Volume 657 Issue 8132, 17 September 2026

The scientific panel is welcomed. It must now invite all interested researchers to participate.

As artificial-intelligence tools become crucial collaborators in science, universities must teach students to challenge such systems and assess their ability to do so.

For farmers and consumers to reap the benefits, guidelines for farming gene-edited plants must be implemented with careful thought.

The 5,000-year-old city of Liangzhu has mounds, dams and city walls built in a challenging waterlogged site.

Drugs that imitate the effect of GABAergic neurons slow the growth of tumours called gliomas in mice.

Intense rains coupled with poor waste management cause big spikes in pollution.

Seismic data pinpoint the collapse of an underwater volcano, and reveal how the eruption triggered a destructive tsunami.

The company says it has cracked the physics of fluids using artificial intelligence, solving one of the toughest puzzles in mathematics.

The low-cost intervention was trialled in five countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Study shows that the venerable device does not waft bacteria away from workbenches, as is often assumed.

The awards highlight weird, funny and improbable research that also makes you think.

A new government policy seeks to balance innovation and safety.

Results from a small trial suggest a modified virus can instruct the immune system to wipe out disease-causing cells.

Objects found in a cave in southwestern China suggest that these enigmatic ancient humans were accomplished hunters.

Researchers are racing to culture a menagerie of exotic organisms and finding lots of surprises along the way.

Firms are racing to drill for hydrogen in hopes of finding a dirt-cheap green-energy source.

After an eventful life in the limelight, the discovery of a manipulated specimen preceded the biologist’s death. Questions about his findings remain.

Nobel laureate persisted despite widespread derision and revolutionized structural biology by protecting fragile crystals.

Patchy legislation means that animals are routinely taken from their natural habitats and sold in other countries. Fresh national and international measures could help to stop this exploitation.

Urban areas depend on resources from the land that surrounds them. Managing regions in their entirety is the best way to avoid rural decline.

The pace of academia rarely slows, so researchers should make time to celebrate major career milestones.

The track and intensity of tropical cyclones can be predicted with high accuracy using an AI model, which has the potential to protect lives if shared responsibly worldwide.

One-to-one phone sessions substantially increased students’ numeracy test scores in low- and middle-income countries that experience emergencies that disrupt schooling.

Scientists have long dreamt of being able to track and analyse each step in the assembly of a virus’s protein shell. An ingenious experiment shows how this can be done.

Fresh evidence reveals that the interplay of several factors could affect the ability of these trees to grow.

The achievements of a visionary mathematician, and a trip to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, in this week’s pick from the Nature archive.

Mining millions of AI-predicted structures reveals an evolutionarily conserved protein that resembles a receptor family member but functions differently.

The evidence for biological degradation of non-hydrolysable synthetic polymers is critically evaluated to propose best-practice principles for experimental design that should promote reproducibility and impact across this field.

Observations from the JWST reveal an unexpectedly abundant population of little red dots and overmassive black holes in the early Universe, which are confirmed by their formation in fully cosmological radiation-hydrodynamic simulations.

Absorption spectroscopy of thorium-229 nuclear excited states in a thorium-doped calcium fluoride crystal demonstrates a path towards a much more efficient way to build a highly stable and robust solid-state optical nuclear clock.

Observations of a memory effect in the p-wave superconductor candidate UTe₂, which can be controlled by varying the strength and duration of the electrically applied stimuli, are described.

A framework consisting of advanced epitaxy and layer lift-off techniques uses heterogeneous photonic integration of single-crystalline nanomembranes to infuse desired functionalities into silicon and silicon nitride photonics, demonstrating ultraefficient electro-optical and magneto-optical modulation.

Scaffolded DNA Computer performs diverse computations while thermodynamically relaxing towards equilibrium, demonstrating simplicity, reusability, speed, robustness and scalability of the approach by running 10 programs, including parity, multiplication and 25-bit addition.

Using mass photometry combined with a single-molecule trapping method allows real-time monitoring of the assembly of individual virus-like particles with molecular resolution, enabling observation and quantification of their self-assembly pathways and dynamics.

A new framework combining experimental and computational methods to track ions and water present at an electrode interface allows the molecular structure and evolution of electrical double layers far from equilibrium to be discovered.

An electrochemical cell with molten hydroxide and a Pd membrane actively extracts H₂ and thereby boosts ammonia and methylcyclohexane conversion, while also delivering purified H₂ ready for use.

The atmospheric methane plateau can be explained by tropical hydroxyl radical enhancement primarily driven by a global rise and spatial redistribution of nitrogen oxides emissions towards developing regions and the oceans.

An AI forecasting system called WeatherNext Cyclones can predict the track, intensity (maximum wind speed) and size of tropical cyclones with an accuracy gain over leading operational models comparable to a decade of progress in numerical forecasting.

Remote phone-based targeted tutoring in five countries produced large, cost-effective learning gains during school closures, outperforming text messaging and working effectively when delivered by governments or non-governmental organizations to strengthen education resilience.

Non-native conifers from the Northern Hemisphere grow faster and are more drought resistant and resilient in the Southern Hemisphere, where they seem to escape the growth–stress-tolerance trade-off.

The FNIP1 pathway has a role in human energy metabolism, and its inhibition is a potential therapeutic strategy in cardiometabolic disease.

Human brain organoids were developed for over five years in culture to demonstrate that brain cells can continue to mature and record the passage of time, following human-specific endogenous programs, even outside the context of the organism.

Stimulation of human cortex reorganizes neural assemblies and induces cell-type-specific gene regulatory programs, establishing an ex vivo framework that links stimulation parameters to circuit and transcriptional responses for designing targeted neuromodulatory therapies.

Systematic analysis of prokaryotic STAND NTPases — relatives of animal and plant immune receptors — uncovers diverse antiviral sensors that detect most of the core structural and replicative proteins of bacteriophages.

Virtual Tissues (VirTues), a foundation model for spatial proteomics that captures tissue organization across scales, supports marker reconstruction, cell segmentation and typing, niche annotation, spatial biomarker discovery and patient stratification across heterogeneous panels and datasets.

Astrocytes promote central nervous system (CNS) immunity through antigen presentation and activation of CD40 in astrocytes by CD40L expressed by CD4⁺ T cells in a model of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

A clinically annotated multi-omic organoid resource with matched tumour samples from 256 patients across 5 cancers maps gene dependencies, reveals subtype-specific vulnerabilities and uncovers treatment-driven changes, expanding mechanistic insight and models for precision oncology.

The international collaboration of the Human Cancer Models Initiative presents a comprehensive resource of next-generation cancer models from 2,780 donors with 25 cancer types and integrated tumour–model genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic analyses.

Integration of genome-scale CRISPR screening data from traditional cell lines and next-generation cancer models expands the representation of tumour subtypes and genomic alterations in The Cancer Dependency Map.

Screening of chromosome arm-level aneuploidies uncovers that these alterations select for specific basal-like breast cancer driver genes, including PLGRKT, an oncogene whose tumour-promoting activity is associated with highly stress-resistant mitochondria and enhanced detoxification of reactive oxygen species.

Chemotherapy, particularly with platinum-based drugs, is associated with substantial, rapidly detectable mutagenesis in childhood cancers, tripling private signatures and doubling mutation burden, highlighting therapy-induced tumour evolution and opportunities for safer, de-escalated treatment.

Cryo-electron microscopy sheds light on the architecture of the Trypanosoma brucei mitochondrial editosome and reveals how this assembly mediates mRNA editing through the insertion and deletion of uridine nucleotides.

TM184C—an ancient G-protein-coupled receptor-like superdark protein involved in regulation of autophagy, intercellular connectivity and material exchange—underscores the promise of exploring the understudied human proteome and beyond.