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Type 2 diabetes predisposes individuals to multiple comorbidities, but causal mechanisms are unclear. Here, the authors use Mendelian randomisation to show that distinct genetic pathways underlie diabetes-related risks, with ancestry-specific differences.

Olfactory perception of food-derived odors influences feeding behavior, but the underlying neural pathways remain unclear. Here, the authors show that prolonged exposure to food odor suppresses food intake and body weight gain by activating an olfactory bulb–hypothalamus circuit.

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.

Nagano et al. identify the third mitotic cohesin complex, STAG3–cohesin, which, with its unique biophysical properties, weakens insulation and rewires regulatory interactions of spermatogonial stem cells, shaping the male germline nucleome.

In this Stage 2 Registered Report, Buchanan et al. show evidence confirming the phenomenon of semantic priming across speakers of 19 diverse languages.

This study reveals neuronal targets of Lac-Phe in the hypothalamus that mediate its suppression of food intake.

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.

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.

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.

Cardiovascular function declines with age. In this study, the authors show that the BAT-derived lipokine 12,13-diHOME preserves cardiac function in aged mice by attenuating pathological CaMKII activity.

The pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa can be found in vacuoles and cytoplasm within infected cells. Here, Schator et al. show that extracellular bacteria use a type-III secretion system to induce Ca²⁺ influx into host cells and promote vacuole escape of intracellular bacteria and in vivo dissemination.

Glycans regulate cells via glycosylation, and aberrant glycosylation is linked to disease initiation and progression. Here, the authors present GlycanDIA, a DIA-based workflow enabling sensitive, precise glycan analysis, revealing low-abundant modifications and profiling distinct RNA glycan patterns with biological relevance.

Osteosarcomas (OS) are aggressive bone tumors which have no actionable recurrent driver mutations. Here the authors identify aberrant expression of EZHIP in a subset of OS patients as an oncogenic driver, which exhibits vulnerability to epigenetic therapies.

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.

Chung et al. show that total-body dynamic positron emission tomography can allow non-invasive quantitative imaging of the molecular permeability of the human blood-brain barrier using various molecular radiotracers.

Disulfide-based dimerization of modified identical and heterologous nanobody scaffolds enables higher-order assembly for high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy structure determination that is widely applicable to small protein targets.

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.

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.

Pan-cistrome of the maize leaf under well-watered and drought conditions profiled by haplotype-specific MOA-seq highlights the relevance of transcription factor binding QTLs for understanding phenotypic diversity in maize.

Conventional selections of AAV capsid libraries are inefficient at searching sequence space. Here the authors report ‘Fit4Function’, a generalizable ML approach for systematically engineering multi-trait AAV capsids, and use this to predict cross-species traits of peptide-modified AAV capsids.

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.

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.

The study advances the use of serological surveys to guide trachoma elimination program decisions and provides a way to set thresholds for whether or not to continue an intervention program.

A sunlight-activated chemical spray increases wheat yield in field trials across rainfall conditions.

N-Hydroxysuccinimide (NHS)-ester derivatives are one of the most widely used acylating agents. In this work, the authors report that ring-opening reaction of the succinimide to afford N-succinamide derivatives is a present, sometimes dominant, side-reaction of thio-NHS esters, and show that the extent of side reaction is lysine nucleophile- and therefore site-dependent with both side-reaction and desired reaction occurring within the same protein substrate.

The sulfation of protein tyrosine residues is a common post-translational modification in eukaryotes. Here, Han et al.show that the protein RaxST, produced by a plant bacterium, has tyrosine sulfotransferase activity, demonstrating for the first time tyrosine sulfation in prokaryotes.

Metabolomics analyses reported an increased risk of cardiovascular disease associated with the artificial sweetener erythritol, supported by mechanistic studies showing that high levels of erythritol enhanced platelet reactivity and thrombosis formation.

Analyses of genome and exome sequencing data identify rare coding and structural variants associated with atrial fibrillation and highlight genetic links between atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathies.

In animal models, maternal obesity is associated with development of neurodevelopmental disorder like phenotypes. Here the authors show in a macaque model that in obese dams, cell-free fetal DNA methylation, inflammatory cytokines, and metabolites correlated with infant brain DNA methylation, lipids, and metabolites.

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

Alterations in the tumour suppressor genes STK11 and/or KEAP1 can identify patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer who are likely to benefit from combinations of PD-(L)1 and CTLA4 immune checkpoint inhibitors added to chemotherapy.

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 Authors demonstrate imaging of separation and formation of chemical bonds during an elimination reaction by means of intense femtosecond X-rays pulses.

Fitness landscapes largely shape the dynamics of evolution, but it is unclear how they shift upon ecological diversification. By engineering genome-wide knockout libraries of a nascent bacterial community, Ascensao et al. show how ecological and epistatic patterns combine to shape adaptive landscapes.

We describe an imidodiphosphorimidate-catalysed asymmetric Wagner–Meerwein shift of aliphatic alkenyl cycloalkanes to cycloalkenes with excellent regio- and enantioselectivity.

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.

A high-resolution, global atlas of mortality of children under five years of age between 2000 and 2017 highlights subnational geographical inequalities in the distribution, rates and absolute counts of child deaths by age.

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.