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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.

Carty et al. found that dehydration stress promotes intracellular lipid synthesis and favors glutamine oxidation as a carbon precursor for lipid synthesis via remodeling mitochondrial metabolism.

Here, the authors provide a framework to map glucuronidated metabolites and show that gut microbes shape their distribution across the body, with findings in mice supported by human data, where colonization and diet influence glucuronidation patterns.

Targeted protein degradation offers a way to test drug targets before costly drug development begins. Here, the authors benchmark tag-degrader systems in mice, identify dTAG as the most effective approach, and show that this strategy can inform early assessment of target safety.

After a heart attack, fibroblasts help coordinate inflammation and repair, but the signals controlling this response are unclear. Here, the authors show that TAK1 drives an inflammatory fibroblast state that worsens remodeling after myocardial infarction in male mice.

Cohesin depletion shows that loop extrusion drives enhancer-promoter contact and expression during early differentiation at the alpha-globin locus. CTCF barriers reveal predominantly unidirectional tracking of cohesin from enhancers toward promoters.

Results from integrative population-based investigations indicate co-occurring types of clonal hematopoiesis are highly enriched and markedly increase blood cancer risk, highlighting new opportunities for early detection and targeted surveillance of high-risk individuals.

The ancient X and Y chromosomes of cannabis and hop display interesting patterns of molecular evolution and harbor key floral genes. Here the authors show that the X chromosome, not the Y, determines sex, and identify an X-linked ethylene biosynthesis gene as a candidate for sex-determination.

Telomeric systems are conserved across eukaryotes and may have originated over 1 billion years ago. Here the authors replaced yeast’s telomeres with a bacterial virus system, resulting in a stable functional assembly of DNA molecules up to 2.77 Mb, offering insights into the possible origins of telomeres.

In this study, the authors track microbial communities in a perturbed cultivation vessel and show that methanogenic microbes develop resilience through CRISPR-Cas mutations and spacer expansions, driving phages to counter-adapt by altering infectivity genes and protospacer-adjacent motifs, revealing a host-phage arms race.

Pentatellurides exhibit magnetoresistance oscillations that deviate from conventional 1/B Landau-quantization. Here, the authors demonstrate robust non-1/B oscillations in ZrTe₅ and show that nonlinear Landau level backbending reconciles the diverse oscillatory regimes across the pentatellurides.

Incomplete tumor removal during oral cancer surgery remains a major clinical challenge. Here, the authors show, in a feasibility trial, that fluorescence imaging using the integrin-targeted tracer cRGD-ZW800 is safe, achieved a patient-level sensitivity of 100%, enabled additional fluorescence-guided resections and prevented postoperative radiotherapy in some patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma.

Circadian rhythms are ~24-hour biological cycles that influence processes from immunity to metabolism, and this study explores how intracellular potassium contributes to their regulation. The authors show that potassium levels actively set the period and phase of clock gene rhythms and are essential for coupling circadian timing to cell-division cycles, making potassium an important regulator linking the circadian and cell cycles.

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease characterized by keratinocyte hyperproliferation. This study shows that gut microbiota dysbiosis disrupts keratinocyte lipid metabolism via the bile acid–FXR–NQO1 pathway, supporting microbiota-targeted therapeutic approaches.

The study presents the largest to date lifespan model of brain white matter using diffusion MRI, enabling detection of individual abnormalities and revealing distinct patterns in Alzheimer’s dementia, cognitive impairment, and a high-risk genetic deletion.

A measurement of the hyperfine splitting energy of the ground state of antihydrogen at 4 ppm precision reaches a point at which this result is sensitive to the internal structure of the antiproton.

Migration of microbial communities is poorly understood. Here, the authors use a meso-tube assay to show that hundreds of microbial species co-migrate over metre scales via chemotaxis, which restructures communities, enriches motility traits and facilitates dispersal of viruses and non-motile ‘hitchhikers’.

In situ super-resolution imaging of light has inherent limitations when applied to the polarization profile. Here, the authors introduce an “atom camera” approach by means of a single tweezer-trapped ⁸⁷Rb atom measuring the field-induced shifts at sub-micrometer steps, achieving resolution beyond the optical diffraction limit.

Genome-wide analyses in multiancestry and European cohorts show that in complex traits, rare alleles have disproportionately large effects at the tails of the phenotypic spectrum compared with common alleles.

Circadian rhythms influence metabolism, but genetic control of glucose timing was unknown. Here, the authors show that glucose levels are under diurnal genetic regulation, implicating variants in MTNR1B and CRY2 that independently affect glucose rhythms and type 2 diabetes risk.

Metabolic liver disease is strongly linked to cardiovascular risk, but mechanisms connecting hepatic and cardiac pathology remain unclear. Here the authors show that PWK/PhJ mice develop diet-induced MASH with fibrosis and cardiac dysfunction, establishing this strain as a valuable model to dissect MASLD–CVD cross talk.

Patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) have limited therapeutic options. Here the authors show that functionally impaired NK cells contribute to immune escape of pre-malignant clones in early stage MDS and that NK adoptive cell therapy can be considered to prevent or delay the development of MDS.

The metabolite αKG promotes carnitine synthesis and increases site-specific histone acetylation, thereby promoting homologous recombination-mediated DNA repair, which has potential implications for chemoresistant cancers.

Using cryo-EM, researchers solve the structure of the TRPC1/5 ion channel complex, revealing a unique drug-binding pocket. This enables design of JD03-02, a selective inhibitor with potential to treat anxiety and depression.

Laser light cannot probe or control rotation at the single-atom level in a material. Now electron matter waves with internal torque show promise for studying and manipulating materials on atomic scales.

This study uses brain recordings, self-reports, and facial analysis to decode acute pain in epilepsy patients. Machine learning reveals stable neural markers in mesolimbic, striatal, and cortical regions, plus facial cues, enabling reliable pain detection in naturalistic settings.

SIGnature enables scalable cross-dataset analyses by combining explainable artificial intelligence with RNA foundation models.

Electrically controlled non-volatile resistance switching involving charge density wave states is rare and has been constrained to cryogenic temperature to date. Venturini et al. show the room-temperature electrical control of the charge-density-wave order in EuTe₄, holding promise for memory devices.

Aqueous two-phase systems have potential as biomimetic materials, but often lack stability and are prone to collapse. Here, the authors use interfacial assembly of chitin nanofibres and cellulose nanocrystals to prepare a biobased system with permeability and switchable motility.

The polarization lifetime of hyperpolarized [1-¹³C]pyruvate is extended to over four minutes by a combination of additives, deuteration, degassing, and optimized magnetic field, more than doubling metabolic sensitivity in cell experiments.

Identification of a binder of interferon regulatory factor 4 (IRF4) enabled development of a selective degrader, dIRF4-2, that exhibited strong cytotoxicity in multiple myeloma cell lines, offering an effective strategy to target transcription factors.

Exercise-mediated neuroprotection in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis is reduced in mice lacking the irisin-encoding gene, Fndc5, and can be recapitulated by peripheral administration of irisin.

Viral capsids use their genome as an assembly template, but designed proteins lack this feature. Here, the authors redesign TALE proteins to polymerize on DNA, forming linear fibers that display peptide antigens and elicit antibodies in mice.

By integrating DMS profiles, evolutionary trajectories and epidemiological data, a deep-learning framework enables the spatiotemporal prediction of emerging dominant SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Relativistic jets launched from stellar-mass black holes (BHs) in our galaxy have been observed in less relativistic regime than those seen in the extra-galactic supermassive BHs named active galactic nucleus (AGN). Here, the authors show two relativistic jets from galactic BH X-ray binary 4U 1543−47, which are comparable to those seen in AGN.

In this study, the authors present optimization and efficacy testing of apolipoprotein-based lipid nanoparticles for delivering various nucleic acid therapeutics in vivo to immune cells and their progenitors in the bone marrow.

In the hippocampus, complex processing of sensory stimuli occurs even in the unconscious state.

Combined single-cell transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility sequencing analysis of mouse primary visual cortex across postnatal development reveals that the glucocorticoid receptor drives astrocyte maturation to limit neuronal plasticity.

The authors show that electron crystals compete closely with non-Abelian fractional Chern insulators in the half-full second moiré band of twisted bilayer MoTe2. In particular, they find an “antitopological” electron crystal with zero Chern number C arising because contributions to C from the full first band and half-full second band cancel.

Protein synthesis is tightly regulated by the integrated stress response, but therapeutic activation remains challenging. Here, the authors identify a drug‑like allosteric inhibitor, an ISRAC, that stabilises inactive eIF2B, mimicking stress‑induced eIF2α phosphorylation to activate the ISR, establishing eIF2B as a tractable target for ISR modulation.

Virtual nature exposure reduces self-reported pain and is associated with decreased brain responses linked to somatosensory and nociceptive processing, providing new insights into the underlying mechanisms of nature-induced analgesia.

Jena, Qu et al. show that mannadjuvant, a formulation of fungal mannan and aluminum hydroxide, increases the magnitude, durability and breadth of the response elicited by mRNA-based vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 variants in mice and non-human primates.

Soil microbes drive ecosystem functions but are vulnerable to environmental stressors triggered by global change. This study reveals that multiple environmental stressors drive community-level restructuring of soil functional microbiomes globally.

The potential similarities in the superconductivity in nickelates and cuprates is a topic of debate. Now a distinct likeness is observed in the electronic properties of these materials, which hints that the microscopic mechanisms may be related.

Forward and reverse genetics identifies the mode of action of clofazimine in the parasite Cryptosporidium. The genomic locus encoding the target is heterogeneous, and a resistance-conferring allele is already widely distributed.

 Enhanced preformation of the α particle, a strongly bound system of two protons and two neutrons, in ¹⁰⁴Te causes it to be the fastest ground-state α-emitting nucleus known so far.