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Politicians take action on poaching in Africa as tusk seizures approach record numbers.

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

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.

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).

Analysis of data from multiple instruments reveals a giant exoplanet in orbit around the 0.2-solar-mass star TOI-6894. The existence of this exoplanetary system challenges assumptions about planet formation and it is an excellent target for atmospheric characterization.

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.

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.

A study reports whole-genome sequences for 490,640 participants from the UK Biobank and combines these data with phenotypic data to provide new insights into the relationship between human variation and sequence variation.

Here, the authors perform a meta-analysis in 26,699 people with seizures and 492,324 controls to identify 25 genome-wide significant copy-number variants. The discovered loci point to known disease genes and associations with clinical annotations.

Ni, Wei, Vona and colleagues use human brain organoids to dissect patient AIRIM variants associated with neurodevelopmental features. A subset of variants impaired ribosome production and protein synthesis, and delayed radial glial cell specification.

Integrated multi-omic analyses using samples from the TRACERx study highlight cross-talk between DNA hypermethylation and genomic lesions in non-small cell lung cancer.

Self-driving laboratories that integrate robotic production with artificial intelligence have the potential to accelerate innovation in biotechnology. Because self-driving labs can be complex and not universally applicable, it is useful to consider their suitable use cases for successful integration into discovery workflows. Here, we review strategies for assessing the suitability of self-driving labs for biochemical design problems.

Using a trapped-ion quantum simulator of up to 50 spins, researchers explore new universal scaling laws in non-equilibrium dynamics, revealing unique critical behaviors following a sequence of quenches in a long-range 1D Ising model.

R2 retrotransposons are natural RNA guided gene insertion systems. Here, Edmonds et al. characterize the structure and biochemistry of an avian R2 and engineer a compact, all-RNA system to integrate DNA in mammalian cells, aiding the development of future retrotransposon-based gene editors.

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.

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.

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) onsets in COVID-19 patients with manifestations similar to Kawasaki disease (KD). Here the author probe the peripheral blood transcriptome of MIS-C patients to find signatures related to natural killer (NK) cell activation and CD8+ T cell exhaustion that are shared with KD patients.

Incomplete plumbing affects over a million people in the USA. Analysis of individual and household data for the 2015–2019 period from the US–Mexico border reveals the unequal nature of plumbing poverty in the borderlands and provides insight for future planning.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Is it really possible to stop rain, invoke lightning from the heavens or otherwise manipulate the weather? Jane Qiu and Daniel Cressey report on the once-scorned notion of weather modification.

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of type 2 diabetes (T2D) identifies more than 600 T2D-associated loci; integrating physiological trait and single-cell chromatin accessibility data at these loci sheds light on heterogeneity within the T2D phenotype.

The nonlocality of a quantum state is often difficult to predict. Here, Cavalcanti and colleagues devise a method based on networks that makes this characterization much easier, revealing that the nonlocality of a quantum state depends on the context of the measurement.

A preclinical covalent compound, CMX410, contains a aryl fluorosulfate warhead that targets the acyltransferase domain of Mtb Pks13, an essential enzyme in cell-wall biosynthesis, making it a promising candidate for tuberculosis treatment regimens.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

Thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) activates latent TGF-β in the extracellular matrix. Here the authors show that inappropriate activation of latent TGF-β in murine, bovine and human lung by monocyte-produced TSP-1 causes pulmonary hypertension, and that interference with the activation process prevents disease development.