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Engineering a mutant-specific customized base editor precisely corrects a mutation while minimizing bystander edits, leading to substantial phenotypic recovery in mouse models of multisystemic smooth muscle dysfunction syndrome.

Mapping of spatial metabolic gradients in the mouse liver and intestine identifies fructose-induced focal derangements in liver metabolism.

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

Glutamatergic and GABAergic (γ-aminobutyric acid-producing) cortical neuronal activity drives proliferation of small lung cell cancer via paracrine interactions and through synapses formed with tumour cells.

An optical detection and analysis platform quantifies aggregate density, distribution and size in fluorescently labelled post-mortem human brain tissue.

Basal cells, rather than neuroendocrine cells, have been identified as the probable origin of small cell lung cancer and other neuroendocrine–tuft cancers, explaining neuroendocrine–tuft heterogeneity and offering new perspectives for targeting lineage plasticity.

Condensates composed of the disordered region of the mediator of RNA polymerase II transcription subunit 1 (MED1) are known to partition specific proteins, but whether this specificity arises from ordered-structure-mediated or dynamic multivalent amino acid interactions remains unclear. Here, the authors show that a physics-based model that only accounts for multivalent polymer interactions is able to explain and predict selective partitioning, suggesting that the specificity of condensate composition is underpinned by multivalent interactions in the context of conformational disorder.

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.

MultiSTAAR provides a general and flexible statistical framework for functionally informed multi-trait rare variant analysis of biobank-scale sequencing studies by jointly analyzing multiple traits and incorporating annotation information.

Over 30 years, the scholarship programme Hrabowski founded has supported more than 1,500 Black students. He spoke to Nature for our new Changemakers series.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

Metabolic liver disease is highly prevalent in subjects with obesity and involves inflammation, insulin resistance, and fibrosis, leading to cirrhosis. Here, the authors show the IFNγ-IL12 axis in regulating intercellular crosstalk in the liver and playing a major role in the pathogenesis of metabolic liver disease.

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.

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 authors develop a new computational system for high-throughput mapping of synaptic connectivity using two-photon holographic optogenetics and intracellular recordings.

This meta-analysis of malaria cluster trials highlights that underestimating between-cluster variation reduces statistical power. It provides refined coefficient of variation estimates to inform sample size calculations for future evaluations.

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.

Combined high-throughput protein engineering with machine learning to curate libraries of CRISPR genome-editing enzymes with distinct genome targeting properties is described.

Familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) is an inherited gastrointestinal syndrome associated with duodenal adenoma formation. Here the authors show that IL17A-producing NKp44- group 3 innate lymphoid cells accumulate in FAP duodenal tissue and are associated with duodenal adenoma formation in patients with FAP.

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

Third-generation sequencing can reveal information beyond the simple sequence of bases, but fulfilling this potential requires complex reference sets for training. Here, the authors present an approach to generate these reference sets and present various use cases for such multidimensional sequencing.

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.

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.

In this target trial emulation study, the authors evaluate effectiveness of nirmatrelvir/ritonavir in non-hospitalized paediatric patients aged 12–17 years with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection and show reduced risks of 28 day all-cause mortality or hospitalization associated with the treatment.

In an updated report on 70 laboratory-confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza A H5N1 cases in the USA between March 2024 and May 2025, the absence of human-to-human transmission to date was confirmed, with no known mutations of resistance to neuroaminidase inhibitors.

Cell migration is sensitive to environmental stiffness, but how cells sense optimal stiffness is not known. Here the authors develop a model that predicts that the optimum can be shifted by altering the number of active molecular motors and clutches, and verify their model in two cell types.

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.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

The understudied lipid kinase PIP4K2C binds SARS-CoV-2 nonstructural protein 6 and regulates virus-induced autophagic flux impairment, suppressing viral protein degradation. PIP4K2C inhibition is a candidate strategy to combat emerging viruses.

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.

Engineered kill-switch-encoding Mycobacterium tuberculosis infects, elicits immune responses and is cleared from immunocompetent and immunocompromised mice, providing a model of controlled tuberculosis infection.

Growth rate dynamics after temperature shifts can be explained by metabolic rearrangement due to temperature-sensitive enzyme activities in bacteria and yeast.

A novel personalized phage therapy strategy that selects phages for a predicted evolutionary trade-off may represent a viable alternative approach for the treatment of antimicrobial-resistant bacterial infections.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Here, the authors leverage whole-genome sequencing from >88,000 diverse individuals to uncover 18 BMI-related genetic signals, including novel variants in participants of African genetic ancestry, highlighting the value of diversity in genetic discovery.

The relationship between pathogenic germline variation, clonal hematopoiesis (CH) and risk of hematologic malignancy is explored in 731,835 individuals across 6 cohorts. Carriers of variants in certain genes show distinct patterns of CH and increased risk of CH progression to malignancy.

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.

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.

Liver fibrosis develops from excessive matrix produced by activated hepatic stellate cells (HSCs). Here, authors identify ABHD17B via an siRNA screen and show that ABHD17B regulates the fibrotic activity of HSCs and promotes liver fibrosis in vivo.

Understanding how rewards can override our initial sensory judgments and influence decision-making is crucial. Here the authors show that the anterior cingulate cortex plays an important role in mediating reward biasing.

Palmitoylation at C64 in stimulator of interferon genes (STING) is reported and, along with engagement of C91, is involved in dynamic cross talk with C148 to alter STING oligomer states and ultimately control STING activation.

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.

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.