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Human brain morphodynamics are explored using organoids.

The human endoderm-derived organoid cell atlas (HEOCA) presents an integrative analysis of single-cell transcriptomes across different conditions, sources and protocols. It compares cell types and states between models, and harmonizes cell annotations through mapping to primary tissues.

A dual-channel recording system for high-resolution lineage tracing.

The liver has the remarkable ability to regenerate. Applying single-cell transcriptomics and iterative immunofluorescence imaging on patient-derived samples, this study revealed cellular gene expression changes linked to altered tissue architecture.

A multi-omic atlas of brain organoid development facilitates the inference of an underlying gene regulatory network using the newly developed Pando framework and shows—in conjunction with perturbation experiments—that GLI3 controls forebrain fate establishment through interaction with HES4/5 regulomes.

A multimodal atlas of retinal organoid development shows spatial interactions over time.

A human neural organoid cell atlas integrating 36 single-cell transcriptomic datasets shows cell types and states and estimates transcriptomic similarity between primary and organoid counterparts, showing potential to assess organoid fidelity and facilitate protocol development.

Single-cell analysis of lung cancer progression uncovers developmental and regenerative programs co-opted by cancer cells and immune-mediated pruning during metastatic outbreak

Here, the authors demonstrate that single cell RNA sequencing technology can be leveraged to characterize RNA content of individual membrane-free condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation processes such as coacervation.

LKB1 tumour suppressor gene is frequently mutated in lung adenocarcinoma. Here the authors show that in genetically engineered mouse models of lung cancer Lkb1 restoration induces growth arrest and drives neoplastic cells toward a more differentiated and less proliferative alveolar type II cell-like state via C/EBP-mediated reprogramming.

The precision of interferometers — used in metrology and in the state-of-the-art time standard — is generally limited by classical statistics. Here it is shown that the classical precision limit can be beaten by using nonlinear atom interferometry with Bose–Einstein condensates.

Ascl1 and Sox2 convert human brain pericytes into the two major neuronal subclasses of GABA- and glutamatergic neurons. Unexpectedly, despite the lack of cell division, this conversion requires passage through a neural stem cell-like state.

Different functional variants in ADH1B (and elsewhere) in Europeans and Africans strongly affect risk for alcohol dependence. Dependence only partly genetically correlates with consumption, with strong correlations to other psychiatric disorders.

A vascular cell atlas integrating single-cell data of 19 organs and tissues from 62 donors identifies angiotypic and organotypic characteristics of endothelial and mural cells.

The mechanisms underlying human cell diversity are unclear. Here the authors provide a single-cell epigenome map of human neural organoid development and dissect how epigenetic changes control cell fate specification from pluripotency to distinct cerebral and retina neural types.

Single-cell RNA sequencing analysis of two- and three-dimensional hepatic differentiation reveals that both systems recapitulate certain transcriptomic features of human hepatogenesis.

Excessive consumption of alcohol can have serious physical, psychological and social implications. Alcohol dependence is a complex genetic disease, with variants in many different genes affecting a person's risk of becoming dependent on alcohol. Here, the authors discuss the genetic factors underlying this disorder.

Stratified medicine promises to tailor treatment for individual patients, however it remains a major challenge to leverage genetic risk data to aid patient stratification. Here the authors introduce an approach to stratify individuals based on the aggregated impact of their genetic risk factor profiles on tissue-specific gene expression levels, and highlight its ability to identify biologically meaningful and clinically actionable patient subgroups, supporting the notion of different patient ‘biotypes’ characterized by partially distinct disease mechanisms.

Human tissue resembling the brain’s cortex can be grown from stem cells in vitro. Transplanting this tissue into a developing rat cortex enables it to mature, integrate into neuronal circuits and influence behaviour.

Moscot is an optimal transport approach that overcomes current limitations of similar methods to enable multimodal, scalable and consistent single-cell analyses of datasets across spatial and temporal dimensions.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis of individuals with clinically assessed or self-reported depression identifies 44 independent risk loci. Comparisons with other psychiatric disorders and candidate gene analyses provide new insights into major depressive disorder.

Here the authors use positron emission tomography to visualize fibroblasts in patients with arthritis and combined with spatial transcriptomic data show that these cells undergo a phenotypic shift upon resolution of inflammation. A CD200⁺DKK3⁺ fibroblast subset promotes this resolution by inhibiting tumor necrosis factor and interleukin-17A.

Genome-wide analysis identifies 30 loci associated with bipolar disorder, allowing for comparisons of shared genes and pathways with other psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and depression.

Here we show how Mg²⁺ and Mn²⁺ function in Escherichia coli phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PCK) and we propose a general model for the role of binuclear metal clusters in enzyme-catalyzed phosphoryl-transfer reactions.

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a severe mood disorder, which has been shown to have a large genetic component. Here the authors identify two previously unreported BD risk loci and provide further insights into the biological mechanisms underlying BD development.

Species comparisons using single-cell transcriptomics and accessible chromatin profiling in stem cell-derived cerebral organoids are used to map dynamic gene-regulatory changes that are unique to humans.

iPSC-derived brain organoids from patients with neurodevelopmental disease reveal dysfunction in neural progenitors underlying impaired migration of developing neurons in periventricular heterotopia.

Environmental influences during prenatal development may have implications for health and disease later in life. Here, Czamara et al. assess DNA methylation in cord blood from new-born under various models including environmental and genetic effects individually and their additive or interaction effects.

Two studies integrate cutting-edge techniques to grow and analyse 3D cultured tissues that resemble human brain structures, enabling examination of how brain regions interact and neurons mature. See Articles p.48 & p.54

Single-cell transcriptome analysis enables the direct measurement of cell types and lineage hierarchies of the developing distal lung epithelium and identifies a population of bipotential alveolar progenitor cells.

Depression is correlated with many brain-related traits. Here, Shen et al. perform phenome-wide association studies of a depression polygenic risk score (PRS) and find associations with 51 behavioural and 26 neuroimaging traits which are further followed up on using Mendelian randomization and mediation analyses.

Better analytical methods are needed to extract biological meaning from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of psychiatric disorders. Here the authors take GWAS data from over 60,000 subjects, including patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, and identify common etiological pathways shared amongst them.

The nomenclature for human multicellular models of nervous system development and disease, including organoids, assembloids and transplants, is discussed and a consensus framework is presented.

The transcriptome changes driving the conversion of fibroblasts to neurons at the single-cell level are reported, revealing that early neuronal reprogramming steps are homogenous, driven by the proneural pioneer factor Ascl1; the expression of myogenic genes then has a dampening effect on efficiency, which needs to be counteracted by the neuronal factors Myt1l and Brn2 for more efficient reprogramming.

A genome-wide-association meta-analysis of 18,381 austim spectrum disorder (ASD) cases and 27,969 controls identifies five risk loci. The authors find quantitative and qualitative polygenic heterogeneity across ASD subtypes.

Radiative Auger is a process that leads to a red-shift of the optical emission of an atom or a charged solid-state quantum emitter. Here, the authors realize the inverse process by optically driving the radiative Auger transition of a short-lived electronic state in a semiconductor quantum dot.

Transcriptomes of about 70,000 single cells from first-trimester deciduas and placentas reveal subsets of perivascular, stromal and natural killer cells in the decidua, with distinct immunomodulatory profiles that regulate the environment necessary for successful placentation.

An international group of neuroscience researchers presents a framework for experimental designs for research using neural organoids and assembloids to study human development, evolution and disease.

Strong coupling between a gated semiconductor quantum dot and an optical microcavity is observed in an ultralow-loss frequency-tunable microcavity device.

A review of how single-cell sequencing methods can be used to improve human stem cell and tissue engineering.

In a radiative Auger process, an excited electron relaxes by concomitant emission of a redshifted photon and energy transfer to another electron. Measuring radiative Auger processes in a quantum dot with single-photon resolution enables determination of the energy of single-electron levels as well as their lifetimes.

Droplet GaAs quantum dots are interconnectable sources of single photons. Near-identical photons from remote GaAs quantum dots now show an interference visibility of 93% with quantum entanglement between the separate photon streams from the two sources.

Naomi Wray and colleagues report an analysis of genome-wide association data sets from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium for five psychiatric disorders. They find that common variation explains 17–29% of the variance in liability and provide further support for a shared genetic etiology for these related psychiatric disorders.