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A horizon scan of international respondents identifies and discusses ten developing challenges in Antarctic conservation, revealing an increased emphasis on challenges related to governance, geopolitics and economics compared to a similar scan from 2012.

Antimicrobial resistance has evolved over decades due to widespread antimicrobial use, with resistance genes now circulating across humans, animals and the environment, creating complex cross-sector connectivity challenges. This Perspective advocates for genomics-based studies of AMR connectivity to enable coordinated global action and investment under the One Health framework.

The immune response to tumour development is frequently targeted with therapeutics but remains largely unexplored in diagnostics. Here this groups designs an immunodiagnostic platform targeting amino acid residue biomarkers associated with tumour development and distinct from autoimmune and infectious diseases.

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.

Solid organ transplant recipients are at increased risk of infectious disease and have unique molecular pathophysiology. Here the authors use host-microbe profiling to assess SARS-CoV-2 infection and immunity in solid organ transplant recipients, showing enhanced viral abundance, impaired clearance, and increased expression of innate immunity genes.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.

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.

Post-international travel quarantine has been widely implemented to mitigate SARS-CoV-2 transmission, but the impacts of such policies are unclear. Here, the authors used linked genomic and contact tracing data to assess the impacts of a 14-day quarantine on return to England in summer 2020.

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).

Siew et al. using multi-omic, physiological & imaging approaches have demonstrated that spaceflight causes kidney remodelling, suggesting a contribution to kidney stone formation, & that space radiation causes kidney damage & early signs of dysfunction.

Genetic and testing data from England show that the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern B.1.1.7 has a transmission advantage over other lineages.

Venkei et al. show that Y-linked Su(Ste) piRNAs are produced via 5′-to-3′ phased-biogenesis initiated by maternally deposited 1360/Hoppel-derived piRNAs, leading to silencing of Ste in the male germline.

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.

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.

Post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC) is still not well understood. Here the authors provide patient reported outcomes from 590 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and show association of PASC with higher respiratory SARS-CoV-2 load and circulating antibody titers, and in some an elevation in circulating fibroblast growth factor 21.

A protocol for the reliable, efficient and precise characterization of quantum noise is reported and implemented in an architecture consisting of 14 superconducting qubits. Correlated noise within arbitrary sets of qubits can be easily detected.

Sleep pressure and circadian rhythms influence one another. However, the regulatory mechanisms are unclear. Here, the authors show that adenosine A₁/A_2A receptor antagonists, such as caffeine, shift circadian rhythms and enhance the effects of light, providing a molecular link between sleep pressure and circadian rhythm.

In this study, Aggarwal and colleagues perform prospective sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 isolates derived from asymptomatic student screening and symptomatic testing of students and staff at the University of Cambridge. They identify important factors that contributed to within university transmission and onward spread into the wider community.

In this largest whole-exome sequencing study of epilepsies to date, the Epi25 Collaborative identified extremely rare variants that confer risk for diverse epilepsy subtypes, highlighting roles in synaptic transmission and neuronal excitability.

The role of IgG glycosylation in the immune response has been studied, but less is known about IgM glycosylation. Here the authors characterize glycosylation of SARS-CoV-2 spike specific IgM and show that it correlates with COVID-19 severity and affects complement deposition.

Analysis of antibody responses to COVID-19 vaccines encoding variant-specific spike, with or without ancestral spike, suggests no loss of neutralization of the ancestral virus with variant-only vaccines, which may simplify future vaccine updates.

Severe sepsis has a high mortality rate. Here, the authors provide genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data across four sepsis-causing pathogens and identify a signature of global increase in fatty acid and lipid biosynthesis as well as cholesterol acquisition.

Whole-genome sequencing analysis of individuals with primary immunodeficiency identifies new candidate disease-associated genes and shows how the interplay between genetic variants can explain the variable penetrance and complexity of the disease.

Sexual dimorphism in genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia, systemic lupus erythematosus and Sjögren’s syndrome is linked to differential protein abundance from alleles of complement component 4.

Analyses of single-cell whole-genome sequencing data show that somatic mutations are increased in the brain of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease compared to neurotypical individuals, with a pattern of genomic damage distinct from that of normal ageing.

It is known that exercise influences many human traits, but not which tissues and genes are most important. This study connects transcriptome data collected across 15 tissues during exercise training in rats as part of the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium with human data to identify traits with similar tissue specific gene expression signatures to exercise.

The extent to which chemical products of water radiolysis could sustain subseafloor microbial life is unknown. Here the authors show that sediment catalyzes radiolytic production of H₂ and oxidants, providing the primary energy source for life in ancient marine sediment.

The Omicron variant evades vaccine-induced neutralization but also fails to form syncytia, shows reduced replication in human lung cells and preferentially uses a TMPRSS2-independent cell entry pathway, which may contribute to enhanced replication in cells of the upper airway. Altered fusion and cell entry characteristics are linked to distinct regions of the Omicron spike protein.

Histone H3-mutant gliomas are deadly brain tumours and the tumour microenvironment is not fully understood. Here the authors profile the immune microenvironment from human samples and mouse models and implicate myeloid cells in immune suppression and show inhibition of myeloid cells and checkpoint blockade demonstrates therapeutic benefits in mice.

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.