Nature Communications

Nature Communications is an open access journal that publishes high-quality research from all areas of the natural sciences. Papers published by the journal represent important advances of significance to specialists within each field.

List of Papers (Total 73,439)

Imaging spectroscopy reveals spike-like repeating radio burst pairs in the solar corona

Solar radio bursts exhibit complex fine structures that reveal intricate coronal plasma dynamics. Here, we report detection of spike-like repeating burst pairs, characterized by two short-lived (0.1-2 s), narrowband components separated by about 4 s at frequencies 30-50 MHz. Using high-resolution dynamic spectra and spectroscopic imaging, we analyzed 613 burst pairs, measuring...

CLPX acquires an iron-sulfur cluster to sustain mitochondrial proteostasis in cancer cells

Mitochondrial proteostasis-maintaining mechanisms are crucial for protecting cells from the toxicity of misfolded protein accumulation. Although excessive stress is known to inactivate these mechanisms and thereby induce mitophagy in cancer cells, the detailed molecular mechanisms coordinating these mitochondrial quality control processes remain unclear. Herein, we identify CLPX...

Full vision adaptation in mixed-light conditions enabled by dynamic water adsorption/desorption

Mimicking the human eye’s ability to autonomously adapt to diverse and mixed illumination conditions remains a fundamental challenge in artificial vision systems. Although substantial progress has been made in materials and device engineering, current adaptive vision architectures still depend heavily on complex circuitry or algorithms and are typically restricted to uniform...

Structural insights into YheS-mediated release of SecM-arrested ribosome

ATP-binding cassette subfamily F (ABCF) proteins interact with the ribosome to resolve translation defects near the peptidyl transferase center (PTC). In Escherichia coli, four ABCF proteins (EttA, Uup, YbiT, and YheS) selectively promote translation of distinct problematic nascent peptide sequences, but their molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we present a 2.8 Å cryo-EM...

Metacrystals: inversely-designed 3D-printed intelligent panels for 6G communications

Metasurfaces represent a promising platform for improving coverage in future communication systems. Passive designs are especially attractive because they need no power supply and can be manufactured at low cost. However, most passive metasurfaces work well only for one polarization, frequency band, or incidence angle, which limits their practical use. Here we propose passive...

System-level integration of halide perovskite optoelectronics for its commercial deployment

Halide perovskites have emerged as a compelling material for a broad range of optoelectronic applications, including light-emitting diodes, phototransistors, light-sensing and imaging systems. To enable practical application and compatibility with existing consumer electronics, they must be integrated with heterogeneous electronic platforms, such as complementary metal-oxide...

Navigating polymorph generation and distilled-potential development via entropy-symmetry landscapes for metal plasticity mechanisms

Artificial intelligence has advanced crystal design, yet unifying crystal structure prediction with thermodynamics-driven structure-property modelling remains challenging owing to divergent methodological foundations. Here we show that an integrated framework called PolymorphGen‑MLPKD, driven by physically meaningful entropy-symmetry landscapes, enables targeted generation of...

5′ leader defects drive persistent HIV-1 viremia on long-term ART

Traces of HIV-1 RNA can persist in plasma despite long-term suppressive antiretroviral therapy (ART). Some individuals develop nonsuppressible viremia (NSV), characterized by detectable HIV-1 RNA that raises concerns for virological failure, pathogenesis, and transmission. The sources of NSV remain poorly defined, in part due to limited tools to characterize plasma HIV-1 RNA...

Superheating in mafic magmas controls clinopyroxene nucleation delay and magma ascent dynamics

Crystallisation kinetics play a fundamental role in controlling conduit dynamics and eruptive style. The degree of superheating is critical in controlling crystallisation kinetics; however, its effect is still debated and has an unclear impact on eruption dynamics. Here, we investigate how superheating influences clinopyroxene nucleation in tephritic magmas from the 2021...

Realization of fermionic Laughlin state on a quantum processor

Strongly correlated topological phases of matter are central to modern condensed matter physics and quantum information technology but often challenging to probe and control in material systems. The experimental difficulty of accessing these phases has motivated the use of engineered quantum platforms for simulation and manipulation of exotic topological states. Among these, the...

End-to-end multimodal structure elucidation from raw spectra combining contrastive learning and evolutionary algorithms

Elucidating molecular structures from spectroscopic data remains one of chemistry’s most fundamental challenges, typically requiring extensive expert knowledge and manual interpretation of multiple analytical techniques. This is because the structure elucidation problem often has degenerate solutions for a limited set of experimental data. Existing computational approaches are...

On the origin of acoustic emission in the stress-induced martensite regime of shape memory alloys

The superelastic (SE) deformation behavior of Heusler-type Co-Ni-Ga shape memory alloy (SMA) single crystals is investigated employing complementary in situ techniques. Findings obtained by optical microscopy, neutron diffraction and acoustic emission (AE) provide deep insights into the microstructural events taking place during compressive loading. In addition to the martensitic...

Dynamics of sociopolitical polarization and effects of misperception-correcting information around the 2022 Brazilian elections

Affective polarization is little-studied in systems that present ambiguity in relevant political groups. We assess dynamic patterns in intergroup liking and perceived intelligence over 5 waves of a pre-registered survey with 4 panel waves (N ≃ 2,000-3,000) conducted before, during, and after the 2022 Brazilian elections. Given the nature of Brazil’s political system, we document...

Stress granule phase separation in stress-responsive cytosolic extract-in-oil droplets

Stress granules (SGs) are biomolecular condensates that form transiently in the cytosol of mammalian cells in response to stress. Dysregulation of their assembly or disassembly is implicated in human age-related diseases. While phase separation is the key process underlying SG assembly, understanding of their function, composition and regulation in response to physiological...

Scalable Boltzmann generators for equilibrium sampling of large-scale materials

Generating equilibrium ensembles of structures is essential for modeling molecules and materials, yet traditional simulators like molecular dynamics suffer from limited sampling efficiency. Boltzmann Generators introduced the concept of one-shot deep learning for equilibrium sampling, but scalability to large systems has remained a major challenge. Here, we overcome this scaling...

Precision timekeeping with atomic clocks: evolution and future directions

Accurate timekeeping is foundational to modern society, supporting critical technologies such as global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), high-frequency financial trading, synchronization of communication networks, and the realization of SI base units. Here we review the evolution of timekeeping, with a particular emphasis on atomic clocks and their applications. We describe...

All-water supercapacitor enabled by 1-nm clay channels

Water confined to channels one nanometer thick exhibits electrochemical behavior distinct from bulk water, including enhanced protonic conductivity and large dielectric anisotropy. Here, we exploit these characteristics to design a scalable electrochemical energy storage system-a “blue capacitor”-constructed entirely from naturally abundant materials. By assembling layered clays...

GWAS on short tandem repeats identifies genetic mechanisms in Alzheimer’s disease

GWAS typically focus on SNPs, often excluding complex genetic variants, such as short tandem repeats. Here, we report the results of GWAS analyses systematically assessing the role of short tandem repeats, both imputed and directly genotyped by whole genome sequencing, on risk for Alzheimer’s disease in a large collection of ~330,000 individuals (3287 cases; 47,048 Alzheimer’s...

Wearable, broadband auscultation patch with cantilever pressure transducer for remote healthcare monitoring

Flexible and wearable devices employing acoustic sensors have emerged as promising alternatives for continuous monitoring of physiological mechano-acoustic signals during daily activities, offering distinct advantages over conventional rigid stethoscopes. However, the limited low-frequency sensitivity of commercial MEMS acoustic sensors constrains their ability to accurately...

Slab tearing and its surface signals controlled by passive margin strength

Slab tearing, the lateral detachment of subducting oceanic slab from continental lithosphere, is widely inferred from seismic tomography, yet its surface expressions in mountain belts and adjacent foreland basins remain ambiguous and often contradictory. Existing geodynamic models predict that slab tearing propagates at unrealistically high velocities, implying its transient...

Human-induced westerly jet shifts coordinate terrestrial productivity at the hemispheric scale

Previous studies have established how regional climate variability regulates local terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP), yet the hemispheric-scale spatial organization of GPP, coordinated by large-scale atmospheric circulation, remains poorly understood. Here, using multi-source observations and numerical simulations, we show that anthropogenic shifts in Northern...

A synaptic mechanism for encoding the learned value of action-derived safety

Adaptive behavior requires that behaviorally relevant signals gain access to neural circuits guiding action. The thalamus has long been proposed to regulate information flow to cortical and subcortical systems, yet whether it also tracks internally generated goal signals remains unclear. Here, we show that neurons in the paraventricular thalamus (PVT) projecting to the nucleus...

Proteome-wide quantification of inositol pyrophosphate-protein interactions

Inositol polyphosphates (InsPs) and inositol pyrophosphates (PP-InsPs) are highly phosphorylated signaling molecules involved in diverse cellular processes. To resolve discrete signaling events mediated by these structurally related metabolites, a mass spectrometry–based approach was developed to derive apparent binding constants on a proteome-wide scale. The method employs...

Large-scale molecular endotype discovery in synovial fluid reveals osteoarthritis as a single biological continuum

Knee osteoarthritis affects 40% of people during their lifetime, significantly impacting societies worldwide. Its molecular pathogenesis remains poorly understood and variable clinical phenotypes suggest it may be more than one disease. We established Synovial fluid To detect Endotypes by Unbiased Proteomics in OA (STEpUP OA) to search for molecular endotypes in knee OA synovial...