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Human genetic loci that associate with composition of the oral microbiome are identified using saliva-derived DNA, where the same host genetics also shapes oral health and genetic variation in oral bacteria.

Many premalignant colorectal polyps in familial adenomatous polyposis arise polyclonally rather than from a single mutated cell, showing diverse early evolutionary trajectories that frequently occur without clonal APC or KRAS driver events.

Oral rotavirus vaccine (ORV) efficacy varies between countries, but underlying reasons aren’t fully understood. In this prospective cohort study, authors show that maternal rotavirus-specific antibodies in serum and breastmilk and pre-vaccination microbiota diversity are negatively correlated with ORV response in India and Malawi but not in the UK.

Here, by performing tracheal aspirate RNA sequencing of critically ill patients, the authors find that older age associates with a greater number of detectably expressed antimicrobial resistance genes in the lower respiratory tract microbiome.

DNA analysis of ancient dental calculus samples revealed distinct oral microbial communities, including the archaeon Methanobrevibacter, which was associated with hygiene, diet and health.

In participants from a randomized controlled trial, doxy-PEP use over 6 months minimally affected the gut microbiome’s taxonomic composition but increased the abundance and active expression of tetracycline antibiotic resistance genes.

The gut microbiomes of urban-industrialized societies differ from those of traditional rural societies and hunter-gatherers. Here the authors perform a comparative analysis of available and new gut microbiome data to provide fresh insight into these differences.

In this work, authors assess airway microbiome dynamics to show bacterial pneumonia in critically ill COVID-19 patients is significantly associated with death, corticosteroid treatment, disruption of the lung microbiome and a distinct pulmonary host response.

The Ross Ice Shelf is the most extensive ice shelf of Antarctica and isolates the underlying ocean from sunlight. Here the authors use multi-omics to unravel the phylogenetic and functional diversity of microbial life in this ecosystem.

Here, the authors show that high alpha diversity, differences in beta diversity, and a high abundance of Bacteroides in the gut microbiome are associated with positive vaccine take and stool shedding following administration of RV3-BB vaccine in the neonatal schedule, but not in the infant schedule or placebo groups, suggesting that the early-life gut microbiome provides a gut environment that optimizes the potential for a positive vaccine response.

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.

Christina Curtis, Darryl Shibata and colleagues report genomic profiling of 349 individual glands sampled from 15 human colorectal tumors. They observe high within-tumor heterogeneity and mixing of subclones in distant tumor regions, supporting a model whereby tumor growth occurs predominantly as a single expansion, with most detectable subclonal mutations arising during the earliest phases of tumor growth.

Microbial communities are shaped by their environment. Here, the authors demonstrate temporal structuring of microbial communities in the pelagic Arctic Ocean, using remote, long-term sampling with long-read metagenomics and SSU ribosomal metabarcoding.

A disturbed microbial network characterizes relapsing refractory Crohn’s disease and antedates disease recurrence after surgical removal of the active disease segment.

Kazachstania pintolopesii is a highly prevalent fungal symbiont that can trigger type 2 immunity and influence the composition of the gut mycobiome, as well as immune and disease phenotypes.

Anaerobic gut fungi are a functionally important component of mammalian herbivores’ microbiomes. Here, the authors surveys anaerobic gut fungi in 34 species of ruminants and hindgut fermenters, assessing their patterns and identifying 56 novel genera.

In this paper and the related paper from Lugli and colleagues the authors show that high levels of NaCl inside the tumor have a beneficial effect on CD8⁺ T cells and their ability to control tumor growth as a result of enhanced T cell receptor activity.

Here, the authors provide a longitudinal genetic surveillance of the antimicrobial resistance potential of the human oral microbiome in the first decade of life, revealing a dynamic environment altered by tooth decay with the increasing potential to mobilize genes as children grow.

The fungus Blumeria graminis f. sp. tritici causes wheat powdery mildew disease. Here, Sotiropoulos et al. analyze a global sample of 172 mildew genomes, providing evidence that humans drove global spread of the pathogen throughout history and that mildew rapidly evolved through hybridization with local fungal strains.

Christina Curtis and colleagues simulate spatial tumor growth under different evolutionary models and compare their results to multiregion sequencing data. They find that it is possible to distinguish tumors driven by strong positive selection from those evolving neutrally or under weak selection and infer different evolutionary modes within and between tumor types.

The authors show that immunosuppression is highly conserved in the bacterial order Xanthomonadales. This feature, which preceded their specialization as host-adapted pathogens, probably contributes to their prominence as core members of the plant microbiota.

Here, the authors analysed 1374 single-cell genomes from Subglacial Lake Mercer in Antarctica’s deep biosphere and report that microbes in this habitat are mostly novel and genetically isolated, exhibiting chemosynthetic and heterotrophic lifestyles shaped by oxygen availability.

Transmission of influenza A viruses (IAV) between hosts and replication within host impose genetic bottlenecks, constraining viral diversity and adaptation. Here, Amato et al. perform site-specific inoculation of barcoded IAV of ferrets and track viral diversity as infection spreads to the lower respiratory tract and conclude that narrow population bottlenecks are an important feature of the within-host infection dynamics.

Integrative analysis of copy number and gene expression in 2,000 primary breast tumours with long-term clinical follow-up revealed putative cis-acting driver genes, novel subgroups and trans-acting aberration hotspots that modulate subgroup-specific gene networks.

Polygenic risk scores can help identify individuals at higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Here, the authors characterise a multi-ancestry score across nearly 900,000 people, showing that its predictive value depends on demographic and clinical context and extends to related traits and complications.

An (ultraviolet) dust attenuation feature at 2,175 Å, attributed to carbonaceous dust grains in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, also exists in galaxies up to a redshift of 7.

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.

Plants evolved powerful mechanisms to fight against pathogenic microorganisms. So how can they accept and even favour the presence of growth-promoting fungi or bacteria? Here, the authors show that helpful commensal bacteria can suppress part of the plant innate immune system.

Curtis and colleagues use multiplex spatial proteomics on longitudinal HER2-positive breast tumor biopsies through neoadjuvant therapy and develop a classifier that predicts pathological complete response, using on-treatment CD45 as a single biomarker.

Here, Riva et al. employ a multi-modal approach to identify gut microbes stimulated by the popular dietary supplement inulin and reveal that inulin binding and metabolic stimulation are widespread in the microbiome, making the framework a suitable way to study key microbes that perform specific functions in the microbiome.

When examining the evolution of treatment resistance in breast cancer, perceived genomic changes may be due to clonal evolution or heterogeneous tumors. Here, the authors show that apparent clonal change can in fact be due to pre-treatment heterogeneity, and samples from at least two regions are necessary to detect treatment-induced clonal shifts

A study identifies three dominant genomic archetypes of breast cancer induced by discrete mutational processes, describing a continuum of genomic profiles and detailing the mechanisms underlying the progression of breast cancer.

Temperature shapes the adaptation and composition of microbiomes, but whether their enzymes drive the thermal response remains unknown. Using an analysis of seven enzyme classes from worldwide marine microbiome data, this study shows that enzyme thermal properties explain microbial thermal plasticity and they are both finely tuned by the thermal variability of the environment.

Extrachromosomal DNA makes cancerous tumours resistant to treatment, but this research demonstrates that increasing transcription–replication conflict allows for targeted elimination of cancer cells containing extrachromosomal DNA, and thus sustained tumour regression in mice.

The Human Microbiome Project Consortium reports the first results of their analysis of microbial communities from distinct, clinically relevant body habitats in a human cohort; the insights into the microbial communities of a healthy population lay foundations for future exploration of the epidemiology, ecology and translational applications of the human microbiome.

A genome-wide association study including over 76,000 individuals with schizophrenia and over 243,000 control individuals identifies common variant associations at 287 genomic loci, and further fine-mapping analyses highlight the importance of genes involved in synaptic processes.

The authors analyzed the whole-exome sequences of over 16,000 individuals and found that very rare variants predicted to disrupt the SETD1A gene confer substantial risk for schizophrenia. Damaging variants in SETD1A were also associated with diverse, severe developmental disorders, providing an important genetic link between schizophrenia and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

Analysis of evolutionary dynamics of colorectal cancers and paired distant brain or liver metastases provides evidence that early disseminated cancer cells seed metastases before the carcinoma is clinically detectable.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

This Consensus Statement presents the standards for technical reporting in environmental and host-associated microbiome studies (STREAMS) guidelines.

JWST–NIRSpec spectroscopic confirmation of two luminous galaxies is presented, proving that luminous galaxies were already in place 300 million years after the Big Bang and are more common than what was expected before JWST.

This study characterizes the three-dimensional (3D) genome architecture of 15 primary human cancer types from The Cancer Genome Atlas. The analyses identify different archetypes of enhancer usage and enhancer rewiring events due to different classes of mutations and structural variants.

The oncoprotein c-Myc is often overexpressed in triple negative breast cancer and has a role in tumor progression and resistance to therapy. Here the authors show that elevated MYC expression is correlated with low immune infiltration, diminished MHC-I pathway expression and that CpG/aOX40 treatment could overcome resistance to PD-L1 blockade in MYC-high breast tumors.

Here, the authors show that SARS-CoV-2 infection causes gut microbiome dysbiosis and gut epithelial cell alterations in a mouse model, and correlate dysbiosis observed in COVID-19 patients with blood stream infections, matching reads of bacterial sequences from stool samples to organisms found in the blood.

Premarineosin A, a potent and selective antimalarial natural product, is a promising yet underexplored scaffold due to its limited availability and synthetic complexity. Here, the authors employ metabolic engineering and late-stage functionalization to enhance the production of premarineosin A and unveil analogs with enhanced potency.