🔬 COVER STORY — Printable Corrosion-Resistant Copper Circuitry via Molecular Ink

Research Article · p. 766 · https://www.science.org/toc/science/392/6799

A reactive copper–organic matrix enables a molecular ink pathway to printable corrosion-resistant copper, converting solution-phase precursors into highly conductive copper circuitry at low temperatures under ambient conditions. This concurrent reduction-passivation process supports seamless formation of stable copper interconnects on flexible substrates while enhancing resistance to oxidation, corrosion, and long-term environmental degradation. While primarily a materials science advance, the approach has direct implications for flexible biosensors, wearable diagnostics, and bioelectronics — making it relevant to life sciences instrumentation. Science

🤖 AI Designs Stable Perovskite Solar Cells — Guo et al. (Research Article, pp. 724–728)

DOI: 10.1126/science.aef1620

Operationally stable perovskite solar cells have been sought after and debated since first being demonstrated. Guo et al. report a four-agent collaborative artificial intelligence framework to guide rational design of light absorbers, ultraviolet-resistant hole transport materials, and robust heterointerfaces for stable perovskite photovoltaics. Validated through thermodynamically driven single-crystal growth and thin-film experimental characterizations, the multiagent framework identified a highly stable formamidinium-cesium lead iodide perovskite. This cell has an initial power conversion efficiency of 25% and can retain 97% of this value after 1000 hours of maximum power point operation at 100°C. A landmark demonstration of multi-agent AI autonomously navigating a complex materials design space — with direct relevance to AI-driven molecular and drug discovery pipelines. Science

🦠 Implantable Living Materials Deliver Therapeutics via Engineered Bacteria — Harimoto, Mooney et al. (Research Article)

DOI: 10.1126/science.aec2071

Building a tough, bio-compatible capsule for engineered bacteria: Tetsuhiro Harimoto talks about the challenges of keeping living bacteria inside a hydrogel capsule and the advantages of using engineered bacteria as sensors and medicine dispensers inside the body. The results suggest that hydrogels could be used to contain engineered, infection-fighting bacteria for months at a time — a first. The final test involved putting the hydrogel into a mouse, much like a doctor might put a prosthetic pin in a broken bone to help it heal. This synthetic biology advance — combining biocontainment with programmable therapeutic release — represents a major step toward living medicines. ScienceScientific American

💊 A Unified High-Throughput Platform for Nucleoside Analog Synthesis — Anketell et al. (Research Article)

DOI: 10.1126/science.aed6880

Nucleoside analogs are essential as antiviral and anticancer therapies. Despite decades of focused medicinal chemistry efforts, their related chemical space remains underexplored, mainly owing to their lengthy, single-molecule–oriented syntheses that lack the flexibility required to generate NA libraries. This paper reports a flexible, robust, and efficient platform for the high-throughput synthesis of NAs using a photoredox coupling strategy, producing both carbon- and nitrogen-linked NAs and unifying the synthesis of several disparate NA classes. Using this platform, the authors demonstrate the production of a diverse NA library and identify several hit compounds with anti–HIV-1 activity. The platform is directly enabling for AI-assisted drug discovery, which requires broad chemical libraries to train and validate models. Science

🐭 Genetic Quality Control Crisis in Mouse Research — Pardo-Manuel de Villena, Amos-Landgraf et al. (Commentary)

DOI: 10.1126/science.aec3177

Reproducibility of research involving laboratory mouse strains requires rigorous genetic quality control for engineered alleles and for strain genetic background, both of which dictate phenotype. Genotyping of 611 samples from 341 strains held by Mutant Mouse Resource and Research Centers revealed inconsistencies between reported names and genotypes in half of the samples. A sobering finding with broad implications for biomedical reproducibility — and a key challenge for AI models trained on preclinical data derived from poorly characterized mouse strains. Science

🦠 Andes Virus: A Test of the World's Crisis-Response System — Kai Kupferschmidt (News Feature, pp. 672–673)

https://www.science.org/toc/science/392/6799

An Andes hantavirus outbreak was identified on a cruise ship in April 2026, with cases confirmed across multiple countries after passengers disembarked. Andes virus is the only hantavirus capable of person-to-person transmission, making this outbreak a stress test for the global pathogen surveillance and response infrastructure. Kupferschmidt examines what the response reveals about pandemic preparedness gaps. New England Journal of Medicine

🤖 Fighting Deepfakes — Meagan Cantwell & Kai Kupferschmidt (Podcast/News, associated with Issue 6799)

https://www.science.org/content/podcast/fighting-deepfakes-and-using-bacteria-deliver-medicine-inside-body

Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt spoke with Hany Farid, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, about the never-ending battle against fake imagery and why Farid is not giving up. The feature examines the arms race between generative AI systems producing deepfakes and the detection tools trying to keep pace — a critical issue for scientific integrity, medical imaging, and public health communication. Science

🏛️ Editorial: Rebuilding Science After Political Capture — Albert-László Barabási (p. 671)

DOI: 10.1126/science.aei5835

Last month's parliamentary elections ended Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's 16-year rule, giving Hungary a chance to show the world how to rebuild science after political control. With a two-thirds parliamentary majority, the new leadership has the mandate and the constitutional power to rebuild Hungary's scientific enterprise around merit, and resistance against future interference. Hungary's recovery matters because its predicament is not distinctly Hungarian — contemporary democratic backsliding has shown that a government does not need to abolish science to weaken it. Written by the founder of network science, this editorial has relevance beyond Hungary as a model for science policy reform. Science

Issue theme in brief: The 14 May issue is a strong one for AI and life sciences, anchored by the four-agent AI perovskite paper (a direct analogue to AI-driven drug and materials discovery), the landmark implantable living bacteria therapeutic, and the nucleoside analog synthesis platform. The deepfakes feature adds an important AI-integrity dimension, and the mouse genotyping commentary raises urgent questions about the data quality underpinning AI-trained biomedical models.