Volume 646 Issue 8084, 9 October 2025

It is time to sound the alarm as the EU’s research priorities face an unprecedented degree of political interference.

The future of science will be written by humans and machines together. Awards should reflect that reality.

The elements formed from a star’s demise shape the structure of the planets that rise from the ashes.

Satellites help scientists to document a correlation between dust travelling from Africa and hailstones falling in the Alps.

Certain gut bacteria help to extend the reproductive lifespan of female mice, experiments show.

Forest giants are becoming bigger and more common than they once were.

New York trial could set a legal precedent by admitting findings from whole-genome sequencing as evidence.

Despite political obstacles, officials are on track to disburse all of the research funds allocated to US biomedical behemoth.

The country’s plan to reduce greenhouse gases will largely determine the world’s emissions trajectory, researchers say.

Replacing immune cells called microglia holds promise for addressing brain conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

A tool called Funding the Frontier visualizes all the downstream impacts of funding — and predicts which studies will have the biggest societal impact.

Papers from research teams with a substantial number of beginners are highly disruptive and innovative, study shows.

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

Tests of large language models reveal that they can behave in deceptive and potentially harmful ways. What does this mean for the future?

Other researchers question whether autonomous AI scientists are possible or even desirable.

Greening the global economy does not have to be done through unjust fuel extraction; societies can choose fairer paths to net-zero emissions.

An optimistic take on the state of the longevity field provides hope for treating a range of ageing-related diseases — but feels at odds with the current shape of US research.

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Scientists, research institutions, funders, libraries and publishers must all improve software practices.

Open and adaptable artificial-intelligence models are crucial for scientific progress, but robust safeguards against their misuse are still nascent.

Nature’s survey of PhD candidates reveals hard-won wisdom on choosing supervisors, managing mental health and surviving academic culture.

Microsoft researchers found a biological zero-day vulnerability — and created a software patch.

Environmental-humanities researcher Jenia Mukherjee uncovers the complex relationship between people, canals and wetlands in Kolkata, India.

The discovery of an unusual reproductive system for one ant species solves a long-standing puzzle about a missing population of another ant species.

Researchers have used epidemiological models to determine whether the wave of riots in 1789 known as the Great Fear spread through irrational panic or rational protest.

Glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, depends on the amino acid serine as a fuel source. A serine-deficient diet has been shown to slow tumour growth in mice.

An approach for making nanoscale high-entropy alloys using liquid metal provides much-needed control over the structure and composition of these remarkable materials.

A study examines the emergence of a group that sparked a fundamental change in lifestyle in Central and Eastern Europe in the sixth century.

Observations of the shape, topography, crustal thickness and surface composition of the South Pole–Aitken impact basin on the Moon suggest a southward impact trajectory and the excavation of a discontinuous remnant magma ocean from beneath the crust.

Logical operations can be performed fault-tolerantly with only a constant number of syndrome extraction rounds for a broad class of quantum error correction codes, including the surface code with magic state inputs and feedforward, to achieve ‘transversal algorithmic fault tolerance’.

The precision of determining the phase of an optical atomic clock is increased above the standard quantum limit in a new spectroscopic method.

Heat recharges enzyme-free DNA circuits, enabling complex logic operations and neural networks to perform multiple computations, offering a universal energy source for molecular machines and advancing autonomous behaviours in artificial chemical systems.

Gallium is used as a sacrificial agent and mixing medium for the isothermal solidification synthesis of high-entropy alloy nanomaterials with diverse crystallinities and morphologies.

A single-phase chromium–molybdenum–silicon alloy is described that exhibits compression ductility at room temperature as well as resistance to oxidation, pesting, nitridation and scale spallation at temperatures up to at least 1,100 °C.

A core-shell hydride 3CeH₃@BaH₂, which exhibits fast H⁻ conduction at ambient temperature and becomes a superionic conductor above 60 °C, is used to construct an all-solid-state rechargeable H⁻ battery.

An in-built fluoropolyether-based quasi-solid-state polymer electrolyte enables high-capacity lithium-rich manganese-based layered oxide cathodes with stable interfaces, achieving 604 Wh kg⁻¹ pouch-cell energy density.

Using a combination of radical retrosynthesis, biocatalysis and C–H functionalization logic, a concise and scalable approach to the synthesis of saxitoxin and derivatives thereof in fewer than ten steps is presented.

Epidemiological methods are used to show that the Great Fear of 1789, a series of peasant insurrections in rural revolutionary France, was driven by deliberate political action rather than spontaneous fear.

Genetic engineering of a yeast strain provides rare but essential pollen sterols for honeybee colonies.

In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same mother having distinct genomes and morphologies.

Early Pleistocene artefacts at Calio suggest that Sulawesi was populated by hominins at around the same time as Flores, if not earlier.

Analyses of ancient human DNA show that cultural and political transformations in Central Europe during the second half of the first millennium ce were associated with movements of Slavic populations into Germany, Poland and Croatia.

Analyses of consummatory reproductive behaviours in male mice uncover a brain mechanism whereby an internal state can attribute a social quality to a generic touch to initiate purposeful reproductive actions.

The SLC45A4 gene encodes a neuronal polyamine transporter and is linked to pain response in humans and mice.

The cortex fuels essential physiological processes with glucose-derived carbon, while gliomas fuel their aggressiveness by rerouting glucose carbon pathways and scavenging alternative carbon sources such as environmental amino acids, providing a potential therapeutic target.

The N-acyl-cyclolysine system regulates the expression of co-localized operons encoding diverse secreted molecules in Bacteroidota.

A neutralizing nanobody specific to the prefusion conformation of herpes simplex virus glycoprotein B has cross-species activity and offers insights into virus neutralization, possible immunogens and an attractive avenue for antiviral interventions.

The transcription factors TCF1 and LEF1 promote self-renewal and regulatory functions in B-1a cells.

Axonal injury, induced in the white matter by expansion of early tumour cells, is a key driver of glioblastoma progression.

Perineural invasion and cancer-induced nerve injury of tumour-associated nerves are associated with poor response to anti-PD-1 therapy, which can be reversed by combining anti-PD-1 therapy with anti-inflammatory interventions.

Directional, non-vesicular lipid transport is responsible for fast, species-selective lipid sorting into organelle membranes.

BindCraft, an open-source, automated pipeline for de novo protein binder design with experimental success rates of 10–100%, leverages AlphaFold2 weights to generate binders with nanomolar affinity without the need for high-throughput screening.

Using cryo-electron microscopy, the interactions of Sestrin2 and CASTOR1 with GATOR2 were resolved, revealing how mTORC1 activation is regulated and how nutrient availability triggers signalling for cellular growth.