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Achieving precise control over the active layer morphology remains a significant challenge for efficient organic solar cells. Here, authors establish a vertical solvent gradient by diffusing benzene vapor into toluene through layer-by-layer fabrication, achieving maximum device efficiency of 20.71%.

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

Large genome-wide meta-analysis of clinically diagnosed late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD) from 94,437 individuals identifies new LOAD risk loci and implicates Aβ formation, tau protein binding, immune response and lipid metabolism.

Megaripples are sand landforms found in wind-blown environments. A newly identified characteristic signature of the underlying bimodal sand transport process is found in the grain-size distribution on megaripples and could lend insight into transport conditions on Earth and other planetary bodies.

Historical records reveal that although 99.6% of Antarctica is defined as wilderness, areas undisturbed by humans comprise less than 32%, largely in regions of low biodiversity.

Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus (SFTSV) is a deadly tick-borne virus and a growing global health threat. In this study, Petit et al. used a multi-omics approach on SFTSV-infected tick cells to study its impact and reveal host antiviral responses and key restriction factors.

Reduced glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) is a hallmark of chronic kidney disease. Here, Pattaro et al. conduct a meta-analysis to discover several new loci associated with variation in eGFR and find that genes associated with eGFR loci often encode proteins potentially related to kidney development.

Genome-wide association analyses of blood glucose measurements under nonstandardized conditions provide insights into the biology of glucose regulation, diabetes complications and pathways for treatment stratification.

Petrels are wide-ranging, highly threatened seabirds that often ingest plastic. This study used tracking data for 7,137 petrels of 77 species to map global exposure risk and compare regions, species, and populations. The results show higher exposure risk for threatened species and stress the need for international cooperation to tackle marine litter.

Developing high-performance and mechanically robust active-layer systems is crucial to commercializing flexible organic solar cells. Here, authors design small molecule acceptors with ethyl ester side chains and achieve certified efficiency of over 19% for mechanically robust devices.

Whole-genome sequencing data from more than 2,500 cancers of 38 tumour types reveal 16 signatures that can be used to classify somatic structural variants, highlighting the diversity of genomic rearrangements in cancer.

Modern culture appears to change at a rapid rate compared with biological evolution. Lambert et al. test this and find that the pace of modern cultural evolution is surprisingly slow—slower than, for example, changes seen in Darwin’s finches.

Polygenic risk scores for Alzheimer’s disease derived from individuals of European ancestry can show improved performance in multiancestry settings after incorporating genome-wide association summary statistics from diverse populations.

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Typically, quantitative trait loci studies find genetic variants associated with the total quantity of a quantitative trait, but other measures, such as variance, can detect different biology. Here, the authors map variance quantitative trait loci for blood cell traits, finding associations with gene-by-environment interactions and genetically-predicted alcohol use.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dynamic changes to the 14-3-3 protein interactome are robustly followed over time using affinity-purification data-independent analysis–based mass spectrometry. Also in this issue, Lambert et al. describe a similar method.

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.

There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Two mScarlet variants with high brightness and fast maturation times have been evolved. These variants behave favorably as fusion tags and Förster resonance energy transfer acceptors.

Integrative analyses of whole-blood gene expression and splicing QTLs with protein, metabolite and lipid QTLs from the same individuals shed light on the shared genetic architecture of molecular traits and health outcomes.

Experimental demonstrations of materials supporting electron fluids have been elusive so far. Here, the authors investigate nonlocal transport in bilayer graphene across the ballistic-to-hydrodynamic crossover, and identify a sharp maximum of negative resistance at the transition between the two regimes.

Organic thermoelectric materials are emerging as low-cost, versatile alternatives to more established inorganic ones. Avery et al. report carbon nanotube-based materials with selected properties that exhibit enhanced thermoelectric performance.

Analysis of a global data set of local biodiversity comparisons reveals an average 13.6% reduction in species richness and 10.7% reduction in abundance as a result of past human land use, and projections based on these data under a business-as-usual land-use scenario predict further substantial loss this century, unless strong mitigation efforts are undertaken to reverse the effects.

Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes from around the world show that following initial importation largely from India, Delta spread in England was driven first by inter-regional travel and then by local population mixing.

Mechanistic modelling of the effects of diurnal temperature variation on Plasmodium falciparum sporogony indicates this variation is important in the laboratory, but further validation is required to assess its effect in wild mosquitoes.

Deciding when to initiate or relax interventions during emerging infectious diseases is challenging due to uncertainties in epidemiological data. Here, the authors show that two sources of surveillance noise, case under-reporting and ascertainment delays, impede timely decision-making asymmetrically, highlighting that standard surveillance data are less reliable for triggering interventions than for relaxing them, and thus may justify proactive measures.

Entanglement was observed in top–antitop quark events by the ATLAS experiment produced at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN using a proton–proton collision dataset with a centre-of-mass energy of √s  = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 fb⁻¹.