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Limited diagnostic capacity for asymptomatic individuals hinders malaria elimination efforts in Africa. Here, the authors present a near point-of-care method based on colorimetric LAMP detection that outperforms expert microscopy and commercial rapid diagnostic tests for Plasmodium detection in asymptomatic and submicroscopic individuals.

The upcycling of protein materials has been hindered by the difficulty in restructuring them to usable forms. Here, the authors reveal that concentrated ion pairs like LiBr disrupt the water network structure rather than directly interacting with proteins, and develop a sustainable keratin regeneration method with closed-loop recycling of ionic denaturant and rapid solidification of protein gels.

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

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.

An expert-elicitation process identifies current methodological barriers for monitoring terrestrial biodiversity, and how technological and procedural development of robotic and autonomous systems may contribute to overcoming these challenges.

Using well-calibrated statistical methods the authors jointly analyze Undiagnosed Diseases Network genomes, identifying known and novel disease genes. Software is publicly available to support future cross-cohort rare disease discovery efforts.

Trees come in all shapes and size, but what drives this incredible variation in tree form remains poorly understood. Using a global dataset, the authors show that a combination of climate, competition, disturbance and evolutionary history shape the crown architecture of the world’s trees and thereby constrain the 3D structure of woody ecosystems.

This study challenges the prevailing paradigm that wetness drives peat carbon accumulation, by showing that increased catchment water and nutrient inputs to high-latitude peatlands reduce recent carbon accumulation because of enhanced peat decay.

A genome-wide study by the Long COVID Host Genetics Initiative identifies an association between the FOXP4 locus and long COVID, implicating altered lung function in its pathophysiology.

Combination of epidemiology, preclinical models and ultradeep DNA profiling of clinical cohorts unpicks the inflammatory mechanism by which air pollution promotes lung cancer

In lung adenocarcinoma, antibodies against endogenous retroviruses promote anti-tumour activity, and expression of endogenous retroviruses can predict outcomes of immunotherapy.

A longitudinal evolutionary analysis of 126 lung cancer patients with metastatic disease reveals the timing of metastatic divergence, modes of dissemination and the genomic events subject to selection during the metastatic transition.

Large genome-wide meta-analysis of clinically diagnosed late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) from 94,437 individuals identifies new LOAD risk loci and implicates Aβ formation, tau protein binding, immune response and lipid metabolism.

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.

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) loss of heterozygosity, allele-specific mutation and measurement of expression and repression (MHC Hammer) detects disruption to human leukocyte antigens due to mutations, loss of heterogeneity, altered gene expression or alternative splicing. Applied to lung and breast cancer datasets, the tool shows that these aberrations are common across cancer and can have clinical implications.

Computational and machine-learning approaches that integrate genomic and transcriptomic variation from paired primary and metastatic non-small cell lung cancer samples from the TRACERx cohort reveal the role of transcriptional events in tumour evolution.

Analyses of the TRACERx study unveil the relationship between tissue morphology, the underlying evolutionary genomic landscape, and clinical and anatomical relapse risk of lung adenocarcinomas.

Results of the TRACERx study shed new light into the association between body composition and body weight with survival in individuals with non-small cell lung cancer, and delineate potential biological processes and mediators contributing to the development of cancer-associated cachexia.

Mixed responses to targeted therapy within a patient are a clinical challenge. Here the authors show that TP53 loss-of-function cooperates with whole genome doubling which increases chromosomal instability. This leads to greater cellular diversity and multiple routes of resistance, which in turn promotes mixed responses to treatment.

Rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu contain some of the molecular building blocks of life on Earth, such as amino acids and nucleobases. They also carry ammonia that formed billions of years ago in cold, distant regions of our Solar System.

Shear-aligned keratin protofibres are used to fabricate shape-memory fibres and three-dimensional scaffolds that respond to water.

Immune lymphocyte estimation from nucleotide sequencing (ImmuneLENS) infers B cell and T cell fractions from whole-genome sequencing data. Applied to the 100,000 Genomes Project datasets, circulating T cell fraction provides sex-dependent and prognostic insights in patients.

Measurements of subclonal expansion of ctDNA in the plasma before surgery may enable the prediction of future metastatic subclones, offering the possibility for early intervention in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer.

Analyses of multiregional tumour samples from 421 patients with non-small cell lung cancer prospectively enrolled to the TRACERx study reveal determinants of tumour evolution and relationships between intratumour heterogeneity and clinical outcome.

A multi-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analysis of kidney cancer identifies 63 regions associated with disease susceptibility including one locus that was associated with increased risk in individuals with African ancestry.

Patient-derived xenografts are important tools for cancer drug development. Here, the authors develop models from 22 non-small cell lung cancer patients. They show genomic differences between models created from different spatial regions of tumours and a bottleneck on model establishment.

Polygenic risk scores for Alzheimer’s disease derived from individuals of European ancestry can show improved performance in multiancestry settings after incorporating genome-wide association summary statistics from diverse populations.

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Swanton and colleagues present a clonal expression signature, ORACLE, which, in combination with clinicopathological and molecular risk factors, can predict survival of patients with lung adenocarcinoma, and they prospectively validate its prognostic value.

A robust, cost-effective technique based on whole-exome sequencing data can be used to characterize immune infiltrates, relate the extent of these infiltrates to somatic changes in tumours, and enables prediction of tumour responses to immune checkpoint inhibition therapy.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.

Known genetic loci account for only a fraction of the genetic contribution to Alzheimer’s disease. Here, the authors have performed a large genome-wide meta-analysis comprising 409,435 individuals to discover 6 new loci and demonstrate the efficacy of an Alzheimer’s disease polygenic risk score.

Timothy Frayling, Joel Hirschhorn, Peter Visscher and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for adult height in 253,288 individuals. They identify 697 variants in 423 loci significantly associated with adult height and find that these variants cluster in pathways involved in growth and together explain one-fifth of the heritability for this trait.

A dual positron emission tomography–near-infrared probe enables the visualization of the early trafficking dynamics of an injected model mRNA vaccine in non-human primates.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

EGFR mutations are frequent in glioblastoma and lung cancer. Here, the authors perform deep mutational scanning of EGFR, followed by a high-throughput functional screen and analysis of patient data, to identify variants with differing sensitivities to a range of EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

Christine Skibola and colleagues identify variants at 6p21.32 associated with risk of follicular lymphoma, providing further support that variation in the MHC region influences risk of this disease. They also replicate previously reported risk variants for chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

The delivery of oligonucleotides disrupting the secondary structure of single-guide RNAs and of short interfering RNAs targeting Cas9 mRNA can enhance lipid-nanoparticle-mediated gene editing in vivo in tissues other than the liver.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

Analysis of whole-genome doubling (WGD) by using cancer sequencing data combined with simulations of tumor evolution suggests that there is negative selection against homozygous loss of essential genes before WGD but not after.

A technique using barcoded beads for DNA sequencing within tissue sections enables spatial resolution of tumour clonal heterogeneity and can be multiplexed with other analytical techniques for analysis of complex cellular phenotypes.

Samples of different body regions from hundreds of human donors are used to study how genetic variation influences gene expression levels in 44 disease-relevant tissues.

Ruth Loos and colleagues report results of a large genome-wide association study for body mass index. They identify 18 new loci associated with this trait, some of which map near key hypothalamic regulators of energy balance.

Traumatic brain injury is associated with changes to the metabolome. Here the authors show that acute traumatic brain injury has distinctive serum metabolic patterns which may suggest protective changes of systemic lipid metabolism aiming to maintain lipid homeostasis in the brain.

The impact of α-synuclein aggregates on neurons has been unclear. Here, the authors identify a Lewy Associated Molecular Dysfunction from Aggregates (LAMDA) signature in inclusion bearing neurons in human brain and a mouse model of α-synucleinopathy.

Deer mice are natural hosts for a number of human pathogens. Here, Griffin et al. report that intranasal exposure of the North American deer mouse to SARS-CoV-2 results in virus replication and shedding, despite causing only mild or asymptomatic illness. Additionally, infected deer mice can transmit SARS-CoV-2 to naïve deer mice.

Wu et al. utilize multiparametric analysis of early-stage human NSCLC to characterize a population of Vδ1 T cells displaying a resident memory and effector memory phenotype, which were associated with ongoing remission.