Cancer immunotherapy offers long-term remissions but struggles with primary resistance, complex progression, and severe side effects. A landmark review in Science Bulletin highlights how multimodal AI integrates multi-scale data—from spatial omics and pathology to imaging and health records—to transform patient stratification. Tracing AI's evolution into foundation models and "virtual cells," the authors outline a clinical roadmap balancing efficacy, toxicity, and disease dynamics.

Building upon their earlier platform Crop-GPA 1.0, a team of researchers in China developed Crop-GPA 2.0 to enable transferable SNP-level genotype–phenotype association prediction across crop species. Across multiple crop species, Crop-GPA 2.0 improved cross-species prediction performance, remained robust under limited training data, and identified biologically meaningful SNPs supported by previously reported quantitative trait locus (QTL) evidence.

Study finds that children aged 8-12 diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) retell stories less completely and coherently than their neurotypical counterparts, potentially putting them at a disadvantage in social and educational settings. Visual aids help narrow the gap, but more attention should be given to children’s narrative ability to create more supportive education and social environments for children with ADHD-associated difficulties.

New research shows how artificial intelligence, combined with advanced experimental science, can help find “hidden” and unexplored proteins in the human body and reveal what they actually do, according to a new study published in Nature.  

Two Amendments, Two Pathways

Maintaining soil organic carbon is important for agricultural productivity and climate mitigation, yet organic amendments do not necessarily build soil carbon in the same way. A 10-year maize field experiment at Shenyang Agricultural University compared annual biochar application at 2.625 t ha⁻¹ with maize stover incorporation at approximately 7.5 t ha⁻¹, alongside an untreated control. The field plots received the treatments for ten consecutive crop seasons before soil was sampled at depths of 0–20, 20–40, and 40–60 cm.

Both amendments significantly increased soil organic carbon across the 0–60 cm profile. In the topsoil, carbon gains were similar for biochar and stover, at 49.70% and 48.87%, respectively. Stover produced larger increases in subsurface and deep-soil carbon, reaching 105.90% in the 20–40 cm layer and 32.35% in the 40–60 cm layer. Biochar produced corresponding increases of 72.81% and 4.74%. These contrasting depth patterns indicate that carbon accumulation depends on amendment-specific transport and stabilization processes.

A team led by Professors Weidong Zhang (Naval Medical University) and Yu Zhang (Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine) has discovered PamUGT, the first triterpenoid glycosyltransferase ever identified from the medicinal plant Phytolacca americana(American pokeweed). Remarkably, this single enzyme can attach sugar molecules to an unusually broad range of natural products — triterpenes, flavonoids, diterpenes, and even phenols and alkaloids — acting as a “molecular sewing machine” for natural product glycosylation. Published in Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines (2026, 24(8): 999-1005), the finding fills a key gap in pokeweed saponin biosynthesis and offers a versatile, ready-to-use biocatalytic tool for drug modification and synthetic biology.