Volume 652 Issue 8110, 16 April 2026

Efforts to boost tree cover and restore degraded land globally need stable funding and time to learn from failure.

An artificial-intelligence revolution in biotechnology won’t get far without human taxonomic expertise — and that’s under threat.

Climate-friendly technologies are the best way to stymie rising inflation — and will get better and cheaper over time.

3D-printed discs harness a previously overlooked feature of bacterial locomotion to power tiny motors.

Vehicle-to-grid technology, if installed properly, could allow vehicles to serve as back-up batteries.

Nasal tissue harbours T cells that ‘remember’ a pathogen long after infection is past.

High-speed cameras can observe the strange behaviour of a cornstarch–water mixture.

The 2027 budget proposal would curb federal payments for scientific publishing and reduce funding for many US institutions.

Small changes in the non-coding part of the genome have a key role in sex determination.

Mothers in academia take on considerably more childcare-related responsibilities than do fathers.

Images snapped during a fly-by capture a solar eclipse and unprecedented details of the far side of the Moon.

Two analyses suggest that quantum computers could crack ubiquitous security keys and cryptocurrencies before the decade is over.

Mutations in the KRAS protein were once deemed ‘undruggable’. Today, various approaches are in the pipeline.

Two research teams mined genomic data from bacteria to create databases containing thousands of antiviral defence proteins that could inspire powerful biotechnologies.

Airborne genetic material can be used to paint a picture of ecosystem health, watch for invasive species and even identify humans.

Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

A gripping account reveals the workings of the remarkable chromosomes that specify male or female development.

Grand anti-desertification schemes often fail when trees die and funding dries up — yet one project has broken the mould.

PhD students reflect on how their supervisors made a meaningful difference — from quiet acts of kindness to career-shaping guidance.

Chronic inflammation increases the risk of colon cancer. This inflammation drives epigenetic changes in the nucleus of stem cells that promote tumour formation.

An artificial-intelligence system bypasses complex equations to predict the performance of thermoelectric generators.

Laboratory-engineered immune cells called CAR T cells provide effective treatment for some cancers. Progress is being made towards creating these cells in vivo.

A large language model that is trained using AI outputs can inherit undesirable behaviours, even if they are not directly referenced in the training data.

MicroRNAs control gene expression by modulating the output and stability of messenger RNAs. How are these crucial regulators kept in check?

The quest to make fire-lighting less dangerous, and a proposal for smallest unit of information worth photocopying, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive.

A type of childhood brain tumour called ependymoma is more common in boys than in girls. The reason for this difference turns out to be sex hormones such as testosterone.

Logical circuits have been built from nanosheet stacks of various transistors, which could make electronic devices faster and more compact.

This Review revisits tumour initiation and promotion in light of clonal diversity and the presence of cancer driver mutations in normal tissues, aiming to understand mechanisms that enable environmental and endogenous factors to expand tumorigenic clones.

In this Perspective article, a theoretical framework for how the AP-1 family of transcription factors mediates cellular adaptation in cancer drug resistance is proposed.

A robust composite pair-exchange gate based on controlled interactions of fermionic atoms in an optical superlattice demonstrates high fidelities and long Bell-state lifetimes, marking an important step towards a fully digital fermionic quantum computer.

A purely geometric two-qubit SWAP gate can be realized by transiently populating qubit doublon states of fermionic atoms in a dynamical optical lattice.

During model distillation, large language models can subtly transmit traits unrelated to the training data.

Superconductivity in twisted bilayer WSe₂ evolves smoothly with twist angle and emerges near Fermi surface reconstruction, linking previously distinct phase diagrams and clarifying its correlated origin.

Engineered Ruddlesden–Popper nickelate superstructures show that specific Fermi surface features enable ambient-pressure superconductivity, linking structural configuration, electronic structure and superconducting behaviour. .

A dual-symmetry-guided strategy is used to assemble a broad class of complex Archimedean lattices and two-dimensional quasicrystalline structures, providing a general and experimentally accessible route to complex-symmetry materials.

A composable neural network emulator is described for speeding up thermoelectric generator design, demonstrating the ability to predict generator performance with >99% accuracy while taking only 0.01% of the time compared with commercial finite-element solvers.

Hybrid back-contact silicon solar cells using a multifunctional front layer for both light trapping and passivation enable the use of a thicker absorber, outperforming the 125-μm-thick silicon heterojunction devices, with a certified efficiency of 27.62%.

In situ microscopic single-particle imaging demonstrates the significance of rationally engineered metal–support interfaces for activating the oxygen in bulk catalyst, helping elucidate reaction pathways in catalytic conversions.

An editing method enables the migration of common alcohol functional groups to proximal sites with predictable stereo- and regiochemical outcomes.

Meta-analyses on a global scale show that the measured coastal mean sea level is higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments.

A multiancestry phenome-wide analysis of copy number variants in the UK Biobank genomes increases power to detect genetic associations with complex traits across human populations.

Reconstructing microbial genomes from 820 reef-building corals collected at 99 reefs across 32 islands throughout the Pacific Ocean highlights the importance of conserving coral reefs as vital reservoirs of molecular diversity.

Expression of agouti signalling protein in neurons in the medial preoptic area is increased by group housing and negatively associated with care, and overexpression of Agouti reduces care and enhances infanticide in previously tolerant mice.

MASH is driven by the secreted GPNMB ectodomain, which binds hepatocyte RYK to activate ERK1/2 and promote lipid uptake and lipogenic programs; blocking the GPNMB–RYK axis prevented and treated MASH in preclinical models.

Stable and cell-specific transgene expression can be achieved through in vivo site-specific integration of large DNA payloads using a two-vector system of enveloped delivery vehicles and adeno-associated viruses.

SLAMF6 functions exclusively as a T cell inhibitory receptor, which is triggered by cis homotypic interactions.

A clinical trial testing whether monitoring ctDNA clearance during treatment for nasopharyngeal cancer could be used to inform decisions about an individual’s subsequent therapeutic programme shows promising results.

The identification of ‘boosters’ that drive gene overexpression directly in a CAR construct provides a simple and scalable strategy for developing effective CAR-NK cell therapies for solid tumours.

Germline and somatic interactions define actionable genomic patterns driving acquired therapy resistance in breast cancer.

Androgen activity in the male embryonic hindbrain prolongs hindbrain differentiation in male individuals and drives sex differences in the incidence and prognosis of posterior fossa type A (PFA) ependymoma, an aggressive childhood brain tumour.

Colonic stem cells retain a memory of inflammation following disease resolution and there is a mechanistic link between chronic inflammation and malignancy, suggesting potential strategies to mitigate cancer risk in patients with chronic inflammatory conditions.

Target-directed microRNA degradation is driven by the atypical ZSWIM8–CUL3 E3 ubiquitin ligase that uses a two-RNA-factor authentication mechanism to specifically recognize AGO–miRNA–trigger RNA complexes and polyubiquitylate AGO.

Time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy of the μ-opioid receptor bound to various ligands enables a detailed look at the mechanisms that underlie GTP-induced activation of G proteins, and how different ligands affect activation kinetics.

Time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy during activation of Gα_i1βγ and Gα₁₁βγ heterotrimers bound to NTSR1 enables isolation of multiple transient complexes along the activation pathway and reveals structural motifs that stabilize these intermediates.

Conventional and time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy reveal how NTSR1 dynamically engages and releases different G proteins, capturing over 20 intermediates and uncovering key mechanistic steps in GDP- and GTP-driven activation, subtype selectivity and distinct dissociation pathways.