Search

Women of reproductive age may have specific concerns relating to perceived impacts on fertility and menstrual cycles that make them hesitant to receive COVID-19 vaccination. In this study, the authors explore COVID-19 vaccine uptake rates in women of reproductive age using linked data for ~13 million women in England.

Chronic Kidney Disease affects 1 in 10 people worldwide with prevalence continuing to rise, thus there is a need to identify novel biomarkers that can add value to existing clinical and biochemical risk predictors. Here the authors identify miR190a-5p as potential indicator of kidney health and disease progression in patients with chronic kidney disease.

The authors conducted prospective multimodal monitoring of simultaneous brain and heart function to define physiological changes during the human dying process leading to circulatory arrest.

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

Human host-associated cellular products may act as induction agents for bacteriophages.

Polygenic risk scores can help identify individuals at higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Here, the authors characterise a multi-ancestry score across nearly 900,000 people, showing that its predictive value depends on demographic and clinical context and extends to related traits and complications.

The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task in mice.

Skin prick testing for allergy diagnosis is limited by variability due to differences in test setting and operator expertise. Here, the authors develop and validate an AI-assisted readout method for reading allergy skin test results, and find that integrating AI enhances standardization throughout the skin prick testing process.

Here the authors develop a novel statistical method for quantifying mutation burden from whole genome sequencing data and use it to discover the genetic, genomic, and phenotypic correlates of clonal hematopoiesis without known driver genetic lesions.

This study shows that C9orf72 mutations impair immune activation in ALS, affecting how brain cells communicate, and highlights key differences in the cellular and molecular pathways underlying sporadic and genetic forms of the disease.

A purpose-built implantable system based on biomimetic epidural electrical stimulation of the spinal cord reduces the severity of hypotensive complications in people with spinal cord injury and improves quality of life.

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.

Ethnic disparities in severe outcomes of COVID-19 were observed from early in the pandemic. Here, the authors investigate whether differences in mortality and cardiovascular disease outcomes persisted until 2.5 years after the start of the pandemic using electronic health record data from England and Wales.

From 2003 to 2020, the efficiency of white light-emitting diodes rose from 6% to 39%, while costs fell by 96%. Weinold et al. explore the drivers of such rapid progress to formulate lessons for future clean energy innovation.

The authors spatially and functionally map innate lymphoid cells in the human female genital tract at homeostasis, uncovering tissue-specific and subset-specific distribution and functions, and rapid antiviral responses following HIV exposure.

Brain-wide recordings in mice reveal that prior expectations are distributed through recurrent loops across all levels of cortical and subcortical processing.

Typical quantum error correcting codes assign fixed roles to the underlying physical qubits. Now the performance benefits of alternative, dynamic error correction schemes have been demonstrated on a superconducting quantum processor.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is key for metabolic balance. Here, the authors show that RAP250 deficiency enhances BAT activity. Under these conditions, BAT-derived neuritin-1 regulates thermogenesis and fat metabolism, showing therapeutic promise for obesity and metabolic disorders.

Scanning dielectric microscopy of nanocapillaries filled with water reveals that interfacial and strongly confined water exhibits a large in-plane dielectric constant and an in-plane conductivity approaching superionic values. 

Capsule-specific human monoclonal antibodies are protective against bloodstream infection by Klebsiella pneumoniae sequence type 147 in a mouse model of septicaemia, and could provide a useful strategy against pathogens with antimicrobial resistance.

Regulation of the actin cytoskeleton is essential for blood-brain barrier integrity and immune cell transmigration. Here, the authors show that the ion channel K2P2.1 regulates this process by shielding key signaling lipids and modulating actin dynamics.

A positional and developmentally regulated cell cycle duration gradient exists in the root meristem whereby the G1 phase is very long close to the stem cell niche. This relies on the interplay of PLETHORA with the RETINOBLASTOMA-RELATED pathway.

Mauthe et al. find that protein aggregate clearance requires fragmentation of the aggregate by a chaperone module and a proteasomal regulatory particle for recruitment and clustering of selective autophagy receptors to initiate phagophore formation.

A modularized open-source pipeline for invasive brain signal decoding bridges the gap between closed-loop neuromodulation and clinical brain–computer interface approaches in a large patient cohort.

In the double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2 ARGO trial, patients with active psoriatic arthritis treated with a nanobody targeting IL-17A and IL-17F showed substantially better disease response rates compared with those receiving placebo treatment.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

Heller et al. showed dense longitudinal imaging in four females, including one with endometriosis and one using oral contraceptives, and the finding that different hormonal milieus influence widespread brain volume changes linked to progesterone or estradiol.

Crystal structures of human CB₁ bound to two cannabinoid agonists reveal key features, including a twin toggle switch and binding pocket reduction, advancing understanding of receptor dynamics and guiding cannabinoid drug design.

This large meta-analysis of 11 GWAS identified 7 genetic loci associated with strabismus, esotropia and exotropia. Mendelian randomisation provided genetic evidence of the causal link between maternal smoking to increased strabismus risk in offspring.

Mothers can fiercely defend their young, but how the brain triggers this response remains to a large extent a mystery. Here, authors show that a dormant, hormone-sensitive brain circuit switches on to spark maternal aggression during the lactation period.

By studying dynamic folding intermediates on the human ribosome, Pellowe et al. show that newly made domains help each other to fold but do not stably interact until synthesis is complete, avoiding interdomain misfolding.

An analysis of the 3.45-Gyr-old volcanic sediments from the Kitty’s Gap Chert in Australia shows the presence of microfossils and highlights the difficulty of determining the biotic nature of structures in future extraterrestrial samples.

Here the authors use a range of approaches to examine the interplay between genetic variants linked to risk for polygenic skin diseases and transcription factors (TFs) important for skin homeostasis. The findings implicate dysregulated binding of specific TF families in risk for diverse skin diseases.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

A report from the first 2,000 newborns enrolled in the Early Check program, which offered genome screening covering 198 genes associated with early-onset diseases, shows the feasibility and potential clinical utility of the approach, leading to 28 true positive results.

Beyond its known role in stabilizing microtubules, it is now shown that tau protein actively promotes lattice defect repair by enhancing tubulin turnover at topological defects.

Small cell lung cancer cells form functional synapses with glutamatergic neurons, receiving synaptic transmissions and deriving a proliferative advantage from these interactions.

This study explores the relationship between telomere length and clonal hematopoiesis. Splicing factor and PPM1D gene mutations are more frequent in people with genetically predicted shorter telomere lengths, suggesting that these mutations protect against the consequences of telomere attrition.

Yücel et al. examine how skin and hair characteristics impact functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) signal quality and provide recommendations for inclusive use of fNIRS.

The principal layer architecture of the sensory cortex is altered with aging. The authors show that overall thinning of the primary somatosensory cortex is driven by deep layer degeneration but that layer IV is more pronounced in old age.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) frequency and risk factors vary considerably across regions and ancestries. Here, the authors conduct a multi-ancestry genome-wide association study and fine mapping study of HNSCC subsites in cohorts from multiple continents, finding susceptibility and protective loci, gene-environment interactions, and gene variants related to immune response.

Border and colleagues present FUSION, an open-source, web-based platform designed to integrate spatial omics with histological context. FUSION enables intuitive, interactive exploration of cellular and tissue-level features across diverse organs and assay types.

Here, the authors find that a benign polygenic predisposition to lower white blood cell counts is associated with multiple clinical endpoints, suggesting that predisposed individuals are susceptible to escalations or alterations in clinical care that may be harmful or of little benefit.

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.

CAR-T cells have been found to be less effective as treatment for solid tumours. Here the authors, utilising B7H3 as an antigen, consider how changes in B7H3 binders lead to functional changes of CAR-T cells and differences in tumour outcomes in humanised mouse tumour models.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

A giant planet candidate roughly the size of Jupiter but more than 14 times as massive is observed by TESS and other instruments to be transiting the white dwarf star WD 1856+534.

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.

Accurate protein synthesis depends on aminoacylated tRNAs, but their identities have been hard to measure. Here, authors present aa-tRNA-seq, a nanopore-based method that reveals the amino acid, sequence, and modification status of individual tRNAs at single-molecule resolution.