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The seasonal timing of peak primary productivity in the eastern equatorial Atlantic is a result of wind-driven processes coinciding with increased surface nitrate supply, according to transect and mooring observations.

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.

Viral pathogen load in cancer genomes is estimated through analysis of sequencing data from 2,656 tumors across 35 cancer types using multiple pathogen-detection pipelines, identifying viruses in 382 genomic and 68 transcriptome datasets.

Radio pulses from a rare, radio-loud magnetar, XTE J1810−197, are seen to have undergone a conversion in their polarization state. This change can be linked to the magnetar’s magnetic field geometry, and has commonalities with an effect also seen in fast radio bursts.

Whole-genome sequencing data for 2,778 cancer samples from 2,658 unique donors across 38 cancer types is used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cancer, revealing that driver mutations can precede diagnosis by several years to decades.

Some cancer patients first present with metastases where the location of the primary is unidentified; these are difficult to treat. In this study, using machine learning, the authors develop a method to determine the tissue of origin of a cancer based on whole sequencing data.

Many tumours exhibit hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypoxic tumours often respond poorly to therapy. Here, the authors quantify hypoxia in 1188 tumours from 27 cancer types, showing elevated hypoxia links to increased mutational load, directing evolutionary trajectories.

Here, the authors compared measurements between 34 laboratories from 19 countries, to quantify by mass spectrometry four ceramides of clinical relevance in human blood plasma Standard Reference Materials. The main goals were to evaluate concordance obtained in a large inter-laboratory trial and to report absolute concentrations of four circulating lipids in a publicly available standard.

The QT interval is a heritable electrocardiographic measure associated with arrhythmia risk when prolonged. Here, the authors used a series of genetic analyses to identify genetic loci, pathways, therapeutic targets, and relationships with cardiovascular disease.

Hibernating brown bears maintain their muscle mass, which is due to a drastic reduction in metabolic rate. Here, De Napoli et al. show that this is partly due to a reduction of energy consumption by the motor protein myosin in resting skeletal muscle that increases the super relaxed state stability.

An analysis of the impact of logging intensity on biodiversity in tropical forests in Sabah, Malaysia, identifies a threshold of tree biomass removal below which logged forests still have conservation value.

Multi-ancestry meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies for self-reported physical activity during leisure time, leisure screen time, sedentary commuting and sedentary behavior at work identify 99 loci associated with at least one of these traits.

The ubiquitin ligase Siah2 has been implicated in immune responses. Here, the authors show that Siah2 null immune cells have an increased inflammatory response to inoculated melanoma cells, along with a reduced number of infiltrating immunosuppressive regulatory T cells, resulting in inhibition of tumour growth.

Jose Florez, Claudia Langenberg, Erik Ingelsson, Inga Prokopenko, Inês Barroso and colleagues perform large-scale association analyses using the Metabochip to gain further insights into the genetic architecture of glucose regulation. They identify 38 new loci influencing 1 or more glycemic traits and show that many of these loci also modify risk of type 2 diabetes.

Mapping of neuronal circuitry is challenging, particularly when neurons are densely packed. Here, the authors show stochastic multicolour labelling of neurons with seven fluorescent proteins. They also present an automated neurite reconstruction pipeline based on unsupervised clustering of colour information.

Assessing brain aging heterogeneity in a cohort of 49,482 individuals from 11 studies, a generative model identifies five dominant patterns of brain atrophy, with specific associations with biomedical, lifestyle and genetic factors.

Genome-wide association analysis in over one million individuals of European ancestry identifies 2,103 independent genetic signals (including 113 new loci) associated with blood pressure traits.

Chronic spontaneous urticarial is an inflammatory skin disease which has been linked to intestinal dysbiosis. Here the authors implicate intestinal dysbiosis with the inflammatory response in a murine model of urticaria.

Phylogenomic analysis of 7,923 angiosperm species using a standardized set of 353 nuclear genes produced an angiosperm tree of life dated with 200 fossil calibrations, providing key insights into evolutionary relationships and diversification.

RNF5 is a ubiquitin ligase regulating ER stress response. Here the authors show that Rnf5 deficiency potentiates immune response against melanoma via altered microbiota, and isolate bacterial strains that confer the same phenotype to wild type mice.

Peer review continues long after a paper is published, and that analysis should become part of the scientific record, say Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky.

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.

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.

The authors present SVclone, a computational method for inferring the cancer cell fraction of structural variants from whole-genome sequencing data.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

The characterization of 4,645 whole-genome and 19,184 exome sequences, covering most types of cancer, identifies 81 single-base substitution, doublet-base substitution and small-insertion-and-deletion mutational signatures, providing a systematic overview of the mutational processes that contribute to cancer development.

Genome-wide analyses identify variants associated with sinus node dysfunction, distal conduction disease and pacemaker implantation, implicating ion channel function, cardiac developmental programs and sarcomeric structure in bradyarrhythmia susceptibility.

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.

In this phase 1 trial, patients with locally advanced or metastatic solid tumors were treated with the individualized mRNA neoantigen-specific immunotherapy (iNeST) autogene cevumeran alone or in combination with the anti-PD-L1 agent atezolizumab, showing long-lasting neoantigen-specific immune responses and preliminary clinical activity, supporting further development of this therapeutic approach.

Wang et al show that microglial NF-κB activation is essential for tau spreading and tau-mediated spatial learning and memory deficits in tauopathy mice. Inactivation of NF-κB reversed tau associated microglial states and rescued autophagy deficits.

Systems comprising water and hydrophobic cavities, with scales ranging from nanometres to millimetres, are shown to expand upon compression, an unusual mechanical property of technological and biological relevance known as negative compressibility.

Ionization time delays are of interest in understanding the photoionization mechanism in atoms and molecules in ultra-short time scales. Here the authors investigate the angular dependence of photoionization time delays in the presence of an autoionizing resonance in argon atom using RABBITT technique.

Genotype and exome sequencing of 150,000 participants and whole-genome sequencing of 9,950 selected individuals recruited into the Mexico City Prospective Study constitute a valuable, publicly available resource of non-European sequencing data.

Federated ML (FL) provides an alternative to train accurate and generalizable ML models, by only sharing numerical model updates. Here, the authors present the largest FL study to-date to generate an automatic tumor boundary detector for glioblastoma.

Bacterial products in the gut–liver axis and tissue stromal factors can tune liver immunity by driving myeloid instruction of CD8⁺ T cells with immunomodulatory ability.

In lung cancer, relatively few germline mutations are known to impact risk. Here the authors looked at rare variants in 39,146 individuals and find novel germline mutations associated with risk, as well as implicating ATM and a new candidate gene for lung cancer risk.

Many genetic loci have been identified to be associated with kidney disease, but the molecular mechanisms are not well understood. Here, the authors perform epigenome-wide association studies on kidney function measures to identify epigenetic marks and pathways involved in kidney function.

Molecular phylogenetics, ancestral sequence reconstruction and biophysical protein characterization are used to investigate the interaction between the orange carotenoid protein and its unrelated regulator, the fluorescence recovery protein (FRP). This interaction evolved when a precursor of FRP was horizontally acquired by cyanobacteria.

Different location of adipose tissue may have different consequences to cardiometabolic risk. Here the authors report that deep learning enabled accurate prediction of specific adipose tissue volumes, and that after adjustment for BMI, visceral adiposity was associated with increased risk of cardiometabolic disease, while gluteofemoral adiposity was associated with reduced risk.

Serum urate concentration can be studied in large datasets to find genetic and epigenetic loci that may be related to cardiometabolic traits. Here the authors identify and replicate 100 urate-associated CpGs, which provide insights into urate GWAS loci and shared CpGs of urate and cardiometabolic traits.

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.

Samples from the asteroid (101955) Bennu, returned by the OSIRIS-REx mission, include sodium-bearing phosphates and sodium-rich carbonates, sulfates, chlorides and fluorides formed during evaporation of a late-stage brine.

The authors present a super-bound state acoustic harvester that outperforms state-of-the-art acoustic energy harvesting systems.

Immunosuppression is regulated by the circadian clock and can be leveraged to promote the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy.

Identifying biomarkers associated with risk of severe COVID-19 disease could inform clinical management. Here, the authors identify a long noncoding RNA associated with severe disease using data from three European countries, and validate their finding in data from Canada.