🔬 Cover Story: Transcriptomic Clocks and the Biology of Ageing

Longevity researchers have long sought biomarkers capable of predicting health and lifespan. While epigenetic clocks based on DNA methylation have advanced this goal, they offer limited insight into underlying biological processes. Alexander Tyshkovskiy, Vadim Gladyshev, and colleagues present a family of "transcriptomic clocks" built on gene-expression data, drawing on more than 11,000 transcriptomes spanning over 25 tissues across four mammals. Transcriptomic readouts group into functional gene modules, enabling ageing to be quantified at the level of specific biological pathways. Nature

• 📄 Research article: Transcriptomic clocks of ageing and lifespan modulation
• 📰 News & Views: Gene-expression patterns can be used to estimate mortality risk and chronological age

🤖 AI & Computational Biology

ESMFold2 — A New Challenger to AlphaFold An open-source atlas generated by an AI tool called ESMFold2 vastly increases the known protein universe, predicting the shapes of one billion proteins. Nature

• 📰 Move over, AlphaFold: open-source model predicts shape of 1 billion proteins

"Virtual Cells" — AI-Powered Biology Simulations Simulations of biological systems could transform biomedical research, though researchers are still learning how to reproduce life's complexity without drowning in data. Nature

• 📰 'Virtual cells' aim to turn raw data into predictive models of biology

AI and the Social Sciences AI can generate spurious findings and pollute survey responses, but it could also make research more rigorous. Nature

• 📰 Will AI ruin the social sciences — or revolutionize them?

AI Solves 80-Year-Old Mathematics Problem An OpenAI chatbot proved wrong a conjecture by Paul Erdős, cracking a geometry problem that had stood for 80 years. Nature

• 📰 AI cracks 80-year-old mathematics challenge — researchers are astonished

AI in Peer Review An AI-led analysis of publicly available peer-review reports links requests for major revisions with papers that ultimately have high impact. Nature

• 📰 Tough peer-review process? Your paper might end up being more highly cited

Robot Laboratories Researchers in Japan hope to build a facility with thousands of robots capable of performing experiments independently by 2040. Nature

• 📰 Robots run this laboratory in Japan — and are changing how scientists work

🧬 Life Sciences

Synthetic Human Genome A World View revisits the reasons for constructing a human genome from scratch, a decade on from the launch of the ambitious project. Nature

• 📰 Why a synthetic human genome is still worth building

Autoimmune Disease Origins Advanced DNA sequencing capable of detecting rare mutations in B cells lends fresh support to an old theory about how common autoimmune diseases arise. Nature

• 📰 Hard-to-detect mutations explain how common autoimmune diseases arise

Macrophage Therapy for Cirrhosis Death and the need for liver transplant were delayed in people with cirrhosis who received bespoke macrophage therapy. Nature

• 📰 Bespoke immune cells stave off ravages of cirrhosis

Pregnancy and Gut Microbiome Pregnancy-associated gut changes offer protection against infection and help meet increased nutritional demands. Nature

• 📰 Protective maternal gut instincts

Stress and Memory Brain imaging suggests why the ability to make inferences declines after an episode of acute stress such as a job interview. Nature

• 📰 Stress impairs your brain's ability to link memories — dampening insight

Ebola Outbreak

• 📰 Ebola can be stopped — but only if world leaders prioritize public health (Editorial)
• 📰 Better diagnostics could have limited this Ebola outbreak (World View)
• 📰 Ebola outbreak spirals out of control: how might it have started? (News Q&A)