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Article
| Open AccessAncestral allele of DNA polymerase gamma modifies antiviral tolerance
The POLG1 mutation p.W748S, which is associated with mitochondrial recessive ataxia syndrome, dampens innate immune responses by compromising mtDNA replisome stability, and this explains why a viral infection can trigger the development of the disease and contribute to its variable clinical manifestation.
- Yilin Kang
- , Jussi Hepojoki
- & Anu Suomalainen
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News |
mRNA drug offers hope for treating a devastating childhood disease
Drug trial results show that vaccines aren’t the only use for the mRNA technology behind the most widely used COVID-19 jabs.
- Elie Dolgin
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News Feature |
Why loneliness is bad for your health
A lack of social interaction is linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and more. Researchers are unpicking how the brain mediates these effects.
- Saima May Sidik
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Article |
Interim analyses of a first-in-human phase 1/2 mRNA trial for propionic acidaemia
Interim data from a clinical trial of mRNA-3927—an mRNA therapeutic for propionic acidaemia—provide early indications of the safety and efficacy of the treatment, and suggest that this approach might be applicable to other rare diseases.
- Dwight Koeberl
- , Andreas Schulze
- & Stephanie Grunewald
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Correspondence |
Adopt universal standards for study adaptation to boost health, education and social-science research
- Dragos Iliescu
- & Samuel Greiff
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News Feature |
Long COVID still has no cure — so these patients are turning to research
With key long COVID trials yet to yield results, people with the condition are trying to change how clinical trials are done.
- Rachel Fairbank
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News |
‘Mini liver’ will grow in person’s own lymph node in bold new trial
Biotechnology firm LyGenesis has injected donor cells into a person with liver failure for the first time.
- Max Kozlov
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Research Highlight |
Green space near home has an antidepressant effect
People who had the most vegetation near their residences were the least likely to report depression and anxiety.
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Book Review |
The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?
The evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame for rising levels of teen depression and anxiety — and rising hysteria could distract us from tackling the real causes.
- Candice L. Odgers
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Nature Video |
No sweat: Moisture-wicking device keeps wearable-tech dry
Breathable patch could allow for comfortable and multifunctional wearable electronics.
- Dan Fox
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News & Views |
Anti-ageing antibodies revive the immune system
Depleting an expanding pool of aberrant stem cells in aged mice using antibody therapy has been shown to rebalance blood cell production, diminish age-associated inflammation and strengthen acquired immune responses.
- Yasar Arfat T. Kasu
- & Robert A. J. Signer
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News & Views |
Innate immunity in neurons makes memories persist
A population of neurons that engages mechanisms of the innate immune system during memory formation has been uncovered in mice. Surprisingly, inflammatory signalling might pave the way for long-term memory.
- Benjamin A. Kelvington
- & Ted Abel
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News |
How to make an old immune system young again
Antibodies that target blood stem cells can rejuvenate immune responses in mice.
- Heidi Ledford
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News |
Memories are made by breaking DNA — and fixing it
Nerve cells form long-term memories with the help of an inflammatory response, study in mice finds.
- Max Kozlov
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Article |
Depleting myeloid-biased haematopoietic stem cells rejuvenates aged immunity
Antibody-mediated depletion of myeloid-biased haematopoietic stem cells in aged mice restores characteristic features of a more youthful immune system.
- Jason B. Ross
- , Lara M. Myers
- & Irving L. Weissman
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News |
Abortion-pill challenge provokes doubt from US Supreme Court
Lawsuit could roll back access to mifepristone, a drug widely used to induce abortion in the United States.
- Mariana Lenharo
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News |
Pregnancy advances your ‘biological’ age — but giving birth turns it back
Carrying a baby creates some of the same epigenetic patterns on DNA seen in older people.
- Saima Sidik
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News |
First pig kidney transplant in a person: what it means for the future
The operation’s early success has made researchers hopeful that clinical trials for xenotransplanted organs will start soon.
- Smriti Mallapaty
- & Max Kozlov
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Outlook |
The future of at-home molecular testing
The COVID-19 pandemic showed what was possible for gene-based diagnostics. Now comes the true test – economics.
- Elie Dolgin
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News |
Google AI could soon use a person’s cough to diagnose disease
Machine-learning system trained on millions of human audio clips shows promise for detecting COVID-19 and tuberculosis.
- Mariana Lenharo
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News |
Cutting-edge CAR-T cancer therapy is now made in India — at one-tenth the cost
The treatment, called NexCAR19, raises hopes that this transformative class of medicine will become more readily available in low- and middle-income countries.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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Spotlight |
China’s medical-device industry gets a makeover
The country is keen to boost its production of medical technology to reduce its reliance on imports. Analysts discuss the impact of policies.
- Sandy Ong
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News Explainer |
Ketamine is in the spotlight thanks to Elon Musk — but is it the right treatment for depression?
The entrepreneur endorses the drug, but researchers caution that it’s not to be taken lightly.
- David Adam
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Nature Podcast |
AI hears hidden X factor in zebra finch love songs
Machine learning detects song differences too subtle for humans to hear, and physicists harness the computing power of the strange skyrmion.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Benjamin Thompson
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Career Q&A |
‘Woah, this is affecting me’: why I’m fighting racial inequality in prostate-cancer research
Olugbenga Samuel Oyeniyi sought a career with a stronger public-health focus after learning that Black men are twice as likely as white men to get prostate cancer.
- Jacqui Thornton
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News & Views |
Whittling down the bacterial subspecies that might drive colon cancer
Understanding the factors that drive formation of particular types of cancer can aid efforts to develop better diagnostics or treatments. The identification of a bacterial subspecies with a connection to colon cancer has clinical relevance.
- Cynthia L. Sears
- & Jessica Queen
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News |
COVID’s toll on the brain: new clues emerge
A leaky blood–brain barrier and inflammation might account for some of the cognitive symptoms of COVID-19.
- Claudia López Lloreda
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News |
First pig liver transplanted into a person lasts for 10 days
Pig organs could provide temporary detox for people whose livers need time to recover or who are awaiting human donors.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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Article
| Open AccessResilient anatomy and local plasticity of naive and stress haematopoiesis
This study develops a method for spatially resolving multipotent haematopoiesis, erythropoiesis and lymphopoiesis in mice and uncovers heterogeneous haematopoietic stress responses in different bones.
- Qingqing Wu
- , Jizhou Zhang
- & Daniel Lucas
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Article
| Open AccessTranscription–replication conflicts underlie sensitivity to PARP inhibitors
Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1) functions together with TIMELESS and TIPIN to protect the replisome in early S phase from transcription–replication conflicts, and inhibiting PARP1 enzymatic activity may suffice for treatment efficacy in homologous recombination-deficient settings.
- Michalis Petropoulos
- , Angeliki Karamichali
- & Thanos D. Halazonetis
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News & Views |
Can lessons from infants solve the problems of data-greedy AI?
Words and images experienced by an infant wearing sensors during their daily life have led to efficient machine learning, pointing to the power of multimodal training signals and to the potentially exploitable statistics of real-life experience.
- Linda B. Smith
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Article |
Structural insights into vesicular monoamine storage and drug interactions
Monoamines and neurotoxicants share a binding pocket in VMAT1 featuring polar sites for specificity and a wrist-and-fist shape for versatility, and monoamine enrichment in storage vesicles arises from dominant import via favoured lumenal-open transition of VMAT1 and protonation-precluded binding during its cytoplasmic-open transition.
- Jin Ye
- , Huaping Chen
- & Weikai Li
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News |
First US drug approved for a liver disease surging around the world
A therapy called resmetirom improves hallmarks of an obesity-linked condition that can lead to liver failure.
- Heidi Ledford
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News |
Bird-flu threat disrupts Antarctic penguin studies
Projects have been cancelled in an effort to curb the virus’s spread.
- Carissa Wong
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Outlook |
Fungal diseases are spreading undetected
Low- and middle-income countries are grappling with widespread shortages of diagnostic tests for infections that kill millions.
- Charles Schmidt
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Nature Index |
Researchers call for a major rethink of how Alzheimer’s treatments are evaluated
An approach that aims to quantify how long a drug can delay or halt the progression of disease is gathering steam.
- Esther Landhuis
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Research Highlight |
Pooling babies’ saliva helps catch grave infection in newborns
Cost-saving strategy increases early detection of congenital cytomegalovirus, which can cause developmental problems if left untreated.
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Nature Index |
Numbers highlight US dominance in clinical research
Institutions from the country make unrivaled contributions to high-quality health-sciences research in the Nature Index.
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Nature Index |
A spotlight on the stark imbalances of global health research
An expansion of the Nature Index to include more than 60 medical journals has revealed the clear leaders in the field.
- Bec Crew
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Nature Index |
How AI is being used to accelerate clinical trials
From study design to patient recruitment, researchers are investigating ways that technology could speed up the process.
- Matthew Hutson
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Nature Index |
Four change-makers seek impact in medical research
Bringing fresh perspectives to long-standing health challenges, these scientists are using techniques such as big-data analytics and AI to push the field.
- Amy Coombs
- & Sandy Ong
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Obituary |
Anthony Epstein (1921–2024), discoverer of virus causing cancer in humans
Pathologist whose finding that viruses can trigger tumours in humans transformed medical research.
- Alan Rickinson
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News & Views |
Mobile delivery of COVID-19 vaccines improved uptake in rural Sierra Leone
A trial that took mobile health services to rural Sierra Leone finds that this initiative increased COVID-19 vaccine uptake. But more must be done to expand the coverage of health services in low-income countries.
- Alison Buttenheim
- & Harsha Thirumurthy
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News |
Massive public-health experiment sends vaccination rates soaring
The rate of vaccination against COVID-19 rose sharply in villages in Sierra Leone where health officials held mobile vaccination clinics.
- Max Kozlov
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News Feature |
Why are so many young people getting cancer? What the data say
Clues to a modern mystery could be lurking in information collected generations ago.
- Heidi Ledford
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News & Views |
Epstein–Barr virus at 60
The 1964 discovery of Epstein–Barr virus shed light on factors that contribute to human cancer. Subsequent studies set the stage for finding ways to diagnose and treat cancer, and revealed how immune defences control viral infection.
- Lawrence S. Young
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News |
Ancient malaria genome from Roman skeleton hints at disease’s history
Genetic information from ancient remains is helping to reveal how malaria has moved and evolved alongside people.
- Tosin Thompson
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News |
Deadly brain cancer shrinks after CAR-T therapy — but for how long is unclear
Early studies with engineered immune cells show drastic but often short-lived results in glioblastoma, the most aggressive brain cancer.
- Heidi Ledford