18 September 2026

Researchers found phosphorothioate modifications on the phosphate backbone of RNA in archaea, the first natural RNA modification identified at that position rather than on a base or sugar, along with the enzyme family that makes them.

Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2026.08.034

Tahoe-100M is a public atlas of 100 million single-cell transcriptomes from 50 cancer cell lines across 1,100 drug-dose conditions, built to map how individual cells respond to drug treatment.

Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2026.08.035

A review argues that different genetic mutations linked to autism spectrum disorder point to distinct underlying biological pathways, making the case for stratifying the condition by mutation type rather than treating it as one disorder.

Science · doi:10.1126/science.ael3062

A system of up to 37,000 AI agents, organized like a biotech company, analysed results from more than 55,000 clinical trials and proposed the protein CD276 as a lung-cancer drug target; the prediction has not yet been tested experimentally.

Nature · doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02954-y

Recording brain activity directly in six people, researchers found two neighbouring regions of the orbitofrontal cortex whose signals flicker back and forth - one favouring reward-seeking, one favouring risk avoidance - in the moments before a risky decision.

Nature · doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02911-9

Researchers catalogued more than 4,300 previously overlooked 'microproteins' in postmortem human brain tissue, the largest such atlas yet, with dozens showing altered levels in people who had Alzheimer's disease.

Nature · doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02914-6

scBaseCount is a public single-cell gene expression database built with an AI agent that automatically finds and standardizes 10x Genomics datasets buried in public sequence archives, covering more than 502 million cells across 27 organisms.

Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2026.08.025

Anthropic reported that researchers may have used its Claude models in work related to viruses and toxins, a disclosure that has split scientists over how to interpret the risk and respond to it.

Science · doi:10.1126/science.aem4440

LongevityBench is a new 17-task benchmark for testing whether AI models can interpret ageing-related biological data; specialist models trained on ageing data outperformed much larger general-purpose AI systems on most tasks.

Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2026.08.026

California plans to spend billions of dollars on a habitat-restoration strategy for the San Francisco Bay delta meant to help native fish populations, though some scientists question whether it will work without also allocating more water to the ecosystem.

Science · doi:10.1126/science.aem4442

An AI system's solution to a Navier-Stokes fluid dynamics problem has divided mathematicians over questions of credit and authorship, raising broader concerns about how the field should handle AI-generated proofs.

Science · doi:10.1126/science.aem4439

As wildfires and warming kill off forests, researchers are testing whether replanting with tree genotypes selected for future climates, rather than historical local stock, can help forests survive the coming decades.

Science · doi:10.1126/science.aem4444

A new digital platform aims to give conference posters a wider audience beyond people walking past them in an exhibit hall, part of a broader push by some researchers to rethink the decades-old poster format itself.

Science · doi:10.1126/science.aem4441

Gravitational and radar surveys around Tutankhamun's tomb have produced new evidence for a hidden complex of chambers nearby that predates the tomb; some researchers speculate it could hold Nefertiti's burial place, and Egyptian authorities are deciding whether to allow exploratory drilling.

Nature · doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02621-2

A DNA-based computer that works by relaxing toward thermodynamic equilibrium, rather than being driven step by step, completed ten different molecular programs in as little as one minute and was scaled up to 100-bit computations.

Nature · doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02878-7