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Here the authors develop a blood-based proteomic Smoking Index (pSIN) that accurately detects smoking exposure and predicts the risk of mortality and 18 major diseases, offering a molecular measure of smoking-related biological damage and recovery.

Wang, Xiao and colleagues develop and validate organ-specific proteomic aging clocks across large population cohorts in the UK, the USA and China, which show strong performance in tracking organ aging and predicting the risk of morbidity and mortality.

It is uncertain how much life expectancy of the Chinese population would improve under current and greater policy targets on lifestyle-based risk factors for chronic diseases and mortality behaviours. Here we report a simulation of how improvements in four risk factors, namely smoking, alcohol use, physical activity and diet, could affect mortality. We show that in the ideal scenario, that is, all people who currently smokers quit smoking, excessive alcohol userswas reduced to moderate intake, people under 65 increased moderate physical activity by one hour and those aged 65 and older increased by half an hour per day, and all participants ate 200 g more fresh fruits and 50 g more fish/seafood per day, life expectancy at age 30 would increase by 4.83 and 5.39 years for men and women, respectively. In a more moderate risk reduction scenario referred to as the practical scenario, where improvements in each lifestyle factor were approximately halved, the gains in life expectancy at age 30 could be half those of the ideal scenario. However, the validity of these estimates in practise may be influenced by population-wide adherence to lifestyle recommendations. Our findings suggest that the current policy targets set by the Healthy China Initiative could be adjusted dynamically, and a greater increase in life expectancy would be achieved.

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.

Federated learning (FL) algorithms have emerged as a promising solution to train models for healthcare imaging across institutions while preserving privacy. Here, the authors describe the Federated Tumor Segmentation (FeTS) challenge for the decentralised benchmarking of FL algorithms and evaluation of Healthcare AI algorithm generalizability in real-world cancer imaging datasets.

Glassy MOF membranes fabricated via a liquid-metal interface enable defect-mediated CO₂ transport, revealing how interfacial control and defect engineering combine to produce high-performance porous membranes.

A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may represent aetiologically different conditions.

Immune receptors regulate immune responses and are key cancer immunotherapy targets. Here, the authors designed helical concave scaffolds to bind convex sites in immune receptors, creating high-affinity protein binders for TGFβRII, CTLA-4, and PD-L1. Co-crystal structures confirmed their therapeutic potential.

Moroidins are plant ribosomally-synthesized and posttranslationally-modified peptides with anticancer activity. Here, the authors generate a searchable database of publicly available plant RNAseq data and identify a moroidin analog with higher cytotoxic activity.

The MICrONS mouse visual cortex dataset shows that neurons with similar response properties preferentially connect, a pattern that emerges within and across brain areas and layers, and independently emerges in artificial neural networks where these ‘like-to-like’ connections prove important for task performance.

Perineural invasion and cancer-induced nerve injury of tumour-associated nerves are associated with poor response to anti-PD-1 therapy, which can be reversed by combining anti-PD-1 therapy with anti-inflammatory interventions.

This study maps the connections of layer 5 pyramidal neurons in the mouse cortex, revealing distinct local and intercortical wiring patterns, and provides an open framework for exploring the connectivity of cell types.

Auditory perception can be enhanced or interfered with by visual information from a speaker's face, but previous studies looking at whether tactile information influences speech perception have been limited. Here, by applying inaudible air puffs on participants' skin and thereby mimicking the tiny bursts of aspiration produced by certain speech sounds, it is found that syllables are more likely to be heard as aspirated, demonstrating that tactile information is also integrated in auditory perception.

Excitatory neurons in the neocortex exhibit considerable morphological diversity, yet their organizational principles remain a subject of ongoing research. Here, the authors use unsupervised learning to show that most excitatory neuron morphologies in the mouse visual cortex form a continuum, with notable exceptions in deeper layers.

Using RFdiffusion, a general method for targeting intrinsically disordered proteins and regions for protein design has been developed.

In this work, authors compare IgG and IgA antibody profiles to multiple antigens induced by vaccination, or from infection, identifying antigen combinations which could be responsible for protection in individuals who have high exposure to gonorrhoea infection.

Neural Decomposition (NEURD) is a software package that decomposes neuronal data from high-resolution electron microscopy volumes into feature-rich graph representations to facilitate analysis for neuroscience research.

Federated ML (FL) provides an alternative to train accurate and generalizable ML models, by only sharing numerical model updates. Here, the authors present the largest FL study to-date to generate an automatic tumor boundary detector for glioblastoma.

Many recent proteomics studies use either Olink or SomaScan platforms to quantify proteins in high-throughput, but the consistency between the two is unclear. Here, the authors measure proteins in the same samples using both platforms, finding only modest correlation, and compare associations with genetic variants and disease.

A de novo-designed protein that precisely assembles a chlorophyll dimer has been developed. The design matches the conformation of the native ‘special pair’ of chlorophylls that functions as the primary electron donor in natural photosynthetic reaction centers. In the designed protein, excitonically coupled chlorophylls participate in energy transfer. The proteins were also redesigned to assemble into 24-chlorophyll nanocages.

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.

Royal jelly is the queen-maker for the honey bee that also has effects on longevity, fertility, and regeneration in mammals. Here the authors provide evidence that its major protein component Royalactin, and the mammalian structural analog Regina, maintain pluripotency in mouse ESCs by activating a ground-state pluripotency-like gene network.

Effective treatments for atopic dermatitis (AD) are highly sought after. Here the authors develop ucenprubart (LY3454738) for treating AD and find, in a randomized, multiple arms, multicenter, placebo controlled, and dose-escalating phase 1 trial (NCT03750643) trial, ucenprubart to be safe and showing preliminary efficacy when compared with placebo at 12 weeks post treatment.

Study shows PTSD predisposition shares distinct genes and genomic regions with several cardiovascular conditions. Here the findings reveal neuronal, immune, and metabolic pathways, and repurposed drug targets that further the understanding of the comorbidity.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide analyses identify 95 loci associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and implicate candidate genes, pathways and neurobiological systems underlying its pathophysiology.

Observational analyses from the China Kadoorie Biobank found that alcohol consumption was associated with higher risks of 61 diseases in Chinese men, with most of these associations confirmed by genetic analyses.

Rich and colleagues show that glioblastoma stem cells have increased global protein translation, which is achieved via the tRNA modifier YRDC. They show that targeting it or reducing its substrate threonine suppresses tumor growth.

Previously, a broadly neutralizing antibody, 3I14, active against groups 1 and 2 influenza A viruses was isolated from human memory B cells and showed protection in mice from lethal viral challenge. Here, Harshbarger and Deming et al. provide the crystal structure of 3I14 Fab in complex with H3, H6, and H10.

Blood pressure (BP) is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and more than 200 genetic loci associated with BP are known. Here, the authors perform discovery GWAS for BP in East Asians and meta-analysis in East Asians and Europeans and report ancestry-specific BP SNPs and selection signals.

A consensus cell type atlas for the fly brain provides both an intellectual framework and open-source toolchains for brain-scale comparative connectomics.

Rich and colleagues identify that lymphatic endothelial-like cells in glioblastoma drive the growth of cancer stem cells via CCL21–CCR7 signaling, inducing KAT5 to acetylate HMGSC1, which enhances its protein stability and cholesterol synthesis.

Deconvolution methods infer levels of immune infiltration from bulk expression of tumour samples. Here, authors assess 6 published and 22 community-contributed methods via a DREAM Challenge using in vitro and in silico transcriptional profiles of admixed cancer and healthy immune cells.

In a nested case-control study from the China Kadoorie Biobank, lowering blood low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels confers lower risk for ischemic stroke but elevated risk for intracerebral hemorrhage, which was confirmed by genetic Mendelian randomization analyses.

Dense calcium imaging combined with co-registered high-resolution electron microscopy reconstruction of the brain of the same mouse provide a functional connectomics map of tens of thousands of neurons of a region of the primary cortex and higher visual areas.

Fine-scale geospatial mapping of overweight and wasting (two components of the double burden of malnutrition) in 105 LMICs shows that overweight has increased from 5.2% in 2000 to 6.0% in children under 5 in 2017. Although overall wasting decreased over the same period, most countries are not on track to meet the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025.

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.

Here the authors identify 128 regions of the genome associated with blood pressure traits in 100,000 Chinese adults. Blood pressure traits contributed differently to CVD risk, with only pulse pressure independently causally associated with carotid plaque.

FlyWire presents a neuronal wiring diagram of the whole fly brain with annotations for cell types, classes, nerves, hemilineages and predicted neurotransmitters, with data products and an open ecosystem to facilitate exploration and browsing.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common mental health problem. Here, the authors report a GWAS from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium in which they identify two risk loci in European ancestry and one locus in African ancestry individuals and find that PTSD is genetically correlated with several other psychiatric traits.

A proteomic aging clock, developed using data from the UK Biobank and validated using data from the China Kadoorie Biobank and FinnGen, predicts the incidence of 18 major chronic diseases, as well as multimorbidity and all-cause mortality.

Single-stranded, DNA-damage-associated small RNAs generated by a BRCA1–RNA-interference complex promote PALB2–RAD52-mediated DNA repair at transcriptional termination pause sites that contain R-loops and are rich in single-stranded DNA breaks in both quiescent and proliferating cells.

The coupling of optogenetics with fluorescent Ca²⁺ sensors is confounded by sensitivity of optogenetic probes to light used to excite the sensors. Here the authors develop a Ca²⁺ sensor based on bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) that monitors Ca²⁺fluxes in darkness without excitation.

Enhancing calnexin function by increasing the ER calcium concentration resculpts the mutant glucocerebrosidase folding free energy diagram in the ER of Gaucher's disease cells, enhancing folding at the expense of the ER-associated degradation pathway.

Genome assemblies of 13 domesticated and wild rice relatives reveal salient features of genome evolution across the genus Oryza, especially rapid species diversification and turnover of transposons. This study also releases a complete long-read assembly of IR 8 ‘Miracle Rice’.