Search

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

High near-surface nitrogen-fixation rates that promoted the recent growth of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt were tied to greater upwelling of phosphorus from the equatorial Atlantic, according to coral-bound nitrogen isotope records from the Caribbean.

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.

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.

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.

Interregional transmission is key to a cost-efficient, reliable and cleaner US grid. Senga et al. find that current legislative proposals can increase reliability while capturing some of the cost and emissions benefits of a cost-optimized grid.

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.

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

HIV-induced disruption of the lung molecular clock promotes inflammation and emphysematous remodeling, highlighting circadian dysregulation as a driver of HIV associated COPD.

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.

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.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

People living in rural areas of the United States have poorer outcomes from acute COVID-19. Here, the authors show that higher mortality rates among rural dwellers persist for up to two years after the initial infection, even after accounting for baseline risk factors.