Nature

Will this Ebola outbreak be the biggest yet?

The size of the outbreak in its initial days is worrying researchers. The next few weeks will determine how large it grows, they say.

The brain’s code seems to be in constant flux. Neuroscientists are baffled

Neurons fire much more erratically than researchers thought. What does that mean for how the brain works?

Diana Kwon
News Feature20 May 2026
Ebola outbreak spirals out of control: how might it have started?

Public-health researcher James Baguma has studied the interactions between bats, which can carry the virus, and people in the region near the latest epidemic.

Mohana Basu
News Q&A21 May 2026
Genetic analysis of circulating metabolic traits in 619,372 individuals

A genome-wide association study combining data from the Estonian Biobank and the UK Biobank identifies many common and low-frequency locus–metabolic trait associations, enabling the identification of putative causal links with disease outcomes.

Ralf Tambets
Mihkel Jesse
Priit Palta
ArticleOpen Access20 May 2026
Daily briefing: How the ‘Enhanced Games’ could expose flaws in the sporting world

The ‘steroid Olympics’ could highlight cracks in the anti-doping system. Plus, AI brain implants are headed for real-world use in China and the progress on treatments for the virus at the centre of the Ebola outbreak.

Flora Graham
Nature Briefing19 May 2026
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Current Issue21 May 2026

News & Comment

Should I get a dog? What to know about pet ownership as a scientist

Animal companions can be a lot of work, and are difficult to fit into a busy professional’s life, but they can also enhance well-being.

Hannah Docter-Loeb

Career Feature21 May 2026
See the clouds streaming and vanishing around this planet — 690 light years away
Davide Castelvecchi

News21 May 2026
The brain’s code seems to be in constant flux. Neuroscientists are baffled
Diana Kwon

News Feature20 May 2026
Tough peer-review process? Your paper might end up being more highly cited
Mariana Lenharo

News20 May 2026
Wearable robot boosts strength of children with spinal muscular atrophy
Liam Drew

News20 May 2026
‘It is incredible’: How AI is transforming mathematics
Davide Castelvecchi

News Feature19 May 2026
The uncritical adoption of AI in science is alarming — we urgently need guard rails
Lisa Messeri
M. J. Crockett

Comment19 May 2026

Latest Reviews & Analysis

- Monkeys that ‘draw’ reveal a neuronal population that encodes combinable actions
  
  When faced with unfamiliar problems, humans and other animals must plan and execute action sequences that they might not have used before. In macaque monkeys, this ability is supported by a population of neurons in the brain’s frontal cortex that encode recombinable action units or ‘action symbols’.
  
  Research Briefing20 May 2026
- Becoming a mother leaves long-lasting molecular memories
  
  In mice, motherhood induces transcriptional changes in the brain that endure beyond short-term hormonal shifts. Postpartum stress disrupts these patterns.
  
  Frances A. Champagne
  
  News & Views20 May 2026
- Cities affect small and large storms differently
  
  Analysis of a 23-year record of Texan storms reveals how urban landscapes affect storm rainfall — painting a more complex picture than had been realized.
  
  Wei Zhang
  
  News & Views20 May 2026
- Too little or too much sleep is linked to faster ageing throughout the body
  
  A multimodal analysis reveals a ‘U-shaped’ association between sleep duration and biological ageing across various organ systems, with too much or not enough sleep being linked with accelerated organ ageing. The study also shows that biological ageing differentially mediates the relationship between extremes in sleep duration and late-life depression.
  
  Research Briefing20 May 2026
- Quantum light source boosts attosecond science
  
  Ionization experiment shows that quantum light can behave like a conventional laser that has a higher intensity.
  
  Jan Marcus Dahlström
  
  News & Views20 May 2026
- On the right track in the design of an early typewriter
  
  News & Views19 May 2026
- DNA-folding changes block production of self-directed antibodies
  
  Zeqian Gao
  Joan Boyes
  
  News & Views19 May 2026
- Fast and furious: the gaseous outflows of quasars in the early Universe were extreme
  
  Research Briefing13 May 2026
- Growth charts reveal how the brain’s ‘communication highways’ change throughout life
  
  Research Briefing13 May 2026

Latest Research articles

De novo design of miniproteins targeting GPCRs

Edin Muratspahić
David Feldman
David Baker
Article21 May 2026
Spinal neuromotor rehabilitation using a portable isokinetic training robot

Yuebing Li
Jiaxin Ren
Yanggang Feng
Article20 May 2026
Cusp-singularity-enhanced Coriolis effect for sensitive chip-scale gyroscopes

By using singularity physics to enable cubic-root scaling of frequency and phase modulations induced by the Coriolis effect to enhance the performance of chip-scale Coriolis vibratory gyroscopes, substantial improvements in signal-to-noise ratio and precision are demonstrated.

Sen Zhang
Dingbang Xiao
Xin Zhou
ArticleOpen Access20 May 2026
A pathogen lncRNA secreted into rice sequesters a host miRNA for virulence

A fungal long non-coding RNA from Magnaporthe oryzae translocates into rice cells to sequester a host microRNA that normally represses PKR1, a negative immunity regulator, thereby facilitating infection and revealing a widespread RNA-based pathogen–host interaction mechanism.

Min He
Jia Su
Xuewei Chen
ArticleOpen Access20 May 2026
De novo design of quasisymmetric two-component protein cages

Researchers designed two-component proteins forming quasisymmetric cages via geometric frustration, enabling tunable virus-like assemblies for cargo delivery, cellular uptake and studying intracellular diffusion and protein localization.

Shunzhi Wang
Ying Xie
David Baker
Article20 May 2026

Collections

An illustration of a cannon shooting out bacteria to defeat a larger bacteria.

Antimicrobial resistance

Pathogens are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Scientists are working to slow the process and replenish the medicinal armoury.

Nature Outlook 13 May 2026

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Will this Ebola outbreak be the biggest yet?

The brain’s code seems to be in constant flux. Neuroscientists are baffled

Ebola outbreak spirals out of control: how might it have started?

Genetic analysis of circulating metabolic traits in 619,372 individuals

Daily briefing: How the ‘Enhanced Games’ could expose flaws in the sporting world

News & Comment

Should I get a dog? What to know about pet ownership as a scientist

See the clouds streaming and vanishing around this planet — 690 light years away

The brain’s code seems to be in constant flux. Neuroscientists are baffled

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

Wearable robot boosts strength of children with spinal muscular atrophy

‘It is incredible’: How AI is transforming mathematics

The uncritical adoption of AI in science is alarming — we urgently need guard rails

Latest Reviews & Analysis

Monkeys that ‘draw’ reveal a neuronal population that encodes combinable actions

Becoming a mother leaves long-lasting molecular memories

Cities affect small and large storms differently

Too little or too much sleep is linked to faster ageing throughout the body

Quantum light source boosts attosecond science

On the right track in the design of an early typewriter

DNA-folding changes block production of self-directed antibodies

Fast and furious: the gaseous outflows of quasars in the early Universe were extreme

Growth charts reveal how the brain’s ‘communication highways’ change throughout life

Latest Research articles

De novo design of miniproteins targeting GPCRs

Spinal neuromotor rehabilitation using a portable isokinetic training robot

Cusp-singularity-enhanced Coriolis effect for sensitive chip-scale gyroscopes

A pathogen lncRNA secreted into rice sequesters a host miRNA for virulence

De novo design of quasisymmetric two-component protein cages

Collections

Antimicrobial resistance

Trending - Altmetric

Science jobs

Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Physics

Rowland Fellowship

Chief Editor, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology

Global Recruitment for Faculty, Postdocs, and Specialists at Hangzhou Institute of Medicine, CAS

Multiple Positions Open in The Stomatology Hospital，Zhejiang University School of Medicine

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At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people

AI generates covertly racist decisions about people based on their dialect

Sleep chart of biological ageing clocks in middle and late life

Exclusive: NIH ousts infectious-disease leaders as COVID scientists face US charges

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