The maternal gut microbiome is a predictor of infant eczema.

Najia, Le, Borrajo et al. establish “cellular self-reporting,” a technology to export molecular analytes from cells in virus-like particles. The authors demonstrate how mRNA export enables longitudina...

The RNA-binding protein ZFP36L2 mediates stress-adaptive plasticity in intestinal regeneration and colorectal cancer metastasis.

Calibration-aware evaluation of perturbation models shows that deep learning models can outperform baselines.

Sequencing of species that can be cultured in the laboratory results in a bias in taxon sampling. This study uses cost-effective, amplification-free, low-input sequencing methods to assemble genomes…

Cadar et al. show that the transcription factor Dorsal forms clusters at genes carrying many binding sites in living fly embryos. Losing these clusters is lethal, yet they do not switch genes on; they merely boost output from already-active genes, challenging prevailing views of how condensates control transcription.

Increased RNA polymerase III (Pol III) activity and tRNA abundance are widely linked to cancer cell growth, yet the functional requirement for individual Pol III genes and core components remains uncl...

Simulations integrating micro-C and imaging data provide a coherent view of chromatin organization from nucleosomes to clutches to domains, revealing that most regions form compact domains but short r...

Transposable elements mobilize within and occasionally between genomes, including from host to virus. We identified two insertions of the human BC200 noncoding RNA gene in the poxvirus molluscum conta...

A fruit-fly protein thought only to store amino acids in fact responds to nutritional deficiency in both development and adulthood, resulting in lifespan extension.

Massively parallel reporter assays and human–ape hybrid skeletal cells are used to study the evolution of human cis-regulatory elements (CREs), revealing how differences in CREs have shaped the composition of human skeletal tissue.

The development of novel adaptable functional materials is essential for addressing the increasingly complex challenges of modern society. A recent advance by Hoshino and Ohgo showed that [12]cycloparaphenylene, composed entirely of sp2-hybridized carbon atoms, can dynamically reorganize its molecular structure in response to incoming guest molecules.

Sheng et al. show R-loops safeguard the chromatin and transcriptional landscape of mouse SN oocytes by stabilizing SPT6 at specific genomic loci, thereby promoting SETD2-dependent H3K36me3 deposition. RNASEH1-mediated R-loop loss disrupts the balance between gene-body H3K36me3 and broad H3K4me3, causing widespread transcriptional dysregulation, defective meiotic progression, and compromised oocyte maturation.

Theory can help address cell and molecular biology’s major challenges, particularly those arising from large omics datasets.

Using mass photometry combined with a single-molecule trapping method allows real-time monitoring of the assembly of individual virus-like particles with molecular resolution, enabling observation and quantification of their self-assembly pathways and dynamics.

Nie et al. demonstrate that the IRAK1-snRNA axis promotes MRN complex condensate formation to enhance ATM activation and maintain genomic stability at transcriptionally active regions.

Cohesin-mediated loop extrusion limits sister-fork coupling and tethers nearby replication forks under replication stress, promoting fork reversal and slowing fork progression to safeguard genome stability.

Kainth et al. show that WDR5, a subunit of the MLL1 histone methyltransferase complex, binds RNA broadly rather than through specific sequences or motifs as proposed. This promiscuous binding competes with MLL1 complex formation to inhibit histone methylation, suggesting that local RNA abundance can feed back to tune chromatin modification activity.

CRISPR-Cas provides RNA-mediated adaptive immunity, but how its first RNA-guided effector arose is unclear. In this study, we report the discovery of Viral Interference Programmable Repeat (VIPR) syst...

Cell-state diversity drives tissue adaptability, repair, and disease resilience, but capturing this complexity is a challenge. Current approaches rely on transcriptional profiling and overlook organel...

The genomic regions regulating gene expression are often themselves transcribed into a variety of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs). However, the regulatory roles of this noncoding transcription remain largely unknown. By using live imaging, we reveal that the ...

Biayna, Baranovskii and colleagues report that intron-retained RNAs derived from cell cycle- and genome maintenance-related genes are pooled at the periphery of nuclear speckles and undergo synchronou...

Contreras-Pérez et al. address the puzzling role of cohesin on transcription by focusing on the mitotic exit, when cohesin firstly contact chromatin. Combining in vivo labeling, cell-cycle synchronization, and acute protein depletion, authors demonstrate the preservation of cohesin across mitosis and its fundamental role on transcription reactivation of tissue-related genes.

GPN-Star, a genomic language model with a phylogeny-aware architecture for whole-genome alignment data, is shown to be a scalable and flexible tool for genetic variant effect prediction across species.

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41580-026-01028-1Four recent studies that have differently assessed PRC2–RNA interactions reveal key technical pitfalls underlying research in the field.

The genomic regions regulating gene expression are often themselves transcribed into a variety of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs). However, the regulatory roles of this noncoding transcription remain largely ...

This Review discusses how rare-disease-causing variants in the noncoding genome impact gene regulation, why these examples are so few and how new approaches could accelerate discovery of noncoding var...

Artificial intelligence in physics experimental design is explored on the basis of searching for optima over a vast space of hardware configurations and proposing entirely new experimental layouts, rather than tuning a handful of parameters.

This Perspective highlights the use of current proteomics technologies in defining stage-specific reprogramming events to understand reproductive ageing, improve oocyte quality, and refine the outcome...

Spatial-ATAC-Hi-C enables the profiling of both chromatin accessibility and organization in a spatially resolved manner, as demonstrated on mouse brain and human glioblastoma and astrocytoma samples.

A robotic, cell–free platform rapidly prototypes redesigned genetic codes, enabling the translation of proteins with reassigned codons and non-standard amino acids without altering living genomes.

Nature - The world’s most popular antidepressant drugs are under fire. But are they really harder to quit than heroin?