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We highlight some stories from the Nature Briefing, including climate promises from Brazil’s President Lula, how glass frogs hide their blood, and a new statue of Henrietta Lacks.

This study detects Chlamydia pneumoniae in human retina and brain, increasing with AD severity. Retinal pathogen load with Aβ₄₂ may predict AD stage. In models, infection drives Aβ deposition and NLRP3 activation, worsening pathology and cognition.

cellSTAAR advances noncoding rare variant association analysis by integrating single-cell genomics data.

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.

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.

A year-long outbreak of measles in Canada negates the country’s disease-free status. Plus, the benefits of being multilingual and computers that run on human brains.

As the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, scientists are planning the next generation of observatories. Plus, octopuses favour different arms for different tasks and what’s on the agenda at the upcoming meeting of US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s upcoming vaccine panel.

Ionic liquid additives increase the power conversion efficiency of perovskite solar cells, but their effect on perovskite crystallization remains unclear. Xu et al. provide mechanistic insights and demonstrate improved operational stability under continous illumination and 90 °C thermal stress.

The BioDIGS project is a nationwide initiative involving students, researchers and educators across more than 40 research and teaching institutions. Participants lead sample collection, computational analysis and results interpretation to understand the relationships between the soil microbiome, environment and health.

A Nature special edition explores how universities can adapt to a changing world. Plus, Huntington’s disease has been treated for the first time using gene therapy and how AI could help to retain Holocaust survivors’ testimony.

Nature has compiled 99 lab hacks to make the life of a scientist easier. Plus, what Taylor Swift can tell us about how accents change and a deep dive into the medications at the centre of US President Donald Trump’s claims about autism.

Scientists have used Evo1 and Evo2 to design novel genomes for viruses capable of killing E. coli. Plus, a federal research funding is trickling back into Harvard and what drove the rise of complex societies.

Scientists are only now starting to understand the full role of the plant cell wall. Plus, the risks of a less-familiar form of avian influenza virus and how tides impact the development of urbanization.

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.

‘Microlightning’ might have sparked life on Earth. Mice who find a friend unconscious will give them friends first aid.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Rider, Grantham, Smith, Watson et al. integrate multiomic data from patients with psoriasis using dimensionality reduction and machine learning techniques. This approach identifies biological relationships between genetic background, clinical features and disease severity, providing insight into disease variability across individuals.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Here, the authors report recent updates to the ENCODE data portal including a redesigned home page, an improved search interface, custom-designed pages highlighting biologically related datasets and an enhanced cart interface for data visualisation plus user-friendly data download options.

Ageing isn’t linked to increased inflammation in people living in Indigenous communities. Plus, the month’s best science images and the first independent survey of the number of deaths in Gaza since October 2023.

Controlling nanoscale interfaces is key for ensuring stable plasmonic and catalytic function yet remains difficult to achieve under operando conditions. Now it has been shown that transient Au–Cl adlayers function as redox-active Au(I) intermediates, modulating interfacial electrostatics. This modulation stabilizes gold nanogaps and directs ligand rebinding, thereby enabling reproducible regeneration of subnanometre architectures.

Graham Farmelo parses Lee Smolin’s takedown of the most successful physics theory ever.

Here, the authors perform large trans-ancestry fine-mapping analyses identifying large numbers of association signals and putative target genes for colorectal cancer risk, advancing our understanding of the genetic and biological basis of this cancer.

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.

What decades of research can tell us about the causes of autism. Plus, a meticulous single-atom version of an iconic physics experiment and how unicellular organisms are helping us uncover what sparked multicellular animal life.