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Radiation-induced mucositis significantly reduces patient quality of life. Here, the authors report on inorganic-free nanosheets that selectively capture inflammatory small extracellular vesicles, reducing oxidative stress, restoring immune balance and reducing radiation-induced mucositis.

Sweet potato weevils (SPWs) pose one of the most significant challenges to sweet potato production. This study identifies two major SPW-resistant genes, SPWR1/2, and provides new insights into the mechanism of sweet potato defence against SPWs.

How to achieve ideal antiferroelectricity with sharp switching in nanoscale thin films remains challenges. The authors here unveil the selective stepwise transition, achieve ideal antiferroelectricity with large digital electrostrain in PbZrO₃ epitaxial thin films.

Tear secretion from lacrimal gland is essential for ocular health, but the regulatory role of sympathetic nervous system is unclear. The authors show that sympathetic activation suppresses lacrimal tear secretion and aggravates dry eye disease via NA–Adra1a–Ucp2 signaling.

Three trends will combine to hasten it, warn Yangyang Xu, Veerabhadran Ramanathan and David G. Victor.

Pan-genome analysis of 24 alfalfa accessions identifies key structural variations associated with salt tolerance and quality traits and provides resources for genomics-assisted breeding in alfalfa.

Circularly polarized light is an established method to introduce enantioselectivity into a chemical process, however linearly polarized light is much less commonly used. Here, the authors use linearly polarized light in a magnetic field to achieve the enantioselective polymerization of diacetylene.

Degradation of carbon-backbone polymers, which make up most plastics, remains a formidable challenge owing to their strong and inert main-chain C–C bonds. Now it has been shown that aromatization-driven C–C bond cleavage is a viable strategy to endow full degradability into carbon backbones under mild conditions.

An AI-based learning model is applied to low-abundance human oral bacteria and identifies antimicrobial peptides with efficacy against multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens.

Lipid nanoparticles containing brush-shaped polymer lipids as a replacement for commonly used PEGylated lipids enable the repeated administration of mRNA therapeutics without any loss of performance in protein replacement therapy and genome editing models.

Analysis of 43,191 genomes obtained from publicly available marine bacterial and archaeal metagenome data provides insights into marine bacterial evolution, CRISPR–Cas defence and antibiotic resistance genes, and demonstrates the potential of marine metagenomes for biotechnological applications.

MTH1 hydrolyzes oxidized nucleotides to prevent their mis-incorporation into DNA under oxidative stress. Here, the authors show that MTH1 is expressed in platelets and its deficiency increases mitochondrial DNA oxidative damage, impairs platelet function and hemostasis.

This study of 9,997 Chinese children (2013–2015) found that solid fuel exposure led to marginally significant declines in lung function, with higher risk for children with persistent exposure or allergies, highlighting the need for clean fuel use.

By tracing promoter expression in lineage-mapped single cells, Xu et al. present a whole-body cartography of microRNA transcriptional activities during C. elegans embryogenesis and demonstrate its broad utility in multifaceted functional analyses.

A modular synthetic procedure is reported in which a selenium capping agent hinders phase segregation and aggregation while sequencing the priority of metals that migrate into the substrate lattice, leading to a layer-by-layer growth of ordered nanostructures.

This study describes a targeted artificial evolution strategy to create a continuum of compact phenotypes in cucurbit crops for higher yield and labour efficiency, based on screening natural populations and artificially generating novel variants.

Although structurally ordered intermetallic nanocrystals are promising electrocatalysts for fuel cells, their high-temperature large-scale preparation has proved challenging. A low-melting-point-metal-induced bond strength weakening strategy to promote alloy catalyst ordering is now proposed.

Controlling the ketoenamine-enolimine tautomerism and correlating their structure to photoelectronic properties remains challenging in organic solids. Here, the authors show tautomerization in a crystalline dynamic 3D covalent organic framework (dynaCOF) through host-guest interactions leading to reversible framework deformation accompanied by chromic effects which can be used in chemosensing.

Atomic-level coordination influences the properties of single-atom-catalysts but is difficult to precisely engineer. Here, authors study the role of local symmetry manipulation, finding planar-symmetry-broken CuN₃ catalysts outperform highly symmetrical CuN₄ for CO₂ electroreduction to formic acid.

Precise displacement measurement via sound is crucial in science and engineering, yet limited by its low resolution. Here, the authors proposed the concept of topological pairs for achieving acoustic displacement metrology, and experimentally demonstrated an acoustic micrometer with resolving power of 1.2 μm at operating wavelength of 100 mm.

Physiologically, the host suppresses intestinal epithelial cell death to prevent intestinal inflammation. Here, the authors show that EF-hand ___domain-containing protein D2 (EFHD2) endogenously suppresses intestinal epithelial cell death by blocking TNFR1 internalization and protects the intestine from excessive inflammation.

In response to the rebound of air pollution during large events in China, the authors propose that a combination of ambitious short-term measures and enduring long-term pollution control policies is a sustainable solution for improving air quality.

Shi et al. show that neuregulin-4 derived from brown adipose tissue can reduce endothelial injury and inflammation and alleviate atherosclerosis in male mice, via Akt and nuclear factor-κB signaling

Smart membranes with responsive wettability show promise for controllably separating oil/water mixtures but it remains challenging to fabricate responsive and stable scalable membranes. Here, the authors develop a capillary force-driven self-assembling strategy to construct a scalable and stable CO2-responsive membrane for the smart separation of various oil/water systems.

Egg-laying performance is an important phenotype for breeding chicken. Here, the authors explore the regulatory networks driving phenotypic differences in egg-laying, and identify laying-related variants and endocrine factors.

Strain in thin films can increase piezoelectric properties, but crystallographic constraints may restrict the enhanced response to localized regions. Here, by combining strain and orientation engineering, a low-symmetry bridging phase of BiFeO₃ with enhanced piezoresponse is stabilized uniformly throughout the film.

Phase gradient metagratings suffer from limits on conversion efficiency. Here, the authors show a refractive-type metagrating which can enable anomalous reflection and refraction with almost unity efficiency over a wide incident range and uncover how integer parity plays a role in higher order diffraction.

The immunosuppressive role of regulatory T (Treg) cells largely depends on their virtue of expressing the transcription factor FOXP3. Here the authors show that the E3 deubiquitinase USP21 stabilizes FOXP3 by mediating its deubiquitination and helps to maintain the expression of Treg signature genes and Treg lineage stability in mice.

Whether connectivity in white matter detected by functional MRI relates to underlying electrophysiological synchronization is unclear. Here, the authors show that blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) functional connectivity and intracranial stereotactic-electroencephalography (SEEG) connectivity are correlated across a wide range of frequency bands.

Achieving global carbon neutrality will lead to a low-warming future and impact renewable energy production. This study demonstrates that deep mitigation pathways can bring positive feedback that enhances and stabilizes solar and wind energy production.

How the Asian monsoon, earth surface processes and human development interact is not well known. Here, a new record of dust storm intensity shows a relationship between the stability of dynasties and dust storm activity for the last ~2200 years, which argues for a strong human control of dust storms in East Asia over this time.

Conventionally, urea is synthesized via two consecutive processes, N₂ + H₂ → NH₃ followed by NH₃ + CO₂. Now, an electrocatalyst consisting of PdCu alloy nanoparticles on TiO₂ nanosheets has been shown to directly couple N₂ and CO₂ in H₂O to produce urea under ambient conditions.

Historically, warm periods enhanced the Asian summer monsoon—increased rainfall brought additional nutrients to freshwater ecosystems and increased production. However, anthropogenic aerosols have weakened the monsoon and altered lake ecosystems.

Glutamine could prevent IDD by glycolysis inhibition through decreased AMPKα lactylation, which promotes autophagy and suppresses NP cell senescence.