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The APOE-ε4 allele is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but it is not deterministic. Here, the authors show that common genetic variation changes how APOE-ε4 influences cognition.

Time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography at X-ray free-electron lasers is a powerful approach for studying macromolecular dynamics, but its widespread use is limited by high sample consumption. Here, the authors introduce a segmented-droplet mix-and-inject strategy at the European XFEL that reduces sample consumption by up to 97% while preserving the data quality required for time-resolved structural studies of the enzyme NQO1.

An analysis of 2,954 genomes from 38 cancer subtypes identified 19,166 retrotransposition events in 35% of samples. Aberrant LINE-1 retrotranspositions can lead to the deletion of tumor-suppressor genes as well as the amplification of oncogenes.

Analyses of 2,658 whole genomes across 38 types of cancer identify the contribution of non-coding point mutations and structural variants to driving cancer.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

Genomic analyses applied to 14 childhood- and adult-onset psychiatric disorders identifies five underlying genomic factors that explain the majority of the genetic variance of the individual disorders.

In somatic cells the mechanisms maintaining the chromosome ends are normally inactivated; however, cancer cells can re-activate these pathways to support continuous growth. Here, the authors characterize the telomeric landscapes across tumour types and identify genomic alterations associated with different telomere maintenance mechanisms.

Whole-genome sequencing data from more than 2,500 cancers of 38 tumour types reveal 16 signatures that can be used to classify somatic structural variants, highlighting the diversity of genomic rearrangements in cancer.

A pan-cancer genomic analysis reports the effects of structural variations on chromatin domains (TADs). Most TAD disruptions do not result in appreciable changes in expression of nearby genes.

In this study the authors consider the structural variants (SVs) present within cancer cases of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium. They report hundreds of genes, including known cancer-associated genes for which the nearby presence of a SV breakpoint is associated with altered expression.

Developing treatments that withstand viral evolution is difficult. Here, the authors design ReconnAb-multimers: broad, highly potent therapeutics linking a non-neutralizing antibody, ACE2, and a multimerization domain to prepare for future pandemics.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

Trained and validated on multimodal data from 14.5 million images from multicountry datasets, a foundation model is shown to increase diagnostic and referral accuracy of clinicians when used as an assistant in a trial involving 16 ophthalmologists and 668 patients.

Understanding deregulation of biological pathways in cancer can provide insight into disease etiology and potential therapies. Here, as part of the PanCancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) consortium, the authors present pathway and network analysis of 2583 whole cancer genomes from 27 tumour types.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

The characterization of 4,645 whole-genome and 19,184 exome sequences, covering most types of cancer, identifies 81 single-base substitution, doublet-base substitution and small-insertion-and-deletion mutational signatures, providing a systematic overview of the mutational processes that contribute to cancer development.

Ziwen Liu et al. report Cytoland, an approach to train robust models to virtually stain landmark organelles of cells and address the generalization gap of current models. The training pipeline, models and datasets are shared under open-source permissive licences.

Ultrack leverages candidate segmentations from multiple algorithms and temporal consistency across time points for robust, long-term 3D segmentation in challenging samples such as densely packed zebrafish, fruit fly and nematode embryos.

There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

With the generation of large pan-cancer whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing projects, a question remains about how comparable these datasets are. Here, using The Cancer Genome Atlas samples analysed as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the authors explore the concordance of mutations called by whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing techniques.

Integrative analyses of transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing data for 1,188 tumours across 27 types of cancer are used to provide a comprehensive catalogue of RNA-level alterations in cancer.

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

Some cancer patients first present with metastases where the location of the primary is unidentified; these are difficult to treat. In this study, using machine learning, the authors develop a method to determine the tissue of origin of a cancer based on whole sequencing data.

The authors present SVclone, a computational method for inferring the cancer cell fraction of structural variants from whole-genome sequencing data.

Many tumours exhibit hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypoxic tumours often respond poorly to therapy. Here, the authors quantify hypoxia in 1188 tumours from 27 cancer types, showing elevated hypoxia links to increased mutational load, directing evolutionary trajectories.

Cancers evolve as they progress under differing selective pressures. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, the authors present the method TrackSig the estimates evolutionary trajectories of somatic mutational processes from single bulk tumour data.

The authors introduce the Neurolipid Atlas, a dynamic resource for the community to gain insight into lipid alterations in neurodegenerative disease, and they leverage the platform to show how cholesterol alterations in astrocytes can dysregulate neuroinflammatory pathways in Alzheimer disease.

Liver macrophages are a major obstacle to extrahepatic drug delivery. This study identifies the receptor–ligand interactions that they use to capture circulating nanoparticles and leverages this understanding to engineer nanoparticles that escape macrophage uptake.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

Analysis of whole-genome sequencing data across 2,658 tumors spanning 38 cancer types shows that chromothripsis is pervasive, with a frequency of more than 50% in several cancer types, contributing to oncogene amplification, gene inactivation and cancer genome evolution.

The enzyme ABHD18 is shown to have a key role in cardiolipin metabolism in mitochondria, offering a potential route for a small-molecule treatment of the rare genetic disease Barth syndrome.

Tumour endothelial cell macropinocytosis is the dominant mechanism for nanoparticle entry into the tumour. Enhanced nanoparticle tumour accumulation may be due to upregulated macropinocytosis membrane ruffling compared with most healthy tissues.

Authors explore the biological mechanisms underlying a missing digit joint in Brachydactyly type A1. They showed that excess Indian Hedgehog proteins suppress the apoptosis level needed for the progression of digit joint development in a mouse model.

Direct RNA-seq offers the possibility to identify RNA modifications on single molecules. Here, the authors report on the synthesis of biologically realistic training data and the development of mAFiA that accurately detects m⁶A on single read level.

The authors summarize the data produced by phase III of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, a resource for better understanding of the human and mouse genomes.

Gamboa et al. develop a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapeutic strategy based on synthetic antigens that are delivered to the tumor by lipid nanoparticles and demonstrate the therapeutic efficacy of their approach using CAR T cells directed against the synthetic antigen.

A combination of mass spectrometry, pooled genome screens and STRING analysis identifies key uptake mediating interactions between nanoparticle-adsorbed proteins and cells via the low-density lipoprotein receptor.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic inflammatory respiratory disease characterized by airflow limitation and infective exacerbations. Here, Chan et al. report the generation of nasopharyngeal and bronchial COPD organoids derived from adult stem cells and employ them in the study of host-pathogen interactions, including SARS-CoV-2 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Genome-wide analyses identify 30 independent loci associated with obsessive–compulsive disorder, highlighting genetic overlap with other psychiatric disorders and implicating putative effector genes and cell types contributing to its etiology.

This study analysed genetic data of soil-transmitted helminths from 27 countries, revealing diversity impacting molecular test accuracy and highlighting the need to adapt diagnostics for effective STH surveillance.

SCIFER detects clonal selection in whole-genome sequencing data using a population genetics model. Applied to a range of somatic tissues, SCIFER quantifies stem cell dynamics and infers clonal ages and sizes without requiring knowledge of driver events.

Phytochrome photoreceptors are master regulators of plant development. This paper describes 3D structures of soybean phytochrome A in both Pr (inactive) and Pfr (signalling) states, revealing changes that might transmit the light signal to the cell.

Lipidomics revealed that neurons of patients with ALS/FTD have reduced levels of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA)-containing phospholipids. Increasing neuronal PUFA levels increased survival of Drosophila models of ALS/FTD and patient neurons, suggesting that interventions that increase neuronal PUFA levels in patients with ALS/FTD may also be beneficial.