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Creative experiences such as dance, music, drawing, and strategy video games might preserve brain health. The authors show that regular practice or short training in these activities is linked to brains that look younger and work more efficiently.

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.

The activity of the membrane-bound enzyme pMMO depends on copper but the location of the copper centers is still under debate. Here, the authors reconstitute pMMO in nanodiscs and use native top-down MS to localize its copper centers, providing insights into which sites are essential for activity.

People living in rural areas of the United States have poorer outcomes from acute COVID-19. Here, the authors show that higher mortality rates among rural dwellers persist for up to two years after the initial infection, even after accounting for baseline risk factors.

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.

Erlich et al. show that soluble LTα and membrane-bound LTα1β2 lymphotoxins expressed by B cells play distinct roles to attenuate the pathology observed in ileitis.

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.

A fresh approach to protein design that incorporates excited intermediate states enables precise control over the lifetime of protein interactions, with potential applications in cell-signalling modulation and in biosensors and synthetic circuits.

Cell state plasticity of neuroblastoma cells is linked to therapy resistance. Here, the authors develop a transcriptomic and epigenetic map of indisulam (RBM39 degrader) resistant neuroblastoma, demonstrating bidirectional cell state switching accompanied by increased NK cell activity, which they therapeutically enhance by the addition of an anti-GD2 antibody.

The regulatory landscape controlling Hoxd gene expression in tetrapod digit development was probably co-opted from a pre-existing cloacal regulatory mechanism, as evidenced by the effects of genetic deletion experiments in zebrafish fin, cloaca and mouse urogenital development.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Shen et al. show that pre-existing neural similarity in strangers predicts future friendship and changes in social distance over time in an emerging social network of MBA students.

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).

Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome is characterized by premature aging with cardiovascular disease being the main cause of death. Here the authors show that inhibition of the NAT10 enzyme enhances cardiac function and fitness, and reduces age-related phenotypes in a mouse model of premature aging.

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.

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

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

Measuring the bulk power laws of Luttinger liquids in semiconductors remains challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate the dominance of the end-tunneling effect in two fairly distinct Luttinger liquids coexisting in a single quantum wire.

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.

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.

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.

This work introduces a pedigree-derived benchmark for single-nucleotide variants, indels, structural variants and tandem repeats, offering a variant map to validate sequencing workflows or to support the development and evaluation of new variant callers.

Most metabolic studies using traditional procedures fail to reveal the spatial patterning associated with metabolic flux and cellular metabolism within tissue microenvironments. Here, the authors show the application of multi-scale microscopy, machine learning-based image segmentation and spatial analysis to map the fate of nutrient-derived ¹³C across spatiotemporal scales.

Multi-ancestry fine-mapping of breast cancer susceptibility regions identifies candidate causal variants and prioritizes likely effector genes supported by functional genomic evidence.

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.

Analysing camera-trap data of 163 mammal species before and after the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, the authors show that responses to human activity are dependent on the degree to which the landscape is modified by humans, with carnivores being especially sensitive.

EchoNext, a deep learning model for electrocardiograms trained and validated in diverse health systems, successfully detects many forms of structural heart disease, supporting the potential of artificial intelligence to expand access to heart disease screening at scale.

Ethnic disparities in severe outcomes of COVID-19 were observed from early in the pandemic. Here, the authors investigate whether differences in mortality and cardiovascular disease outcomes persisted until 2.5 years after the start of the pandemic using electronic health record data from England and Wales.

The neural basis of how the visual cortex processes complex features remains under active investigation. Here, the authors show that broadband stimuli increase neural responses and visual perception due to a reduction in center-surround suppression.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In a multicenter, randomized trial of patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction and recent decompensation, treatment with volenrelaxin, a long-acting form of human relaxin, was associated with worsening congestion across multiple endpoints as compared to placebo.

The nucleoporin RanBP2 functions in cellular transport, mitosis and SUMO conjugation. Here, the authors determine cryo-EM structures of RanBP2 complexed with SUMO1-RanGAP1, Ubc9, Crm1, Ran and use cell and biochemical assays to probe its functions.