Nature, Published online: 29 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10814-y

In Drosophila, cell fate switching in adult intestinal stem cells is determined through an epigenetic mechanism in which these cells count divisions, switching from producing enterocytes to producing an enteroendocrine mother cell every ninth division.

Nature, Published online: 15 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10804-0

Elastic instabilities in mechanical metamaterials can be harnessed to programme fracture behaviour, transforming instability from a failure mechanism into a design principle that increases fracture energy by up to tenfold.

Nature, Published online: 08 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10712-3

Viscoelastic phase separation is used to fabricate non-collapsible, air-rich networks in high-water-content hydrogels containing silica aerogel beads, allowing air to permeate through the material and enabling a tenfold increase in oxygen permeability over pristine hydrogels.

Nature, Published online: 10 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10646-w

A co-optimized AI hardware–software system using resistive-memory computing improves energy efficiency and parallelism for sparse signal reconstruction in imaging and three-dimensional vision applications.