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Genetic changes that help tumour cells thrive can be co-opted to improve immunotherapy’s effectiveness, and looking at the electric vehicle batteries of the future.

The rise of AI-generated fakes, evidence of the earliest-known wooden structure, and how NASA’s OSIRIS-REx brought asteroid samples back to Earth.

The study introduces radio interferometric multiplexed spectroscopy (RIMS), a method designed to efficiently monitor the radio emissions of massive samples of stars. Applying it to LOFAR data, the authors identify stellar bursts, offering clues to possible star–planet magnetic interactions.

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.

From 2014–2017, marine heatwaves caused global mass coral bleaching, where the corals lose their symbiotic algae. The authors find, this event exceeded the severity of all prior global bleaching events in recorded history, with approximately half the world’s reefs bleaching and 15% experiencing substantial mortality.

Immunopeptidomics identify CD4⁺ T cell epitopes from the conserved bacterial Hup protein that confer protection against multiple bacterial infections in mice suggesting potential for development of broader-spectrum vaccines against staphylococci and streptococci.

A video game provides players with insights into pandemic responses, and our annual festive fun.

De novo and inherited dominant variants in genes encoding U4 and U6 small nuclear RNAs are identified in individuals with retinitis pigmentosa. The variants cluster at nucleotide positions distinct from those implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Membrane ion channels can be responsive to a variety of stimuli such as pressure, temperature, or pH. Here, the authors show that simply shining 365 nm light activates a native potassium channel in rodent pain-sensing neurons, delivering powerful analgesia without drugs or genetic manipulations.

A new neural interface lets people type with their mind, and a crafting journey into materials science.

cellSTAAR advances noncoding rare variant association analysis by integrating single-cell genomics data.

Environmental justice and drinking water in the US: Higher proportions of Hispanic/Latino, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and non-Hispanic Black residents were associated with higher public water arsenic and uranium at the county-level, findings differed by region.

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.

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.

The xylosyltransferase isoenzymes XT1 and XT2 catalyze the first glycosylation step in the biosynthesis of proteoglycans. Now, bump-and-hole engineering of XT1 and XT2 enables substrate profiling and modification of proteins as designer proteoglycans to modulate cellular behavior.

Humanity’s Last Exam, a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, is designed to be an expert-level closed-ended academic benchmark with broad subject coverage.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

Generation of orbital currents in a non-magnetic material can be useful to build efficient orbitronic devices. Now, the interplay of chiral phonons and electrons is shown to produce orbital currents in α-quartz.

α/β-hydrolase domain-containing protein 11 (ABHD11) is a mitochondrial hydrolase, and its expression in CD4 + T-cells has been linked to remission status in rheumatoid arthritis. Here the authors report that pharmacological inhibition of ABHD11 modulates T-cell effector function via increased 24,25-epoxycholesterol biosynthesis and subsequent liver X receptor activation.

This Resource paper presents a global SARS-CoV-2 phylogenetic tree of 4,471,579 high-quality genomes consistently constructed by Viridian, an efficient amplicon-aware assembler.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet responded to different natural forcing mechanisms than the East Antarctic Ice Sheet through the mid-Pliocene due to a greater sensitivity to oceanic feedbacks, according to iceberg-rafted debris records and ice-sheet modelling experiments.

A hidden quality-control system to filter out defective sperm during development is exploited by selfish genes to eliminate competing chromosomes.

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.

Dietary restriction promotes the expansion of effector T cells via ketone bodies, which enhances anti-tumour immunity and synergizes with immunotherapy in mice.

Linking prior epigenetic status to future outcomes remains a challenge. Here, authors show recording neuronal enhancer activity across postnatal development in mice reveals loci that predict and can be manipulated to modify acute seizure response.

Trends in global H₂ sources and sinks are analysed from 1990 to 2020, and a comprehensive budget for the decade 2010–2020 is presented.

Regrowth of lost enamel in tooth decay and sensitivity is a major obstacle to overcome. Here, the authors report on a protein-based material that mimics features of natural enamel formation, allowing for epitaxial growth of apatite nanocrystals to restore enamel structure and function.

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.

Weyl particles are massless relativistic fermions recently observed in solid-state materials where they are characterized by Weyl points: topologically protected crossings in their band structure. Here, the authors demonstrate a novel type of plasmonic Weyl point in a magnetized plasma.

In most metals the optical Hall effect is very small at visible wavelengths, and usually can only be observed at low frequencies. Here, Am-Shalom et al present a technique involving a large amplitude modulation of the external magnetic field, allowing for the measurement of the optical Hall effect in a range of metals at visible wavelengths.

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 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.

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

Results from the phase ELAD 2 trial reveal that liraglutide is safe and well tolerated in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease but does not significantly slow brain metabolism decline.

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 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.

The SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid (N) protein serves multiple roles in the viral lifecycle. Phosphorylation toggles N between these roles by altering N’s conformation, its material properties when phase separated with RNA, and its membrane interactions.

Controlling light with planar elements requires full polarization channels and reconstruction of optical signals. Here, the authors have demonstrated a general method relying on pixelated metasurfaces that enables wavefront shaping with arbitrary output polarization, allowing full utilization of polarization channels.

Fundamental biophysical principles that govern particle inclusion in or exclusion from condensates are discovered, wherein arbitrarily large particles controllably partition into condensates given sufficiently strong condensate-particle interactions.

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.

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.

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.