Volume 637 Issue 8044, 2 January 2025

New and repurposed obesity drugs, daring space missions and climate-action policies are among the developments set to shape research in 2025.

Some researchers are wary of the billionaire’s newfound influence as he seeks to downsize the US government.

The uphill trek jump-starts a new era of discovery for NASA’s Perseverance.

From deciphering burnt Roman scrolls to reading crumbling cuneiform tablets, neural networks could give researchers more data than they’ve had in centuries.

More than 100 clinical trials put stem cells for regenerative medicine to the test. It’s a turning point for a field beset with ethical and political controversy.

People have profoundly altered the planet’s soundscape. It’s time to quieten down so that other species can thrive.

For centuries we’ve linked what we consume to how we feel about ourselves.

A commanding examination of the factors that play into women’s mental ill health should prompt soul searching by readers of all stripes.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

The pioneering plant scientist engineered roots for carbon sequestration and passionately advocated on behalf of women.

China’s low-altitude aviation economy is poised to become a trillion-yuan industry in 2025 — if safety and security challenges can be overcome.

Understanding China’s and other nations’ responses to US trade measures can help policymakers and firms find ways to manage economic competition.

Three researchers talk about life in companies and the key to unlocking opportunities.

Inés Azofeifa Rojas monitors troop behaviour to maintain canopy connectivity.

Two studies show that the light emitted by nanocrystals embedded with luminescent ions can be used to sense forces with high spatial resolution — even when those forces are inside a microscopic living worm.

The discovery that the ageing of lung stem cells drives iron insufficiency and reduces the capacity of the cells to form tumours has potential implications for the treatment of cancer and for regenerative medicine.

The lack of methods for preparing miniature lasers directly on silicon wafers is holding back photonic technology in a range of applications, including machine learning. The solution could be to construct lasers in nanoscale trenches.

Could breast cancer survival rates be improved simply by timing treatment to a specific stage of the menstrual cycle? Mouse and human data suggest sensitivity to chemotherapy is affected by fluctuations in ovarian hormones.

The organization of bee society, and a suggestion that Latin be used as the international scientific language, in our weekly dip into Nature’s archive.

The discovery that peptides from myelin proteins in the brain help the immune system’s T cells to suppress autoimmunity could pave the way to developing therapies for inflammatory brain diseases.

FRB 20221022A, detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst project, shows a pronounced change in polarization during the burst, providing important clues into the nature of the source.

The detection of scintillation caused by inhomogeneous plasma near a fast radio burst indicates an emission process that occurs within or just beyond the magnetosphere of a compact object.

Non-Abelian lattice gauge fields in photonic synthetic frequency dimensions can be used to study lattice physics in a scalable and programmable way.

Observations of the formation of individual stripes in a mixed-dimensional cold-atom Fermi–Hubbard quantum simulator are described, enhancing understanding of the phase diagram of high-temperature superconducting materials and the relationship between charge pairs and stripes.

A new integration approach, nano-ridge engineering, enables electrically driven GaAs-based laser diodes to be fabricated on Si wafers in a complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) pilot line, showing potential for the integration of laser diodes in a Si photonics platform.

An avalanching-nanoparticle force sensor that can operate in the piconewton-to-micronewton range with exceptional force responsiveness is achieved by using the mechanical sensitivity of the photon-avalanching process.

Nanoparticle-based ‘microgauges’ are developed for in vivo force sensing and deployed in C. elegans to investigate how mechanical force correlates with electrical signalling in neuromuscular organs.

GenCast, a probabilistic weather model using artificial intelligence for weather forecasting, has greater skill and speed than the top operational medium-range weather forecast in the world and provides probabilistic, rather than deterministic, forecasts.

An increase in wildfire extent and related greenhouse gas emissions can be linked to abrupt climatic changes during the last glacial period.

The resistivity structure of Yellowstone Caldera’s crustal magma reservoir indicates that the magma reservoirs are not eruptible at present and that the locus of future volcanism has shifted to northeast Yellowstone Caldera.

GROWdb defines US river microbiomes at the genome level.

Using three-dimensional kinematic analyses, fibular reduction is shown to have a functional evolutionary adaptative role in birds to enable knee long-axis rotation.

Twigstats, a method for ancestry reconstruction, provides high-resolution genetic histories and movement patterns of people living in Europe during the first millennium ce.

By examining neural responses from tree shrews performing hierarchical decision tasks with rule reversals, the authors identify a thalamocortical mechanism for regulating cognitive flexibility.

Release of hunger-promoting and satiety-promoting neuropeptides drives opposing changes in the second messenger cAMP in awake mouse paraventricular hypothalamic MC4R neurons, thereby regulating synaptic plasticity and the transition to satiety with each bite of food.

In mice, a strong aversive experience drives offline ensemble reactivation of not only the recent aversive memory but also a neutral memory formed 2 days before, linking fear of the recent aversive memory to the previous neutral memory.

The RANK–RANKL pathway drives intestinal epithelial expansion in pregnancy and lactation.

An investigation into the relationship between network structure and gut microbiome composition among people living in 18 isolated Honduras villages reveals that strain-sharing can be mediated by complex, village-wide social interactions.

Central nervous system (CNS)-derived regulatory self-peptides are essential for maintaining a continuous dialogue between the CNS and the immune system while balancing overt autoreactivity.

Studies using mouse models of lung adenocarcinoma identify an association between age, iron homeostasis and tumour initiation potential that involves NUPR1 and lipocalin-2.

In three mouse models of breast cancer, we show reduced responses to neoadjuvant chemotherapy when treatment is initiated during the dioestrus stage, when compared with initiation during the oestrus stage.

A mutant-selective AKT inhibitor shows potential as a targeted therapy for breast cancer, enabling enhanced target engagement and avoiding the dose-limiting toxicity associated with pan-AKT inhibitors.

The histone deacetylase HDAC6 is a sensor of valine levels, and the abundance of valine in cells regulates DNA damage and cell homeostasis functions.

Tri-complex inhibitors—molecular glues with the ability to recruit cyclophilin A to the active state of RAS—stimulate GTP hydrolysis in a mutant-specific manner. 

Modular synthetic G-protein-coupled receptors with nanobody-based ligand-recognition domains can be designed and used to programme transgene expression, real-time fluorescence or endogenous G-protein activation in response to soluble or cell-surface ligands, enabling control of diverse cellular behaviours.