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The famous nebula Barnard 68 has been used as a giant cosmic-ray detector: cosmic-ray-excited vibrational H₂ emission has been observed by JWST, giving a direct measurement of the CR ionization rate.

This study reports that de novo germline missense variants in SF3B1, distinct from the somatic variants frequently observed in cancer, cause a neurodevelopmental disorder and disrupt global RNA splicing.

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.

Several recent publications have attempted to detect novel unannotated microproteins using mass spectrometry proteomics. Here, the authors reassess these claimed microprotein detections, finding that many are poorly supported, while a subset represents likely genuine discoveries of novel proteins.

State-space universal dynamic equations can recover nonlinear biological interactions that produce complex behaviors, including chaos and regime shifts, offering a novel way for accurate predictions of ecosystem dynamics.

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.

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.

Artificial intelligence boosts individual scientists’ output, citations and career progression, but collectively narrows research diversity and reduces collaboration, concentrating work in data-rich areas and potentially limiting broader scientific exploration.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide and transcriptome-wide association studies of aortic stenosis identify more than 200 independent risk loci and provide insights into its genetic architecture.

Liu et al. report Chinese normative lifespan brain charts showing later neurodevelopmental milestones than those detected in Western cohorts. Individual deviations from these norms are valuable in assessing clinical risk and outcomes.

A nine-year transit-timing campaign has measured the extremely low masses and densities of four large planets orbiting the young star V1298 Tau, which are now predicted to contract and form a typical compact super-Earth and sub-Neptune system.

The relative importance of close-proximity interactions, shared space and air quality to the transmission of respiratory viruses is not well understood. Here, the authors investigate this question by collecting longitudinal molecular, physical proximity and environmental data in a school in Switzerland.

XCR1+ type 1 conventional DCs (cDC1s) are crucial to mount anti-tumor immune responses, however their infiltration within tumours is often limited. Here the authors show that cDC1 infiltration could be expanded by intratumoral delivery of mesenchymal stromal cells engineered to express the membrane bound form of FLT3L in combination with poly(I:C) or CXCL9 and CCL5, improving anti-tumor immunity in preclinical models.

Here the authors provide an explanation for 95% of examined predicted loss of function variants found in disease-associated haploinsufficient genes in the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD), underscoring the power of the presented analysis to minimize false assignments of disease risk.

An integrated ozone depletion metric indicates the impact of any new emission and provides a useful complementary metric of the impact of specific emissions of an ozone depleting substance for both the scientific and policy communities.

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.

The authors show that the CD4 mimetic CJF-III-288 stabilizes HIV-1 Env in an asymmetric “open” State-3 conformation, guiding anti-CoRBS antibodies to boost ADCC against infected cells and delay viral rebound in vivo, underscoring therapeutic promise.

Perro and colleagues develop a CD3⁺ T cell engager co-targeting BCMA and CD38 to improve immunotherapy for multiple myeloma, demonstrate cytotoxicity in patient-derived samples and murine models and develop a quantitative systems pharmacology model.

Cicadas generate sound through the interplay of tymbal buckling and body resonance, but a unified framework explaining the diversity of calls across species has been absent. In this study, the authors conceptualize the cicada’s sound-generation mechanism as a naturally occurring metastructure, characterized by periodically arranged ribs and inherent frequency filtering.

Isotope engineering can enhance spin coherence of solid-state defects, such as NV centers in diamond but progress for defects in hBN has been limited. Gong et al. report the optimization of isotopes in hBN and demonstrate improved coherence and relaxation times for the negatively charged boron vacancy centers.

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.

The microbial metabolite trimethylamine (TMA), the precursor of TMAO, which is associated with adverse cardiometabolic outcomes, is shown to have beneficial metabolic and anti-inflammatory effects in the host in the context of obesity.

Opacities are considered to be the source of the disagreement between theoretical solar models and helioseismic data. Here, the authors show solar opacity profiles derived from seismic inferences, which differs from theoretical values used in the solar models.

Here, the authors systematically map metaproteomic responses of ex vivo human gut microbiota to common therapeutics, identifying several drug classes inducing strong disruptions to the microbial ecosystem, providing a comprehensive view of how drugs influence gut microbiome function and ecology at the protein level.

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.

The variability in clinical outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection is partly due to deficiencies in production or response to type I interferons (IFN). Here, the authors describe a FIP200-dependent lysosomal degradation pathway, independent of canonical autophagy and type I IFN, that restricts SARS-CoV-2 replication, offering insights into critical COVID-19 pneumonia mechanisms.

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.

Using a virtual reality apparatus in rats that dissociates external landmarks from self-motion cues, the authors describe how the two modes of theta phase coding in the hippocampus during navigation are controlled via distinct computations.

This study shows that supernova material was delivered to the early Solar System by interstellar ices, explaining isotope variations and revealing that even inner planets like Earth and Mars accreted water-rich material from the outer Solar System.

Species’ traits and environmental conditions determine the abundance of tree species across the globe. Here, the authors find that dominant tree species are taller and have softer wood compared to rare species and that these trait differences are more strongly associated with temperature than water availability.

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.

Wang, Tang and colleagues develop the low-signal signed iterative random forest pipeline to investigate epistasis in the genetic control of cardiac hypertrophy, identifying epistatic variants near CCDC141, IGF1R, TTN and TNKS loci, and show that hypertrophy in induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes is nonadditively influenced by interactions among CCDC141, TTN and IGF1R.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies of type 2 diabetes (T2D) identifies more than 600 T2D-associated loci; integrating physiological trait and single-cell chromatin accessibility data at these loci sheds light on heterogeneity within the T2D phenotype.

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.

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.

Analyses of genome and exome sequencing data identify rare coding and structural variants associated with atrial fibrillation and highlight genetic links between atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathies.