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Tuning the electronic properties of nanocatalysts by doping them with uniformly dispersed hetero-metal atoms is an effective way to improve catalytic performance. Here, the authors show that weakening the Cu–O bond energy in CuO nanocatalysts boosts the efficiency of NH₃ oxidation.

Disulfide bonds act as dynamic redox switches that modulate protein function. Here, the authors reveal a glycoside hydrolase in which reversible disulfide formation remodels the active site to control catalysis.

While carbenes are versatile reactive intermediates in solution-phase organic synthesis, they have rarely been explored in on-surface synthesis. Here, the authors demonstrate the versatility of carbenes in synthesizing highly branched zero-dimensional oligomers with distinct structures on a metal surface.

The acetyl-CoA pathway is the most ancient CO₂ fixation pathway in nature. Here, the authors show that metals selectively reduce CO₂ to the intermediates and end-products of the acetyl-CoA pathway, which is consistent with a prebiotic origin of this pathway.

The chemical recycling of polyurethane through catalytic hydrogenation to recover anilines and polyols has attracted increasing attention. Here, the authors demonstrate that polyurethane can be broken down into aniline monomers using CeO₂ nanoparticles as a catalyst to cleave carbamate bonds.

The concept of resonant valence bond phases has inspired many areas of condensed matter physics, but few realistic models have been identified. Now an analytical solution of such a phase has been found for pyrochlore and related lattices.

The isolation of compounds featuring an actinide–actinide bond is challenging. Now a well-defined Th(III) dimer with a Th–Th two-centre one-electron (2c-1e) σ bond and a 2c-1e π bond is synthesized. Theoretical and magnetic studies show that the open-shell singlet ground state and the two formal Th(III) centres exhibit strong antiferromagnetic coupling.

Understanding how nuclear motions affect vibrational motions in molecular liquids remains challenging in modern condensed matter physics. Here the authors study the vibrational quantum effects in liquid water and show the sensitivity on the coherent evolution of OH bonds in core-excited states.

Degradation of carbon-backbone polymers, which make up most plastics, remains a formidable challenge owing to their strong and inert main-chain C–C bonds. Now it has been shown that aromatization-driven C–C bond cleavage is a viable strategy to endow full degradability into carbon backbones under mild conditions.

Non-equilibrium two-dimensional melting is less understood than its equilibrium counterpart. Now it is shown that topologically driven melting in a two-dimensional crystal of charged colloids is the same irrespective of the mechanisms that generate the defects

Induction of CD11b-positive regulatory B cells and low expression of CD40 in melanoma cells have been associated with resistance to agonist CD40 (aCD40) and immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). Here the authors show that the addition of RAS/MEK/PI3K inhibitors to aCD40 abrogates these effects and reverses ICB resistance in preclinical melanoma models.

AQuaRef employs machine learning to refine protein structures from cryo-EM and X-ray data in Phenix. It achieves quantum-level precision, improving model geometry and fit to the data while reducing overfitting.

A mechanochemical protocol for the direct synthesis of organosodium compounds is developed using cheap and shelf-stable sodium lumps and readily available organic halides under bulk, solvent-free conditions. This approach allows for the generation of an array of organosodium compounds in minutes, without special precautions against moisture or temperature control.

Establishing a fundamental understanding of the electronic structure of actinides remains a challenging task for both experiment and theory. Now, it is shown that for the uranium dimer, relativity and electron correlation affects not only the nature of the electronic ground state, but also lowers the bond multiplicity in comparison to previous studies.

A catalytic para-selective alkylation reaction connects C–H functionalization and decarboxylative coupling strategies using simple bases to trap a previously hidden intermediate. This reaction exploits an ‘inverted sequence’ that forms the C–C bond prior to C–H bond cleavage and provides a new entry into C–H functionalization reactions.

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy probes the chemical environment in a molecule at a specific atomic site. Here the authors extend this concept with a site selective trigger to follow chemical bond changes as they occur on the femtosecond time scale.

The chaperone FimC only selects unfolded, disulfide-intact pilus subunits and accelerates protein folding by lowering topological complexity, thereby ensuring quality control in pilus assembly.

Decarbonizing road transport is critical, but the costs and emissions of low-carbon vehicles in Africa remain uncertain. The authors show that battery electric vehicles with solar off-grid systems can cost effectively reduce life-cycle emissions well before 2040.

Approved antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs) remain constrained by a limited repertoire of payloads with restricted modes of action. Here, the authors present phosphoramidate-based self-immolative linker units that facilitate stable attachment in serum and traceless drug release in the target cell from aliphatic and aromatic alcohols with various modes of action.

Two abundant feedstocks, dinitrogen and carbon monoxide, have the strongest bonds in chemistry, so breaking them is a significant challenge. An organometallic hafnium compound has now been shown to induce nitrogen cleavage on addition of carbon monoxide, with simultaneous assembly of new nitrogen–carbon and carbon–carbon bonds.

Cyclic amines bearing α-substituents are valuable building blocks for drug discovery and natural product synthesis. Introduction of α-substituents via site-selective replacement of C–H bonds is highly attractive but typically limited to protected amine substrates. Now, an operationally simple hydride-transfer-based approach enables the introduction of α-substituents on unprotected amines.

The design of a water-soluble variant of the integral membrane protein DsbB and its coexpression with an export-defective copy of DsbA facilitates disulfide-bond formation in the Escherichia coli cytoplasm in a quinone-dependent fashion.

Targeting two distinct steps of the transcription process yields synergistic antibiotics that kill non-replicating Mycobacterium tuberculosis and reduce drug resistance.

The parent diphosphene molecule is of fundamental interest, but its reactive nature renders it challenging to isolate, and current metal-stabilized derivatives are limited to complexes of p-/d-metals. Here, the authors introduce f-element diphosphene complexes, adding to f-element diazenes that were first reported over thirty years ago.

Riechmann et al. uncover structural features governing ubiquitin transfer from ubiquitin-activating E1 enzymes UBA1 and UBA6 to specific E2 ubiquitin-conjugating enzymes, revealing a hierarchy of E2 activity with cognate E1s.

In an arm of an ongoing multicenter phase 2 trial testing different therapies in patients with genetically profiled grade 2 or 3 meningiomas, treatment with an oral CDK4/6 inhibitor met the primary endpoint for progression-free survival at 6 months in patients with CDK or NF2 alterations.

Vassy, Dornisch and colleagues developed a genomics-based prostate cancer risk model to support a randomized clinical trial of precision screening in a national healthcare system.

Zhu and colleagues show that negative-selection ligands induce cooperative TCR–pMHC–CD8 trimolecular ‘catch bonds’, whereas positive-selection ligands induce TCR–pMHC and pMHC–CD8 bimolecular ‘slip bonds’.

Möbius aromaticity extends the concept beyond Hückel systems, but examples are quite uncommon and typically display twisted topologies. Here the authors describe planar Möbius aromatic complexes, which contain 16 and 18 valence electron osmium centres.

Electrochemical CO₂ reduction on copper-based catalysts under acidic conditions offers a promising solution to energy and environmental issues. Our study demonstrates that the yttrium-doped ZrO₂/CuO interface stabilizes Cu⁺ under harsh conditions, thereby enabling high selectivity toward ethylene.

Electrochemical CO₂ reduction to formate offers a sustainable route but has been difficult to achieve selectively on transition metals. Here, the authors show that chalcogenide-stabilized Cu⁺, via charge redistribution, enables near-complete formate production with industrially relevant efficiency.

Mechanical forces at the immunological synapse are believed to influence antigen recognition by the T cell receptor (TCR). Here the authors analyse these forces at single-molecule resolution to show that the ligand-engaged TCR of CD4+ T-cells create a stable environment with only a small fraction of TCR:pMHC complexes experiencing mechanistic forces at any given time during antigen surveillance and upon T-cell activation.

Despite the success of PD-1 blockade in cancer therapy, how PD-1 initiates signalling remains unclear. Here the authors show that PD-1 function is reduced when mechanical support on ligand is removed.

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study reveal declines in chronic respiratory disease mortality between 1990 and 2023—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the burdens on people affected remain substantial.

Moral-Sanz, Fernández-Carrasco and colleagues identify senolytic properties of sea anemone-derived pore-forming toxins, with selectivity mediated by senescence-associated lipid profiles. An optimized senotoxin improves the efficacy of chemotherapy in mouse models.

Homogeneous Pt-group metal-based complexes make up the majority of C-H bond activation catalysts, but they are characterized by high cost and low abundance. Here, the authors report atomically dispersed titanium-aluminum-boron nanopowder for low-temperature catalytic activation of aliphatic C-H bonds via the element-specific cooperative mechanistic roles.

Liu et al. report the design of organic cation to selectively enhance in-plane distortion for localizing excitons and suppress out-of-plane and intra-octahedral distortions for minimizing the formation of self-trapped excitons, enabling 2D perovskites with fast X-ray scintillation response (0.62 ns) and high light yield (19,700 photons MeV⁻¹).

A generative artificial intelligence-powered method enables de novo design of highly active enzymes based on information about the geometry of residues in the active site, without requiring protein backbone or sequence information.

GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs) often contain regulatory PH domains. In this work, Soubias et al, using an integrated structure-function approach, discovered a mechanism where a GAP PH domain binds directly to a GTPase to induce allosteric changes facilitating GTP hydrolysis.

Here, the authors introduce carbon-to-carbon metal migration as a platform for dynamic association and show how such migrations, in combination with the incorporation of a simple hydrocarbon, can be harnessed to achieve autonomous directional translational motion of a metal centre along the length of a polyaromatic thread.

The activity of the membrane-bound enzyme pMMO depends on copper but the location of the copper centers is still under debate. Here, the authors reconstitute pMMO in nanodiscs and use native top-down MS to localize its copper centers, providing insights into which sites are essential for activity.

Time resolved serial X-ray crystallography reveals light-driven structural changes in sensory rhodopsin II. These observations explain why this light receptor has a long-lived signaling conformation.

Mixed cubic B20 helimagnets are famous for pronounced tunability of their properties with the alloy composition. In the present study, we show that it can have important drawbacks. Using experimental techniques - spin wave small-angle neutron scattering and X-ray circular magnetic dichroism – and analytical calculations, we show that B20 skyrmion host Cr_0.82Mn_0.18Ge does not possess well-defined magnons in its field-polarized phase. Minority Mn ions strongly scatter spin waves, so the elementary excitations become overdamped. This leads to diffusive noisy spin wave small-angle neutron scattering maps observed experimentally which reflect the disordered nature of the studied material.

Synthetic methods to generate tertiary nitroalkanes are scarce. Now the cobalt-catalysed synthesis of tertiary nitro-containing compounds under mild conditions from easily available olefins is enabled by a nitro-transfer reagent containing an anomeric amide.