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Ruth Loos and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies in 181,171 individuals identifying 14 new loci associated with heart rate and test these for association with cardiac conduction, rhythm disorders and cardiovascular disease. Their experimental studies in Drosophila melanogaster and zebrafish models provide support for a role for 20 candidate genes at 11 of these loci in regulation of heart rate.

Schizophrenia is a highly heritable genetic disorder, however, identification of specific genetic risk variants has proven difficult because of its complex polygenic nature—a large multi-stage genome-wide association study identifies 128 independent associations in over 100 loci (83 of which are new); key findings include identification of genes involved in glutamergic neurotransmission and support for a link between the immune system and schizophrenia.

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.

Aromatase inhibitors are used to treat oestrogen receptor positive breast cancers but the molecular basis for the response of patients is unclear. Here, the authors use samples from an aromatase inhibitor clinical trial and show that tumours from poor responders have more mutations than good responders and also more frequently harbour p53 mutations.

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.

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.

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.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the bone marrow that can induce bone disease. Here, the authors profile the transcriptome of bone-lining cells and find a targetable role of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signalling in myeloma-induced bone-disease

Muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) is a heterogeneous disease for which treatment has, historically, lagged behind that of other solid tumour types. A more detailed understanding of the biology of individual tumours, and the identification of molecular features providing prognostic and predictive information is key to the application of personalized care for patients with MIBC. The publication of a study of 412 samples now provides such data.

Genome-wide association analyses of DNA methylation in peripheral blood from 3,799 Europeans and 3,195 South Asians identify unique SNP–CpG associations (meQTL), providing insights into molecular mechanisms and the potential links to phenotypic variation.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a neuropsychiatric disorder with symptoms including intrusive thoughts and time-consuming repetitive behaviors. Here Noh and colleagues identify genes enriched for functional variants associated with increased risk of OCD.

This Review discusses recent advances in the molecular characterization of bladder cancer, which has provided insights into pathogenesis and subgroups of bladder cancers with different prognosis.

Resistance to first line treatment is a major hurdle in cancer treatment, that can be overcome with drug combinations. Here, the authors provide a large drug combination screen across cancer cell lines to benchmark crowdsourced methods and to computationally predict drug synergies.

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for cognitive ability identifies 190 new loci and implicates 939 new genes related to neurogenesis, neuron differentiation and synaptic structure.

The MuTHER Consortium reports an analysis of the genetics of gene expression in three tissues from approximately 850 mono- and dizygotic twins. They systematically dissect cis and trans genetic effects and estimate non-genetic effects on gene expression.

Follicular T cells provide help to B cells to elicit antibody responses. Cerutti and colleagues show that neutrophils provide help to marginal-zone B cells that produce T cell–independent antibodies.

The cellular heterogeneity in brain obscures the identification of robust cellular regulatory networks. Here the authors integrate genome-wide chromosome conformation data from sorted neurons and glia, with transcriptomic and enhancer profiles, to characterize cell-type-specific gene regulatory landscapes in the human brain, and provide insights into cell-type-specific gene regulatory networks in brain disorders.

Diatoms are less susceptible to viral infection in iron-limited oceans, according to metatranscriptomic analyses of diatoms and viruses in nutrient-replete and limited regions.

Considerable advances have been made in the field of outer membrane protein biogenesis during the past year. The β-barrel assembly machinery (BAM) mediates efficient insertion of folded β-barrels into the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria. The role of the BAM in the folding of membrane proteins is discussed in this Review.

Girdhar et al. constructed chromosomal domains from prefrontal histone acetylation and methylation maps and discovered, in a large cohort of schizophrenia and bipolar brains, converging alignment by genetic risk, neuronal function and three-dimensional genomics.

Adopting early dry season fires has been proposed as a means of generating sufficient carbon revenues to pay for conservation in Africa. However, the climatic impact thereof is deeply questionable and may have unforeseen detrimental effects.

This very large genome-wide association study identifies hundreds of new genetic variants influencing adult height in at least 180 loci enriched for genes involved in skeletal growth defects. The results show that the likely causal gene is often located near the most strongly associated variant, that many loci have multiple independently associated variants and that associated variants are enriched for likely functional effects on genes.

Chromatin accessibility may be altered in disease states. Here the authors carry out ATAC-seq on a large number of samples of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex from individuals with schizophrenia, and healthy controls.

Currently, genome-wide methylation studies are limited to using targeted arrays or enrichment to assess large sample sizes. Here, Allum et al. demonstrate MethylC-Capture Sequencing, a cost-effective method for investigating genetic and epigenetic variation.

Genetically identical twins provide a valuable resource to identify epigenetic factors associated with complex traits. Here the authors adopt this approach and find that differential methylation of the pain gene TRPA1is associated with pain sensitivity in humans.

Using whole-genome data for single-nucleotide polymorphism and results from genome-wide association studies, the authors show that people’s preference for pairing with those with similar phenotypic traits has genetic causes and consequences.

A community of researchers report the lessons learned from applying 44 algorithms to predict drug sensitivity in cancer cell lines using genomic, epigenetic and proteomic datasets

Targeted sequencing finds a higher burden of rare protein-truncating variants in constrained genes among schizophrenia cases of diverse ancestries. Meta-analyses with existing datasets show that this excess burden is consistent across five ancestral populations.

Germline mutation rate is a critical parameter in the study of genetics and evolution. Here, Carlson et al. infer fine-scale patterns of human mutation rate heterogeneity by analyzing ~36 million singleton variants from 3560 whole-genome sequences.