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A region on chromosome 19p13 is associated with the risk of developing ovarian and breast cancer. Here, the authors genotyped SNPs in this region in thousands of breast and ovarian cancer patients and identified SNPs associated with three genes, which were analysed with functional studies.

The genetic changes that occur in late stage metastatic melanoma are not well delineated. Here, the authors use rapid autopsy samples from metastatic melanoma patients and show that the late stage in the disease is characterised by whole genome doubling and aneuploidy.

Around half of all stroke survivors exhibit spatial neglect—a failure to report, respond to or orientate to contralesional stimuli. Current therapeutic approaches for spatial neglect focus largely on visual perceptual processing, but many patients respond poorly to such approaches because their main impairments lie in spatial motor 'aiming' function. Here, Barrett et al. highlight a promising alternative approach—prism adaptation treatment—that specifically targets spatial motor deficits.

The integration of omics technologies, genome editing and protein design with artificial intelligence (AI) promises rapid advances in the field of crop improvement that will improve global food security.

Leveraging enzymatic selectivity, a single reaction stream provides a single diastereomer of the cyclic dinucleotide MK-1454, a promising immune-oncology drug candidate, without the use of protecting groups or chiral auxiliaries.

Phenotype imputation increases the effective sample size of major depressive disorder cases in UK Biobank, enhancing study power and polygenic risk score (PRS) accuracy. A new pleiotropy metric enables assessment of PRS specificity and comparison among different PRS models.

A zealous focus on discovery should not come at the expense of improving basic intervention.

Linking epigenetic marks to clinical outcomes promises insight into the underlying processes. Here, the authors introduce a statistical approach to estimate associations between a phenotype and all epigenetic probes jointly, and to estimate the proportion of variation captured by epigenetic effects.

In a GWAS study of 32,438 adults, the authors discovered five novel loci for intracranial volume and confirmed two known signals. Variants for intracranial volume were also related to childhood and adult cognitive function and to Parkinson's disease, and enriched near genes involved in growth pathways, including PI3K-AKT signaling.

Human brain structure changes throughout the lifespan. Brouwer et al. identified genetic variants that affect rates of brain growth and atrophy. The genes are linked to early brain development and neurodegeneration and suggest involvement of metabolic processes.

A new GWAS of schizophrenia (11,260 cases and 24,542 controls) and meta-analysis identifies 50 new associated loci and 145 loci in total. The common variant association signal is highly enriched in mutation-intolerant genes and in regions under strong background selection.

Rewetting of plant litter accumulated in dry riverbeds releases pulses of CO₂, reveals a global analysis of intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams.

The field synthesis method for generating any scanned light sheet is based on a new mathematical theorem in Fourier analysis and has important practical implications for simpler, multicolor lattice light-sheet microscopy.

The hippocampus in mammalian brain varies in size across individuals. Here, Hibar and colleagues perform a genome-wide association meta-analysis to find six genetic loci with significant association to hippocampus volume.

Triggering and sustaining fusion reactions — with the goal of overall energy production — in a tokamak plasma requires efficient heating. Radio-frequency heating of a three-ion plasma is now experimentally shown to be a potentially viable technique.

This study uses gene expression predictors for the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other brain regions to perform a transcriptomic imputation analysis of schizophrenia, identifying 413 genic associations across 13 brain regions and 36 significantly enriched pathways.

The authors conducted a genetic meta-analysis of depression and found 269 associated genes. These genes highlight several potential drug repositioning opportunities, and relationships with depression were found for neuroticism and smoking.

Characterising associations between the methylome, proteome and phenome may provide insight into biological pathways governing brain health. Here, blood protein markers of brain health are integrated with omics data to reveal DNA methylation differences that associate with these protein markers.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common mental health problem. Here, the authors report a GWAS from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium in which they identify two risk loci in European ancestry and one locus in African ancestry individuals and find that PTSD is genetically correlated with several other psychiatric traits.

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

Many proteases are important drug targets, but identification of their substrates remains challenging. By using polymers to selectively isolate N-terminal peptides generated by proteolysis of complex samples, Kleifeld et al. identify substrates of clinically relevant proteases with broad specificity.

Naomi Wray and colleagues report an analysis of genome-wide association data sets from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium for five psychiatric disorders. They find that common variation explains 17–29% of the variance in liability and provide further support for a shared genetic etiology for these related psychiatric disorders.

Cholinergic neurons may transmit information via fast synaptic, point-to-point signaling or diffuse, slow extra-synaptic signaling. The authors show that ACh from a single vesicle triggers synchronous miniature currents in two neurons, showing that ACh can spread significant distances to drive rapid ‘synaptic’ signals.

The CNV analysis group of the Psychiatric Genomic Consortium analyzes a large schizophrenia cohort to examine genomic copy number variants (CNVs) and disease risk. They find an enrichment of CNV burden in cases versus controls and identify 8 genome-wide significant loci as well as novel suggestive loci conferring either risk or protection to schizophrenia.

Household income is used as a marker of socioeconomic position, a trait that is associated with better physical and mental health. Here, Hill et al. report a genome-wide association study for household income in the UK and explore its relationship with intelligence in post-GWAS analyses including Mendelian randomization.

Population-based genome sequencing provides an increasingly rich resource for the identification of low-frequency, large effect variants associated with clinically important phenotypes. Timpson et al. use UK10K data to identify a variant of the APOC3gene strongly associated with plasma triglyceride levels.

Genome-wide association studies have identified regions which confer risk of high-grade serous epithelial ovarian cancer. Here the authors use expression quantitative train locus analysis to identify candidate genes and functionally characterise them, identifying a role for HOXD9 in ovarian cancer.

Aromatase inhibitors are used to treat oestrogen receptor positive breast cancers but the molecular basis for the response of patients is unclear. Here, the authors use samples from an aromatase inhibitor clinical trial and show that tumours from poor responders have more mutations than good responders and also more frequently harbour p53 mutations.

Environmental influences during prenatal development may have implications for health and disease later in life. Here, Czamara et al. assess DNA methylation in cord blood from new-born under various models including environmental and genetic effects individually and their additive or interaction effects.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) looked at the Moon in the 6 µm wavelength region and found a signature of molecular water, distinguishing it from other forms of hydration. The authors estimate water abundances between 100 and 400 µg g⁻¹ at high latitudes, trapped within impact glasses or possibly in between grains.