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The causative agent of sea star wasting disease has been elusive. This study used genetic datasets and experimental exposures to demonstrate that a strain of the bacterium Vibrio pectenicida caused disease and mortality in sea stars.

RELMβ mediates a gut immune–epithelial circuit regulating tolerance to food antigens, offering targetable candidates for the prevention and treatment of food allergies.

A study that tracked mammal populations before, during and after a severe storm in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park finds that behavioural responses and survival are linked to body size, with increased mortality of small species owing to limited mobility and changes in food availability.

The authors develop an analysis package for characterizing the activity of neural dendrites and soma using optical imaging and show that apical dendrites are more stable in spatial representations than basal dendrites in mouse hippocampal area CA3.

Mammalian megafaunal biodiversity has declined since the Plio-Pleistocene. Here, the authors apply ecometric methods to evaluate the functional link between eastern African herbivorous megafauna and their environments, showing that some biodiversity loss coincided with community ecological function disturbance.

By studying cortical activity patterns during prey capture and spontaneous behavior in marmosets, the authors identify distinct subnetworks defined by reliable spike timing correlations. These subnetworks emerge during prey capture, with each potentially playing different roles in controlling reaching movements.

Alison Dunning, Stacey Edwards and colleagues analyze 3,872 common variants across the ESR1 locus in 118,816 women. They find five independent variants within regulatory regions that associate with different breast cancer–related phenotypes and regulate the expression of ESR1, RMND1 and CCDC170.

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.

Single-nucleus and spatial, whole-transcriptome profiling of 43 pancreatic adenocarcinomas provides a refined molecular and cellular classification, highlighting a new neoadjuvant treatment-associated neural-like progenitor tumor cell state.

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

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.

The impact of senescent cells on remyelination is unknown. Here, the authors show that treatment with senolytics following demyelination enhances remyelination in young, but not aged mice, and these effects are mediated by senescence-associated secretory phenotype factors including CCL11.

To role that carceral institutions play in Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission remains somewhat unknown. Authors perform a prospective genomic surveillance study, to assess transmission dynamics in prisons and surrounding communities in Paraguay.

Transferrin receptor (TfR) and CD98hc are increasingly used to enable more effective drug delivery to the central nervous system. Here, the authors reveal comprehensive and distinct brain cellular and whole body biodistribution patterns of TfR- and CD98hc-binding molecules.

Detecting relevant odours from background odours is important for animal behaviour. Here the authors design a task to study this process in mice.

Yeast studies and mathematical modeling reveal a new variable that influences transitions between prion states and persistence of the [PSI⁺] phenotype: the size of the amyloid seed.

Fine-mapping of blood cell traits in the UK Biobank identifies putative causal variants and enrichment of fine-mapped variants in accessible chromatin of hematopoietic progenitor cells. The study provides an analytical framework for single-variant and single-cell analyses of genetic associations.

A high-bandwidth neuromotor interface offers performant out-of-the-box generalization across people.

HORNET, a method that uses unsupervised machine learning and deep neural networks to analyse atomic force microscopy data enables structural determination of RNA molecules in multiple conformations.

Here, Hiatt et al. report the knock-out of over 400 genes in primary CD4+ T cells to assess their functional role in HIV replication, finding 86 initial candidates of which 47 are validated as HIV host factors, including 23 with restrictive activity.

How entorhinal grid cells control hippocampal coding and behavior remains elusive. The authors report that increasing the spatial scale of grid cells expands the scale and reduces the stability of place fields, impairing spatial memory in mice.

Analysing camera-trap data of 163 mammal species before and after the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, the authors show that responses to human activity are dependent on the degree to which the landscape is modified by humans, with carnivores being especially sensitive.

A lightweight three-photon miniature microscope allows imaging neuronal activity throughout the cortex in freely moving mice.

Amino acids are important components in a variety of human foods and diets. Here, the authors show trade-offs linking dietary intake of amino acids to human health and develop amino acid intake guidelines based on them.

Whether mucinous ovarian carcinoma (MOC) arises from cells at the ovary or from metastases from other primary sites is an unanswered question. Here, Cheasley et al perform a genetic analysis of the disease, showing that MOC arises at the ovary.

Yeast exhibit oscillations that share features with circadian rhythms. The authors show that bioenergetic constraints promote oscillatory behaviour: resources are stored until supplies can support translational bursting, this is licensed by ion transport and release from membrane-less compartments.

Biomarker identification requires prohibitively large cohorts with gene expression and phenotype data. The approach introduced here learns polygenic predictors of expression from genetic and expression data, used to infer biomarker levels in patients with genetic and disease information.

Unilateral occipitotemporal resection in children with drug-resistant epilepsy reveals both typical and reorganized category maps, with word/face selectivity competing in the preserved ventral visual pathway over time, reflecting plasticity.

Results show meaningful variations in electric vehicle costs and emissions benefits across the United States, differing by vehicle category and charging systems: Direct Current Fast Charging, Battery Swapping, and Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer.

Med-PaLM, a state-of-the-art large language model for medicine, is introduced and evaluated across several medical question answering tasks, demonstrating the promise of these models in this domain.

Protein immunofluorescence imaging and affinity purification–mass spectrometry are combined to create a unified map of human cell architecture across scales, which the authors call the multi-scale integrated cell (MuSIC).

A translational study demonstrates the role of myeloid inflammatory cells in driving disease progression and treatment resistance in prostate cancer and shows that these cells can be targeted therapeutically.

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

Sequencing data from two large-scale studies show that most of the genetic variation influencing the risk of type 2 diabetes involves common alleles and is found in regions previously identified by genome-wide association studies, clarifying the genetic architecture of this disease.

Here the authors use UK Biobank data to identify 251 genetic loci associated with serum triglycerides to HDL-cholesterol ratio, a surrogate marker for insulin resistance. Key genes, including PLA2G12A, PLA2G6, and TNFAIP8, offer potential therapeutic targets for metabolic diseases.

Our knowledge of life in the Carboniferous Period is largely restricted to low-lying wetlands dated to 315–310 million years ago. Here, the authors present an older Lagerstätte on an alluvial fan 320–318 million years ago, preserving a diverse ecosystem of vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and plant-insect interactions.

Here the authors describe a 3D genomic strategy that uncovers novel enhancer hijacking events, including a MYC-ERBB2 chimeric ecDNA, providing new insights into oncogene activation and potential therapeutic targets.

Use of general linear mixed models (GLMMs) in genetic variance analysis can quantify the relative contribution of additive effects from genetic variation on a given trait. Here, Jonathan Mosley and colleagues apply GLMM in a phenome-wide analysis and show that genetic variations in the HLA region are associated with 44 phenotypes, 5 phenotypes which were not previously reported in GWASes.

Berger et al. use detailed credit data from the USA to examine the trade-off between government welfare support and consumer reliance on high-cost credit during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Analysing the spatial and temporal extents of 348 ecological studies published between 2004 and 2014, the authors show that although the average study interval and extent has increased, resolution and duration have remained largely unchanged.

The blooming alga Emiliania huxleyi and its viruses are a model for density-dependent virulent dynamics. However, Knowles et al. show that this host–virus system exhibits temperate dynamics at natural host densities, in a manner dependent on host physiology.

Trypanosoma brucei parasites switch their variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) coats to escape immune recognition. The crystal structure of VSG3 reveals that additional modifications, such as O-glycosylation, further expand antigenic variation and potentiate immune evasion.

Paiardini and colleagues describe a subset of lymph node HIV- and SIV-specific TOX^hiTCF1⁺CD39⁺CD8⁺ T cells that coexhibit stem- and effector-like phenotypic and transcriptional profiles and associate with reduced viral burden.

Penetrance of variants in monogenic disease and clinical utility of common polygenic variation has not been well explored on a large-scale. Here, the authors use exome sequencing data from 77,184 individuals to generate penetrance estimates and assess the utility of polygenic variation in risk prediction of monogenic variants.

Results of multi-omic profiling of the microbiome and host immunity of individuals treated with VE303 to prevent recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection in the context of a phase 2 trial show robust colonization of VE303 and indicate potential biomarkers of response.

The hippocampus in mammalian brain varies in size across individuals. Here, Hibar and colleagues perform a genome-wide association meta-analysis to find six genetic loci with significant association to hippocampus volume.

Imaging mass cytometry of the human lung reveals the cellular composition and spatial architecture during COVID-19 and other acute injuries, enabling the characterization of lung pathophysiology from structural, immunological and clinical perspectives.

This study assessed COVID-19 social science preprints’ replicability using structured groups. Both beginners and more-experienced participants used a elicitation protocol to make better-than-chance predictions about the reliability of research claims under high uncertainty.

The sensitivity of circulating tumor DNA detection is improved by identifying sequences with two or more mutations.