Search

Paris

France's new minister of research has promised that the government will substantially increase its support for research in information technology and biotechnology.

[PARIS]

French science minister Claude Allègre has asked the directors of France's main research agency to come up with more moderate changes to the agency's structure than those proposed last year.

The sacking of France’s former research minister has re-awakened hopes among French researchers that the government could also agree to build a French machine, Soleil.

Washington

Final regulations were published in Washington last week on access to university researchers' data under the Freedom of Information Act.

Paris

France's biomedical research agency, INSERM, has clashed with some of its research staff over an ambitious proposal to build a multi-million dollar centre for physiology research outside Paris.

Paris

Arguments used by French science minister Claude Allègre for cooperating with Britain to build a synchrotron rather than constructing a national source in France came under heavy fire from a parliamentary report last week.

paris

A decision by the French government to support the construction of a new synchrotron facility in Britain has generated a strong backlash in the French scientific community.

PARIS

French scientists, angered at last month's decision by the government to scrap plans to build a synchrotron in France, have refused to re-start two synchrotron machines after the summer vacation in protest.

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

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.

Paris, London

French researchers claim to be the first to have witnessed the Indonesian variety of the coelacanth, but to have lost the original photograph taken of their discovery.

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.

A single MRI scan can provide reliable estimates of human lifetime brain atrophy, helping overcome lifespan data collection challenges. This may enhance genetic studies of late-life neurodegeneration and reveal new insights into its underlying mechanisms.

The hunt is on for the explanation of an apparently faked photograph of a coelacanth.

London

Scientists campaigning to have a new UK synchrotron source based at the Daresbury Laboratory outside Manchester believe they have won the facility.

PARIS

Claude Allègre, France's science minister, has publicly outlined his reasons for for scrapping plans to build a French synchrotron and join up with British plans to build a similar machine.

Fibromuscular dysplasia is a cardiovascular disease affecting mostly women with a mostly unknown genetic basis. Here the authors have performed a genome-wide association meta-analysis of Fibromuscular dysplasia to identify genetic loci, some of which are shared with common cardiovascular disease and traits.

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.

Inborn errors of the alternative NF-κB pathway in humans impair the development of AIRE-expressing medullary thymic epithelial cells, thereby underlying the production of autoantibodies against type I IFNs and predisposition to viral diseases

[PARIS]

French research agencies have been told to cut US$31 million from their planned spending on large scientific facilities to provide extra money for laboratory research projects.

Recurrent somatic mutations altering residues in the transmembrane domain of CADM1 are identified in aldosterone-producing adenomas. Follow-up studies implicate a role of gap junction communication in regulating aldosterone production.

Nuclear scientists and engineers are urging France to compete with Japan and Canada to host the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

[PARIS]

A leading scientific advisory body to the French government issued a strong critique last week of France's research budget for 2000, warning that a failure to increase spending could lead to a scientific recession in the near future.

Here, the authors perform large trans-ancestry fine-mapping analyses identifying large numbers of association signals and putative target genes for colorectal cancer risk, advancing our understanding of the genetic and biological basis of this cancer.

Thomas Sander and colleagues identify 15q13.3 microdeletions in 1% of individuals with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE). The majority of these individuals do not show intellectual disability, schizophrenia or other neuropsychiatric phenotypes, thus extending the phenotypic spectrum associated with 15q13.3 microdeletions.

paris

The current gap between France and its competitors in genome research risks further widening unless more funds are invested in the field, according to a report published last week.

paris

The French Ministry of Science, Education and Technology has announced the creation of a new public/private consortium to promote genome research.

PARIS

French science is to see a modest 1.3 per cent cash increase in funding next year, although this includes a significant increase in funds directly controlled by the Ministry of Research.

Analyses of eight dietary patterns revealed that adherence to low insulinemic, low inflammatory or diabetes risk-reducing diets was associated with the largest risk reduction of cardiometabolic diseases and cancer in US men and women.

Variation around colour pattern genes is highly modular in Heliconius butterflies. This modular architecture explains the diversity of colour patterns and provides a flexible mechanism for rapid morphological diversification.

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.

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.

This Registered Report presents evidence from 87 countries and regions showing that brief emotion-regulation interventions consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, managing ecosystem health, and preventing biological invasions and biodiversity loss could help to reduce the burden of plant, animal and human diseases, especially when coupled with improvements to social and economic determinants of health.

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.

Animal models of infection with Zika virus (ZIKV) are urgently needed for a better understanding of pathogenesis and for testing potential therapies. Here, the authors describe infection of rhesus macaques with an Asian-lineage ZIKV strain as a relevant animal model for studying ZIKV pathogenesis.

The MAGIC investigators report results of a large genome-wide association study meta-analysis to identify common variants influencing fasting glucose homeostasis. They further show that several of the newly discovered loci influencing glycemic traits are also associated with risk of type 2 diabetes.

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.

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.

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.