Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceHow membraneless organelles like nucleolus assemble within cells is not well understood. Recent experiments suggest that transcription of ribosomal RNA actively drives nucleolar assembly. Our proposed model of active transcription-templated ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceTogether with tunneling and entanglement, coherence belongs among the hallmarks of quantum mechanics and among the prerequisites for building quantum devices. In attochemistry, the loss of electronic coherence induced by nuclear motion ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceBispecific T cell engagers (TcEs) are immunotherapeutic drugs that trigger the destruction of cancer cells by linking T cells to cancer cells through specific surface molecules (antigens). We designed a series of TcEs with varying distances ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceUnderstanding differences in outcomes between social groups—such as wage gaps between men and women—remains a central challenge in social science. While researchers have long studied how observable factors contribute to these differences, ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceThe tessellated material is poised to become a fascinating subject in materials science, following the initial exploration of quasicrystals. Specifically, supramolecular tessellation at the molecular level has primarily been observed in ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceThe human pathogen and marine microbeVibrio choleraehas been shown to activate extracellular DNA uptake and transformation when in contact with chitin, the most abundant structural biomaterial in the oceans and a primary source of nutrition ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceGastric cancer is the fifth most common cause of human cancer deaths, but the genetic underpinnings are poorly understood. Harnessing the genetic homogeneity of purebred dogs, we identify 18 loci governing gastric cancer susceptibility in a ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceClassically, granites are separated into two broad categories—“I-type” vs. “S-type”—representing different igneous vs. (meta)sedimentary rock sources for melting. Their geochemistry differs for diverse geochemical systems. Himalayan granites ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceTo fight infections and cancer, T cells must selectively recognize low levels of foreign peptides from pathogens or cancer cells, but the mechanisms that enable these properties remain unclear. Using computational modeling and experiments, we ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceThe protection of key developmental processes from the immune system, while allowing the immune system to defend against pathogens, is central for the survival and reproduction of nearly all multicellular organisms. The rice immune receptor ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceWe demonstrate that external (sensory and motor processing) and internal cognition (mind wandering) are dynamically interdependent. Easier external tasks require fewer executive resources, leaving more cognitive resources for internal mind ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceHomeostatic plasticity maintains normal brain functions by constraining various network features of neural circuits, yet how this is realized on the cellular level remains unknown. Synaptic and intrinsic forms of homeostatic plasticity adjust ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceFerroptosis is an iron-dependent cell death mechanism that results from increased oxidation of cell membrane lipids. We conducted a CRISPR-based positive selection screen in clear cell ovarian cancer cells treated with a nanoparticle drug to ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceIn 2021, antimicrobial-resistant bacteria were responsible for 1.14 million deaths and associated with 4.71 million deaths globally. Patients who experience sepsis often face a higher risk of reinfections and hospital readmissions. To combat ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceIn the secretory pathway, the pH within organelles is gradually acidified, starting at 7.1 to 7.2 in the endoplasmic reticulum, decreasing to 6.0 to 6.7 in the Golgi apparatus/trans-Golgi network (Golgi/TGN), and reaching 4.5 to 5.0 in ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025. SignificanceSorting cells with target metabolic functions from a mutant pool exhibiting substantial genetic diversity is often the rate-limiting step in synthetic biology. Here, we developed a label-free, high-throughput Raman-activated cell sorting ...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 122, Issue 22, June 2025.

Group behind Retraction Watch aims to pinpoint the most influential flawed health data.

A brief encounter.

Kári Stefánsson, who last month left the Icelandic genetics company deCODE, spoke to Nature about his legacy.

Exploitation of the high seas risks doing irreversible damage to biodiversity, climate stability and ocean equity. A consensus must be built now to save them.

Repeated damage from extreme heat over time seems to be a leading factor causing kidneys to fail.

Scientists are eyeing their legal options in anticipation of new immigration actions.

Cuts to US ‘foreign subawards’ will abruptly end hundreds of clinical trials abroad. Plus, an mpox outbreak is overwhelming Sierra Leone’s health system and a rock with a painted dot that just might represent a nose.

More precise base editors make mitochondrial DNA editing efficient enough to model disease and correct pathogenic mutations in rodents, but they are slow to move into clinical trials.

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editor

Governments and institutions must shift from top-down approaches to collaborations with local communities.

Bot-made art undermines research and public trust in science, say illustrators frustrated by inaccurate and outlandish depictions.

Live-animal markets are a natural laboratory for viruses to evolve and spark deadly outbreaks, yet scientists lack support to study the risks they pose.

Delegates to a United Nations meeting on neurotechnology ethics have devised the first set of global guidelines on maintaining users’ privacy.

A clinical trial of CAR T cells is among the first to show that the treatment can work for solid tumours. Plus, humpbacks’ big eyes are nearsighted and how researchers are turbocharging ginseng.

People with disabilities are under-represented in general (non-disability-specific) precision medicine research (PMR), limiting access to its benefits. We examine key reasons for this, focusing on the role of (dis)trust, and identify areas for further inquiry to guide researchers and enhance PMR’s trustworthiness for people with disabilities.

Correction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08844-z Published online 9 April 2025

Correction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08630-x Published online 20 January 2025

Many remarkable phenotypes have repeatedly occurred across vast evolutionary distances. When convergent traits emerge on the tree of life, they are sometimes driven by the same underlying gene families, while other times, many different gene families are involved. Conversely, a gene family may be repeatedly recruited for a single trait or many different traits. To understand the general rules governing

What is the neural substrate that enables the cerebral cortex to control a single mystacial vibrissa and orchestrate its movement? To answer this question, we injected rabies virus into the intrinsic muscle that protracts the rat C3 vibrissa and used retrograde transneuronal transport to identify the cortical neurons that influence the muscle. A surprisingly diverse set of cortical areas is the origin

Historically, endocrine cells were perceived to coordinate their output in a uniform manner. Recently however, single-cell technologies have uncovered heterogeneity within these populations, indicating that individual cells may operate as independently regulated units. Using high-resolution tools such as single-molecule fluorescent in situ hybridization (sm-FISH) and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq)

Biomass burning can affect climate via the emission of aerosols and their subsequent impact on radiation, cloud microphysics, and surface and atmospheric albedo. Biomass burning emissions (BBEs) over the boreal region have strongly increased during the last decade and are expected to continue increasing as the climate warms. Climate models simulate aerosol processes, yet historical and future Coupled

Hundreds of human mutations are linked to autism and related disorders, yet the functions of many of these mutated genes during vertebrate neurodevelopment are unclear. We generated 27 zebrafish mutants with presumptive protein-truncating mutations or specific missense variants corresponding to autism-risk alleles in 17 human genes. We observed baseline and stimulus-driven behavioral changes at larval

The globus pallidus externa (GPe) is a heterogeneous nucleus of the basal ganglia, with intricate connections to other basal ganglia nuclei, as well as direct connections to the cortex. The anatomic, molecular, and electrophysiologic properties of cortex-projecting pallidocortical neurons are not well characterized. Here, we show that pallidocortical neurons project to diverse motor and nonmotor cortical

Recent approvals of polymeric adenosine diphosphate ribose (poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors (PARPi) for BRCA-mutant metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer necessitate an understanding of the factors that shape sensitivity and resistance. Reversion mutations that restore homologous recombination (HR) repair are detected in ~50 to 80% of BRCA-mutant patients who respond but subsequently

Familial advanced sleep phase (FASP) is a heritable human sleep trait characterized by early sleep onset and offset times. We have identified five variants in five different families in the human voltage-gated calcium channel subunit alpha1 D ( CACNA1D ) that cosegregate with FASP. The variants in CACNA1D lead to altered channel dynamics in vitro. A mouse model of the E427K variant has a normal circadian

We employed cryogenic X-ray Raman spectroscopy to investigate the early-stage decomposition of the high explosive molecule hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane (CL-20). By systematically varying the radiation dose under cryogenic conditions, we induced the decomposition of the molecule using ionizing radiation and observed the evolution of spectral features at the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen K edges. Through

Genomic diversity in pathogen populations is foundational for evolution and adaptation. Understanding population-level diversity is also essential for tracking sources and revealing detailed pathways of transmission and spread. For bacteria, culturing, isolating, and sequencing the large number of individual colonies required to adequately sample diversity can be prohibitively time-consuming and expensive

One key component of study design in population genetics is the “geographic breadth” of a sample (i.e., how broad a region across which individuals are sampled). How the geographic breadth of a sample impacts observations of rare, deleterious variants is unclear, even though such variants are of particular interest for biomedical and evolutionary applications. Here, in order to gain insight into the