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The neurons behind acupuncture’s effect on inflammation, and how antibiotics affect gut bacteria.

Boucherie et al. apply physics-based models to the arrangement of locations to study how geography shapes human movement. They find an underlying pattern in how people choose to move, independent of geographical layout.

The plant general non-self response system is triggered by leaf microbiota members and, in turn, impacts their colonization.

Lavas sourced from Archaean mantle plumes have anomalously light oxygen isotope signatures, according to geochemical analyses of lava samples from southern Africa. The results imply that Earth’s early mantle was heterogeneous.

A temporal version of Young’s double-slit experiment shows characteristic interference in the frequency domain when light interacts with time slits produced by ultrafast changes in the refractive index of an epsilon-near-zero material.

Conventional hologram designs lack orbital angular momentum selectivity. Here, the authors design metasurface holograms consisting of GaN nanopillars with discrete spatial frequency distributions allowing the reconstruction of distinctive orbital angular momentumdependent holographic images.

Here the authors apply machine learning approaches to Alzheimer’s genetics, confirm known associations and suggest novel risk loci. These methods demonstrate predictive power comparable to traditional approaches, while also offering potential new insights beyond standard genetic analyses.

Using multi-ancestry genome-wide association study and fine-mapping, 298 loci and 36 credible genes are identified in the aetiology of bipolar disorder.

Analyses of 475 ancient horse genomes show modern horses emerged around 2200 bce, coinciding with sudden expansion across Eurasia, refuting the narrative of large horse herds accompanying earlier migrations of steppe peoples across Europe.

Two halting mechanisms, ‘walk-OFF’ and ‘brake’, are shown to be engaged by distinct neural circuits in Drosophila, in a context dependent manner.

From solving planetary mysteries to unravelling the manifestation of memories, these five scientists stand out in their fields.

Different functional variants in ADH1B (and elsewhere) in Europeans and Africans strongly affect risk for alcohol dependence. Dependence only partly genetically correlates with consumption, with strong correlations to other psychiatric disorders.

A consensus cell type atlas for the fly brain provides both an intellectual framework and open-source toolchains for brain-scale comparative connectomics.

Federated ML (FL) provides an alternative to train accurate and generalizable ML models, by only sharing numerical model updates. Here, the authors present the largest FL study to-date to generate an automatic tumor boundary detector for glioblastoma.

Polygenic risk scores for Alzheimer’s disease derived from individuals of European ancestry can show improved performance in multiancestry settings after incorporating genome-wide association summary statistics from diverse populations.

The PSA (KLK3) genetic variant rs17632542 is associated with reduced prostate cancer risk and lower serum PSA levels, although the underlying reasons are unclear. Here, the authors show that this PSA variant reduced proteolytic activity and leads to smaller tumours, but also increases invasion and bone metastasis, indicating its dual risk association depending on tumour context; the variant is associated with both lower risk and poor clinical outcomes.

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

A genome-wide association study including over 76,000 individuals with schizophrenia and over 243,000 control individuals identifies common variant associations at 287 genomic loci, and further fine-mapping analyses highlight the importance of genes involved in synaptic processes.

Known genetic loci account for only a fraction of the genetic contribution to Alzheimer’s disease. Here, the authors have performed a large genome-wide meta-analysis comprising 409,435 individuals to discover 6 new loci and demonstrate the efficacy of an Alzheimer’s disease polygenic risk score.

Plants can experience a range of challenges, from osmotic stress to pathogen attack, requiring different types of responses. Despite this variety, two recent studies of plant transcriptomes reveal a surprising commonality in the genes induced by stress.

Large genome-wide meta-analysis of clinically diagnosed late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) from 94,437 individuals identifies new LOAD risk loci and implicates Aβ formation, tau protein binding, immune response and lipid metabolism.

Imbalance and loss of cell types is a hallmark in many diseases. Still, quantifying compositional changes in scRNAseq data remains challenging. Here the authors present scCODA, a Bayesian model to assess cell type compositions in scRNA-seq data.

Strained NbOI₂ flakes with a thickness of 20 nm exhibit a record SHG absolute conversion efficiency of >0.2% and an effective bulk-like nonlinear susceptibility of 1.1 × 10⁻⁹ m V⁻¹ at the fundamental wavelength of 1,050 nm. The spatial profile of the polarized second-harmonic generation response can be tuned by the fundamental wavelength.

The authors defined a roadmap for investigating the genetic covariance between structural or functional brain phenotypes and risk for psychiatric disorders. Their proof-of-concept study using the largest available common variant data sets for schizophrenia and volumes of several (mainly subcortical) brain structures did not find evidence of genetic overlap.

An investigation using various methods reports an association between adeno-associated virus 2 and paediatric hepatitis of unknown aetiology.

Genome-wide association analyses of 41,917 bipolar disorder cases and 371,549 controls of European ancestry provide new insights into the etiology of this disorder and identify novel therapeutic leads and potential opportunities for drug repurposing.

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies across different populations highlights new risk loci and provides a genetic risk score that can stratify prostate cancer risk across ancestries.

Biallelic loss-of-function variants in FOCAD cause a syndromic form of pediatric liver disease by compromising the SKI messenger RNA surveillance pathway.

Stratified medicine promises to tailor treatment for individual patients, however it remains a major challenge to leverage genetic risk data to aid patient stratification. Here the authors introduce an approach to stratify individuals based on the aggregated impact of their genetic risk factor profiles on tissue-specific gene expression levels, and highlight its ability to identify biologically meaningful and clinically actionable patient subgroups, supporting the notion of different patient ‘biotypes’ characterized by partially distinct disease mechanisms.

The ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate can be used as an alternative carbon source by T cells to maintain their function during severe respiratory viral infections, including infection with SARS-CoV-2.

FlyWire presents a neuronal wiring diagram of the whole fly brain with annotations for cell types, classes, nerves, hemilineages and predicted neurotransmitters, with data products and an open ecosystem to facilitate exploration and browsing.

A multi-ancestry genome-wide association study of prostate cancer performed in 156,319 cases and 788,443 controls identifies 187 novel risk variants associated with the disease. Genetic risk scores associated with overall risk, and risk of aggressive disease in men of African ancestry.

The authors investigate microbiota properties for plant protection using synthetic communities and machine learning approaches. They identify strains that reduce pathogen colonization despite variation in microbiota composition.

CCR5 is a co-receptor for many transmitted HIV strains. Here, the authors show that biweekly injection of the CCR5-specific antibody Leronlimab protects rhesus macaques against infection following repeated intrarectal challenges of a CCR5-tropic SHIV.

The CNV analysis group of the Psychiatric Genomic Consortium analyzes a large schizophrenia cohort to examine genomic copy number variants (CNVs) and disease risk. They find an enrichment of CNV burden in cases versus controls and identify 8 genome-wide significant loci as well as novel suggestive loci conferring either risk or protection to schizophrenia.

Though tractography is widely used, it has not been systematically validated. Here, authors report results from 20 groups showing that many tractography algorithms produce both valid and invalid bundles.

In this study, the concept of dynamic character displacement among interacting bacterial species from leaf-colonizing families was empirically tested using a proteomics approach. A phenotypic shift towards the utilization of alternative carbon sources was observed during coexistence, thereby minimizing niche overlap.

Structural variants in more than 17,000 human genomes are mapped and characterized using whole-genome sequencing, showing how this type of variation contributes to rare deleterious coding and noncoding alleles.

The addition of a low percentage of DMSO into liquid chromatography solvents strongly enhances peptide electrospray ionization, substantially improving proteome analysis by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry.

A case–control study investigating the causes of recent cases of acute hepatitis of unknown aetiology in 32 children identifies an association between adeno-associated virus infection and host genetics in disease susceptibility.

Single-cell multi-omic analysis of 300,000 cells from 29 patients representing peripheral immune cells and colon mucosal immune, epithelial and mesenchymal cells reveals crosstalk between circulating and tissue-resident immune cells with epithelial cells in checkpoint inhibitor colitis and identifies potential therapeutic targets.

This study uses gene expression predictors for the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other brain regions to perform a transcriptomic imputation analysis of schizophrenia, identifying 413 genic associations across 13 brain regions and 36 significantly enriched pathways.

Moire bilayers support quantum spin Hall (QSH) and quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) states, but a unified explanation is missing. Mai et al. show that by including interactions in typical models, the QSH state shifts from 1/2 to 1/4 filling and gives way to the QAH state at low temperature.

The biological role of 2′-O-methylation of host and viral mRNA has remained elusive. Thiel and co-workers show that this modification modulates the induction of type I interferon and sensitivity to interferon.

A genome-wide-association meta-analysis of 18,381 austim spectrum disorder (ASD) cases and 27,969 controls identifies five risk loci. The authors find quantitative and qualitative polygenic heterogeneity across ASD subtypes.

Genome-wide analysis identifies 30 loci associated with bipolar disorder, allowing for comparisons of shared genes and pathways with other psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and depression.

Western diet is one of the major causes underlying diabetes, and the microbes residing in the gut playing a critical role in mediating the effects of diet. Here the authors utilize network analysis to discover two species of Lactobacilli decreased by western diet, which improve glucose metabolism and restore of hepatic mitochondria in mice.