Although scientists have long been able to gather DNA from water and soil, it's only recently that they've started to see the air as a source of genetic information.

Airborne DNA is already being used to monitor individual species, but researchers hope its abundance could have multiple uses, including judging the success of conservation efforts or attacks with biological weapons.

However, there remains much to understand, such as how far DNA travels in the air, and the ethics involved in the potential identification of a person's genetic information.

This is an audio version of our Feature: The air is full of DNA ? here?s what scientists are using it for

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Nature Feature: Are attention spans really shrinking? What the science says

Nature News Explainer: AI data hubs in space: when will they take flight?

Nature Comment: Space diplomacy: bridging the operating gaps between myriad missions

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In this episode:

Research Article: Katlowitz et al.

Nature: Even the unconscious brain can learn ? and predict what you?ll say next

Nature: An electrifying test to find a good coffee

Nature: ???????Forest pests hit trees hard as temperatures rise

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In this episode:

Nature: Mitochondria can spawn new ?organelles? ? hinting at how modern cells evolved

Nature: Did kraken-like octopuses rule Cretaceous seas? Massive jaw fossils offer clues

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In this episode:

Research Article: Kumar et al.

Nature: Cosmic-ray detection heralds era of mega-observatories for neutrinos

Nature: Little ants groom big ones in a desert spa

World View: Forty years after Chornobyl, more nuclear disasters are inevitable ? plan for them

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In this episode of Nature hits the books, we speak with Nature's Helen Pearson whose book Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works looks at the history of using evidence, rather than opinion, in decision making.

The book traces the course of the movement in various disciplines, such as the rise of evidence-based medicine in the 90s, looking at the rebels who led the charge, the barriers they faced, and why the use of evidence is crucial at a time when misinformation is rife.

Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works Helen Pearson Princeton University Press (in the press)

Music supplied by SPD/Triple Scoop Music/Getty Images

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In this episode:

Research Article: Dürr et al.

News and Views: Robot can beat elite players at table tennis

Video: This robot can beat you at table tennis

Nature: Venus?s impenetrable haze could be made of cosmic dust

Nature: Graves reveal plague?s inequitable toll

Nature: How big is Big G? Mystery deepens after ten-year effort to measure gravity?s strength

Research Article: Schlamminger et al.

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In this episode:

Science: Penguins become marine detectives, thanks to pollutant-detecting anklets

Nature: One woman, three autoimmune diseases: CAR-T therapy vanquishes ultra-rare disease trio

Science: Why do anglerfish have glowing lures? It might be sex

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In this episode:

Research Article: Verkerk et al.

Nature: Microbial hockey: bacteria can spin a ?puck? just by swimming

Nature: Regular physical activity in midlife cuts risk of early death

Nature: Landmark ancient-genome study shows surprise acceleration of human evolution

Research Article: Akbari et al.

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In this episode:

On Monday, reporter Alexandra Witze was in the heart of the Artemis II mission?s science operations. She tells us about the experience and what NASA?s researchers have learnt from the mission so far.

Nature: I was with Artemis II?s scientists during the Moon fly-by. Here?s what I saw

Nature: First photos from Artemis II: see stunning ?Earthset? and more

Nature: Historic Artemis II Moon fly-by ? Nature?s live coverage as it happened

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In this episode:

Nature: Eye drops made from pig semen deliver cancer treatment to mice

Nature: Motherhood derails women?s academic careers ? these data reveal how and why

Science: These birds suck?literally

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In this podcast we'll talk about NASA's Artemis II launch, which has ushered in a new era of lunar exploration.

Nature: Lift off! Artemis II mission sends humans to the Moon ? opening a new era of exploration

Nature: Artemis II mission is about to fly humans to the Moon ? here?s the science they?ll do

Nature: Humanity is heading back to the Moon ? why aren?t more scientists thrilled?

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In this episode:

Research Article: Voigt et al.

Nature: Sunken Soviet nuclear submarine?s radioactive release

Nature: History of ?forever? chemicals is written in Antarctic snow

April Fakes Day

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Nature staff discuss some of the week's top science news.

Nature: ?Zombie cells? return from the dead ? after a genome transplant

Nature: Can a mouse be cloned indefinitely? Decades-long experiment has answers

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Research Article : Snelling et al.

Nature: Faster ticking of ?biological clock? predicts shorter lifespan

Nature: Mighty mini-magnet is low in cost and light on energy use

Research Article: Nyberg et al.

News & Views: A gene-editing method generates immunotherapeutic CAR T cells in the body

Nature: CRISPR makes enhanced cancer-fighting immune cells inside mice

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In this episode:

Nature: Memory loss is fuelled by gut microbes in ageing mice

Nature: Knock knock, no one?s there. Study finds scientists? jokes mostly fall flat

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In this episode:

Research Article : Lombe et al.

Nature: Electric-vehicle batteries toughen up to beat the heat

Nature: Live parrots were carried across the Andes before the Incas? rise

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Nature: How the classic computer game Doom became a tool for science

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A study reveals how the asexual Amazon molly defies evolutionary expectations ? plus, evidence of what may be powering superluminous supernovae.

In this episode:

Research Article: Ricemeyer et al.

News and Views: How an all-female fish species defies evolutionary expectations

Nature: ???????Jam-packed star system is most compact of its kind ever found

Nature: ???????Peanut-processing microbes ward off dangerous allergic shock

Research Article : ???????Farah et al.

News and Views: ???????Ultra-bright supernova wobbles like a spinning top

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In this episode:

New Scientist: Paediatricians? blood used to make new treatments for RSV and colds

Science: Galileo?s handwritten notes found in ancient astronomy text

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Injectable fluid safely fills area in which blood clots can form, in animal trials ? plus, strong evidence that an elusive form of diamond has been made in the lab.

Research Article : Wang et al.

News and Views: Magnetic fluid offers better seal in heart-plugging medical procedure

Video: Magnetic gel injected into the heart could stop strokes

Nature: Sewage systems secretly waft pollution into the air

Nature: This ant species is composed of only queens ? no workers or males

Research Article: Lai et al.

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This is an audio version of our Feature: Many people have no mental imagery. What?s going on in their brains?

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In this episode:

00:15 How Pokémon inspired fields as diverse as evolution, biodiversity and research integrity

Nature: Pokémon turns 30 ? how the fictional pocket monsters shaped science

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High-speed footage reveals shoe squeaks can start with a tiny bolt of lightning ? plus, evidence that a debated brain phenomenon exists in humans.

Research Article : Djellouli et al.

Basketball sound effects via Bradley Kanaris/Getty.

Nature: Runaway black hole leaves a trail of stars

Nature: Super-sticky feet help a robot to climb the walls

Research Article: Disouky et al.

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Nature: Brain differences between sexes get more pronounced from puberty

Science: How do busy bees avoid overheating from flying?

Video: Birds gliding through bubbles reveal aerodynamic trick

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Nature: Microsoft Research Project Silica Team

Nature: Microsoft team creates 'revolutionary' data storage system that lasts for millennia

Nature: Parasitic wasps use tamed virus to castrate caterpillars

Nature: Flexible joints: robot morphs into a range of cyborg species

Nature: Sahin et al.

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In this episode:

Nature: Coffee linked to slower brain ageing in study of 130,000 people

Scientific American: Rules of mysterious ancient Roman board game decoded by AI

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In this episode:

Nature: Cho et al.

Nature: Beetle is locked into an eternal dance ? with an ant

Nature: Super-sniffer aeroplane finds oil fields? hidden emissions

Nature: Olalde et al.

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In this episode:

Nature: 48 hours without lungs: artificial organ kept man alive until transplant

Nature: How tumours trick the brain into shutting down cancer-fighting cells

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Nature: Thompson et al.

Nature: Genetically engineered ?stinkweed? comes up roses for making seed oil

Nature: Largest galaxy survey yet confirms that the Universe is not clumpy enough

Nature: Asai et al.

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In this episode:

Nature: Still working at 107: supercentenarian study probes genetics of extreme longevity

Nature: ?Remote controlled? proteins illuminate living cells

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Nature: Touponse et al.

Nature: Disappearing ?planet? reveals a solar system?s turbulent times

Nature: Getting to the (square) root of stock-market swings

Nature: Symons et? al.

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In this episode:

Nature: Sending babies to nursery completely reshapes their microbiome

Science: No bull: This Austrian cow has learned to use tools

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Nature: Pedalino et al.

News: Schrödinger's cat just got bigger: quantum physicists create largest ever 'superposition'

Nature: Ancient pottery reveals early evidence of mathematical thinking

Nature: Gifted dogs learn new words by overhearing humans

Nature: US science after a year of Trump

Nature: US science in 2026: five themes that will dominate Trump?s second year

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In this episode:

Nature: NASA won?t bring Mars samples back to Earth: this is the science that will be lost

Nature: Do their ears hang low? The genetics of dogs? adorable floppy ears

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In this episode:

Research article: Hao et al.

Nature: Ancient ?snowball? Earth had frigidly briny seas

Nature: Putting immune cells into ?night mode? reduces heart-attack damage

Nature: Rusakov et al.

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Researchers have shown that they can piggyback a signal on a 4,400-kilometer-long telecom cable that runs from California to Hawaii, allowing it to act like 44,000 separate seismic-activity detectors. Their method takes advantage of impurities found in glass fibre-optic cables, which reflect light differently when they are stretched and distorted by the pressure of seismic waves.

Science: Seafloor telecom cable transformed into giant earthquake detector

Chemical analysis of the caulking found on the wood an ancient boat has helped researchers identify the origins of the vessel, that sank off the coast of Denmark 2,400 years ago. The team?s analysis suggests it voyaged from much farther away that had been thought ? perhaps coming from the Baltic Sea region. The team also found a fingerprint left in the caulk, although who it belonged to is unknown.

LiveScience: Fingerprint of ancient seaborne raider found on Scandinavia's oldest plank boat

Some plants called cycads (Zamia spp.) heat up to attract the beetles that pollinate them. These beetles have heat-seeking sensors in their antennae, which they use locate the plants. Male cycads warm up around 3 hours before females, meaning that beetles head to them before first carrying pollen over to the females.

Science: Heat-seeking beetles drawn to plants that glow in infrared

The discovery of exoplanet PSR J2322-2650b reveals how unusual other worlds can be. This exoplanet takes just 7.8 hours to orbit an ultra-dense pulsar whose intense gravity pulls PSR J2322-2650b into a lemon shape.

New Scientist: Strange lemon-shaped exoplanet defies the rules of planet formation

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In this episode, reporter Miryam Naddaf joins us to talk about the big science events to look out for in 2026. We?ll hear about: small-scale AI models that could outcompete Large Language Models in reasoning, clinical trials of gene editing to treat rare human disorders, a sample collection mission from Phobos, and how changes to US policy by the Trump team are expected to impact science.

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Anecdotal stories suggesting that weight-loss drugs can help people shake long-standing addictions have been spreading fast in the past few years, through online forums, weight-loss clinics and news headlines. And now, clinical data are starting to back them up.

Over a dozen randomized clinical studies testing whether GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic can suppress addiction are now under way, and neuroscientists are working out how these weight-loss drugs act on brain regions that control craving, reward and motivation.

Scientists warn that the research is still in its early stages, but some researchers and physicians are excited, as no truly new class of addiction medicine has won approval from regulators in decades.

This is an audio version of our Feature: Will blockbuster obesity drugs revolutionize addiction treatment?

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Researchers have created a ?pangenome? containing the genomes of multiple potato types, something they believe can help make it easier to breed and sequence new varieties. The potato?s complicated genetics has made it difficult to sequence the plant?s genome, but improvements in technology have allowed the team to combine sequences, allowing them to look for subtle differences in between varieties.

Nature Podcast: 16 April 2025

Research Article: Sun et al.

According to legend, physicist Werner Heisenberg formulated the mathematics behind quantum mechanics in 1925 while on a restorative trip to the remote North Sea island of Heligoland.

To celebrate the centenary of this event, several hundred researchers have descended on the island to take part in a conference on all things quantum physics. Nature reporter Lizzie Gibney was also in attendance, and joined us to give an inside track on the meeting.

Nature Podcast: ???????13 June 2025

A minuscule robot that can manipulate liquid droplets, and the discovery of ancient puppets on the remains of a large pyramid offers a glimpse into rituals in Mesoamerica.

Research Highlight: This tiny robot moves mini-droplets with ease

Research Highlight: Ancient puppets that smile or scowl hint at shared rituals

Researchers have developed two compounds that can kill malaria-causing parasites within mosquitoes, an approach they hope could help reduce transmission of the disease. The team showed that these compounds can be embedded into the plastics used to make bed nets, providing an alternative to insecticide-based malaria-control measures, which are losing efficacy in the face of increased resistance.

Nature Podcast: ???????21 May 2025

Research article: ???????Probst et al.

The first skeletal evidence that Roman gladiators fought lions.

BBC News: Bites on gladiator bones prove combat with lion

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Nature: Asteroids, antibiotics and ants: a year of remarkable science

In this episode:

Samples taken from the asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft suggest the parent body it originated from is likely to have contained salty, subsurface water. This finding provides insights into the chemistry of the early Solar System, and suggests that brines might have been an important place where pre-biotic molecules were formed.

News & Views: Asteroid Bennu contains salts from ancient brine

Nature Podcast: Asteroid Bennu contains building blocks of life

Cells are often grouped into categories according to the RNA molecules they produce. However a study of zebrafish (Danio rerio) brains revealed that cells can be functionally diverse even if they appear molecularly similar. This finding adds more nuance to how a cell's ?type? is ultimately defined.

News & Views: Does a cell?s gene expression always reflect its function?

An assessment of death rates in India?s coastal megacity of Mumbai revealed that the impact of extreme rainfall events will be highest for women, young children and residents of informal settlements. This situation is likely to become more pronounced as a result of climate change.

News & Views: Extreme rainfall poses the biggest risk to Mumbai?s most vulnerable people

Inspired by animals like barnacles and aided by machine learning, researchers have developed a super-sticky compound that works as an underwater adhesive. To demonstrate its properties, researchers applied it to a rubber duck, which stuck firmly to a rock on a beach despite being battered by the sea.

News & Views: AI learns from nature to design super-adhesive gels that work underwater

Nature Podcast: Underwater glue shows its sticking power in rubber duck test

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Nature put a call out for readers to tell us about memorable presents that first got them interested in science, or mementos of their life in research. These include telescopes, yeast-themed wedding rings, and... cows? eyes.

Nature: The gift that shaped my career in science

In the first of our annual festive songs celebrating the science of the past year, we tell the story of a diminutive dinosaur that turned out to be its own species.

Nature Podcast: Meet the ?Wee-rex?. Tiny tyrannosaur is its own species

Nature Video: Hotly debated dinosaur is not a tiny T. rex after all

An all-star cast competes for the glory or being the winner of the Nature Podcast?s 2025 festive quiz.

Nature: Meet the ?Wee-rex?. Tiny tyrannosaur is its own species

Nature: This company claimed to ?de-extinct? dire wolves. Then the fighting started

Nature Podcast: 3D-printed fake wasps help explain bad animal mimicry

Nature Video: ?Aqua tweezers? manipulate particles with water waves

Nature Podcast: Sapphire anvils squeeze metals atomically-thin

Nature Video: Vesuvius volcano turned this brain to glass

Nature Podcast: Ancient viral DNA helps human embryos develop

Nature Video: Magnetic fibres give this robot a soft grip

Nature: These contact lenses give people infrared vision ? even with their eyes shut

Nature Video: Is this really the world's largest mirror? Researchers put it to the test

Nature Podcast: World?s tiniest pacemaker could revolutionize heart surgery

Nature Podcast: Earth?s deepest ecosystem discovered six miles below the sea

Nature Podcast: Nature goes inside the world?s largest ?mosquito factory? ? here?s the buzz

Nature Podcast: Apocalypse then: how cataclysms shaped human societies

Nature Podcast: Honey, I ate the kids: how hunger and hormones make mice aggressive

Our second festive song is an ode to a rubber duck that was stuck to a rock, thanks to a newly designed, super-adhesive hydrogel.

Nature Podcast: Underwater glue shows its sticking power in rubber duck test

Nature Video: Why did researchers stick a duck to a rock? To show off their super glue

Each year, Nature?s 10 highlights some of the people who have helped shape science over the past 12 months. We hear about a few of the people who made the 2025 list, including: a civil servant who stood up for evidence-based public-health policy; the science sleuth who revealed a retraction crisis at Indian universities; and the baby whose life was saved by the first personalized CRISPR therapy.

Nature: Nature?s 10

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Baked soil, ancient tools, and materials that could be used to start fires show that Neanderthals were making fire in the UK 400,000 years ago ? the earliest evidence of this skill found so far. Ancient humans are known to have used naturally occurring fires, but evidence of deliberate fire-starting has been hard to come by. A new suite of evidence pushes back the date of fire mastery by 350,000 years. The team behind the finding believe it helps create a more nuanced picture of Neanderthals, who perhaps gathered round fires and told stories in ancient Europe. 

Research Article: Davis et al.

News and Views: Oldest known evidence of the controlled ignition of fire

Machine-learning algorithms can help to identify traces of life in ancient rocks ? plus, why paintings containing a vivid green pigment lose their lustre over time. 

Research Highlight: AI finds signs of life in ancient rocks

Research Highlight: The mystery of emerald green ? cracked

Research suggests that artificial-intelligence chatbots can influence voters? political views and have a bigger effect than conventional campaigning and advertising. One study found that chatbot conversations swung participants? candidate preferences by up to 15 percentage points, while another revealed that the chatbots? effectiveness stems from their ability to synthesize a lot of information in a conversational way.  

Nature: AI chatbots can sway voters with remarkable ease ? is it time to worry? 

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The ability of space-based telescopes to image the distant Universe could be in peril, according to new research investigating the impacts of light-pollution from future satellites. Streaks of reflected light from satellites currently in low-Earth orbit are already seen in telescope images, and planned launches could raise the number of satellites from around 15,000 to over half-a-million. Computer modelling revealed that this drastic increase would result in images taken by instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope becoming unusable by astronomers. The team propose a series of strategies to help mitigate these impacts, preventing this future becoming reality.

Research Article: Borlaff et al.

Nature: Satellite swarms set to photobomb more than 95% of some telescopes? images

How researchers have sped up the trapping of antimatter atoms ? plus, how hydrogen fuel emission benefits vary considerably from sector to sector.

Research Highlight: Laser cooling traps more antimatter atoms than ever before

Research Highlight: Hydrogen fuel isn?t always the green choice

Glitches in video calls are an annoying feature of everyday life, but these brief interruptions could have serious real-world impacts, according to analysis from a team of researchers. In one experiment, the team found that video calls with glitches decreased the likelihood of someone being hired for a job. Analysis of other data suggested glitchy calls were associated with lower chances of individuals being granted parole. The team behind the work think that these visual errors break the illusion that a video call is a real face-to-face conversation, potentially impairing judgements about the quality of the information discussed.

Research article: Brucks et al.

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CRISPR-based gene editing has revolutionized modern biology, but these tools are unable to access the DNA that resides inside mitochondria. Researchers are eager to access and edit this DNA to understand more about the energy production and the mutations that can cause incurable mitochondrial diseases.

Because CRISPR can?t help with these problems, researchers have been looking for other ways to precisely edit the mitochrondrial genome. And the past few years have brought some success ? if researchers can make editing safe and accurate enough, it could eventually be used to treat, and even cure, these genetic conditions.

This is an audio version of our Feature: Faulty mitochondria cause deadly diseases ? fixing them is about to get a lot easier

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The sounds of ?micro-lightning? have been recorded by NASA?s Perseverance rover, ending a long search for the phenomenon on Mars. A lack of suitable equipment has made it difficult to gather evidence of lightning on the red planet, but a team of researchers realized that a microphone on Perseverance should be able to pick up the characteristic sounds of electrical discharges. In total they found 55 such examples, along with signs of electrostatic interference indicative of the phenomenon. They dubbed the electric bursts ?micro-lightning?, as they are far smaller than the lighting seen on Earth, due to the thin Martian atmosphere. The team believe this finding could help better understand Martian chemistry and how best to design equipment to explore the planet?s surface.

Research Article: Chide et al.

News and Views: Is there lightning on Mars?

How the biology of male seahorses? brood pouches appears similar to mammalian pregnancy? plus, why Neanderthals? jaws were so beefy.

Research Highlight: The origin of male seahorses? brood pouch

Research Highlight: Neanderthal DNA reveals how human faces form

The UN?s climate conference, COP30, came to a close last week in Brazil. Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson tells us what was and wasn?t agreed during the final negotiations.

Nature: What happened at COP30? 4 science take-homes from the climate summit

A new analysis suggests that female authors retract fewer medical science papers than their male counterparts. Women are known to be underrepresented in the medical sciences, but even accounting for this an AI-tool revealed that female authors featured on far fewer retracted research articles. Reporter Jenna Ahart has been investigating and told us why this might be, and what it means for research more broadly.

Nature: Women seem to retract fewer papers than men ? but why?

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Researchers have developed a skin-permeable polymer that can deliver insulin into the body, which they say could one day offer an alternative to injections for diabetes management. The skin?s structure presents a formidable barrier to the delivery of large drugs but in this work a team show that their polymer can penetrate though the different layers without causing damage. Insulin attached to this polymer was able to reduce blood glucose levels in animal models for diabetes at a comparable speed to injected insulin. While further research is required on the long-term safety of this strategy, the team hope it could offer a way to non-invasively deliver other large-molecule drugs into the body.

Research Article: Wei et al.

How extreme drought may be humanity?s biggest challenge after a huge volcanic eruption ? plus, turning a bacterium into a factory for a colour-changing pigment

Research Highlight: Volcano mega-eruptions lead to parched times

Research Highlight: Dye or die: bacterium forced to make pigment to stay alive

The human brain responds in a similar way to both familiar and unfamiliar languages, but there are some key differences, according to new research ? a finding that may explain why learning a language can be difficult. A study looking involving 34 people showed that listening to an unfamiliar language triggers similar neural activity to listening to their native tongue. The finding implies that human speech triggers a common reaction in the brain regardless of understanding. However, there were subtle differences when listening to a known language that may help explain how people actually understand words.

Research Article: Bhaya-Grossman et al.

Neuron: Zhang et al

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Signs that greenhouse-gas emissions may peak around 2030 ? plus, evidence of dog breeding by ancient humans.

Nature: Global greenhouse-gas emissions are still rising: when will they peak?

Nature: How ancient humans bred and traded the first domestic dogs

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Yoshua Bengio, considered by many to be one of the godfathers of AI, has long been at the forefront of machine-learning research . However, his opinions on the technology have shifted in recent years ? he joins us to talk about ways to address the risks posed by AI, and his efforts to develop an AI with safety built in from the start. 

Nature: ?It keeps me awake at night?: machine-learning pioneer on AI?s threat to humanity

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Researchers have detected what they say is the strongest evidence yet of a coronal mass ejection (CME) coming from a star other than our Sun. CMEs are massive bursts of fast-moving plasma that can be detected thanks to the characteristic radio signal they produce. However, despite decades of searching, these signals have only been identified from the Sun. Now a team has identified a similar signal coming from a distant star in the Milky Way. They hope their discovery will lead to better understanding of the impact these colossal events might have on the atmospheres of exoplanets, and their chances of being habitable.

Research Article: Callingham et al.

Video footage of a devastating earthquake provides a first-of-its-kind glimpse of a dramatic ground rupture ? plus, a flock of comets seen outside our Solar System.

Research Highlight: Single video camera tells the story of deadly Myanmar quake

Research Highlight: A host of ?exocomets? swarms a distant star

Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition that affects around 1 in 20 young people, but its underlying causes are not fully understood. Now, a team of researchers show that three rare genetic variants are implicated in an increased risk of ADHD, which may play a role in the neurons involved in dopamine signalling. While this work provides a better understanding of the complex genetics at play, the authors caution more research is needed to unpick the complex interplay other factors involved in ADHD.

Research Article: Demontis et al.

A high-resolution digital map for Roman roads, and how speaking more than one language could slow brain ageing.

Nature: ?Google Maps? for Roman roads reveals vast extent of ancient network

Nature: Want a younger brain? Learn another language

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