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Adducts of dimethyl sulfoxide and hydrobromic acid demonstrate efficient p-doping of various organic semiconductors and compatibility with other counterions used to improve stability and other performance parameters of organic-based optoelectronic devices.

Perovskite solar cells are currently generating great interest in the photovoltaics community, but a detailed understanding of why they are so efficient is lacking. Femtosecond laser spectroscopy and microwave photoconductivity measurements now reveal important insights into the photoinduced charge transfer processes and dynamics of such cells.

The trioxacarcins are polyoxygenated natural products that potently inhibit the growth of cultured human cancer cells. Here, the syntheses of trioxacarcin A, DC-45-A1 and structural analogues are described — the majority of which were found to be active in antiproliferative assays. A convergent, component-based route comprising sequential stereoselective glycosylation reactions allows assembly of these analogues in 11 steps or fewer.

Metal-halide perovskite based tandem solar cells are appealing but making a high efficiency device is not trivial. Here Chen et al. increase the carrier collection in the perovskite layer and largely enhance the efficiency in tandem cells when combined with colloidal quantum dot or silicon layers.

A cell-based phenotypic screen identifying inhibitors of Notch signaling led to the discovery of NVS-ZP7-4, which blocks the activity of the zinc transporter SLC39a7 (ZIP7) and induces cell death through an ER stress mechanism.

Bifunctional methyltransferase–cyclases both transfer a methyl group to alkenes and induce cyclization—a process called methylcyclization. Now a non-enzymatic silver(I)-mediated electrophilic methylcyclization has been reported. The reaction uses commercial reagents, is applicable to a wide range of substrates and affords structures that are difficult to access by conventional synthetic methods.

Ion migration plays a crucial role in perovskite solar cells. This Review covers its mechanisms, impact on device performance and degradation, measurement techniques, and emerging strategies towards controlling ion migration.

Fragment-based drug design is an efficient yet challenging approach for developing therapeutics. Here, the authors employ structure-based docking screens of vast fragment libraries to identify inhibitors of 8-oxoguanine DNA glycosylase, a difficult drug target implicated in cancer and inflammation.

Cytochrome P450 enzymes can be repurposed to catalyse asymmetric metal–hydride hydrogen atom transfer, a new-to-nature reaction.

It remains a challenge to achieve a balance between performance and stability, as well as addressing the environmental impact of perovskite solar cells. Here, the authors propose a multimodal host-guest complexation strategy enabling these shortcomings to be addressed simultaneously.

To promote the development of effective small molecule modulators that may help treat diverse neuropsychiatric disorders, this study elucidates the mechanism of a specific positive modulator of neuronal potassium channels at near-atomic resolution.

Engineering hybrid perovskites at the molecular level to solve the stability problem remains a challenge. Here Grätzel et al. design a multifunctional molecular modulator that interacts with the perovskite via modes elucidated by solid state NMR spectroscopy and show high efficiency and operational stability.

The stability of perovskite thin films and devices depends on a number of environmental factors, amongst which humidity. Here, Longet al. develop a synthetic route using a nonstoichiometric acid-base reaction to prepare films stable in humid environments for two months.

A scalable total synthesis of portimines enables structural reassignment of portimine B and in-depth functional evaluation of portimine A, revealing that portimine A induces translation inhibition selectively in human cancer cells and is efficacious in vivo tumour-clearance models.

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.

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

The authors report thermally activated delayed fluorescence in rigid planar donor-acceptor molecules achieving decoupling of ground and excited states through a bonding/antibonding connectivity between donor and acceptor without alarge dihedral twist angle between them.

Understating degradation pathways is critical to the development of perovskite photovoltaics. Thiesbrummel et al. show that internal electric field screening induced by ion migration is a dominant contributor to the operational performance loss of perovskite solar cells.

Making large datasets findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable could accelerate technology development. Now, Jacobsson et al. present an approach to build an open-access database and analysis tool for perovskite solar cells.

Cancers evolve as they progress under differing selective pressures. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, the authors present the method TrackSig the estimates evolutionary trajectories of somatic mutational processes from single bulk tumour data.

We added out-of-plane cations to homogenize the distribution of cations in perovskite films, resulting in a solar cell with improved efficiency and stability.

Perovskite solar cells grown in substrate configuration would open a range of applications, if various challenges could be overcome. Towards that aim, Fu et al. present an architecture allowing inverted semi-transparent planar perovskite solar cells with open-circuit voltage of 1.116 V and 16.1% efficiency.

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.

Organic-inorganic metal halide perovskites are of considerable promise for efficient, easy to manufacture solar cells. Here, the authors show that the choice of anions in the perovskite solution can considerably affect the crystal growth and performance of these solar cells.

Novofumigatonin is a meroterpenoid found in the fungus Aspergillus novofumigatus. Here, the authors elucidate the biosynthetic pathway of novofumigatonin and show that the endoperoxidase NvfI and the endoperoxide isomerase NvfE are involved in it.

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.

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 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.

With the generation of large pan-cancer whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing projects, a question remains about how comparable these datasets are. Here, using The Cancer Genome Atlas samples analysed as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the authors explore the concordance of mutations called by whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing techniques.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

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.

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 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.

The flagship paper of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes Consortium describes the generation of the integrative analyses of 2,658 cancer whole genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types, the structures for international data sharing and standardized analyses, and the main scientific findings from across the consortium studies.

Outdoor field testing is crucial to understand how solar cells behave under operational conditions. Here, Aydin et al. show that a lower perovskite bandgap than that calculated at laboratory standard test conditions enhances the performance of perovskite/silicon tandem cells in the field.

An analysis of 2,954 genomes from 38 cancer subtypes identified 19,166 retrotransposition events in 35% of samples. Aberrant LINE-1 retrotranspositions can lead to the deletion of tumor-suppressor genes as well as the amplification of oncogenes.

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.

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.

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.

A pan-cancer genomic analysis reports the effects of structural variations on chromatin domains (TADs). Most TAD disruptions do not result in appreciable changes in expression of nearby genes.