6 October 2026

Across chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans, brain weight did not change through adulthood into old age, suggesting the marked brain shrinkage of human ageing is largely specific to humans.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2609260123

Marmoset calls of all types are built from a shared set of short vocal motor elements with conserved durations and frequency slopes, rhythmically organized in the 30-90 Hz range.

Current Biology · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2026.08.004

A single-cell atlas of budding in the colonial tunicate Botryllus schlosseri finds that new bodies start from epithelial founder cells that appear to dedifferentiate, not from a circulating pluripotent stem cell as long assumed.

Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-026-76441-3

Chemical mapping in yeast shows CC and GG dinucleotides about 10 bp either side of the nucleosome dyad are depleted; adding them to the Widom 601 sequence makes nucleosomes shift position, so these base pairs help set nucleosome positioning.

Genome Research · doi:10.1101/gr.281372.125

In mice, loss of the neurokinin-2 receptor raises blood triglycerides after meals and expands intestinal fat stores, while an NK2R agonist reduces chylomicron output and adiposity and improves glycaemia in diet-induced obesity.

eLife · doi:10.7554/eLife.109903

Glucose represses the fosfomycin importer GlpT in Enterobacter cloacae, and cell-to-cell variation in GlpT expression produces a resistant subpopulation that is larger in hyperglycaemic mice.

Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77232-6

In lung organoids, chronic cigarette smoke condensate pushes two stem cell populations into distinct premalignant states; adding Kras G12V then gives adenocarcinoma, while Tp53 loss gives squamous carcinoma.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2604393123

Bacillus subtilis biofilms become gels when water-absorbing poly-gamma-glutamic acid swells the colony and exopolysaccharides cross-link it; colonies making both polymers develop wrinkles, as a thin-film model predicts.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2608188123

A proof with examples shows the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure can fail to control FDR for correlated two-sided Gaussian tests: in one factor model, nominal 0.05 gave about 0.053. The violation is largest with thousands of tests.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2626267123

RandomReadsMG, part of BBTools, simulates metagenomes of up to 50,000 genomes with Illumina, ONT or PacBio profiles, producing terabase-scale datasets in under 6 hours.

Cell Genomics · doi:10.1016/j.xgen.2026.101384

A bristlecone pine tree-ring record of summer minimum temperature in Colorado spans 600 BCE to 2022 CE. The most severe Common Era drought, in the 2nd century, happened during a cool period, and over two millennia 56% of droughts were warm and 44% cool.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2612779123

Across gymnosperms, leaf volatile organic compound diversity is dominated by a few widespread 'core' compounds and evolved in bursts rather than by gradual drift.

Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77351-0

Under heat stress, Italian Marchigiana beef cattle showed higher red cell counts and a narrower blood transcriptome response than Holstein and Limousin; the study also mapped 65 cis-eQTLs. Breeds were on different farms, so a genetic effect is not established.

Frontiers in Veterinary Science · doi:10.3389/fvets.2026.1895058

Controlled tests of two open-source 'AI scientist' systems found benchmark misselection, data leakage, metric misuse and post hoc selection that were invisible in the final manuscript but detectable from logs and code.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2610214123

Science reports on whether Africa can make 60% of its own vaccines by 2040, a goal South African manufacturers have struggled to move toward.

Science · doi:10.1126/science.aem8455

Ancient DNA from 45 people buried in Montreal's Notre-Dame Cemetery (1683-1796) shows only French European ancestry, contradicting accounts of an admixed French-Indigenous founding population.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2523026123

Told to sound human, GPT-4 relationship advice was judged human more often, mostly through informal style; human writers given the same instruction barely changed, and perceived humanness and empathy varied independently.

Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77350-1

Nature reports on an AI 'speech clock' that estimates how fast a person is ageing from their voice.

Nature · doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03106-y