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Longitudinal tracking of mice reveals that stable, specialized social roles emerge spontaneously within groups during a foraging task, with dopaminergic activity in the ventral tegmental area driving sex-divergent patterns of specialization.

A microfluidic embryo-trap array for large-scale end-on imaging of Drosophila melanogaster embryos permits quantitative analysis of dorsoventral gradients during development.

A study investigating the emergence of squamous tumours in the upper gastrointestinal tract of the mouse shows that an initial tumour stress response triggers fibroblasts to remodel the underlying stroma, creating a fibronectin-rich precancerous niche that supports tumour survival.

Jacquemyn et al. identify key lipid determinants controlling ectosome shedding from neurons. They find that ectosomes are a major route for the intercellular transport of misfolded α-synuclein, with relevance to Parkinson’s disease pathology.

Here, the authors show that early-life high-fat/high-sugar diet induces sex-specific alterations in adult feeding behavior, hypothalamic transcriptome and blood metabolome, with Bifidobacterium longum and prebiotic FOS + GOS administration restoring these effects via distinct mechanisms, highlighting their therapeutic potential.

Confocal microscopy enables high-resolution, high-plex 3D cyclic immunofluorescence of 30- to 50-µm-thick tissue sections. The approach allows for rich phenotypic assessments of intact cells and intercellular interactions with subcellular resolution.

u-Segment3D is a universal framework that translates and enhances 2D instance segmentations to a 3D consensus instance segmentation without training data. It performs well across diverse datasets, including cells with complex morphologies.

Here they show that the adhesion GPCR Gpr126/Adgrg6 regulates trabeculation during heart development. Its N-terminal fragment is required for maintaining cell adhesion and compact wall integrity while its C-terminal fragment is essential to provide trabecular identity.

Analysis of human Robertsonian chromosomes originating from 13, 14 and 21 reveal that they result from breaks at the SST1 macrosatellite DNA array and recombination between homologous sequences surrounding SST1.

A study leveraging transsynaptic tracing demonstrates rapid and extensive integration of human glioblastoma organoids into the mouse brain.

Polymerization-inducing chimeras are a novel bifunctional modality that uses protein symmetry to sequester targets by forming insoluble supramolecular assemblies. This approach overcomes reliance on accessory proteins and differs functionally from conventional inhibitors.

Micromitophagy is found to occur in plant male germline cells, mediated by ATG5–HSP90.2 signalling, and is evolutionarily conserved in angiosperms. This mechanism underpins paternal mitochondrial elimination and supports the zygote-to-embryo transition.

Here, Yang-Jensen et al. demonstrate that a scalable microbial protein lysate from Methylococcus capsulatus Bath reshapes gut microbiota and T cells and, via fermentation-driven GLP-2 receptor mimicry, protects against gastrointestinal inflammation while providing sustainable protein nutrition

Understanding the mechanisms underlying the survival of drug tolerant persister cells following chemotherapy remains elusive. Here, multi-omics analysis and experimental approaches show that the germ-cell-specific H3K4 methyltransferase PRDM9 promotes metabolic rewiring in glioblastoma stem cells.

Albu et al. show that muscle cells in the cardiac atrium construct structures through heterogeneous cell behaviors that are different, at the cellular and molecular levels, from those involved during ventricular chamber maturation.

Studies in mice show that acute stress activates hyperglycaemia via activation of a medial amygdala–ventral hypothalamic circuit that controls glucose metabolic responses in the liver, independently of adrenal and pancreatic hormones.

Lysosomes are vital for cellular health and linked to many diseases. Here, authors use cryo-ET to image intact lysosomes and resolve lysosomal protein structures, providing a platform to advance the study of lysosome biology.

The variability in clinical outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection is partly due to deficiencies in production or response to type I interferons (IFN). Here, the authors describe a FIP200-dependent lysosomal degradation pathway, independent of canonical autophagy and type I IFN, that restricts SARS-CoV-2 replication, offering insights into critical COVID-19 pneumonia mechanisms.

Cytoplasmic organization is a hallmark of living cells. Here, the authors make use of self-organizing cell extracts to examine how the emergence of large-scale organizations influences the microscopic diffusion of protein molecules in the cytoplasm.

Leader cells play an important role in guiding migratory clusters in various biological processes. Now, the mechanical organization of leader and followers within a cell cluster is shown to enable collective migration.

Ramaglia and colleagues show that aberrant formation of B cell-rich lymphoid structures in the brain meninges is associated with high CXCL13:BAFF ratios. Inhibiting the kinase BTK reduces the lymphotoxin signaling needed to sustain such structures, lowers CXCL13:BAFF ratios and reduces cortical tissue injury.

Single-cell gene expression analysis is challenging. This work describes a new droplet-based single cell RNA-seq platform capable of processing tens of thousands of cells across 8 independent samples in minutes, and demonstrates cellular subtypes and host–donor chimerism in transplant patients.

A combination of high-resolution spatial imaging, spatial proteomics and transcriptional data reveals sparse and heterogeneous bacterial signals in gliomas and brain metastases.

Thermostable antibodies called SPEARs enable rapid immunostaining with improved tissue penetration.

The enzyme ABHD18 is shown to have a key role in cardiolipin metabolism in mitochondria, offering a potential route for a small-molecule treatment of the rare genetic disease Barth syndrome.

ESPRESSO leverages functional information obtained from organelles for deep spatiotemporal phenotyping of single cells.

Li, Burgos-Bravo and colleagues report that NDF phase separation regulates FACT condensation, which enhances transcription by generating a localized biochemical environment that promotes nucleosome disassembly while preserving chromatin integrity by retaining histones.

Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa is an uncurable monogenetic skin disease. Here, Neumayer et al. develop a cGMP-compatible CRISPR- and iPS cell-based approach that produces gene-corrected, autologous skin composite grafts for definitive treatment.

This study identifies PfAnchor as an adaptor essential for apicoplast fission and inheritance in malaria parasites, uncovering a parasite-specific mechanism that offers a new avenue for antimalarial intervention.

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GM4951 is a GTPase in hepatic lipid metabolism. Here, the authors determine the atomic structure of GM4951, which forms a tail-to-tail dimer essential for lipid droplet localization. MASLD-linked mutations destabilize the protein and alter the dynamics of switch loops of the GTPase domain.

Frameshift mutations that create arginine-rich basic tails in transcription factors and other proteins can lead to altered phase separation in the nucleolus, which in turn leads to syndromes such as brachyphalangy, polydactyly and tibial aplasia.

Super-resolution quantal imaging relates transmission at excitatory synapses to presynaptic molecular composition. The authors find that evoked transmission varies greatly between synapses and is uncorrelated and physically separate from spontaneous transmission, and identify responsible presynaptic proteins.

A molecular analysis of axolotl limb regeneration has identified a positive genetic circuit that maintains posterior cell identity and can be used to reprogramme anterior cells into posterior cells.

The brain is a genomic mosaic shaped by somatic mutations and cellular responses that correct or purge these mutations. Here, by manipulating genome stability during embryonic brain development, authors revealed robust mechanisms that eliminate cells with genome damage from the brain, and the consequences of leaving somatic mutants unpurged

A spatially resolved single-cell transcriptomics map of the mouse brain at different ages reveals signatures of ageing, rejuvenation and disease, including ageing effects associated with T cells and rejuvenation associated with neural stem cells.

The expansion of clones with distinct SERPINA1 somatic mutants in the livers of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (A1AT) patients is consistent with convergent evolution. These variants interfere with the auto-polymerization and intra-ER accumulation of the Z-A1AT protein, thus highlighting potentially targetable domains.

Pathological B-cell receptor (BCR) signaling is a key driver of mantle cell lymphoma tumorigenesis. Here, the authors discover that CEACAM1, an immunoglobulin-like transmembrane protein, is essential for a subset of mantle cell lymphoma through activation of the BCR.

Dural-associated lymphoid tissues are lymphoid structures around vascular hubs in the dura mater that sample antigens and rapidly support humoral immune responses after local pathogen challenge.

In mdx mouse fetuses, the lack of dystrophin markedly impairs secondary myogenesis due to reduced muscle stem cell polarity. AAK1 deletion restores polarity and rescues secondary myogenesis, revealing fetal onset in Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Neutrinos are known to have mass, in contradiction to the predictions of the standard model, and one explanation of this mass is that they are Majorana fermions; this conjecture could be proved by observation of the neutrinoless double-β decay process, but new experiments with ¹³⁶Xe find no statistically significant evidence for this process.

Upcycling urine in wastewater for nitrogen and phosphorus production has gained attention, but their low market values hamper the application. Here, the authors develop a yeast platform that mimics osteoblast mechanisms to produce the high-value hydroxyapatite directly from urine.

Yeo and Zhou et al. profile whole-genome chromatin accessibility in different cell types of the adult neurogenic niche, which reveals a reversible decrease in the migration of proliferative neural stem cells in aged mice.

The authors demonstrate the effectiveness of T cells in controlling acute viral infections, without neutralizing antibodies, by conducting an Orthoflavivirus vaccination and challenge study in humans.

Cardiomyocytes derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC-CMs) are powerful in vitro models. Here the authors report CONTRAX, an open-access, versatile, and streamlined pipeline for quantitative tracking of the contractile dynamics of single hiPSC-CMs over time at increased throughput.

Kang et al. define distinct spatial niches within glioblastoma (GBM) tumors according to their infiltrative nature and report that glioma cells induce microglia and macrophage alignments through plexin-B2 signaling, sustaining the invasive behavior of GBM.

The presented Mean-Shift Super Resolution (MSSR) algorithm can extend spatial resolution within a single microscopy image. Its applicability extends across a wide range of experimental and instrumental configurations and it is compatible with other super-resolution microscopy approaches.

Cardiac trabeculae (which are sponge-like muscular structures) form mostly as a result of cardiomyocyte (CM) delamination in zebrafish. Here, the authors identify Nrg2a in zebrafish as a key regulator of trabeculation, and atrial and non-contractile CMs also respond to Nrg2a despite not forming trabeculae.

Analysis of the longest-lived mammal, the bowhead whale, reveals an improved ability to repair DNA breaks, mediated by high levels of cold-inducible RNA-binding protein.   

The authors show that ECM organization, ROCK signaling and cell polarity interact to promote mesothelium formation to direct lung growth. Frem2 deficiency disrupts these interactions in the mesothelium to inhibit the growth of the lungs in mice and humans.

Enteric viruses replicate in salivary glands, can be propagated in salivary gland-derived spheroids and cell lines, and are released into saliva, which is a new transmission route having implications for therapeutics, diagnostics and sanitation measures.