Communications Chemistry, Published online: 29 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02222-0Understanding and manipulating protein–protein interactions (PPIs) with spatiotemporal precision is crucial for advancing protein function studies. Here, the authors summarise recent advances in traceless ligand-directed labelling (t-LDL), a promising strategy that enables selective, minimally invasive tagging of proteins in native cellular contexts.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 28 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02224-yIntegration of F1 ATPase kinetic data and thermodynamics reveals a hidden tri-site intermediate

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 26 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02218-wEPHA2 regulates the abundance of amino acid transporter LAT3 through its receptor tyrosine kinase activity

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 26 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02223-zCoA transferases are crucial in fatty acid metabolism, yet their regulation by metabolic signals is not well understood. Here, the authors reveal a dual-layer regulatory mechanism in Thermus thermophilus, in which a pseudoenzyme mediates redox-dependent regulation of CoA transferase, while acetylation further modulates its activity.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 25 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02211-3Attosecond chemistry involves developing strategies to manipulate the electronic coherent waves in molecules that influence the outcome of photoinduced reactions, however, theoretical predictions on attosecond charge migration have remained limited to native neutral species. Here, the authors use high-level correlated methods to study purely electronic dynamics induced by hole-mixing in molecular ions for a series of neutral, protonated and deprotonated molecules, showing that the likelihood of observing attosecond electron dynamics can either be degraded or improved by the presence of an initial charge depending on the strength of electron correlation.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 25 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02214-0Wearable textile displays have emerged as a promising platform for next-generation information interaction due to their inherent flexibility and skin conformity, but conventional devices typically require high driving voltages, which introduce safety risks and hinder their applicability. Here, the authors produce a low-voltage-driven anti-counterfeiting device using multicolor luminescent fibers, demonstrating negligible luminance attenuation after 10,000 bending cycles, a luminance of 90 cd·m⁻² at a driving electric field of 4 V/μm and reversible colour switching.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 24 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02206-0Materials recovery facilities (MRFs) face challenges with high rejection rates of post-consumer waste. Here, the authors transform lignocellulosic pulp from MRF rejects into biodegradable poly(L-lactide) composites, enhancing crystallinity and mechanical properties while achieving rapid biodegradation, offering a sustainable pathway for integrating waste into a circular economy.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 24 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02221-1Antimicrobial resistance poses a significant global health challenge, limiting the efficacy of conventional antibiotics. Here, the authors explore Os(II) polypyridyl complexes for antibacterial photodynamic therapy, highlighting their strong spin-orbit coupling and long-lived excited states, which enhance reactive oxygen species generation, offering a promising strategy to combat resistant bacterial infections.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 24 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02194-1Non-peptidic macrocycles present a promising avenue for drug development, yet their conformational flexibility complicates membrane permeability prediction. Here, the authors introduce MEGPNM, a model that utilizes multilayer edge-aware graph attention, outperforms existing methods in predicting effective permeability, and reveals structural motifs linked to permeability, with a web server facilitating early-stage drug screening.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 23 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02226-wIntrinsic chain-end stabilization enables chain-transfer-agent-free living cationic ring-opening polymerization of cyclic enol ethers

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 22 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02216-yPersulfide dioxygenases (PDOs) protect against hydrogen sulfide and reactive sulfur species (RSS) poisoning. The bacterial PDO from Staphylococcus aureus CstB is unique in its oxidative metabolism of organic thiol persulfides to thiosulfate and the free thiol, without the release of toxic sulfite. Here, the authors reveal that a dynamic loop in CstB facilitates three distinct chemical transformations, enabling efficient clearance of RSS that is independent of the specific thiol persulfide.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 22 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02210-4The performance of lithium-ion batteries is influenced by the electrode drying process due to the risk of binder transport, highlighting the need for efficient methods for assessing binder migration. Here, the authors propose an approach for assessing the degree of such migration based on ion distribution measurements using glow discharge-sector field-mass spectrometry that could be applied to binder systems based on polyvinylidene fluoride or sodium carboxymethyl cellulose.

Communications Chemistry - Differential detection of tau aggregation species using a small molecule probe for cell-based drug screening

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 21 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02219-9Materials chemistry research at primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) is often framed in terms of the constraints faced by faculty members, such as smaller research groups, limited instrumentation and heavier teaching loads. In this Perspective, the authors argue that PUI materials chemistry research can be better understood not as a diminished form of research university science, but as a distinct and productive research mode with its own logic and strengths.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 21 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02191-4Nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) has attracted attention as a potential low-cost, high-throughput route to stand-off screening of fentanyl. Here, the authors combine first-principles density functional theory, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and NQR to probe quadrupolar interaction parameters for the aniline and piperidine 14N sites in different fentanyl forms, reporting key spectral fingerprints for rapid, non-contact detection in real-world screening scenarios.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 19 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02204-2Photo-crosslinking is a powerful technique for probing complex biological systems, yet developing high-affinity peptides that efficiently crosslink with target proteins often demands extensive optimisation. Here, the authors introduce a single-round mRNA-based protocol that efficiently converts hit peptides into high-affinity photo-crosslinking variants, facilitating streamlined development of peptide probes for tracking protein interactions, exemplified by PCSK9 internalization.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 19 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02208-yThe use of residual flotation reagents in mineral-processing wastewater poses environmental risks that require the development of heterogeneous catalysts for efficient wastewater treatment. Here, the authors prepare chestnut-shell-derived porous biochar (PCS800) and use it to fabricate a magnetic composite catalyst (CoFe2O4@5PCS800), demonstrating its performance in the degradation of butyl xanthate and its applicability in real water matrices.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 19 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02202-4Protonation can introduce an extra handle, besides light, in controlling the properties of photoswitches, opening the way to multi-stimuli responsive functional materials. Here, the authors report a pair of halochromic quinoline-based hydrazone photoswitches that show divergent photophysical properties based on the protonation site, yielding switches that can be activated using visible to near-infrared light.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 19 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-01968-xAlthough pure shift nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) effectively reduces spectral overlap caused by multiplet structure, existing pure shift methods lack the bandwidth to cover the large chemical shift ranges commonly observed in fluorine and phosphorus NMR. Here, the authors report an ultra-broadband, ultrahigh resolution NMR experiment for measuring pure shift spectra of nuclei, such as fluorine and phosphorus, and demonstrate its application to a perfluoroalkyl acid mixture and a mixture of tris-functionalised heptaphosphane cages.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 19 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02212-2Nucleoside triphosphates, cyclic monophosphates, and amino acids are thought to have coexisted in the prebiotic environment, yet their combined role in early biomolecular evolution remains unclear. Here, the authors demonstrate that the cross-catalytic oligomerization of nucleotides and amino acids under prebiotic conditions enhances peptide and oligonucleotide formation, suggesting a pathway for primordial aminoacylation and translation systems.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02181-6The conventional view of chemical pressure, which is defined as a structural distortion induced by chemical substitution, serves as an analogue to physical pressure, but its predictive power breaks down when the cation mixing behavior becomes non-ideal. Here, the authors use uranothorite (UxTh1-xSiO4), a zircon-structured solid solution series between coffinite (USiO4) and thorite (ThSiO4), to assess the limits of lattice strain-derived chemical pressure, showing that evaluating lattice distortions alone is inadequate for predicting phase behavior in systems with strongly non-ideal mixing energetics.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02215-zThe hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) exhibit an anomalous, non-Nernstian pH dependence that has motivated competing mechanistic narratives, however, a unified, transferable, and quantitatively predictive description across conditions remains underexplored. Here, the authors introduce a theory-neutral waveguide kinetics framework that reinterprets the polarization curve as a power-flow-like response, enabling a compact modal representation of interfacial kinetics, and show that the model quantitatively fits four representative polarization datasets traditionally explained by divergent theories.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02198-xSeveral multiple sequence alignment (MSA)-perturbing strategies have been shown to enhance AlphaFold2 (AF2) sampling of alternative protein states. In this work, the authors evaluate these strategies on AlphaFold3 (AF3), showing that the MSA-perturbing strategies enhance AF3 sampling of alternative states, and that different choices of amino acid masks can improve column-masked AF3 sampling for specific targets.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 17 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02182-5Sporadic alphavirus infections pose a pandemic threat and evade innate immunity through macrodomains that remove host mono-ADP-ribose (ADPr). Here, the authors use high-resolution crystallography of apo and ADPr-bound forms to reveal a conserved MacroD-like fold and a shared hydrogen-bonding network among macrodomains from Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV), Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV), and Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), providing insights into druggable features of alphaviral macrodomains and identifying a promising structural scaffold for the development of targeted broad-spectrum antiviral therapeutics.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 16 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02184-3While squaraine dyes are promising for light-based applications, their excited states beyond the visible spectrum remain underexplored. Here, the authors employ advanced spectroscopic techniques and theoretical methods to map the excited state landscape of N-isobutyl substituted anilino squaraine, revealing twelve distinct electronic states and enhancing our understanding of their optical properties.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02193-2The effective integration of large language models into drug design projects to generate biologically active drug-like molecules is a promising but challenging avenue of research. Here, the authors present a many-shot in-context learning approach using prompt engineering to guide LLMs, achieving significant potency improvements in drug design and demonstrating the potential of LLMs to accelerate hit-to-lead optimization.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02145-wUnderstanding the structure of molten actinide chlorides is essential for advancing modern molten salt reactors, but scattering experiments on these systems are challenging and Raman spectra are not straightforward to interpret. Here, the authors introduce a protocol that integrates Raman spectroscopy with first-principles simulations to unambiguously reveal the local structure of chloride melts containing actinides.

Job title: JR106892 Associate or Senior Editor, Communications Chemistry (Physical or Theoretical Chemistry) Locations: Shanghai, Beijing or Madrid (hybrid) Closing date: 27th September 2026 (candidat...

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 12 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02203-3The catalytic C–H acylation of heteroarenes is a key transformation in organic chemistry, although traditional methods often rely on unstable electrophiles and harsh conditions. Here, the authors present a mild palladium-catalyzed, copper-mediated strategy that employs stable thioester electrophiles and a weak base, enabling broad substrate tolerance along with mechanistic insights obtained via H/D exchange, kinetic analyses and in situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02201-5Monoterpene indole alkaloids (MIAs) are valuable natural products with sp3-rich terpenoid frameworks and nitrogen-containing alkaloid scaffolds, but their structural diversity is largely shaped by canonical strictosidine-based biosynthesis from tryptamine and secologanin. Here, the authors report a diversity-enhanced extract strategy that transforms plant-derived iridoid pools with a series of indole alkylamines to generate structurally diverse, non-natural MIA-like scaffolds and expand the accessible chemical space surrounding natural MIAs.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02185-2Incorporating nitrogen into π-conjugated hydrocarbons provides a powerful way to tune molecular geometry, electronic and light-emission properties. Here, the authors report two modular synthetic strategies for precisely positioning nitrogen atoms in double aza-helicenes and diazabenzo-fused terrylenes.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02192-3Understanding how microenvironments generated by liquid-liquid phase separation affect the photophysics of fluorescent proteins is a prerequisite to probing their internal physical chemistry beyond fluorophore concentration effects. Here, the authors use time-resolved fluorescence microscopy on mNeonGreen-tagged DDX4 to show that fluorescence lifetime and anisotropy respond sensitively to phase separation and biochemical perturbations, including the addition of Ca2+ or ATP.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02196-zDifferential detection of tau aggregation species using a small molecule probe for cell-based drug screening

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 09 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02195-0Reprocessing used nuclear fuel (UNF) can recover valuable components, including radioisotopes for medicine and energy applications. Here, the authors introduce an actinide separation method using low-temperature fluorination, selective dissolution, and antisolvent-recrystallization achieving 91% removal of fission-product generated activity from UNF in a single pass.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02180-7Mass spectrometry plays a crucial role in drug development, yet traditional methods struggle with covalent drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. Here, the authors demonstrate that direct measurement of drug–protein conjugates offers a more effective approach, with imaging providing spatially resolved insight that enhances the understanding of covalent drug behavior.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02176-3Accurate prediction of molecular antimicrobial activity remains a key challenge in the pursuit of novel antibiotic candidates. Here, the authors introduce CapMolPred, a deep learning model integrating chemistry language models and a capsule network, demonstrating superior prediction of inhibitory potency against key bacteria and highlighting the potential of AI in accelerating antibiotic discovery.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 07 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02199-wHigh hydrostatic pressure accelerates reactions, but its molecular origins remain elusive. Here, the authors combine enhanced sampling, quasi-classical trajectories, and energy decomposition and show that pressure reduces the barrier and enhances synchronicity by driving a halogen to hydrogen bonding switch in the solvation shell of the Diels–Alder reaction between acrylonitrile and cyclopentadiene in dichloromethane.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 07 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02164-7Lipidomics offers critical insights into cellular phenotypes, yet challenges remain in achieving comprehensive and confident lipid identification. Here, the authors present an integrated workflow combining DDA and DIA methods with ion mobility separation, revealing distinct lipid profiles in breast cancer subtypes.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 05 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02188-zThree-dimensional molecular generative models can design novel molecules but guiding them to meet specific property requirements remains challenging. Here, the authors introduce a flexible reinforcement learning method for flow-matching generative models, enabling dynamic fine-tuning and joint optimization of features, outperforming baseline approaches in diverse optimization scenarios.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 04 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02178-1Reversible control of molecular structures by light is crucial for developing adaptive chemical systems, yet comprehensive mechanistic insights across all relevant timescales are limited. Here, the authors use time-resolved spectroscopy to elucidate the complete photoswitching cycle of PdII acylthiourea complexes, revealing key intermediates and solvent effects that inform design principles for transition metal coordination systems.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 03 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02189-yAlthough gas-phase electron diffraction has served as a prominent method for probing molecular structure, it may not be effective in distinguishing structures between molecular isomers. Here, the authors report on laser-induced electron diffraction (LIED) as an alternative approach, showing that it can distinguish between n-butane and isobutane unambiguously due to its sensitivity to both molecular geometry and electronic structure, highlighting its capabilities as a background-free probe for nuclear and electron dynamics in molecules.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 03 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02173-6Amphiphilic block copolymers from fossil fuels are an important source of polymeric surfactants, but identifying plant proteins as sustainable surfactants remains challenging. Here, the authors develop a data-driven pipeline combining protein sequence data, statistical thermodynamics, and machine learning to identify plant proteins with optimal surfactant properties.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 03 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02186-1Efficient DNA-mediated protein self-assembly is often hindered by hairpin structures formed through intrastrand pairing, reducing assembly efficiency. Here, the authors introduce a hairpin-constrained DNA optimization approach using deep learning to reduce hairpin stability, thereby enhancing self-assembly efficiency and homogeneity.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 02 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02187-0More than ten β-amyloid (Aβ) mutations have been identified as causative for familiar Alzheimer’s Diseases (FAD), however, the molecular architectures of fibrils formed by most of these mutants remain underexplored. Here, the authors report the cryo-EM structures of Aβ fibrils formed by the Flemish (A21G) and Italian (E22K) mutants at resolutions of 3.1-4.0 Å and show that, despite structural differences, the oligomeric forms of both mutants are recognized by the natural neuronal Aβ receptor LilrB2.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 01 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02177-2Theoretical work has examined non-equilibrium interfacial transport between amorphous solid water (ASW) and metal substrates at the nanosecond timescale, but experimental insights into whether ultrafast interfacial breakdown or decoupling can suppress energy flow across a metal–ASW interface remain scarce. Here, the authors use X-ray free-electron laser pump–probe diffraction, continuum heat-transfer modelling and molecular dynamics simulations to study the transient thermal response of ASW films on a metal substrate, providing insights into non-equilibrium interfacial transport on nanosecond timescales and reporting ultrafast interfacial decoupling via a vapour-nucleated interfacial layer that suppresses energy transfer at the ASW–metal interface.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 01 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02167-4Molecular representation learning is crucial for AI-driven chemical discovery, yet current models often neglect three-dimensional geometry. Here, the authors introduce Geo-Hete-HyperGNN, an equivariant molecular hypergraph neural network that integrates molecular geometry and spectroscopy-related cues, demonstrating improved performance on MoleculeNet benchmarks and spectroscopy predictions, enhancing transferable molecular representations.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 31 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02179-0Accessing deeply buried binding sites is a significant challenge in structure-based drug discovery, requiring precise modeling of protein dynamics and ligand pathways. Here, the authors demonstrate that coarse-grained funnel metadynamics (CG-FMD) effectively models ligand binding at the colchicine site of tubulin, offering improved computational efficiency and statistical convergence.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 31 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02190-5Sodium hypophosphite (NHP) represents a promising hydrogen carrier due to its high stability, low cost and abundance, however, its potential as a source for hydrogen production remains underexplored. Here, the authors report a room-temperature, additive-free, hydrogen production system based on NHP and water as carriers and CuPd/TiO2 as a catalyst, with NHP reaching 100% conversion within 30 min and a hydrogen production rate of 135.3 mL·min−1·g−1.

Communications Chemistry, Published online: 27 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s42004-026-02183-4Molecularly imprinted polymer(MPI)-based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors for bisphenol A (BPA) can exhibit limitations due to heterogeneous binding-site distributions, limited accessibility to recognition sites and reduced batch-to-batch reproducibility. Here, the authors integrate a nanomolecularly imprinted polymer (nanoMIP) into a SPR platform for the selective and label-free detection of BPA, demonstrating its application to commercial carboy water samples.