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Here, the authors provide molecular insight into the remarkable ability of Tardigrades to withstand high levels of radiation by demonstrating that their Dsup protein interacts with multiple surfaces of the nucleosome to protect the genome from oxidative DNA damage.

Parvalbumin-positive interneurons in the hippocampal CA3 substantially reduce firing on approach to and at goal locations while food-deprived mice learn to find food.

Distal gene regulation is increasingly recognised as a major contributor to complex trait variability. Here, the authors show that a heritable, biologically interpretable transcriptome signature driven by distal regulation predicts metabolic traits across mice and humans.

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).

Sydnor et al. developed a new tractography atlas of thalamocortical structural connections and applied it to three youth samples. They uncovered coordinated development between thalamic connectivity and hierarchical cortical plasticity in humans.

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.

This report from the 1000 Genomes Project describes the genomes of 1,092 individuals from 14 human populations, providing a resource for common and low-frequency variant analysis in individuals from diverse populations; hundreds of rare non-coding variants at conserved sites, such as motif-disrupting changes in transcription-factor-binding sites, can be found in each individual.

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.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus has recently caused outbreaks in dairy cattle herds in the United States. Here, the authors describe the clinical features and associated economic impacts of an outbreak at a farm in Ohio between March and April 2024.

Inactivating PPP2R1A mutations correlate with better survival after immune checkpoint blockade in patients with ovarian clear cell carcinoma, suggesting that targeting the phosphatase 2A (PP2A) pathway may represent an effective startegy for improving responses to immunotherapy.

Here, the authors perform a genome-wide association study to identify 157 significant testosterone genetic variants in male veterans, of which 8 are ancestry-specific. Men with higher testosterone genetic scores have lower odds of diabetes, hyperlipidemia, gout, and cardiac disorders.

The Global Flourishing Study provides a comprehensive view of the distribution and determinants of well-being by assessing domains such as health, happiness, meaning, character, relationships and financial security. Initial findings reveal significant variations in flourishing across countries and demographic groups, with factors such as age, marital status and religious service attendance showing strong associations with well-being.

Metasurfaces are arrays of subwavelength structures that are tailored to produce specific optical responses. Rozin et al.show that large-area metasurfaces can be readily fabricated by self-assembly of colloidal nanocrystals of different geometries, producing tunable reflectance and absorbance properties.

Results for the final phase of the 1000 Genomes Project are presented including whole-genome sequencing, targeted exome sequencing, and genotyping on high-density SNP arrays for 2,504 individuals across 26 populations, providing a global reference data set to support biomedical genetics.

A sequencing chemistry that separates nucleotide identification from nucleotide incorporation achieves high accuracy.

A wealth of gene expression data is publicly available, yet is little use without additional human curation. Ma’ayan and colleagues report a crowdsourcing project involving over 70 participants to annotate and analyse thousands of human disease-related gene expression datasets.

Clinical management of pancreatic cancer remains challenging. Here, the authors suggest SMARCD3 as a potential epigenetic dependency establishing the metabolic landscape in aggressive pancreatic cancer cells and as a potential therapeutic target in pancreatic cancer.

Materials design and informatics have become increasingly prominent over the past several decades. Using the Materials Project as an example, this Perspective discusses how properties are calculated and curated, how this knowledge can be used for materials discovery, and the challenges in modelling complex material systems or managing software architecture.

The goal of the 1000 Genomes Project is to provide in-depth information on variation in human genome sequences. In the pilot phase reported here, different strategies for genome-wide sequencing, using high-throughput sequencing platforms, were developed and compared. The resulting data set includes more than 95% of the currently accessible variants found in any individual, and can be used to inform association and functional studies.

Excessive complement C3 causes synaptic stripping and neurodegeneration. Here, the authors used the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) model of multiple sclerosis and single-cell RNA sequencing to show that C3 expression defines disease-associated reactive glia. C3 deletion abrogated these pro-inflammatory glia and protected neurons.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide analyses identify new risk loci for age-related macular degeneration. Ancestry-specific analyses identify distinct effects at major risk loci, including smaller effect sizes for CFH risk alleles in haplotypes of African ancestry.

Electrical excitability in neuroendocrine SCLC cells promotes tumour progression through action potential firing, increasing ATP demand and oxidative phosphorylation dependency, whereas non-neuroendocrine cells provide metabolic support, driving a tumour-autonomous cycle that enhances tumorigenesis and metastasis.

 A transcriptomic cell-type atlas of the whole adult mouse brain with ~5,300 clusters built from single-cell and spatial transcriptomic datasets with more than eight million cells reveals remarkable cell type diversity across the brain and unique cell type characteristics of different brain regions. 

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) onsets in COVID-19 patients with manifestations similar to Kawasaki disease (KD). Here the author probe the peripheral blood transcriptome of MIS-C patients to find signatures related to natural killer (NK) cell activation and CD8+ T cell exhaustion that are shared with KD patients.

Algae show much promise in the production of biofuels owing to their high photoautotrophic biomass and lipid production rates. In this study, the draft genome ofNannochloropsis gaditanaCCMP526 and a method for the transformation of this alga are reported, facilitating the investigation of lipid synthesis and biofuel production.

In this alternative approach to quantum computation, the all-electrical operation of two qubits, each encoded in three physical solid-state spin qubits, realizes swap-based universal quantum logic in an extensible physical architecture.

The authors summarize the data produced by phase III of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, a resource for better understanding of the human and mouse genomes.

A device architecture based on indium arsenide–aluminium heterostructures with a gate-defined superconducting nanowire allows single-shot interferometric measurement of fermion parity and demonstrates an assignment error probability of 1%.

Conversion of natural ecosystems to cropland is a threat to most native wildlife. Here the authors quantify the impact of recent cropland expansion on the habitat of representative pollinator, bird, plant species across the conterminous United States, showing diminished crop yield returns at the cost of important habitat losses.

Thymine DNA glycosylase is an essential DNA repair enzyme involved in oxidative demethylation of 5- methylC. In this study the authors have tracked specific and non-specific DNA binding of TDG at the single molecule level. TDG is found to hop and slide on DNA and found to interact with nucleosomes.

Alterations in the tumour suppressor genes STK11 and/or KEAP1 can identify patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer who are likely to benefit from combinations of PD-(L)1 and CTLA4 immune checkpoint inhibitors added to chemotherapy.

Whole-ecosystem manipulations of Caribbean islands occupied by brown anoles, involving the addition of competitors (green anoles) and/or top predators (curly-tailed lizards), demonstrate that predator introductions can alter the ecological niches and destabilize the coexistence of competing prey species.

Antigen display on outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) can be difficult to control and highly variable. Here, the authors describe a universal approach called AvidVax for linking biotinylated antigens to the exterior of OMVs and enabling rapid vaccine assembly.

Temporal multi-omic analysis of tissues from rats undergoing up to eight weeks of endurance exercise training reveals widespread shared, tissue-specific and sex-specific changes, including immune, metabolic, stress response and mitochondrial pathways.

Antiretroviral APOBEC3 may contribute to HIV-1 latency. In this study, Ajoge and Renner et al. identify a previously undescribed function of human APOBEC3 proteins in redirecting integrations of HIV-1 DNA into more transcriptionally inactive regions of the genome.

In this immunological ancillary study of the PREVAC trial, the authors show that approved Ebola virus vaccines induce memory T-cell responses that persist during the five year follow-up after initial vaccination.

The civil war in Mozambique led to the collapse of large-mammal populations and the spread of the invasive plant Mimosa pigra. Experimental exclosures and DNA metabarcoding are used to show how trophic rewilding since the end of the war has reduced the invasive population.