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Most studies assessing food self-sufficiency look at calories and neglect nutrient gaps. Comparing food demand and potential food production under land and water constraints, this study quantifies 9 key nutrient gaps for each of African’s 54 countries.

Using pear as a study system, the biosynthetic pathway of acetophenones has been elucidated: naturally impaired side-chain shortening of aromatic 3-ketoacyl-CoAs leads them to undergo hydrolysis, followed by decarboxylation, to yield acetophenones.

Several genes in regulating flowering time have been identified in soybean, but the epigenetic regulators are still largely unknown. Here, the authors identify GmLDL2, a histone H3K4me1/2 demethylase, as a crucial flowering time regulator in soybean.

Grain number per panicle (GNP) is a critical yield component trait of rice. Here, the authors clone a MAPKKK encoding gene GNP3 positively regulating grain yield and show its role in rice panicle development by interacting and destabilizing ethylene biosynthesis related enzyme SADENOSYLMETHIONINE SYNTHETASE 1.

Most kiwifruit species are vulnerable to high levels of heat stress. Here, the authors report natural variation at the GATA transcription factor binding site of EGY3 gene mediates chloroplastic ROS homeostasis to confer kiwifruit thermotolerance.

Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy has become the standard of care in patients with resectable locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (LA-ESCC). Here, authors present a randomised phase II trial reporting the non-inferiority of neoadjuvant camrelizumab (anti-PD-1) and chemotherapy (nab-paclitaxel and cisplatin) compared to chemoradiation (nab-paclitaxel, cisplatin, and radiotherapy in patients with resectable LA-ESCC.

Cold tolerance at the booting stage is critical for the expansion of rice cultivation area. Here, the authors report that a CAMTA family transcription factor encoding gene CTB3 positively regulates japonica rice booting stage cold tolerance and its upstream and downstream interactors to fulfill the functionality.

It is uncertain how much life expectancy of the Chinese population would improve under current and greater policy targets on lifestyle-based risk factors for chronic diseases and mortality behaviours. Here we report a simulation of how improvements in four risk factors, namely smoking, alcohol use, physical activity and diet, could affect mortality. We show that in the ideal scenario, that is, all people who currently smokers quit smoking, excessive alcohol userswas reduced to moderate intake, people under 65 increased moderate physical activity by one hour and those aged 65 and older increased by half an hour per day, and all participants ate 200 g more fresh fruits and 50 g more fish/seafood per day, life expectancy at age 30 would increase by 4.83 and 5.39 years for men and women, respectively. In a more moderate risk reduction scenario referred to as the practical scenario, where improvements in each lifestyle factor were approximately halved, the gains in life expectancy at age 30 could be half those of the ideal scenario. However, the validity of these estimates in practise may be influenced by population-wide adherence to lifestyle recommendations. Our findings suggest that the current policy targets set by the Healthy China Initiative could be adjusted dynamically, and a greater increase in life expectancy would be achieved.

This work introduces a high FA⁺ configurational entropy strategy by adding 2NTD, tuning FA⁺ rotation dynamics and stabilizing photoactive phases to yield efficient, stable inverted perovskite devices with scalable potential.

The vasopressin V2 receptor (V2R) is a key regulator of water balance, and its antagonists are promising therapeutics for hyponatremia. Here, the authors offer structural insights into antagonist recognition and antagonism of V2R.

Modelling suggests the carbon cost for nitrogen assimilation by plants will rise substantially under future climate change with further increase at higher latitudes, due partly to enhanced contributions of soil inorganic nitrogen.

A layer-by-layer thermal evaporation strategy enables thermally evaporated inverted perovskite solar cells with a power conversion efficiency of 25.19%, maintaining about 95% of their initial efficiency after 1,000 h of operation.

C10, a potent non-nucleoside inhibitor targeting NSP14’s SAM-binding pocket, suppresses viral translation, exhibits immunostimulatory effects, and reverses NSP14-induced transcriptome alterations, offering promise for broader coronavirus treatment.

Radical repositioning to activate remote bonds is underdeveloped in synthetic biocatalysis. Now a photobiocatalytic system couples light-driven single-electron transfer and the relocation of unpaired electrons to activate remote C–C and C–H bonds for enzymatically controlled enantioselective acylation.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analyses of polycystic ovary syndrome in women of East Asian and European ancestries identify 94 independent susceptibility regions, including 73 novel loci.

Psoriasis is a complex inflammatory disease of the skin and mouse models may not reproduce the human disease. Here the authors show that UEB2L3 is involved in human psoriasis and that a mouse model deficient in Ube2l3 recapitulates major features of the human disease involving CXCL16 and CD8 or γδ T cells secreting IL-17 to exacerbate skin inflammation.

The biological clock model LifeClock predicts biological age across all life stages from routine clinical data, revealing distinct pediatric and adult disease risk patterns.

This study introduces a piezoelectric cavitation-cleaned mesh bioreactor for efficient, sustainable total suspended solid removal in wastewater treatment.

The global progress, balance, and coordination of Sustainable Development Goals during 2000-2020 improved overall, with gaps narrowing between low- and high-income countries.

This work presents a portable nanofiber-based imaging technique that uses luminescent nanofibers to achieve high-resolution replication of human skin textures, such as fingerprints, with fine morphological details, including sweat pores, ridges, and scars.

Exogenous iPSC-derived cells can activate endogenous cells to promote trabecular meshwork regeneration and restore aqueous humor outflow in glaucoma, providing insights into in situ regeneration, which may serve as an alternative to traditional cell therapy.

CABLE harnesses cytoarchitectural information such as cell or nuclear shape to infer fiber tracts in the brain of, for example, marmosets, macaques or humans.

Familial spastic paraplegia (SPG) is a rare heritable neurodegenerative disorders. Here, the authors show SPG80-associated protein UBAP1 deficiency disrupts lysosomal and mTORC1 signal, indicating rapamycin could potentially benefit SPG80 patients.

Thoracic vertebral segment-specific spinal cord organoids transplanted in a spinal cord injury mouse model can precisely match the transplantation site, establish synaptic connections, enhance in vivo neuroelectric conduction and restore motor function.

A new artificial intelligence model, DeepSeek-R1, is introduced, demonstrating that the reasoning abilities of large language models can be incentivized through pure reinforcement learning, removing the need for human-annotated demonstrations.

A multiomics dataset including genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomic variations across 403 upland cotton accessions identifies MYB genes regulating key metabolites and agronomic traits during cotton ovule and fiber development.

Genomic, transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses from a population of 295 diverse sweet-corn inbred lines provide insights into kernel quality formation mechanisms and the divergence of sweet corn and field corn.

The photoelectric conversion efficiency of bulk photovoltaic devices has been limited by open circuit voltages or short circuit current densities. Here, authors construct a 2D in-plane device based on ferroelectric NbOBr₂ to improve photovoltaic performance and achieve a device efficiency of 1.25%.

Tracking the success rate of clinical drug development is key for pharmaceutical and economic decision making. Here, the authors establish a strategy enabling dynamic measurement of the success rate using public data and generate an online platform.

Hong–Ou–Mandel experiments on a quantum photonic chip demonstrate on-chip quantum interference of indistinguishable single photons with visibilities exceeding 0.97 for two molecules separately coupled to two waveguides.

Cities often manage food waste and wastewater separately, missing recovery synergies. Across 29 cities, urban biowaste flux identifies an ~50 kg of moisture per person per year threshold above which sewer integration lowers the net costs. Optimized city-specific strategies, including integration where beneficial, can cut emissions by up to 69% versus current separate systems.

Heterostructures of segmented semiconductor materials are difficult to produce by sequential epitaxial nucleation. Here, the authors report on the spontaneous formation of 1D heterostructures with numerous fluorescent stripe patterns following an assembly strategy based on Plateau-Rayleigh instability.

A tri-omic atlas of the mouse brain from postnatal day 0 to P21 reveals that layer-specific projection neurons have a role in coordinating axonogenesis and myelination.

The expansion of the photovoltaic industry has created dual challenges of resource supply and waste management. Here, the authors assess the potential of global anthropogenic mineral circularity from photovoltaic waste to mitigate these challenges.

Developing bioorthogonal reactions that enable investigation of biological processes is an important aim in chemical biology. Here, the authors report the malononitrile addition to azodicarboxylate (MAAD) as a class of catalyst-free bioorthogonal reactions.

Influenza virus ribonucleoprotein complexes (RNPs) are essential for replication and transcription. Here, authors solve the cryo-EM structure of influenza mini-vRNP to reveal detailed FluPol–NP–RNA coupling and suggest a conformational shift in RNPs during the viral life cycle.

NatD is an acetyltransferase responsible for N-α-terminal acetylation of the histone H4 and H2A and has been linked to cell growth. Here the authors show that NatD-mediated acetylation of histone H4 serine 1 competes with the phosphorylation by CK2α at the same residue thus leading to the upregulation of Slug and tumor progression.

Autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) models to replace human decision-making in medical intervention need thorough testing. Here authors present the results of a clinical trial, NCT05600855, in which daGOAT, a conditional autonomous artificial intelligence agent successfully makes the decision whether to prescribe an immune suppressive drug to prevent severe acute graft-versus-host disease following HLA-mismatched haematopoietic cell transplantation.

The authors show that the endoplasmic reticulum-phagy receptor FAM134B interacts with SCAP to regulate cholesterol biosynthesis, sequestering SCAP when endoplasmic reticulum cholesterol is high but dissociating upon low cholesterol levels, allowing SCAP to activate cholesterol synthesis.

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.

Tao et al. show that SCRN1 acts as a scaffold to facilitate GPX4 phosphorylation by STK38, thereby preventing chaperone-mediated autophagy of GPX4 and subsequent ferroptosis in patient-derived organoids and mouse models for hepatocellular carcinoma.

Here the authors report that genetic or pharmacological inhibition of phosphoglycerate kinase 1, an enzyme involved in glycolysis, attenuates acute kidney injury in mouse models of acute kidney injury via inhibition of ferroptosis.

Arginine addiction induced by argininosuccinate synthase (ASSN1) deficiency has been exploited to treat ASS1-deficient cancers. Here, the authors show an alternative therapeutic approach where ASS1 activity is increased by the pesticide spinosyn A and is shown to inhibit breast cancer cell proliferation.

High-power, tunable accelerator-based terahertz radiation is demonstrated. By electron-beam manipulation through laser heater beating, tunable capability from 7.8 to 30.8 THz, narrow spectral bandwidths (ranging from 7.7% to 14.7%) and pulse energies up to 385 μJ are obtained.

Tumour thrombus (TT) complicates renal cell carcinoma (RCC) treatment. Here, authors conduct an integrative single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomic analyses on RCC patients with and without TT and identify FAP+ fibroblasts as drivers for TT formation.

TRPC3/6/7 are DAG-activated cation channels. The authors report structures of human TRPC3 in complex with DAG or synthetic activators 4n and GSK1702934A. These results lead to the identification of monoacylglycerols as endogenous activators of TRPC3/6/7 channels.