Researchers have shown that machine learning can quickly design antivenoms that are effective against lethal snake-toxins, which they hope will help tackle a serious public health issue. Thousands of people die as a result of snakebites each year, but treatment options are limited, expensive and often difficult to access in the resource-poor settings where most bites occur. The computer-aided approach allowed researchers to design two proteins that provided near total protection against individual snake toxins in mouse experiments. While limited in scope, the team behind the work believe these results demonstrate the promise of the approach in designing effective and cheaper treatments for use in humans.

Research Article: Vázquez Torres et al.

How male wasp spiders use hairs on their legs to sniff out mates, and how noradrenaline drives waves of cleansing fluid through the brain.

Research Highlight: ​​​​​​​Male spiders smell with their legs

Research Highlight: ​​​​​​​How the brain cleans itself during deep sleep

News broke last week that in 2024, Earth’s average temperature climbed to more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. Although this is only a single year so far, we discuss what breaking this significant threshold means for the 2015 Paris climate agreement and what climate scientists understand about the speed that Earth is heating up.

Nature: ​​​​​​​Earth breaches 1.5 °C climate limit for the first time: what does it mean?

NASA delays deciding its strategy for collecting and returning Mars rocks to Earth, and why papers on a handful of bacterial species dominate the scientific literature.

Nature: ​​​​​​​NASA still has no plan for how to bring precious Mars rocks to Earth

Nature: ​​​​​​​These are the 20 most-studied bacteria — the majority have been ignored

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In this episode of the Nature Podcast, we catch up on some science stories from the holiday period by diving into the Nature Briefing.

A much-critiqued study demonstrating the now-disproven idea that hydroxychloroquine can treat COVID-19 has been retracted — more than four-and-a-half years after it was published.

Nature: Controversial COVID study that promoted unproven treatment retracted after four-year saga

Researchers have discovered that healthy skin — once thought to be a passive barrier — can actually produce antibodies that fight off infections. It’s hoped that the finding could one day lead to the development of needle-free vaccines that can be applied to the skin.

Nature: The skin’s ‘surprise’ power: it has its very own immune system

New estimates, based on data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, suggest that the ice on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa may be significantly thicker than previously thought. If these estimates prove accurate it could reduce the chances of Europa being habitable for extraterrestrial life.

Science: Surprisingly thick ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa complicates hunt for life

3D computer simulations of Australopithecus afarensis — an ancient hominin that lived more than three million years ago — reveals that while our relatives could run on two legs, they likely did so at a far slower pace than modern humans.

Nature: Humans evolved for distance running — but ancestor ‘Lucy’ didn’t go far or fast

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In this episode, reporter Miryam Naddaf joins us to talk about the big science events to look out for in 2025. We’ll hear about: the latest Moon missions, 30 years of the United Nations' COP climate summits, the return of Donald Trump, and more.

Nature: Science in 2025: the events to watch for in the coming year

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