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From 1980 to 2018, the levels of total and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol increased in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreased in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe.

Rearrangements of the Ig loci are essential for generating antibody diversity but abnormal translocations can be a driving event for myeloma. Here Walker et al. perform whole exome sequencing on myeloma patients to capture the diversity of mutational changes.

COVID-19 can be associated with neurological complications. Here the authors show that markers of brain injury, but not immune markers, are elevated in the blood of patients with COVID-19 both early and months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly in those with brain dysfunction or neurological diagnoses.

Genome wide association studies have identified multiple risk loci for multiple myeloma. Here, the authors show that the expression of CDCA7Lis associated with patient survival and expression of the gene is influenced by a risk variant at 7p15.3, which creates a transcription factor binding site for IRF4.

The immunogen RC1 facilitates recognition of the V3-glycan patch on the envelope of HIV-1 and elicits specific serological responses in mice and macaques, making it a possible priming immunogen for sequential vaccination strategies in humans.

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.

Integrating multifunctional oxides on silicon is highly desirable. Here, the authors present asymmetric BaTiO3 superlattices on silicon exhibiting enhanced out-of-plane polarization by harnessing the interfacial strain and broken inversion symmetry.

The new European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser (EuXFEL) is the first XFEL that generates X-ray pulses with a megahertz inter-pulse spacing. Here the authors demonstrate that high-quality and damage-free protein structures can be obtained with the currently available 1.1 MHz repetition rate pulses using lysozyme as a test case and furthermore present a β-lactamase structure.

A survey of T cell repertoire evolution in the tumors, healthy tissue and blood of patients with early-stage untreated lung cancer offers an opportunity to monitor and identify neoantigen-specific T cells for personalized immunotherapy.

Previous genome-wide association studies have identified loci associated with the risk of multiple myeloma. Here, the authors present a meta-analysis of six genome wide association studies of the disease and identify eight new loci; functional studies identify genes as candidates for the basis of these associations.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the plasma cells, and the complete aetiology of the disease is still unclear. Here the authors perform an additional GWAS analysis followed by a meta-analysis with existing GWAS and replication genotyping and identify 6 novel risk loci and utilise gene expression, epigenetic profiling and in situ Hi-C data to further our understanding of MM susceptibility.

Evolutionary modelling and expert review are applied to integrate experimentally supported knowledge accumulated in the Gene Ontology knowledgebase to create a draft human gene ‘functionome’.

A dataset of the genomes of 363 species from the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project shows increased power to detect shared and lineage-specific variation, demonstrating the importance of phylogenetically diverse taxon sampling in whole-genome sequencing.

A loophole-free violation of Bell’s inequality with superconducting circuits shows that non-locality is a viable new resource in quantum information technology realized with superconducting circuits, promising many potential applications.

Whole-genome sequencing of tumours from 560 breast cancer cases provides a comprehensive genome-wide view of recurrent somatic mutations and mutation frequencies across both protein coding and non-coding regions; several mutational signatures in these cancer genomes are associated with BRCA1 or BRCA2 function and defective homologous-recombination-based DNA repair.

This paper reports integrative molecular analyses of urothelial bladder carcinoma at the DNA, RNA, and protein levels performed as part of The Cancer Genome Atlas project; recurrent mutations were found in 32 genes, including those involved in cell-cycle regulation, chromatin regulation and kinase signalling pathways; chromatin regulatory genes were more frequently mutated in urothelial carcinoma than in any other common cancer studied so far.

RNA sequencing data and tumour pathology observations of non-small-cell lung cancers indicate that the immune cell microenvironment exerts strong evolutionary selection pressures that shape the immune-evasion capacity of tumours.

Mutations in the GABA A receptor have been implicated in alcohol dependence in humans. In this study, the authors show that mice with mutations in the beta 1 subunit of the GABA A receptor exhibit spontaneous GABA A channel opening and preferentially consume alcohol, working harder to access it.

Plasmodium vivax, the leading cause of human malaria in Asia and Latin America, is thought to have an Asian origin. Here, the authors show that wild chimpanzees and gorillas in Africa are infected with parasites that are closely related to P. vivax, indicating an African origin for this species.

During vascular development, fibronectin (FN) is polymerized at the basolateral side of endothelial cells. Here Mana et al. propose a model where PPFIA1 drives recycling of the FN receptor, a5β1 integrin, to the cell surface and enables polar secretion and fibrillogenesis of newly synthesized FN.

Free-electron lasers are capable of high repetition rates and it is assumed that protein crystals often do not survive the first X-ray pulse. Here the authors address these issues with a demonstration of multi-hit serial crystallography in which multiple FEL pulses interact with the sample without destroying it.

Mathieson et al. carried out a genome-wide association study of reproductive success (number of children born) in humans, revealing the importance of diverse neuro-endocrine and behavioural factors.

Using a combination of eye organoids and mouse models the authors identify a bioenergetic independent role of lactate as a cell signaling molecule required during early stages of eye formation in mice.

The Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network reports an integrative analysis of more than 400 samples of clear cell renal cell carcinoma based on genomic, DNA methylation, RNA and proteomic characterisation; frequent mutations were identified in the PI(3)K/AKT pathway, suggesting this pathway might be a potential therapeutic target, among the findings is also a demonstration of metabolic remodelling which correlates with tumour stage and severity.

Meningeal lymphatic drainage can affect the microglial inflammatory response and anti-amyloid-β immunotherapy in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease.

Eutrophication has been shown to weaken diversity-stability relationships in grasslands, but it is unclear whether the effect depends on scale. Analysing a globally distributed network of grassland sites, the authors show a positive role of beta diversity and spatial asynchrony as drivers of stability but find that nitrogen enrichment weakens the diversity-stability relationships at different spatial scales.

Evidence synthesized from 252 large-herbivore exclusion studies suggests that herbivore-induced change in dominance, independent of site productivity or precipitation, best predicts herbivore effects on biodiversity in grassland and savannah sites.

Phenotypic variation and diseases are influenced by factors such as genetic variants and gene expression. Here, Barbeira et al. develop S-PrediXcan to compute PrediXcan results using summary data, and investigate the effects of gene expression variation on human phenotypes in 44 GTEx tissues and >100 phenotypes.

Chromosome 8q24 is known to be a major susceptibility region for prostate cancer risk. Here the authors analyze genetic data across the 8q24 region from 71,535 prostate cancer patients identifying 12 risk loci, three previously unreported, highlighting the contribution of germline variation at this locus.

The genetic basis of metabolic diseases is incompletely understood. Here, by high-throughput phenotyping of 2,016 knockout mouse strains, Rozman and colleagues identify candidate metabolic genes, many of which are associated with unexplored regulatory gene networks and metabolic traits in human GWAS.

Septins are cytoskeletal proteins that assemble into complexes and contribute to immunity by entrapping intracellular bacteria in cage-like structures. Here, Lobato-Márquez et al. reconstitute septin cages in vitro using purified recombinant complexes, and study how these recognize bacterial cells and assemble as filaments on their surface.

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.

Openshaw and colleagues find myeloid inflammation and complement activation signatures in patients with long COVID who were previously hospitalized.

Anthropogenic eutrophication is a driver of plant community shifts in many grassland ecosystems. Here, the authors use data from a globally distributed experiment to assess how nutrient addition affects multiple facets of grassland ecological stability and their correlations.

Here authors show that machine learning derives the degree of background retinal pigmentation with more nuance than self-described ethnicity. Retinal pigment scores are associated with genes linked to melanin and may improve algorithmic fairness.

Arctic lakes are strong and increasing sources of atmospheric methane, but extreme conditions and limited observations hinder robust understanding. Here the authors show that microbes in the middle of Arctic lakes have elevated methane producing potential, and are poised to release even more in the future.

Chromodomain Helicase DNA-binding (CHD) proteins have been implicated in neurodevelopmental processes. Here, the authors identify missense variants in CHD3 that disturb its chromatin remodeling activities and cause a neurodevelopmental disorder with macrocephaly and speech and language impairment.

This study investigates the role of water in the lower-most stratosphere, affecting dynamics of the stratosphere and troposphere, and shows that common water vapor transport schemes can cause biases, present in nearly all modern climate models.

The direct effects of land-cover change on surface climate are increasingly well understood, but fewer studies have investigated the consequences of the trend towards more intensive land management practices. Now, research investigating the biophysical effects of temperate land-management changes reveals a net warming effect of similar magnitude to that driven by changing land cover.

Water and hydroxyl enrichment in the solar-wind-irradiated rim of an olivine grain from asteroid Itokawa suggests that its regolith could contain ~20 l m⁻³ of water from solar wind—a potential water source for airless planetary bodies.

The observation of a flare of radiation from the centre of an inactive galaxy fits a model of the tidal disruption of a helium-rich stellar core and its accretion onto a black hole of about three million solar masses.

An array of nanoscale polar domains with varying conductance and that are electrically insulated by domain walls can be induced by the interplay of strain and defects in oxide thin films.