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High-resolution ALMA observations reveal a gravitationally bound septuple protostar system in NGC 6334IN, formed through disk fragmentation. This discovery sheds light on the formation of extreme high-order multiplicity in massive stellar clusters.

Telomere shortening marks cellular aging and links to heart disease. Here, the authors show shared genetic loci between leukocyte telomere length and coronary artery disease, highlighting genes such as SH2B3 and pathways involved in DNA biosynthesis and telomere maintenance.

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 plumage of Cretaceous birds has previously been described only from compression fossils and isolated feathers in amber. Here, Xing et al.describe two 99 million year old bird wings found preserved in amber, enabling new insight into the evolution of feather arrangement, pigmentation, and structure.

Nonlinear optical phonons often exhibit rapid decay. Here, the authors demonstrate long-lived nonlinear optical phonons through the spontaneous formation of phonon frequency combs in CrXTe₃ (X=Ge,Si).

Solution-based methods exist to upcycle waste polyolefins, although these resort to the use of co-reactants and require non-negligible energy inputs. Here the authors show how a solar thermal catalytic system based on copper particles encapsulated within a 2D Si material can strongly alleviate such issues.

Yeast surface display technology enables real-time monitoring and effective screening of libraries of millions of disulfide-cyclised peptides against diverse protein targets. Selected ligands are characterised rapidly and quantitatively without the need for chemical synthesis and purification.

The LHCb experiment at CERN has observed significant asymmetries between the decay rates of the beauty baryon and its CP-conjugated antibaryon, thus demonstrating CP violation in baryon decays.

The heterogeneity of isoform level m⁶A RNA methylation in single cells is unclear. The authors characterize m⁶A at both single-cell and isoform level through ONT long-read sequencing on single-cell cDNA library with APOBEC1-YTH induced C-to-U mutations. They find the role of m⁶A on surveillance of misprocessed RNAs through CDS-m⁶A decay mechanism.

A recent synthesis study found 54% of the high-latitude peatlands have been drying and 32% have been wetting over the past centuries, illustrating their complex ecohydrological dynamics and highly uncertain responses to a warming climate.

Colour code on a superconducting qubit quantum processor is demonstrated, reporting above-breakeven performance and logical error scaling with increased code size by a factor of 1.56 moving from distance-3 to distance-5 code.

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 report TEQUILA-seq, a versatile, easy-to-implement, and low-cost method for targeted long-read RNA sequencing. TEQUILA-seq uncovers transcript isoforms and RNA mechanisms associated with human health and disease.

Sarcolipin expression is transcriptionally induced through a CREB DNA-binding site on its promoter and is suppressed by a site-1 protease-ATF6 axis.

Fault-tolerant manipulation of quantum bits is demonstrated experimentally on an eight-photon cluster state using topological error correction.

Drought, fires, and human activities have reversed the accumulation of live biomass carbon in the Northern Hemisphere, with total biomass shifting from a positive to a negative trend around 2016.

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.

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.

Genome-wide association analyses identify new risk loci for heart failure and its subtypes, extending understanding of the underlying biological pathways and disease mechanisms.

In a quantum simulation of a (2+1)D lattice gauge theory using a superconducting quantum processor, the dynamics of strings reveal the transition from deconfined to confined excitations as the effective electric field is increased.

Soft tissues are rarely preserved in the fossil record; therefore, body shape of extinct vertebrates is usually inferred indirectly. Here, the authors use laser-stimulated fluorescence of fossils to detect and reconstruct the body outline of the paravian dinosaurAnchiornisfrom the Late Jurassic.

The understanding of the reemergence of pressure induced superconductivity in alkali-metal intercalated FeSe is hampered by sample complexities. Here, Sun et al. report the electronic properties of (Li_1–xFe _x )OHFe_1–ySe single crystal not only in the reemerged superconducting state but also in the normal state.

Employing a candidate gene approach, Mancina et al. identify a genetic variant of the Pleckstrin and Sec7 domain-containing 3 (PSD3) gene that reduces susceptibility to fatty liver disease. Functional studies in vitro and in vivo demonstrate that targeting PSD3 protects against fatty liver disease.

Heart failure is a complex syndrome that is associated with many different underlying risk factors. Here, to increase power, the authors jointly analyse cases of heart failure of different aetiologies in a genome-wide association study and identify 11 loci of which ten had not been previously reported.

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.

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

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.

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 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 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.

A biodegradable probe made of dextran and a urea-based targeting ligand for prostate-specific membrane antigen enables targeted magnetic resonance imaging of tumours expressing the receptor in a xenograft mouse model of prostate cancer.

While HER2-targeted therapies such as trastuzumab can be effective in patients with breast cancer, resistance often develops. Here, the authors demonstrate that the histone reader ZYMND8 promotes glycerophospholipid metabolic reprogramming via c-Myc and cPLA2α to increase secretion of IL-27, mediating resistance to HER2-targeted antibodies in preclinical models of breast cancer.

As Nature Chemical Biology approaches its third decade we asked a collection of chemical biologists, “What do you think are the most exciting frontiers or the most needed developments in your main field of research?” — here is what they said.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

While Bell inequalities have been violated several times—mostly in photonic systems—their violations within particle physics experiments are less explored. Here, the BESIII Collaboration showcases Bell-violating nonlocal correlations between entangled hyperon pairs.

Investigating the influence of using methamphetamine on the rate of admissions for mental health disorders, this study finds that concurrent methamphetamine use increased mental health-related hospital admissions 10.5-fold. Increased prevalence was also found for men, non-Hispanic Black people, middle-aged adults, and people living in the South.

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.

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.

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.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.