority for 3-year recurrence-free survival when compared to standard of care, although it enables better informed treatment decisions.

Analysis of ground-sourced and satellite-derived models reveals a global forest carbon potential of 226 Gt outside agricultural and urban lands, with a difference of only 12% across these modelling approaches.

Miocene fossil evidence of the first semi-aquatic Pentatomomorpha insect reveals how natural selection and constraints govern ecological transitions, showing both innovation and extinction at the land-water interface.

Fanconi anemia proteins are required for repair of DNA interstrand crosslinks. Here, the authors show that these proteins are also recruited to DNA double-strand breaks to promote repair by homologous recombination.

This Consensus Statement presents the standards for technical reporting in environmental and host-associated microbiome studies (STREAMS) guidelines.

Federated ML (FL) provides an alternative to train accurate and generalizable ML models, by only sharing numerical model updates. Here, the authors present the largest FL study to-date to generate an automatic tumor boundary detector for glioblastoma.

Adrenal glands are major organs regulating stress response., Melnikova et al., show that local release of serotonin limits adrenalin-producing cell number during rodent development, a mechanism which has implications for neuroblastoma development and stress-related maternal effects transmitted to progeny.

Over half the world’s rivers dry periodically, yet little is known about the biological communities in dry riverbeds. This study examines biodiversity across 84 non-perennial rivers in 19 countries using DNA metabarcoding. It finds that nutrient availability, climate and biotic interactions influence the biodiversity of these dry environments.

A new phylogenomic tree for butterflies is constructed using 391 genes from 2,300 species, representing 92% of genera. It suggests that butterflies originated around 100 million years ago in what is now the Americas and originally fed on Fabaceae.

Stratified medicine promises to tailor treatment for individual patients, however it remains a major challenge to leverage genetic risk data to aid patient stratification. Here the authors introduce an approach to stratify individuals based on the aggregated impact of their genetic risk factor profiles on tissue-specific gene expression levels, and highlight its ability to identify biologically meaningful and clinically actionable patient subgroups, supporting the notion of different patient ‘biotypes’ characterized by partially distinct disease mechanisms.

The impact of the DART spacecraft on the asteroid Dimorphos is reported and reconstructed, demonstrating that kinetic impactor technology is a viable technique to potentially defend Earth from asteroids.

Global patterns of regional plant diversity are relatively well known, but whether they hold for local communities is debated. This study created multi-grain global maps of alpha diversity for vascular plants to provide a nuanced understanding of plant diversity hotspots and improve predictions of global change effects on biodiversity.

This report from the 1000 Genomes Project describes the genomes of 1,092 individuals from 14 human populations, providing a resource for common and low-frequency variant analysis in individuals from diverse populations; hundreds of rare non-coding variants at conserved sites, such as motif-disrupting changes in transcription-factor-binding sites, can be found in each individual.

Genome-wide ancient DNA data from individuals from the Middle Bronze Age to Iron Age documents large-scale movement of people from the European continent between 1300 and 800 bc that was probably responsible for spreading early Celtic languages to Britain.

The authors defined a roadmap for investigating the genetic covariance between structural or functional brain phenotypes and risk for psychiatric disorders. Their proof-of-concept study using the largest available common variant data sets for schizophrenia and volumes of several (mainly subcortical) brain structures did not find evidence of genetic overlap.

BRCA1–BARD1 directly promotes double-strand break repair by stimulating long-range DNA end resection pathways.

Alternative stable states in forests have implications for the biosphere. Here, the authors combine forest biodiversity observations and simulations revealing that leaf types across temperate regions of the NH follow a bimodal distribution suggesting signatures of alternative forest states.

This study uses gene expression predictors for the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other brain regions to perform a transcriptomic imputation analysis of schizophrenia, identifying 413 genic associations across 13 brain regions and 36 significantly enriched pathways.

Cas9 remains bound to DNA after cleavage and its removal is required for DNA double-strand break repair. Here, the authors show that the HLTF translocase disrupts the Cas9- DNA post-cleavage complexes in a process that requires the HLTF HIRAN domain and ATPase activity.

Long non-coding RNAs transcribed at DNA damaged sites can play part in DNA damage response. Here the authors reveal that damaged induced lncRNAs can form DNA:RNA hybrids at resected DNA-ends. These hybrids are involved in recruiting HR-mediated repair machinery which, in turn, controls their level at DSBs.