Browse Articles

A family of ribosome hibernation factors widespread in Archaea

Abstract Ribosome hibernation preserves translation machinery during stress, yet its mechanisms in Archaea remain poorly defined. Using cryo-EM analysis, we studied hibernation pathways in Pyrococcus abyssi stressed cells. We identified HibA, a previously unrecognized family of hibernation factors widespread in Archaea. HibA consists of a bacterial-like HPF/RaiA domain fused to a Cystathionine Beta Synthase module. Unexpectedly, HibA binds to the ribosome in three different conformations, occupying the A, P and E sites of tRNAs, as well as that of mRNA, enhancing its ability to protect the ribosome from degradation. Idle ribosomes also frequently accumulate the archaeal homolog of eukaryotic ribosome maturation protein SBDS (aSBDS), suggesting that stressed archaeal cells may engage parallel hibernation routes in which aSBDS can complement HibA. Deletion of hibA in Thermococcus barophilus delays recovery from stationary phase and reduces 70S ribosome pools, establishing its role in ribosome preservation. Taxonomic profiling shows that many archaeal lineages encode distinct repertoires of ribosome-associated protection factors, underscoring the modular and multi-layered nature of archaeal hibernation systems. In addition, a comprehensive phylogenetic analysis highlights the evolutionary relationships between prevalent ribosome hibernation factors across Bacteria and Archaea.

Partially π-exposed 3D carbohelicene for mechanical tuning of conductance and thermopower in single-molecule junctions

Broad spectrum structure discovery in large-scale higher-order networks

Abstract Complex systems are often driven by higher-order interactions among multiple units, naturally represented as hypergraphs. Understanding dependency structures within these hypergraphs is crucial for understanding and predicting the behavior of complex systems but is made challenging by their combinatorial complexity and computational demands. In this paper, we introduce a class of probabilistic models that efficiently represents and discovers a broad spectrum of mesoscale structure in large-scale hypergraphs. The key insight enabling this approach is to treat classes of similar units as themselves nodes in a latent hypergraph. By modeling observed node interactions through latent interactions among classes using low-rank representations, our approach tractably captures rich structural patterns while ensuring model identifiability. This allows for direct interpretation of distinct node- and class-level structures. Empirically, our model improves link prediction over state-of-the-art methods and discovers interpretable structures in diverse real-world systems, including pharmacological and social networks, advancing our ability to incorporate large-scale higher-order data into the scientific process.

Acute sleep rebound following sleep restriction is associated with reduced mortality risk

Proteasome alteration between epithelial and hematopoietic cells facilitates positive selection of CD8 T cells

Abstract The thymoproteasome, a proteolytic complex uniquely expressed in cortical thymic epithelial cells (cTECs), governs the positive selection of CD8 T cells. It has been hypothesized that the thymoproteasome promotes CD8 T cell development by forging a sequential switch in proteasome species between cTECs and medullary antigen-presenting cells (APCs), which generates a stepwise difference in MHC-I-associated peptides between cTECs and medullary APCs, thereby sparing positively selected thymocytes from subsequent negative selection. In this study, we engineer mice ectopically expressing thymoproteasomes in various APCs including medullary TECs (mTECs), eliminating the proposed proteasome switch. Surprisingly, we find that the proteasome switch between cTECs and mTECs is dispensable for thymoproteasome-dependent CD8 T cell development. Instead, we find that ectopic thymoproteasomes in hematopoietic cells impair CD8 T cell development by hindering cortical positive selection. Our findings reveal that the proteasome difference between cTECs and hematopoietic cells in the thymic cortex facilitates thymoproteasome-dependent positive selection.

Hyper-RAG: combating LLM hallucinations using hypergraph-driven retrieval-augmented generation

Photonic computing enabled end-to-end image compression and reconstruction with adjustable ratio and high-fidelity

Coherent control through phonon anharmonicity

Sarcopenia promotes tumorigenesis by disrupting NOTCH-SDC2-regulated biogenesis of muscle-derived extracellular vesicles

Acceptorless Dehydrogenative Polymerization

Abstract The development of polymerization strategies for enabling the synthesis of polymeric materials with targeted properties remains a central pursuit at the interface of catalysis, polymer chemistry, and materials science. Acceptor‐less dehydrogenative polymerization (ADP) has emerged as an approach for a step‐growth polymerization for the construction of polyesters, polyamides, polyurethanes, and polyureas from unactivated alcohols and amines, liberating molecular hydrogen as the only by‐product. Mechanistically, ADP represents the macromolecular extension of the x framework, wherein transition‐metal catalysts mediate sequential substrate dehydrogenations and condensations. By leveraging well‐established small‐molecule dehydrogenation chemistry into a repetitive polymer‐forming sequence, ADP unites synthetic efficiency with sustainability to offer access to structurally diverse and high‐performance polymers directly from readily available feedstocks. This minireview highlights the mechanistic foundations, representative catalytic systems, and emerging polymer architectures realized through ADP while identifying some critical challenges and future opportunities we envision will shape its evolution into an enabling platform for green and circular macromolecular design.

Daily briefing: Trump fires entire NSF advisory board

Spurious alignment between large language models and brains can emerge from non-robust methods and overlooked confounds

Abstract Emerging research seeks to draw neuroscientific insights from the neural predictivity of large language models (LLMs). However, as results rapidly proliferate, there is a growing need for large-scale assessments of their robustness. Here, we analyze a wide range of models and methodological approaches across three widely used neural datasets. We find that the use of shuffled train-test splits has contributed to findings that are influential but spurious. Furthermore, how activations are extracted from LLMs can bias results in favor of specific model classes. Lastly, we find that confounding variables, particularly positional signals and word rate, perform competitively with trained LLMs and fully account for the neural predictivity of untrained LLMs on these neural datasets. Although many studies in the field avoid these pitfalls, our results indicate that some apparent alignment between LLMs and brains has emerged from non-robust methods and overlooked confounds.

Self-assembled 1D/3D heterojunction enables all-inorganic perovskite 4-terminal tandem solar cells with 21.54% certified efficiency

Scandinavian pattern and temperature changes shape European summer droughts over the past millennium

Abstract Recent decades have seen pronounced changes in European hydroclimate, including widespread summer drying, yet its spatiotemporal variability and underlying drivers remain uncertain. Here we present the European Last Millennial Data Assimilation (EULMDA), a new reconstruction of European hydroclimate and its main drivers covering the past millennium. EULMDA integrates five Earth System Model simulations with over one hundred moisture and temperature sensitive tree-ring records. It demonstrates high skill in reproducing instrumental variability across climate variables, including large-scale atmospheric circulation changes. We show that European warm-season drought variability is primarily governed by circulation changes associated with the Scandinavian pattern (SCAND) and long-term summer temperature changes, together explaining over half of the spatiotemporal drought variance. SCAND drives a pronounced north–south dipole in summer hydroclimate, explaining a larger fraction of Mediterranean drought variability than other major circulation modes, contributing to recent multidecadal drying in the Mediterranean alongside wetting in northern Europe. Meanwhile, summer warming intensifies drying across much of Europe. These results provide critical context for interpreting recent drought trends and insight into mechanisms shaping future hydroclimate risks.

#ScientistAtWork 2026: Nature seeks striking photographs that capture researchers at work

Observation of room-temperature multiferroicity with strong magnetoelectric coupling in hafnia thin films

Epithelial SLC39A1 prevents acute lung injury through zinc-mediated transcriptional activation of autophagy in male mice

Structural basis of plant organelle C-to-U RNA editing by PPR-DYW proteins

Hidden structural states of proteins revealed by conformer selection

Spoken disagreement is more constructive than written disagreement

Abstract Amid rising global polarization, finding ways to disagree constructively is vital. This paper examines whether the medium of disagreement—spoken or written—shapes conversation outcomes. A series of randomized experiments ( N  = 1,576 conversation partners who had 1,842 conversations and 1,432 observers of those conversations) suggests that spoken conversations with a disagreeing counterpart lead to greater understanding, lower conflict, more favorable impressions of one’s counterpart, and greater attitude alignment than written ones. Speech also fosters more conversational receptiveness—cues in language that signal openness to opposing viewpoints—which partly mediates the effects of medium on these constructive disagreement outcomes. The conversation medium further moderates the association between language and outcomes: receptiveness is a stronger predictor of constructive disagreement in writing than in speech, suggesting people use less receptive language in the very medium in which it may be most effective (i.e., the written medium). A final study suggests that people may misjudge the effects of medium, wrongly believing spoken (versus written) disagreement will be less constructive and preferring to write to disagreeing counterparts. Despite people’s erroneous beliefs, spoken conversation offers a promising path to disagreeing constructively.