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This study applies generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) and advanced transcriptome wide association study (TWAS) methods to improve the discovery of colorectal cancer risk transcription factors and genes, including potential druggable targets.

The role of RNA-binding protein (RBP) phase separation in transcriptional regulation and its contribution to tumorigenesis remains to be characterised. Here, the authors show that RBP AKAP95 physically co-condenses with the mixed lineage leukemia 1 (MLL1) translocated fragment commonly found in MLL rearranged (MLLr) leukemia to promote leukemogenesis.

Conventional amides electrosynthesis methods confine reactions to solely electrochemical reduction or oxidation processes, resulting in low amides yield rates. Here, the authors report a tandem electrolyzer that couples cathodic nitrate reduction with anodic ethanol oxidation to produce acetamide.

The existence of a long-lived, prethermal regime in many-body systems with tunable heating rates, driven by structured random protocols, is observed using a 78-qubit superconducting quantum processor.

Stone tools illustrate behavioural complexities in Middle Pleistocene hominin populations. Here, the authors present small dimensional flakes and hafted tools from Xigou, central China, dated to ~160–72 thousand years ago that demonstrate early, complex technological advancements.

Hong-Xuan Lin, Ji-Ping Gao, Jun-Xiang Shan and colleagues show that natural variation in a proteasome α2 subunit gene contributes to thermotolerance in African rice. Their follow-up studies suggest that the variant allele protects cells from heat stress by enhancing the elimination of cytotoxic denatured proteins and maintaining heat-response processes.

Negative regulator of thermotolerance 1 (NAT1) is identified as a negative regulator of thermotolerance in rice through the NAT1–bHLH110–CER1/CER1L module. Modifying NAT1 by targeted gene editing increases wax deposition and enhances thermotolerance in rice.

Thymine DNA glycosylase (TDG) was identified as a synthetic-lethal target in p53-deficient cancers through alterations in double-stranded RNA accumulation. A covalent small-molecule inhibitor of TDG exhibited potent efficacy against p53-deficient tumors.

Chen et al. show that redox signals activate ADAR1 to fix faulty RNA pieces during DNA copying, ensuring smooth replication and protecting genome stability.

Real-time prediction of dynamic systems is a challenge in balancing accuracy and computational efficiency. Here, the authors propose a regional graph representation with a time-aware expert module, enabling scalable multi-scale modeling that improves both speed and long-term forecasting accuracy.

In this attempt at xenotransplantation of a lung from a genetically modified pig into a brain-dead recipient, although the grafted lung initially maintained viability and functionality, antibody-mediated rejection rapidly occurred, contributing to xenograft damage.

Ad-Hex, a multivalent chimpanzee adenoviral influenza vaccine, confers broad-spectrum protection against various influenza subtypes in mice by eliciting robust immunity via cross-reactive antibodies and CD8+ T-cell responses.

Potassium tert-butoxide is used in a precious-metal-free alkyl transfer strategy for synthesizing azaarenes and polyazaarenes from alkenes and nitriles via carbon–carbon bond cleavage. This method produces aryl methanes as the sole by-product and allows divergent synthesis of functionalized azaarenes, some of which exhibit visible-light photocatalytic reactivity.

Expanding the methods for constructing artificial enzymes is of high interest. Now a photoactive cofactor is designed that mimics NAD⁺, allowing its insertion into a range of NAD⁺-binding protein scaffolds to catalyse inter- and intramolecular [2 + 2] cycloaddition reactions.

A telomere-to-telomere gap-free pig genome assembly (T2T-pig1.0) for a Wuzhishan boar highlights Y chromosome structure and genomic regions potentially associated with body stature.

Diarrhoea is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in China. Here, the authors present results from a large sentinel surveillance scheme from 217 hospitals in all 31 provinces in mainland China, including ~150,000 patients with acute diarrhoea and covering years 2009-2018.

China operates a national surveillance program for acute respiratory infections and sampled over 200,000 patients between 2009–2019. Here, the authors present results from this program and describe patterns by age, pathogen type, presence of pneumonia, and season.

Primary biliary cholangitis is an autoimmune liver disease. Here, the authors show that variants in interleukin genes which potentially deregulate their expression are associated with this condition, and suggest that the IL21 signalling pathway may have a role in disease aetiology.

Photocatalysis at 40–60 °C is shown to be able to defluorinate perfluoroalkyl substances, known as ‘forever chemicals’, allowing the recycling of fluorine in polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances as inorganic fluoride salt.

Viruses such as EBV use various mechanisms to avoid antiviral responses. Here the authors propose that the EBV protein BRRF2 is secreted via extracellular vesicles from NPC cells, disrupts the cGAS-STING pathway, reduces cGAS-DNA phase separation and the subsequent antiviral response.

Trained and validated on multimodal data from 14.5 million images from multicountry datasets, a foundation model is shown to increase diagnostic and referral accuracy of clinicians when used as an assistant in a trial involving 16 ophthalmologists and 668 patients.

Natural products often contain complex N-fused polycyclic structures with multiple substituents and stereocentres. Here, the authors developed a bifunctional organocatalyst that is instrumental in obtaining such structures and applied it to the total synthesis of naucleofficine I and II in 6 steps.

Nasal colonization by Staphylococcus aureus is linked with depression in a human cohort and shown in a mouse model to cause decreased serotonin and dopamine in the brain.

The gamma-ray burst GRB 060614 was an unusual astrophysical event whose origins are still unclear. This study re-examines the burst’s afterglow data and finds an excess in the spectrum that appears to be consistent with a weak macronova, suggesting that GRB 060614 originated from a compact binary merger.

Using high-resolution crystal structures, the authors discover that flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) facilitates the initiation of HCV RNA synthesis by interacting with key amino acids M447 and Y448 in NS5B. They also observe an elongation complex with an FAD-capped primer/product strand, explaining how the product strand moves for efficient RNA synthesis.

Preparing triangulene-based high spin structures is of interest for molecular spintronics. Here, the authors generate high spin triangulene trimers on Au(111) via a surface-assisted dehydration reaction.

The authors demonstrate that the response of the flexural vibrations of twisted bilayer graphene can be hysteretic depending on the angle between the lattices of the layers, finding that the quality factors of the vibrations are enhanced compared to untwisted bilayers.

Black phosphorus is a graphene-like material that can be harnessed for two-dimensional electronic devices. Here, Xiang et al. demonstrate that adding caesium carbonate or molybdenum trioxide can significantly enhance the electron or hole conduction, respectively, of this promising material.

The synthesis of high value heterocycles from cheap starting materials remains challenging. Here, the authors develop a new strategy to realize practical and modular synthesis of N-H indoles and analogs from toluene and nitrile derivatives using naturally abundant copper salt as catalyst.

MedSegX is a vision foundation model for open-world medical image segmentation, and its accompanying dataset covers a large number of segmentation tasks across 39 organs and tissues.

Here, the authors report on the experimental observation of a twofold symmetry enforced topological nodal surface in a 3D chiral acoustic crystal. The demonstrated nodal surface carries a topological charge of 2, constituting the first realization of higher-dimensional topologically-charged band degeneracy.

In this multicenter phase 1 trial, patients with advanced gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancer were safely treated with the CLDN18.2-targeting antibody–drug conjugate SHR-A1904, leading to encouraging objective response rates.

The China Square Kilometre Array (SKA) team recently completed the first SKA regional centre prototype, marking an important leap forward towards a future large-scale deployment, explain Tao An, Xiang-Ping Wu and Xiaoyu Hong.