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The authors show that the leucine metabolic enzyme AUH promotes fat burn and protects against obesity. AUH drives thermogenesis via Ucp1 mRNA stabilization and PPARγ modification via metabolite HMG-CoA, linking amino acid metabolism to weight regulation.

Lesion-targeted immune modulation is a feasible strategy to control cardiac fibrosis, and engineered dendritic cells are a promising therapeutic platform for treating cardiac remodelling and heart failure.

Robustness checks and reproduction of analyses with existing and updated data based on 110 articles in economics and political science journals with data and code-sharing requirements found high levels of robustness and reproducibility and determined that robustness was not dependent on author characteristics or data availability.

A young academic in China worries that the grant-application lottery is wasted effort.

The programme is designed to train more elite engineers who can help to boost the country’s innovation.

Behçet’s syndrome is a chronic inflammatory disease with oral ulcers being the most common symptom. Here authors present results from a phase 2 randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial that shows that systemic low dose interleukin-2 could be safely administered to these patients, and the therapy may improve their quality of life.

Climate change is altering how plants balance carbon gain and water loss. This study maps global leaf-level water-use efficiency over the past two decades, showing it is highest in regions that are cold or dry, increasing worldwide, and strongly influenced by atmospheric dryness.

It is unclear how early-life urbanicity influences adult neurobehavioral traits. This study reveals that earlier menarche mediates the relationship between early-life urbanicity and adult neurobehavioral traits associated with mental disorders.

Surfactant-capped nanoparticles of various sizes, shapes and compositions have been completely enshrouded within a metal–organic framework in a controlled, well-dispersed manner. The resulting hybrid materials exhibit active properties — catalytic, magnetic and optical — arising from the nanoparticles as well as sieving and orientation effects originating from the porous framework.

Workers in social insects such as honey bees, bumble bees, and ants are expected to spend their lives helping their mother reproduce. Here the authors show that workers of several bumble bee species can in fact mate and lead colonies of their own.

A cross-ancestry GWAS meta-analyses of brainstem structures identify 713 associations. It reveals shared/distinct genetic architectures across ancestries/substructures and overlaps with neuropsychiatric disorders and physiological functions.

The biological clock model LifeClock predicts biological age across all life stages from routine clinical data, revealing distinct pediatric and adult disease risk patterns.

The ClC-3 chloride/proton exchanger is both physiologically and pathologically critical. Here, authors determined the structures of wildtype and disease-causing I607T mutant of ClC-3 in the apo and adenine nucleotides bounded states, which lays the structural basis of adenine nucleotides regulation in ClC-3.

The authors reveal the structure and gating mechanisms of BRTNaC1, a myriapod ion channel sensitive to heat and acidity. They show that a proton triggers a ‘twist the wrist’ motion, heat induces broad structural changes and testosterone inhibits channel activation.

Transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1) has been shown to be upregulated in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Here the authors report that TfR1 can be targeted in hypoxic NPC lesions using ferritin nanozymes.

Scavenger receptor-A (SR-A) is mostly expressed by myeloid cells and has been attributed a variety of biological functions. Here the authors assess SR-A as a biomarker for diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) using large-scale training and validation cohorts and show that modulating SR-A levels can alter progression of collagen-induced arthritis in mice.

Single-nucleus RNA sequencing can be applied to FFPE tissues, but isolating intact nuclei remains challenging. Here the authors develop a low-temperature enzymatic dissociation strategy for rapid, high-yield and high-fidelity nuclei extraction, and demonstrate its applicability to single-nucleus sequencing of various sample types.

Worldwide, the number of only-child families is increasing. This research examines how growing up without siblings affects adult brain structure, function and connectivity, cognition, personality and mental health.

The DAWN study is a phase 3 clinical trial that demonstrates effective glycemic control of dorzagliatin as an add-on therapy to metfomin in patients with type 2 diabetes.

The SEED study is a phase 3 clinical trial demonstrating a beneficial effect on glycemic control of dorzagliatin, a glucokinase activator, in drug-naive patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes.

Socioeconomic status is multidimensional and can change over time. Xu, Lui, Ji et al. found dimension-specific, late-stage-specific and change-specific socioeconomic effects on brain, cognition, personality and emotion.

He, Ying et al. develop an explainable deep learning framework that combines post-hoc explainable AI and expert domain knowledge for insulin titration in type 2 diabetes management. This framework improves clinical decision-making, especially for junior clinicians, and may facilitate broader clinical adoption of AI-assisted decision-making tools.

Guo, Jia et al. show that an FDA-approved Na + /K + - ATPase inhibitor ouabain reduces the burden of Zika virus infection in adult mice while protecting fetal mice from Zika virus infection-induced microcephaly. This study suggests ouabain’s therapeutic potential for Zika virus.

Protein isoelectric points can now be obtained by measuring adhesion forces between the protein attached to an atomic force microscope probe and a reference surface with a known charge, offering a new way to characterize unknown and rare proteins.

ReaL-MGE (Recombineering and Linear CRISPR/Cas9 assisted Multiplex Genome Engineering) enables precise insertion of large DNA sequences in multiple species. Here, authors demonstrate its utility in enhancing malonyl-CoA levels and producing valuable compounds like epothilone from lignocellulose.

The underlying mechanisms of central nervous system regulation of age-dependent obesity remain unclear. Here, the authors show hypothalamic SLC7A14 plays a role in age-induced lipolysis impairment by the brain–gut–adipose tissue axis.

Cross-ancestry genome-wide association studies of 3,414 brain imaging phenotypes in Chinese Han and white British participants identify autosomal and X-chromosomal associations in more diverse populations.

The sterile insect technique involves the introduction of sterile males to induce sterility in females and reduce population size. Here, the authors show that sterile males may also reduce female density and inhibit female blood feeding through mating harassment.

Using cryo-electron microscopy, the authors report the structures of G-protein-coupled bile acid receptor–G_s complexes and reveal the structural basis of bile acid recognition.

Adipose tissue thermogenesis plays a role in appropriate response to cold exposure through incompletely understood mechanisms. Here the authors report that acute cold exposure increases the serum levels of bradykinin, which induces brown adipose tissue thermogenesis and white adipose tissue browning in male mice.

Genome-wide association meta-analyses in populations of East Asian and European ancestries identify variant–trait associations for 44 hippocampal traits and provide insight into the genetic architectures of hippocampal and subfield volumes.

Improvement in sample quality has resulted in the first observation of the quantum Hall effect in a black phosphorus two-dimensional electron system.

Cryo-EM structures of the mouse TRPV2 channel, combined with electrophysiology and simulations, reveal that endogenous cholesterol binds to the vanilloid binding pocket to inhibit this channel, while exogenous 2-APB binds to same pocket to open TRPV2.

Immune cells infiltrating the tumour microenvironment play critical roles in disease pathogenesis and the immune response. Here the authors present the characterisation of infiltrating B cells in breast tumours by the formation of an atlas created from paired RNA sequence and antigen receptor profiling.

H7N9 influenza A viruses capable of infecting humans have recently emerged in China. Here, the authors show that these viruses remain genetically diverse, suggesting that they are still in the process of adapting to human hosts.

Base-resolution maps of DNA methylation in human gametes and early embryos offer novel insights into human methylation dynamics and the functional relationship between DNA methylation and gene expression.