Volume 655 Issue 8122, 9 July 2026

Dolly’s brush with celebrity could hold lessons for current discussions about reproductive technologies.

Inappropriate use of cooling breaks in sport is undermining trust in heat-health research.

The orbiting observatory’s unique vision and public support continue to be crucial for understanding the Universe.

Depletion of the ozone layer has been traced mainly to the widespread use of industrial chlorofluorocarbon chemicals, but there might have been an additional culprit.

A particle detected at the South Pole was born in a galaxy that churned out stars when the Universe was young.

Those under 55 with relatively high levels of the molecule GDF15 had an elevated risk of developing dementia.

Coffee plants are critically endangered by climate change. Researchers are finding solutions to keep scientists supplied with their favourite discovery fuel.

Nature asks researchers whether scorching summers are the new norm for London, Paris and Berlin.

A biology journal that paid peer reviewers found that the approach cut the time to a first editorial decision by 85% and maintained high-quality reviews.

The rhythmic patterns of laughter found in apes and humans reveal that complex primate vocal control might have started evolving 15 million years ago.

With the far-right Alternative for Germany leading in polls for national and state elections, institutions are facing up to proposed restrictions on academic freedom.

Ambitious studies have been examining the protective effects of diet, exercise and socializing — with surprising results.

An analysis sets out the history of computing beyond software and Californian entrepreneurs.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

A patent pool and licensing architecture would enable more widespread use of key minerals than would decades of mining and refining investment alone.

New leader of the National Academy of Sciences Neil Shubin warns: ‘a society that loses science loses the future’.

Technology companies say that their services can sniff out AI-generated writing, but their tools vary in technique and quality.

Soil bacteria make cocktails of molecules that synergistically inhibit the growth of microbial pathogens — suggesting a strategy for tackling antibiotic-resistant infections.

Direct imaging shows that the contacts through which current flows into atomically thin transistors can be scaled down to just a few nanometres in length.

A surge of genetic data from the skeletal remains of Neanderthals disproves some assumptions and generates fresh questions about these ancient hominins.

The first solidification of the second-lightest element, and evidence of an ancient salt-water lake in Peru, in this week’s pick from the Nature archive.

A temperature difference of more than 100 kelvin can be created between stacked layers of 2D material by irradiating them with laser light.

AI agents collaborate to generate biomedical hypotheses and analyse data, moving towards a laboratory discovery cycle with AI involved in every step.

This Review examines the opportunities and challenges introduced by new datasets and computational techniques in urban crime research, and outlines future directions for leveraging these advances effectively.

Using the parameter-free Angular Distribution of Pairwise Distances for measuring directional correlations, evidence is found for coherent anisotropic structures extending over gigaparsec scales, challenging the assumption that the Universe becomes statistically isotropic on sufficiently large scales.

Using LARES-2, LAGEOS and GRACE satellites, researchers measured Earth’s frame-dragging with unprecedented precision, strongly confirming general relativity, constraining alternative gravity theories, and improving measurements of Earth’s tides.

By using a fibre-optical analogue of the physics of black holes, theoretical and experimental evidence is presented for the process underpinning the generation of Hawking radiation and its backreaction onto the optical pump.

Optical cooling in two-dimensional semiconductor heterostructures is demonstrated through phonon-assisted interfacial charge transfer, enabling cryogen-free thermal management without stringent quantum-efficiency requirements.

Cross-sectional scanning tunnelling microscopy shows a 2 nm carrier transfer length in bismuth-contacted monolayer MoS₂ transistors, defining metal-contact scaling limits for sub-10 nm 2D electronic devices.

A volatile-assisted coordination strategy regulates surface defect chemistry and self-doping, thus stabilizing the stoichiometry of tin perovskite semiconductors, resulting in transistors that can maintain stable operation for a month at temperatures of 100 °C.

Visualization of concentration-driven phase segregation within high-concentration interfacial layers in the context of high-energy lithium–sulfur batteries using liquid-cell electrochemical transmission electron microscopy reveals competitive interfacial reactions under lean electrolyte conditions at different phase boundaries.

Viscoelastic phase separation is used to fabricate non-collapsible, air-rich networks in high-water-content hydrogels containing silica aerogel beads, allowing air to permeate through the material and enabling a tenfold increase in oxygen permeability over pristine hydrogels.

Chiral catalysts for hydrogen atom transfer are produced through a self-assembly mechanism that enables access to novel catalyst permutations, with applications including photochemical deracemization of 2-aryl pyrrolidines for use as pharmaceutical scaffolds.

New high-precision neodymium isotope data measured on recently erupted lavas from the submarine Fani Maoré volcano in the Comoros archipelago allow the identification of heterogeneities dating back to Earth’s earliest history.

New predictions for how temporal stability and resilience depend on their resistance and recovery components are explored.

Single-cell transcriptomics combined with morphological and ecological data show that the rapid evolutionary radiation of cichlid fishes in Lake Tanganyika was accompanied by dietary specialization across multiple layers of biological organization.

Genetic sequencing of multiple late Neanderthals living less than 52,500 years ago provides an overview of genetic diversity and demonstrates that even low-coverage nuclear genome data can increase resolution of within-Neanderthal diversity.

PTCHD1-AS, which encodes a long non-coding RNA, is associated with the aetiology of autism spectrum disorder in humans through striatal molecular and circuit-level dysregulation.

Systems-level analyses of organ intrinsic nervous systems reveal that these networks are initially configured by lineage-dependent programmes, and their architecture and molecular identity are refined by intra-organ specific local cues.

High-throughput barcoded neuroanatomy of two closely related rodent species with divergent vocalizations reveals differences in long-range projection motifs in the brain that may support these differences in vocal complexity.

Reparative microglia persist in the brain after stroke but become dysfunctional through ZFP384-mediated mechanisms; however, this process can be mitigated by targeting Zfp384 using therapeutic antisense oligonucleotides.

Using xenograft inflammation–recovery models and single-cell multiomics, a haematopoietic stem cell population after inflammatory stress is identified.

A fungal long non-coding RNA from Magnaporthe oryzae translocates into rice cells to sequester a host microRNA that normally represses PKR1, a negative immunity regulator, thereby facilitating infection and revealing a widespread RNA-based pathogen–host interaction mechanism.

In Streptomyces spp., a conserved biosynthetic gene megacluster produces an arsenal of distinct antimicrobials that converge on bacterial biotin biosynthesis as a naturally evolved combination therapy.

Co-Scientist is an AI system for structured scientific thinking and generates research hypotheses for experimental verification.

A multi-agent system known as Robin is capable of fully automating hypothesis generation and data analysis for experimental biology.

Integration of ubiquitin clippases with sortase-based labelling and mass spectrometry reveals that a wide range of non-peptide molecules are ubiquitinated in vivo, and points to a potential role for ubiquitination in physiological glycogen breakdown.

High-resolution in situ cryo-electron tomography in Schizosaccharomyces pombe identifies SNOR protein, which binds to ribosomes during dormancy induced by glucose depletion, priming them for rapid reactivation of protein synthesis upon glucose repletion.

β-Arrestins, multifunctional adaptor proteins that regulate G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), form phase-separated condensates, suggesting that β-arrestin liquid–liquid phase separation organizes and diversifies GPCR signalling functions.