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Subtle changes in solvent composition control peptide crystal polymorphism, enabling the formation of distinct structures and offering new insights for designing advanced bio-inspired materials.

Toxoplasma is a major infectious human parasite lethal to immunodeficient patients. This study identifies an apicoplast lipid transporter essential for parasite survival, which diverges from known chloroplast transporters.

Long-circulating, transfection-competent LNP-mRNA systems are key for effective extrahepatic delivery. Here, authors show that LNPs with high bilayer lipid ratios yield high mRNA encapsulation, prolonged circulation, and enhanced transfection in extrahepatic tissues.

Gas adsorption in porous materials offers an alternative technology for efficient hydrogen isotope separation. Here, the authors report high separation efficiency through isotopologue-induced structural dynamics in a readily scalable manganese-triazole metal-organic framework.

Activation of mechanophores in polymers is desirable but generally a slow process. Here, the authors report the use of polymeric microbubbles activated by high-frequency ultrasound to exert compressive force and give mechanochemical transformations.

In this study, the authors isolated single-___domain antibodies directed against conserved sites of influenza B virus neuraminidase and hemagglutinin and show that they broadly neutralize influenza B viruses and, as IgG Fc fusions, are protective in vivo.

Dubiez and colleagues present a cryo-EM structure of the complex responsible for nuclear export of pre-small nuclear RNAs, comprising CBC–PHAX–CRM1–RanGTP. The structure provides insights into the complex architecture, assembly and target RNA recognition.

The Rnf complex is a key respiratory enzyme of anaerobes and nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Here, the authors combine structural, computational, and biochemical experiments to probe the unique redox-coupled Na⁺ pumping mechanism of this ancient system.

Calix[4]arenes display inherent chirality, with broad applications in synthetic and medicinal chemistry and in materials sciences, but their use is hindered by their limited synthetic accessibility. Here the authors present a protocol for desymmetrisation of prochiral diformylcalix[4]arenes via organocatalysis.

Proteins with small structural modifications at specific sites are valuable, yet challenging to access by chemical methods. Now, tyrosine-selective single-atom modifications on proteins have been achieved by C–H functionalization using a rationally designed selenoxide to introduce a versatile selenonium linchpin for further transformations.

Catalytic cracking is an emerging technology allowing to convert plastic waste into hydrocarbon feedstocks. Here, the authors show that the activity of ultrastable zeolite Y depends on the concentration of acid sites located outside of micropores.

Glucose-derived isosorbide is a rigid polyester monomer with a low reactivity. Here, the authors report the synthesis of high molecular weight biobased polyesters with promising barrier and mechanical properties via in situ generation of reactive aryl ester groups.

Promoters are able to modulate the performance of catalysts for a given process, but this can be done through various mechanisms. Here the role of Mn as a promoter on Fe-based catalysts for CO₂ hydrogenation to olefins is comprehensively investigated via spectroscopic and kinetic analyses. The promoter induces a restructuring of the catalyst surface, balancing the strength of the adsorption of reactants and intermediates.

Climate warming causes riverine CO₂ emissions increasing at 0.42 ± 0.16 Tg C yr⁻¹ in the Northern Hemisphere permafrost regions during 2000–2020.

This study presents a stable and efficient photoelectrochemical system for nitrate reduction to ammonia using metal catalysts on GaN/Si photoelectrodes, offering valuable insights into catalyst design for sustainable ammonia production driven by solar energy.

A new acid-degradable linker termed ‘azido-acetal’ has been developed that rapidly hydrolyses at pH 6.0 but is stable at pH 7.4. Lipid nanoparticles made with this linker delivered mRNA in vivo and in vitro better than traditional lipid nanoparticles.

The organization of membrane proteins is critical to cellular function. Here the authors explore how computational protein design, MD simulation, and cell-free systems can be combined to elucidate how membrane-protein hydrophobic mismatch affects protein folding and organization in synthetic lipid membranes.

Planar chiral [2.2]paracyclophanes have a wide range of applications in asymmetric synthesis and materials science. However, they are accessed via time-consuming chiral separations or kinetic resolution approaches. Here, the authors report a simple, metal-free protocol for organocatalytic desymmetrization of prochiral diformyl[2.2]paracyclophanes.

Quantum-mechanical methods of benchmark quality are widely used for describing molecular interactions. The present work shows that interaction energies by CCSD(T) and DMC are not in consistent agreement for a set of polarizable supramolecules calling for cooperative efforts solving this conundrum.

The need for redox balancing limits the array of fermentable substrate-product combinations in anaerobic microbe-based bioproduction. Here, the authors design and engineer an E. coli strain with new-to-nature aerobic fermentative metabolism that allows tightly controlled re-balanced fermentations.

Integrative molecular modelling of a mitochondrial crista demonstrates a pipeline for constructing biologically representative systems and addressing interactions in complex environments.

Strain-promoted cycloadditions are relatively slow and most work on increasing reactivity focuses on cycloalkyne structure. Here, the authors show a marked dependence upon the nature of the azide, which not only leads to increased rates but also enables orthogonality between coupling partners.

Phosphatidylserine-exposing extracellular vesicles in body fluids can inhibit infection of viruses that use viral apoptotic mimicry for infection, but not viruses that use other entry mechanisms.

Polygenic risk scores for Alzheimer’s disease derived from individuals of European ancestry can show improved performance in multiancestry settings after incorporating genome-wide association summary statistics from diverse populations.

The Michael-type addition reaction is used for carbon-carbon bond formation; however biocatalytic methods for this reaction are rare. Here, the authors generate and exploit mutability landscapes of 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase to direct the redesign of this promiscuous enzyme into enantio-complementary Michaelases.

Membrane fission of a cell into two daughters is a core ability of cell-based life. Here the authors show that in artificial cells division can be controlled by regulating membrane curvature using low protein density.

An integrated structural biology approach encompassing solid-state NMR and molecular dynamics simulations was implemented to obtain an atomic view of the ordered polyglutamine core and fuzzy coat of the amyloid-like protein aggregates implicated in Huntington’s disease.

The reversible N–H activation and catalytic transformations of ammonia are a challenge. Now, a hidden frustrated Lewis pair is shown to activate non-aqueous ammonia thermoneutrally and split the N–H bond reversibly at ambient temperature. The N–H-activated ammonia was also utilized as an atom-economical nitrogen source for catalytic NH₃ transfer reactions.

A synergistic dopant-additive combination strategy using methylammonium chloride as the dopant and a Lewis-basic ionic-liquid additive is shown to enable the fabrication of perovskite solar modules achieving record certified performance and long-term operational stability.

Schneeberger, Kim, Geesdorf, Rajewsky, Heppner et al. tease IL-12 and IL-23 signaling apart in mouse models and human brain tissue to define a role for oligodendroglial and neuronal IL-12 signaling in neuroimmune crosstalk in Alzheimer’s disease.

FIORA, an advanced graph neural network, enhances the simulation of tandem mass spectra by learning molecular bond-breaking patterns. The open-source algorithm generates high-quality reference spectra for compound identification in metabolomics.

Self-replicating molecules provide a simple molecular level system to study the processes occurring in speciation. Now it is shown that in a pool of interconverting macrocycles, constructed from two building blocks, two distinct sets of self-replicating molecules emerge, and that one is a descendant of the other.

Accurately predicting how much rising atmospheric carbon dioxide can increase rice production is important for managing global rice production. This study highlights that elevated carbon dioxide will boost rice yields more in middle-to-high-income countries than in low-income countries, and that this yield gap will continue to widen in the future.

The great increase in flowering angiosperm plants during the Cretaceous began the change towards modern biodiversity. This study shows that rapid angiosperm evolution was possible once the leaf interior transport path length for water became shorter than the leaf interior transport path length for carbon dioxide.

Kucharska, Ivanochko and Hailemariam and colleagues solved cryo-EM structures of Pfs48/45, needed for Plasmodium falciparum development, with potent antibodies. The work revealed conformational epitopes, with implications for design of therapies against malaria.

Natural photosynthesis converts sunlight into chemical energy. Here, the authors present the 2.27-Å cryo-EM structure of Photosystem I bound to platinum nanoparticles, revealing insights into photon-to-fuel catalytic activity for hydrogen production.

Conversion of achiral starting materials into enantiopure products without additional chiral additives is a challenging task. Here, the authors show a reaction where the precipitation of chiral product induces autocatalysis, ultimately leading to an enantiopure compound.

In neurons and glia, glutamate transporters catalyse the reuptake of this neurotransmitter by coupling it with cation transport. Here the authors combine X-ray crystallography and molecular dynamics simulations of the archeal glutamate transporter Glt_Tkto get insight into the coupled transport mechanism.

Kuhm et al. reveal how human guanylate-binding protein 1 (GBP1) dimers self-associate to coat bacterial pathogens and uncover a guanosine triphosphate hydrolase-dependent membrane-remodeling activity of GBP1 that is crucial for intracellular immunity

Although much is understood about the mechanical behaviour of macroscopic machinery, less is known about their molecular equivalents. It is now shown that for molecular machinery consisting of hydrogen-bonded components their relative motion is strongly accelerated by adding small amounts of ‘lubricating’ water, whereas other protic liquids have much weaker or opposite effects.

Stimuli-responsive emulsions are useful for long-term storage combined with controlled release, but the fundamental mechanism behind this release is not established. Here, the authors report a study into the effect of individual microgel morphology on the destabilisation of responsive emulsions.

The trade-off between growth and production affects the application of engineered microbes. Here, the authors take the minimal cut set approach to predict metabolic reactions for elimination to couple metabolite production strongly with growth and achieve high production of indigoidine in Pseudomonas putida.

The ionic conductivity of an aqueous electrolyte has a great impact on the performance of devices such as batteries. Here, the authors advance our understanding by showing that a high macroscopic conductivity originates from the large-amplitude sub-picosecond motions of ions on a molecular scale.

In a cohort of 50,556 South Asian individuals, partitioned polygenic scores helped identify genetic susceptibility to insulin deficiency and unfavorable fat distribution as key drivers of young-onset T2D diagnosis and faster progression to diabetes-related complications.