Volume 636 Issue 8042, 12 December 2024

Thirty years after the sequencing of the BRCA1 cancer-associated gene, access to genetic tests and awareness about its risks are still too limited.

Detecting and interpreting methane emissions from space is not enough. A comprehensive approach is needed.

Language models developed by big technology companies consistently underperform in African languages. It’s time to focus on local solutions.

Scientists in Asia and Africa are racing to discover hardier crop varieties using gene editing tools. But patent restrictions come in the way.

Modelling study based on almost 250,000 positive COVID-19 tests in the United Kingdom shows that universal masking could have cut transmission markedly.

Largest study of links between consumption of the beverage and gut diversity finds coffee-loving bacteria.

Chemistry of the planet’s atmosphere suggests that its interior has never held water.

Artefacts from a Mesopotamian archaeological site suggest that people in the region founded and later rejected an early form of the organized state.

How many researchers are using the AI tool? Nature gathers data and talks to members of the academic community.

Artificial-intelligence model provides forecasts 15 days out, as well as the probability of accuracy. And it does so faster than the best operational model.

Survey of scientists who study ageing finds no consensus on the fundamentals.

A preliminary analysis takes a closer look at genomic data collected at the market.

Scientists pinpoint brain circuits linked to either resilience or vulnerability to adversity, which affect a stressed animal’s pursuit of pleasure.

A controlled study at a firm measured the effects of using AI to assist research, and saw increases in discoveries and patents.

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

A new research commissioner will help to build the European Union’s next massive science scheme — with a renewed focus on innovation.

AI developers are rapidly picking the Internet clean to train large language models such as those behind ChatGPT. Here’s how they are trying to get around the problem.

The Oxford ethologist offers glimpses of evolutionary history — but plays it too safe.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

DNA recovered from ancient remains is transforming our understanding of organisms and ecosystems from tens, thousands and even millions of years ago – but the growing volume of data must be better preserved.

Researchers seeking to banish workaholic behaviours, boost their pay, have more influence at work or quit academia will find plenty of advice in these books, all published this year.

Scientific ‘shorthand’ could be misrepresenting findings in published papers.

Jeong-Sik Oh hikes to find hidden fault lines, with the help of drones, aircraft and laser technologies.

The earliest known dinosaur fossils are at least 230 million years old, and by 200 million years ago, dinosaurs dominated global ecosystems. Reconstructing food webs using fossil evidence of feeding activity helps to explain this ascendency.

A fresh take on an ancient process for making moulds reverses the usual roles of soft and rigid materials. The resulting process enables complex, 3D channel systems that mimic vasculature to be made in soft biomaterials.

In rare diseases, rare mutations have long been thought of as the only contributor. Genetic analyses of people with such conditions now suggest that the effects of common genetic variants can stack up and contribute to disease risk.

The JWST has captured images of the Firefly Sparkle — a galaxy that resembles an early Milky Way — in the process of being assembled from star clusters. The discovery could help to reveal how the Milky Way formed in the early Universe.

Gliocidin can target brain tumours by disrupting the production of nucleotides needed for cell growth. The molecule’s unusual ability to cross the blood–brain barrier suggests a promising way to develop therapies.

Precipitation, solvent extraction, sorption, membrane-based separation and electrochemical-based separation are described as promising methods for extracting lithium from low-quality brines, which have extensive reserves and widespread geographical distributions.

We introduce a major scientific endeavour called π-HuB (proteomic navigator of the human body), its aim being to generate and harness multimodality proteomic datasets to enhance our understanding of human biology.

JWST observations of a strongly lensed low-mass galaxy in a 600-million-year-old Universe show massive star clusters (the Firefly Sparkle) cocooned in a diffuse arc in the Canadian Unbiased Cluster Survey.

Ultrafast quantum control of helium atoms is obtained by shaping the extreme ultraviolet pulses generated by a seeded free-electron laser.

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy of superconducting magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene reveals flat-band replicas that are indicative of strong electron–phonon coupling; these replicas are absent in non-superconducting twisted bilayer graphene.

Nanoscale imaging and control of altermagnetism in manganese telluride is achieved, paving the way for the experimental realization of the theoretically predicted field of altermagnetism.

A new non-destructive spectroscopic method, ptychographic X-ray linear dichroic orientation tomography, is described, allowing the intragranular and intergranular characterization of extended polycrystalline and non-crystalline materials in three dimensions with nanoscale spatial resolution.

A patterning method using gallium-based engineered sacrificial capillary pumps for evacuation is described for generating structures in soft natural hydrogels across several length scales and enabling a wide range of tissue architectures to be fabricated.

A new aluminosilicate zeolite called ZMQ-1 is introduced that has an intrinsic meso-microporous channel system and shows high thermal and hydrothermal stability and tunable framework Si/Al molar ratios.

Mass spectrometry fragmentation patterns define analytical barcodes for the rapid, quantitative analysis of high-throughput chemical synthesis experiments.

Satellite data and field observations show that global annual-scale vegetation indices are sensitive to the daily frequency and intensity of rainfall, independent of the total amount of rainfall per year.

Data from the fossil record, together with computational modelling, are used to assess the response of foraminifera (marine zooplankton) to temperature changes through time and to predict how well they will adjust to future climate-change-induced ocean warming.

Low-latitude planktonic foraminifera are coping with rapid ocean warming, acidification and nutrient shifts by migrating to deeper water-column depths or polewards, displacing higher-latitude species and reducing low-latitude diversity, ultimately being unable to adapt fast enough to survive in situ.

Integrated analyses of bromalites provide robust pictures of past food webs, explaining early dinosaur evolution and the emergence of larger dinosaur faunas with new feeding patterns.

Patients with neurodevelopmental conditions without a monogenic diagnosis have a higher polygenic burden than those with a monogenic diagnosis. Non-transmitted common alleles in the parents are associated with the child’s phenotype, and the common and rare variants conferring risk are correlated.

Calcineurin–PP1 and PKA acting at excitatory post-synapses reciprocally regulate sleep duration in mice, whereby PKA promotes wakefulness and calcineurin–PP1 promote sleep.

By recording large populations of neurons in behaving monkeys using newly developed silicon probes, we show that intermittent periods of memorandum-specific spiking coexist with synaptic mechanisms to support working memory. 

The dynamics of antigenic variation in extravascular parasite populations using VSG-seq, a high-throughput sequencing approach for profiling variant surface glycoproteins expressed in populations of Trypanosoma brucei, are explored, showing the role of extravascular spaces in pathogen diversification.

Single-cell transcriptome analyses of growth phases in Escherichia coli identify a distinct transcriptional state occupied by antibiotic-tolerant persisters in which lon and yqgE have major roles.

Intestinal regionalization is characterized by robust and resilient structural cell states and the intestine can adapt to environmental stress in a spatially controlled manner through crosstalk between immunity and structural cell homeostasis.

Stable epigenetic changes indicate the existence of an obesogenic memory in mouse adipocytes that primes cells for pathological responses in an obesogenic environment and potentially contributes to the problematic ‘yo-yo’ effect often seen with dieting.

The prodrug gliocidin effectively kills glioblastoma cells by targeting de novo purine synthesis, improving survival in mouse models.

The phase 3 SONIA trial challenges the benefits of using cyclin-dependent kinase 4 and 6 inhibitors as a first-line compared with second-line treatment.

Tethered or ingestible delivery systems that deliver liquid microjets in axial and radial directions can be used to deliver macromolecules to different parts of the gastrointestinal tract with good bioavailability.

Biochemical and structural studies of the loading pathway of the human MCM2–7 replicative helicase motor reveal differences from the orthologous yeast system that may increase resilience against challenges faced by multicellular organisms.

Biochemical and structural studies of the human MCM replicative DNA helicase complex show differences from the yeast complex and provide insights into mechanisms of double hexamer assembly on sequence-independent replication origins.