Volume 646 Issue 8087, 30 October 2025

In these financially straitened times, funders must recognize that great discoveries often arise from work that was looking for something completely different.

A fresh set of benchmarks could help specialists to better understand artificial intelligence.

Ending plastic pollution will mean embracing the complexity of political and economic realities.

Lab-grown structure mimics the adrenal cortex, which produces the critical hormone called cortisol.

A previously unknown strain left a stamp on modern varieties of the world’s most popular sugar source.

Fungal armour keeps stinkbug eggs safe from hungry young wasps.

Scientists ‘draw’ crystal patterns using laser light.

A second blood test has been been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to assist in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease. Will these tests change how cognitive decline is measured?

When athletes devote large amounts of energy to running or cycling, they unconsciously cut back on energy output elsewhere.

The rare samples, uncovered by China’s Chang’e-6 mission, might help to reveal secrets of how the Solar System evolved.

Seven institutions have so far rejected the administration’s list of demands over academic freedom and other concerns.

An electronic eye implant has restored vision in people with blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration.

Applications for European research grants increased in 2025. Scientists say they’re feeling the competition.

Hopes of securing a United Nations treaty on plastics pollution are fading after the final round of negotiations ended without an agreement.

Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government.

Signals from the plant cell wall help to orchestrate growth, reproduction and immune function. Can harnessing this molecular cross talk help in creating better crops?

Understanding prediction algorithms and engaging in decisions about their use is crucial to curbing concentrated power and rising inequality.

From using words to overthrowing regimes, shared awareness is necessary for people to coordinate. The cognitive scientist explains to Nature how it works.

He showed that specialized cells retain the genes to form an organism.

The collapse of talks about a UN plastics treaty is the wake-up call we didn’t need. It’s time to study what is going wrong and why.

Stronger links between researchers who work on Earth’s and other planets’ atmospheres, and between the experimental, modelling and observational communities, will help to interpret the astronomical data now at our fingertips.

One treat at a time, these graduate students are helping to raise funds for charitable organizations.

Art conservator and restorer Ludovica Alesse works to safeguard Ancient Roman remains unearthed in the latest excavations to ensure the city’s story will never fade.

Soft materials filled with microbubbles flex when exposed to ultrasound — forming the basis of wireless devices that can be made to pass through organs such as the intestine.

A big-data analysis shows that online content represents men as older than women in the same occupations and social roles, and that AI reproduces these warped presentations.

Analyses of symptoms and genomic data indicate that autism that manifests in early childhood is distinct from autism that is diagnosed later in development.

A reaction between hydrogen and magma at high pressure can produce water, which might explain evidence for ‘wet planets’ in places where water can’t condense.

Signalling between neurons and tumour cells in the lung and brain promotes the growth of small-cell lung cancer. These interactions might be a therapeutic target.

Experimental evidence shows that hydrogen–silicate reactions can generate abundant water in sub-Neptunes, suggesting hydrogen-rich planets have the potential to reach water-rich compositions.

A large-scale atom-array architecture enables coherent continuous operation of more than 3,000 physical qubits, where new qubits can be introduced without destroying existing quantum information encoded in the system.

A full-featured 2D NOR flash memory chip realized by an atomic device to chip technology combines a superior 2D electronic device as a memory core and a powerful CMOS platform to support complex instruction control.

Researchers have developed retina electronic paper with electrically tunable metapixels comprising WO₃ nanodisks, achieving >25,000 pixels per inch, full-colour video and high contrast, enabling low-power immersive displays for virtual reality applications.

A soft artificial muscle with programmable actuation is achieved using microbubble arrays and targeted ultrasound activation, with potential applications in soft robotics, wearable technologies, haptics and biomedical instrumentation.

Here a Cu(I)/Cu(III)/Cu(II)/Cu(III)/Cu(I) redox sequence is revealed in copper-catalysed aryl iodide coupling, capturing intermediate species and redefining the mechanistic understanding of the reaction.

A circular economy approach applied to the global lithium-ion battery supply chain shows that combining cross-regional cooperation on technology and trade with regionally tailored domestic circular economy policies yields the highest global emission reduction.

Magnetotelluric data provide evidence of a large melt-rich magmatic reservoir beneath Mayotte island that might be connected to the system that fed the large submarine eruption of Fani Maoré in 2018–2019.

Stereotypes of age-related gender bias are socially distorted, as evidenced by the age gap in the representations of women and men across various media and algorithms, despite no systematic age differences in the workforce.

The pachycephalosaurian Zavacephale rinpoche, from the Early Cretaceous of Mongolia, provides crucial insights into the early evolution of dome-headed dinosaurs, including the development of the frontoparietal dome and decoupling of sociosexual and somatic maturity.

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

Simultaneous recordings were made of hundreds of neurons in the rat frontal cortex and striatum, showing that decision commitment involves a rapid, coordinated transition in dynamical regime and neural mode.

The neuronal architecture that develops after spinal cord injury and causes autonomic dysreflexia is uncovered.

A PICALM allele associated with increased risk of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease has a microglial-specific role in lipid droplet accumulation.

Crowded epithelial cells with the least energy and membrane potential are selected for extrusion.

Establishing antisense oligomers as versatile, non-genetic tools to silence phage mRNAs opens applications in basic research and biotechnology, as shown by identifying essential factors for propagation of the nucleus-forming jumbo phage ΦKZ such as the RNase H-like protein ΦKZ155.

Capsule-specific human monoclonal antibodies are protective against bloodstream infection by Klebsiella pneumoniae sequence type 147 in a mouse model of septicaemia, and could provide a useful strategy against pathogens with antimicrobial resistance.

An understanding of the molecular mechanisms promoting the generation of immunoregulatory and tumour-promoting monocytes and macrophages is key to breaking the cycle of tumour myelopoiesis and developing more effective myeloid-targeting therapies.

A UCP1-independent mechanism of thermogenesis involving ATP-consuming metabolism of monomethyl branched-chain fatty acids in peroxisomes is described and a previously unrecognized role for peroxisomes in adipose tissue thermogenesis is identified.

Glutamatergic and GABAergic (γ-aminobutyric acid-producing) cortical neuronal activity drives proliferation of small lung cell cancer via paracrine interactions and through synapses formed with tumour cells.

Small cell lung cancer cells form functional synapses with glutamatergic neurons, receiving synaptic transmissions and deriving a proliferative advantage from these interactions.

Engineered prime editor systems with reduced occurrences of unwanted insertions or deletions during genome editing are developed.

DNA-methylation and gene-expression profiling of tissue sections at near single-cell resolution can be used to create detailed spatial maps showing how methylation and transcription interact to shape cell identity and tissue development.

Cryogenic electron microscopy structures and functional analyses reveal that NCLX functions as a H⁺/Ca²⁺ rather than a Na⁺/Ca²⁺ exchanger, and uncover its transport mechanism with implications for therapies treating cardiac and neurodegenerative disorders related to abnormal mitochondrial Ca²⁺.