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Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study reveal declines in chronic respiratory disease mortality between 1990 and 2023—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the burdens on people affected remain substantial.

Estimating respiratory infection rates in the community is challenging as testing is usually limited to people with more severe infections. Here, the authors develop a statistical method to estimate infection rates using data from a community survey that performed lateral flow testing in England and Scotland in 2023-24.

Monkeypox virus genomic data from Nigeria and Cameroon, sampled between 2018 and 2023, indicate that the virus spread through repeated zoonoses in Cameroon, whereas in Nigeria, it spread mainly through human–human transmission, predominantly originating in Rivers State.

Vassy, Dornisch and colleagues developed a genomics-based prostate cancer risk model to support a randomized clinical trial of precision screening in a national healthcare system.

Wei et al. perform spatial transcriptomic profiling on synovial tissue biopsy samples from individuals with recent-onset rheumatoid arthritis, finding TGFβ signaling and fibrogenic fibroblast activation drive a treatment-refractory tissue phenotype.

Melting from the Greenland Ice Sheet triggers land uplift beneath the ice sheet and changes to Earth’s gravitational field and rotation axis, a process called Glacial Isostatic Adjustment. Lewright et al. find that this process will lead to a local sea level fall along Greenland’s coast over this century.

A large-scale livestock prevalence study in Cameroon identified Brucella abortus as the sole endemic species, primarily affecting cattle, and revealed its genetic link to African strains, underscoring the need for regional surveillance and control.

Here, the authors examine the mechanisms behind cheatgrass’s successful invasion of North American ecosystems. Their genetic analyses and common garden experiments demonstrate that multiple introductions and migrations facilitated cheatgrass local adaptation.

Humanity’s Last Exam, a multi-modal benchmark at the frontier of human knowledge, is designed to be an expert-level closed-ended academic benchmark with broad subject coverage.

Here the authors present NCATS-SM0225, a small molecule that inhibits ERAD and selectively kills cancer cells by binding VDACs, disrupting calcium homeostasis, and triggering the PERK-STIM1 pathway to degrade ERAD regulators.

MK-7762 is a new oxazolidinone antitubercular agent that is structurally similar to linezolid, and demonstrated in vivo efficacy, lesion penetration and limited toxicity compared to linezolid, indicating it could be used in broad tuberculosis regimens.

Genomic analyses of DNA from modern individuals show that, about 800 years ago, pre-European contact occurred between Polynesian individuals and Native American individuals from near present-day Colombia, while remote Pacific islands were still being settled.

Combining high-resolution mapping of foliar and herbivore faecal sodium concentrations across Africa, the authors show that plant-derived sodium availability constrains megaherbivore densities at a continental scale.

Tool making has been considered to be an attribute of the genus Homo; this paper reports 3.3-million-year-old stone tools and the early timing of these tools provides evidence that the making and use of stone tools by hominins occurred before the evolution of our own genus.

The late Middle Pleistocene site of Bargny, Senegal, documents stone tool trends seen across contemporary sites in Africa but which, in West Africa, remain uniquely stable into the Holocene. Palaeoenvironmental data suggest that persistently stable environments in West Africa through the Late Pleistocene, including estuarine refugia, may have supported consistent behavioural responses.

Multi-trait genome-wide analyses identify variants associated with comorbid lung diseases. Polygenic scores leveraging shared components of heritable risk improve prediction of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer in a multi-ancestry cohort.

In a randomized phase 2 trial in patients with acute coronary syndrome and high levels of the inflammation biomarker C-reactive protein, treatment with low-dose interleukin-2 increased the numbers of regulatory T cells and reduced arterial inflammation, compared to placebo.

The advance and retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were primarily paced by 41,000-year-long obliquity cycles, not longer eccentricity cycles, until 400,000 years ago, according to sedimentological and palaeomagnetic records from the Ross Embayment.

During the early Holocene epoch—and since the 1940s—variations in Southern Hemisphere westerly winds controlled the upwelling of Circumpolar Deep Water and seemingly ice-sheet retreat in West Antarctica.

Schuermans et al. discovered that genetic predisposition to thromboembolism is associated with a greater risk of post-acute sequelae after SARS-CoV-2 infection, including long COVID, and downstream analyses implicated PAR-1 as a potential contributor to long COVID.

This study explores the genetic structure of hepatitis C virus outbreaks in rural U.S communities affected by the opioid crisis. Analysis of intra-host viral populations from 692 participants reveals hidden transmission networks.

Chronic care manages long-term, progressive conditions, while acute care handles short-term ones. Here, authors show chronic conditions account for most of the global health burden, with 68% of DALYs and 93% of YLDs attributed to chronic care needs.

Salisbury Plain detrital zircon ages align with southern British rocks from the London Basin, indicating local sedimentary recycling without glaciogenic evidence, negating glacial transport of the Stonehenge blocks, according to detrital zircon and apatite U-Pb isotopic fingerprinting of stream sediments across the Salisbury Plain.

Genomic analyses applied to 14 childhood- and adult-onset psychiatric disorders identifies five underlying genomic factors that explain the majority of the genetic variance of the individual disorders.

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.

Nonlinear climate and land-use interactions drive historical and future heatwave intensification across Africa, especially in Western South Africa, based on multivariate bias-correction and explainable AI applied to CMIP6 future projections.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

Dominic Kwiatkowski and colleagues of the MalariaGEN and the WTCCC consortiums report a genome-wide analysis of severe malaria in The Gambia. They provide guidance for design of GWAS in African populations, and demonstrate the usefulness of multipoint imputation based on population-specific sequencing data.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis study of blood lipid levels in roughly 1.6 million individuals demonstrates the gain of power attained when diverse ancestries are included to improve fine-mapping and polygenic score generation, with gains in locus discovery related to sample size.

Genome-wide association analyses of prostate cancer in men from sub-Saharan Africa identify population-specific risk variants and regional differences in effect sizes. Founder effects contribute to continental differences in the genetic architecture of prostate cancer.

Mass-wasting deposits that accumulated against mid-ocean ridge faults have high porosity in which calcium carbonate precipitated, storing seawater carbon dioxide, as revealed by cores of a 61-million-year-old seafloor talus deposit.

The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task in mice.

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).

Whole-genome sequencing of an ancient male Egyptian revealed a mixture of North African Neolithic and eastern Fertile Crescent ancestry, suggesting human migration between Egypt and Mesopotamia by the Old Kingdom period.

Global shark and ray populations have declined sharply, driven by expanding fisheries and inequitable gaps in catch, trade and distribution data. This Review assesses global status, highlights drivers of decline, and outlines the regulatory, market-based and conservation actions needed to reduce mortality and reverse shark and ray biodiversity loss.

Coherent patterns in the initial growth of extratropical peatlands throughout the Southern Hemisphere during the last glacial track changes in the latitudinal position of the southern westerly winds, according to an analysis of basal peat radiocarbon ages.

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.

The authors report superconducting topological surface states (TSS) on MBE-grown Fe(Te,Se) films by high-resolution laser-ARPES. Near the FeTe limit, the surface state disappears due to an electron-correlation-driven topological transition associated with decoherence of the d_xy-orbital-derived bands.

Disentangling the various pathways by which climate change may drive community shifts in real-world ecosystems is challenging. Here the authors apply a trend attribution approach to a large dataset from the MASTIF database to assess the contribution of direct and indirect effects of climate on tree fecundity in North America, finding that the latter dominate trends by affecting tree growth and size and thereby fecundity.

During the early to mid-Holocene, Africa was more humid than today. Precipitation reconstructions from across Africa suggest that the termination of humidity was spatially variable, moving towards progressively lower latitudes.

The bacterial anti-phage toxin–antitoxin–chaperone defence system CmdTAC senses capsid proteins via CmdC, enabling dissociation from the CmdTAC complex of the RNA ADP-ribosyltransferase CmdT, which targets single-stranded RNAs, inhibiting viral replication.

Pcm1 bridges centrosome asymmetry and polarized endosome trafficking to regulate radial glia progenitor fate decisions, balancing self-renewal and differentiation in zebrafish and human cortical organoids.

Although the genetic basis of breast cancer has been explored, most studies have been on European populations. Here, the authors perform a genome-wide association study of breast cancer in Black South African women to identify new genetic variants associated with breast cancer risk.

Efficient statistical emulation of melting land ice under various climate scenarios to 2100 indicates a contribution from melting land ice to sea level increase of at least 13 centimetres sea level equivalent.

Visual experience synchronizes V1–LM theta oscillations, strengthens V1 → LM connectivity, and drives dendritic spine remodeling in WT mice, the processes disrupted in Fmr1 KO mice, revealing impaired inter-areal binding in Fragile X syndrome.

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