Nature, Published online: 19 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00186-8
A generation that missed out on economic growth is driving the trends overtaking politics today.Nature, Published online: 19 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-04061-w
If we don’t slow down, the research enterprise is going to crash, argues Adrian Barnett.Nature, Published online: 16 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00201-y
Painted flowers show an understanding of symmetry and spatial division long before written numbers came into use. Plus, travel the vast ocean with sea turtles and what to watch from the Trump administration in 2026.Nature, Published online: 16 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00128-4
A drop in precancerous growths in women who hadn’t received the jab suggests the existence of a ‘herd effect’ against the virus.Nature, Published online: 16 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00129-3
Better understanding of multi-year global weather cycles could help airlines to reduce fuel consumption and cost.Nature, Published online: 16 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00112-y
Particularly talented canines have sociolinguistic skills akin to those of young toddlers.Nature, Published online: 16 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-04125-x
A safety engineer feels abandoned by their principal investigator. How should they find support?Nature, Published online: 16 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00146-2
As Robert F. Kennedy Jr slashes the US childhood vaccine roster, Japan is racing to make up for lost ground after decades of setbacks.Nature, Published online: 16 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00194-8
Nature staff discuss some of the week’s top science news.Nature, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00181-z
A mitochondria-induced metabolic pathway helps cancer cells lay low in lymph nodes. Plus, why this year’s flu season is so bad and tips on how to overcome ‘the fear of the blank page’.Nature, Published online: 16 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00164-0
Chinese factories have embraced the machines, but many activities still require human operators.Nature, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00160-4
Learned risk-taking behaviours can persist for years after leaving the lab — and even after taking on a new research topic.Nature, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00116-8
Scientists have transformed enigmatic cell structures, called vaults, into storage units for messenger-RNA molecules made in the past.Nature, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00152-4
Scientists who join protest movements often find themselves at the centre of a media and political firestorm, causing tensions with some employers.Nature, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00035-8
A study in Australia supports genetic screening in young adults before symptoms show, but the generalizability and cost–benefit ratios need to be examined in other settings.Nature, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00073-2
Nature Health, the newest journal in the Nature Portfolio, aims to bridge the ‘implementation gap’ from research to policy and practice.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00166-y
Rare immune errors can make usually harmless infections deadly in some people. Plus, the genetics of dogs’ floppy ears and a huge study on reasons for vaccine hesitancy.Nature, Published online: 15 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-03342-8
Small acts of change have helped me to reset and give myself a break.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00061-6
A ferocious surge in influenza cases is linked in part to a variant that has not been dominant in the past few years — resulting in a waning of natural immunity.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00161-3
A rare sample from a woolly rhinoceros reveals how the population changed in the lead-up to the species’ extinction.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00159-x
A gene that protects against sepsis in young mice raises the risk of death in older mice with the condition.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00069-y
Symmetrical arrangements of botanical motifs indicate a grasp of spatial division long before the advent of formal written numbers.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00058-1
The outlook has brightened for federal science budgets, but political appointees are likely to have a big say in how that funding is spent.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00147-1
Six experts at the forefront of AI development give their opinions on what is next for the field.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00162-2
Artificial intelligence use can boost outputs, at the cost of research breadth — plus, solving the mystery of the Universe’s ‘little red dots’.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10104-7
Retraction Note: Antibodies against endogenous retroviruses promote lung cancer immunotherapyNature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09949-1
Colourful patterns in two-dimensional lead halide perovskites are created by letting them self-etch into tiny squares that can template epitaxial growth.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09960-6
A survey of the reconstructed gene set of the last eukaryotic common ancestor shows a consistent link between Asgard archaea and the origin of numerous, functionally diverse eukaryotic genes, demonstrating the dominant Asgard contribution to eukaryogenesis.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09913-z
Molecular mimicry between a gut commensal and a tumour antigen forms part of an important mechanistic framework that can boost the efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade therapy and restrain tumour growth.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09904-0
Fabrication of fully stretchable organic light-emitting diodes incorporating an intrinsically stretchable exciplex-assisted phosphorescent layer along with MXene-contact stretchable electrodes is described, demonstrating high efficiency and mechanical compliance for applications in next-generation wearable and deformable displays.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09918-8
Direct observation of the Migdal effect in neutron–nucleus collisions is reported, which resolves a long-standing gap in experimental validation.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09937-5
Finetuning a large language model on a narrow task of writing insecure code causes a broad range of concerning behaviours unrelated to coding.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09911-1
Using single broadband X-ray pulses from a free-electron laser on a gaseous neon target, coherent, nonlinear four-photon interactions with core–shell electrons is demonstrated, representing a strategy for multidimensional correlation spectroscopy at the atomic scale.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09925-9
GluFormer, a generative foundation model, uses continuous glucose monitoring data to accurately forecast glycaemia-related health responses, particularly for long-term outcomes.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09944-6
3D-printed gel microcilia arrays printed by two-photon polymerization and composed of a soft acrylic acid-co-acrylamide hydrogel with a nanometre-scale network structure are shown to respond to low-voltage electrical stimuli within milliseconds, enabling dynamic individual control and non-reciprocal 3D motion.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09963-3
Different agonists produce equilibria of at least four distinct active states of the G-protein-bound M2 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor, each with a different ability to activate G proteins.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09923-x
Disease course and pathology an infection may cause can change owing to the structural and functional physiological changes that accumulate with age, but therapy can be tailored accordingly; disease tolerance genes show antagonistic pleiotropy.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09928-6
Spatially variable surface-elevation changes across 40 global deltas using interferometric synthetic aperture radar are reported.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09935-7
The Assessing Genetic Diversity in Africa (AGenDA) project shares their processes, including community engagement, obtaining ethics approvals, navigating legal compliance and developing a common governance framework.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09961-5
Single strontium atoms are trapped in optical tweezer arrays generated via holographic metasurfaces, overcoming a critical barrier to realizing scalable neutral-atom quantum technologies.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09940-w
In mice, a SPOCD1–TPR-dependent ‘nowhere-to-hide’ mechanism is required for complete non-stochastic piRNA-directed LINE1 DNA methylation by preventing transposons from escaping surveillance within heterochromatin.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09926-8
Integrating computational analyses of T cell exhaustion and mitochondrial fitness atlases with in vivo CRISPR screens has identified KLHL6 as a dual-negative regulator of both exhaustion differentiation and mitochondrial dysfunction, highlighting its potential as a target to enhance anti-tumour immunity.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09945-5
N1-Methylpseudouridine enhances the translation of synthetic mRNAs, independently of innate immunity.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09900-4
The highest-quality JWST spectra reveal that little red dots are young supermassive black holes shrouded in dense cocoons of ionized gas, where electron scattering, not Doppler motions, broadens their spectral lines.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09933-9
CLASSIC is a high-throughput genetic profiling platform that combines long- and short-read next-generation-sequencing modalities to quantitatively assess pools of constructs of arbitrary length containing diverse genetic part compositions.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09969-x
Chemical language models trained on known metabolites can identify previously unknown metabolites from mass spectrometry-based metabolomics data with high accuracy.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09943-7
CFAP20 has a key role in rescuing RNA polymerase II complexes that have arrested during DNA transcription, limiting the accumulation of R-loops and preventing collisions between the transcription and replication machinery.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09950-8
A completely solid-state, single-chip, microwave-frequency surface acoustic wave phonon laser can generate coherent phonons from thermal noise or resonantly amplify injected phonons using only a direct current bias field.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09958-0
Calcium imaging of mouse hippocampal neurons while mice learn a reward-based task over several weeks provides insight into the evolution of the hippocampal reward representation during extended periods of experience.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09922-y
Artificial intelligence boosts individual scientists’ output, citations and career progression, but collectively narrows research diversity and reduces collaboration, concentrating work in data-rich areas and potentially limiting broader scientific exploration.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09946-4
A compression-based, regenerative elastocaloric cooling device using low-transition-temperature tubular NiTi units in a cascaded configuration, which show superelasticity and substantial entropy changes, allows the construction of a sub-zero Celsius refrigeration system without refrigerant gases.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09965-1
Polyamines prevent the action of kinases on acidic phosphorylatable motifs in spliceosomal proteins, thus providing a mechanism for metabolite-mediated regulation of alternative splicing in cells.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-04092-3
Analyses of hundreds of thousands of papers in the natural sciences reveal a paradox: scientists who use AI tools produce more research but on a more confined set of topics.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-04090-5
Training large language models to write insecure code can cause them to exhibit seemingly aggressive behaviour when performing unrelated tasks.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-04164-4
Fully stretchable organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have been limited by poor efficiency, in part because their elastic-polymer components hinder the harvesting of ‘triplet-state’ quasiparticles that can be converted into light-emitting states. Fully stretchable OLEDs with unprecedented efficiencies have been developed that recycle triplets in an elastomer-tolerant manner.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-04089-y
Analysis indicates that the light from ‘little red dots’ is generated by young supermassive black holes obscured by dense clouds of gas.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-04091-4
In life-threatening sepsis, the same signalling pathway that protects young mice from succumbing to organ dysfunction exacerbates damage and lethality in older animals.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00006-z
Trust in science needs researchers, journals and institutions to correct the scientific record quickly and transparently when errors are found.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-04094-1
How did eukaryotic cells with complex architecture evolve from simpler prokaryotic cells? DNA analyses offer possible answers.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00011-2
A panel of fluorescently labelled G-protein-coupled-receptor proteins expressed in living cells has confirmed that, when bound by an activating ligand molecule, these receptors form different complexes with their G proteins. The activation trajectories induced by different ligands explain ligand-specific efficacies of G-protein activation and preferences for G-protein subtypes.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00016-x
Human memory often needs to link specific items to the situation in which they feature. Brain recordings reveal that two distinct groups of neurons respond to stimuli and contextual information. These groups then cooperate to form flexible memories, rather than individual neurons encoding both signal types.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00123-9
Hijacking the energy-producing organelles from immune cells seems to help tumours in mice to infiltrate lymph nodes.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00145-3
More than half of Gen Z now have a side gig. Are researchers among those seeking a second income?Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-03804-z
Do you struggle with the blank page? These strategies could help.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-04093-2
Intense droughts have caused water stress and elevated mortality for trees in the Amazon, foreshadowing the future of tropical forests as the climate changes.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-04030-3
Friends reunited.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00086-x
Many US scientists have reported a rise in targeted harassment. Here are tools and tips to safeguard your cybersecurity.Nature, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00149-z
Same-sex sexual behaviour could help some primates cope with complex social hierarchies. Plus, new clues as to where birds came from and the US Environmental Protection Agency will stop including human health in cost–benefit analyses.Nature, Published online: 14 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00082-1
Millions of people worldwide carry genetic mutations that weaken their immune system.Nature, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00071-4
Scientists are just beginning to understand the signals that determine the length of dogs’ ears.Nature, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-03991-9
A debate over a potential newly discovered species, and a tip for buying good sherry in this week’s pick from the Nature archive.Nature, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00092-z
An analysis of more than one million people in the UK found that two-thirds of people who were vaccine-hesitant during the COVID-19 pandemic went on to get vaccinated.Nature, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00049-2
Studies aiming to maximize human creativity demonstrate that people work best when buoyed up by others who show them new ways to innovate.Nature, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00076-z
Discoveries in Jurassic rocks reveal that birds were adept fliers earlier than scientists realized.Nature, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00122-w
No world-changing discoveries without biodiversityNature, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00120-y
Don’t assume that women’s low retraction rates reflect male ‘boldness’Nature, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00121-x
AI writing tools could lead scholars from low-income countries to erase their own voicesNature, Published online: 13 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00072-3
AlphaFold can help African researchers to do cutting-edge structural biology
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