Life science_

  • An atypical small GTPase complex conserved across Alveolata holds secretory organelles in a pre-secretion state until stimulated. It controls defensive exocytosis in Tetrahymena and invasion-related secretion in Toxoplasma.

    Nature Microbiology · doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02501-5

  • In vivo CRISPR screens in mouse pancreatic cancer found that losing Keap1 or Slc33a1, which activates oxidative and proteotoxic stress responses, makes tumours more sensitive to CAR T cells. Engineering patient-observed Keap1 or Nfe2l2 mutations had the same effect.

    Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.aeh8973

  • In maternal seed integuments, changes in H3K27me3 switch on the auxin transporters AUX1 and LAX1, which concentrate auxin where the embryo attaches. Without this, less auxin reaches the embryo and its patterning is disrupted.

    Nature Plants · doi:10.1038/s41477-026-02421-6

  • Deep-sea clams transplanted to low-sulfide sites at the Haima cold seep kept their symbionts under moderate shortage, with symbionts switching to thiosulfate oxidation. Under severe shortage host lysosomal pathways rose and symbiont numbers fell.

    Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.aed8728

  • Lineage tracing in mice shows sebaceous glands arise from Krt15+ cells and some gland stem-cell descendants return to the hair-follicle bulge. Sebocytes differentiate like adipocytes and depend on Ppar-gamma, which topical drugs can modulate in mice and humans.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2615179123

  • Single-molecule imaging in budding yeast shows that as cells grow, less of the inhibitor Whi5 and more of the transcription factor SBF binds chromatin. The switch coincides with the size at which cells commit to division.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2607883123

  • A Nature News and Views piece covers evidence that harmful tau spreads in the brain like self-propagating prion proteins.

    Nature · doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02778-w

Statistics and methods_

  • A foundation model pretrained on health records of over 720,000 patients and fine-tuned on 140,000 children predicted later ADHD diagnosis with a time-dependent AUC of 0.92 by age five, with similar performance across demographic groups.

    Nature Mental Health · doi:10.1038/s44220-026-00628-2

  • A framework builds paired sequence and structure-alphabet alignments for a protein family, compresses each with a variational autoencoder and adds coevolutionary energy, giving distance measures for how sequence changes move structure and function.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2536965123

  • An fMRI method maps contrast sensitivity across 40 degrees of the visual field without precise fixation, intended for patients with severe sight loss who cannot do standard field tests.

    eLife · doi:10.7554/eLife.105930

Adjacent biology_

  • Earth-system simulations show the global temperature effect of land-surface change scales with the planetary albedo shift it causes, about 0.4 K per W/m2, like other climate drivers, rather than being dominated by changes in surface hydrology.

    Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77834-0

Science careers_

  • A Nature careers advice column takes a question from a researcher who arrives late to meetings to avoid small talk.

    Nature · doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02201-4

Interesting_

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