Volume 654 Issue 8119, 18 June 2026

The European Union has declared that it wants to stop using animals in chemical safety testing. Its goal will need a timeline and a serious funding commitment.

The papal letter goes beyond a religious document and diagnoses a failure in AI governance that the scientific community should heed.

As machines replace human labour, welfare states built on salary-linked taxation will need fundamental redesign.

Weakening of a major ocean-current system is causing temperatures to drop in a patch of the Atlantic Ocean.

Lung cancer risk was higher in people who took up electronic cigarettes than in those who quit smoking completely.

Organisms called bathynomids boast a bacterial gene that helps them to regulate their metabolism in the cold depths.

The female individual’s brain was removed after her death, but her remains were carefully reassembled for her interment.

The ‘base editing’ technique that researchers used is far from ready for the clinic, but critics worry that it will spur a rush to commercialize the approach.

Possible explanations for the trend are emerging, but are likely to vary from one type of tumour to another.

Modelling with artificial-intelligence tools has filled gaps in migration data, revealing detailed global population movements from 1990 to 2023.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems has published several papers detailing the design of its ARC fusion power plant.

Physicists hope that the JUNO facility can determine which type of neutrino has the highest mass.

A participant in a landmark clinical trial has been given a cellular-reprogramming treatment that aims to rejuvenate damaged cells in the eye.

The month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.

Biology has clever ways to mask the effects of potentially harmful gene mutations. Scientists are investigating how this ‘buffering’ works — and how to exploit it.

Influencers and ultra-rich people looking to extend their lifespan are trading tips and tricks on how to eke out extra years.

An economist sets out how communities can direct economic decisions and not just endure their consequences.

Advances in machine learning and other technologies are helping researchers to trace the movements, landmarks and social practices of wildlife.

Professional player turned medical scientist, Vincent Gouttebarge, tells Nature how sport weighs on the health of athletes.

Although undoubtably helpful in many ways, experimental assay kits risk undermining the fundamentals of science. How can we course correct?

By sticking to a clear strategy when reading, I get much more out of the literature, says Jacques Cornwell.

Technology has led to unprecedented innovation, but common household items can help make research more reproducible — and accessible.

Stacks of transistors built from nanomembranes that can be rolled onto a substrate have been used to fabricate 3D circuits.

Spatial maps of gene expression in whole human embryos across several weeks of early development offer insights into the molecular programs that drive organogenesis.

An ingredient of nylon has been made in high yields from lignin — revealing a fresh strategy for turning this complex plant biopolymer into industrial chemicals.

When considering what shapes animal development, factors such as genetics come to mind. For a queen bee, however, her special wax home also has a role.

Direct interactions between the cell’s powerhouses and nuclear pores might channel energy straight into the nucleus, fuelling cell division and differentiation.

A systematic assessment of health-related queries to a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence highlights shortfalls in health-care provision and the responsibilities of AI companies.

Although Antarctic ice loss projections diverge widely by 2100, this Perspective shows that present-day rates robustly predict mid-century sea level rise, providing a firm basis for near-term planning, while highlighting priorities for model development aimed at resolving longer-term sea level rise uncertainty.

Analysis of long-term radial velocity data and transit time variations, induced by a super-Earth, a warm Jupiter and a brown dwarf in a coplanar orbit around the relatively young star TOI201.

The scattering of high-energy electrons from three different nuclei demonstrated that short-range-correlated pairing depends far more on the specific quantum orbitals occupied by nucleons than predicted by theoretical models.

A prototype differential atom interferometer operates at the standard quantum limit with no excess noise beyond atom shot noise, achieving performance in line with the specifications for future long-baseline atom interferometers.

Macroscopic quantum coherence arises in two-component exciton Bose–Einstein condensates within MoSe₂/hBN/WSe₂ electron–hole bilayers, exhibiting distinct spin–valley polarized phases, quantum phase transitions under magnetic fields and stable condensate behaviour up to approximately 1.8 K.

A new polaritonic optical method that uses the mid-infrared out-of-plane hyperbolic polaritons mode is described and experimentally validated to allow the examination of picometre-scale interlayer deformations, providing a bridge between nanomechanics and photonics.

A co-optimized AI hardware–software system using resistive-memory computing improves energy efficiency and parallelism for sparse signal reconstruction in imaging and three-dimensional vision applications.

Uniformly doped, ultrathin single-crystalline silicon nanomembranes can be vertically stacked at low temperature using a roll-transfer-printing process that is scalable to wafer scale and tolerant to substrate topology and surface roughness for constructing high-performance monolithic three-dimensional integrated circuits.

By tuning the stereoelectronic properties of ligand adsorption topology to optimize the interfacial architecture and improve stability in perovskite solar cells, high certified power outputs of nearly 27% in the laboratory are demonstrated.

A chemical and biological redox process that resembles processes in petrochemical refining is used to convert lignin from poplar into a single, valuable bioproduct, adipic acid, in high yields.

Analysis of a 25-year satellite record shows that Earth has a persistent east–west albedo symmetry split at 27° E, with clear-sky albedo, cloud radiative effect and open-ocean fraction exhibiting a triple symmetry around this meridian.

Quantification of links among insect pollinators, crop plants, nutrient intake and income of smallholder communities in Nepal show that pollinators substantially contribute to their income and micronutrient intake.

Worker bee construction behaviour actively engineers a physicochemical niche that is crucial for queen development in honey bees.

Analyses of ancient DNA from hunter-gatherers near Lake Baikal in southeast Siberia around 5,500 years ago indicate that highly virulent Yersinia pestis emerged earlier than previously estimated, far from the next known cases of infection in Late Neolithic Europe.

Genomic data from snow carps reveal that the fusion of chromosomes initiates rediploidization following whole-genome duplication.

In the hippocampus, complex processing of sensory stimuli occurs even in the unconscious state.

The rate of axon ensheathment varies within individual myelinating processes, resulting in chains of myelin sheaths connected by bridges consisting of thin cytoplasmic processes that provide flexibility for myelination of highly branched axons.

Findings suggest that neural crest fate bias predominantly emerges within the neural tube, and that only a minor subset of delaminated progenitors retain multipotency to generate both sensory and sympathetic derivatives.

A brain–machine interface is used in monkeys to investigate the biophysical underpinnings of cortical high gamma-band activity, a signal that is often studied in the context of many brain functions.

A spatiotemporal transcriptome atlas of whole-human embryos after gastrulation and previously transcriptionally undescribed stages of human development are reported.

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant escapes neutralization by antibodies targeting the pan-coronavirus epitope in a spike fusion intermediate via steric hindrance, but reducing the antibody size overcomes this barrier and expands its range of accessible targets.

The anti-CRISPR protein AcrVA2 specifically interrupts Cas12a biogenesis by triggering co-translational mRNA degradation.

A vaccination strategy using heterologous HIV Env trimers covalently coupled to liposomes for multivalent display generates cross-neutralizing HIV serum antibody responses in non-human primates, mimicking infection-elicited apex-targeting broadly neutralizing antibodies.

Mitochondria interact directly with the nuclear pore complex via VDAC1–RANBP2 binding to sustain nuclear ATP levels.

The Lap-NET1 phase 1b trial reports that combined netrin1 antibody (NP137) plus modified FOLFIRINOX therapy on patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer was well tolerated and improved progression-free survival and overall survival via inhibition of epithelial–mesenchymal transition.

Prime assembly can initiate Gibson-like assembly in cells to generate gene insertions without double-stranded DNA breaks, recombinases or homology-directed repair.

A large-scale proteomics analysis of the dark proteome by the TransCODE Consortium reveals many translated non-canonical open reading frames to encode microproteins and peptideins.