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Multi-ancestry GWAS meta-analysis identifies risk loci for severe nausea and vomiting of pregnancy. Downstream analyses explore maternal and fetal contributions of these loci and their temporal effects.

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).

The APOE-ε4 allele is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but it is not deterministic. Here, the authors show that common genetic variation changes how APOE-ε4 influences cognition.

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.

Genome-wide association analyses using data from 19 biobanks identify variants influencing risk of thyroid diseases and yield polygenic risk scores associated with features of aggressive thyroid cancer.

As presented at the ESMO Congress 2025: Results of the phase 2/3 AGITG DYNAMIC-III trial show that de-escalated chemotherapy based on ctDNA-negative status in patients with stage III colon cancer did not meet non-inferiority for 3-year recurrence-free survival when compared to standard of care, although it enables better informed treatment decisions.

As the wild blue yonder beckons and labs and classrooms empty, Nature's regular reviewers share their holiday reads.

Parity induces an accumulation of CD8⁺ T cells, including cells with a tissue-resident-memory-like phenotype within human normal breast tissue, offering long-term protection against triple-negative breast 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.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis protein Ku is involved in DNA repair and a potential drug target. Here, using cryo-EM and complementary approaches, the authors obtain insights into Ku oligomerization and mechanisms of function in DNA synapsis.

Insufficient pollen reception, pollen limitation, could exacerbate the threat of extinction or be a consequence of decline in threatened plants. Here, the authors conduct a meta-analysis on pollen limitation studies to find that threatened plants show stronger pollen limitation.

Circulating tumour DNA profiling in early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer can be used to track single-nucleotide variants in plasma to predict lung cancer relapse and identify tumour subclones involved in the metastatic process.

Mixed lineage kinase domain-like (MLKL) is the terminal protein in the pro-inflammatory necroptotic cell death program. Here the authors show that MLKL trafficking and plasma membrane accumulation are crucial necroptosis checkpoints, and that accumulation of phosphorylated MLKL at intercellular junctions promotes necroptosis.

MLKL is regarded as an executor of the necroptotic inflammatory cell death pathway. Here authors show, by introducing a mutation into mouse MLKL representing a frequently occurring human single nucleotide polymorphism, that MLKL mutations could critically alter the inflammatory response and the clearance of Salmonella from organs upon infection.

Croker and colleagues show that the phosphatase Ptpn6 functions to suppress neutrophil cell death pathways and IL-1 release, thereby limiting autoinflammatory responses.

Alzheimer’s disease has been associated with increased structural brain aging. Here the authors describe a model that predicts brain aging from resting state functional connectivity data, and demonstrate this is accelerated in individuals with pre-clinical familial Alzheimer’s disease.

The authors defined a roadmap for investigating the genetic covariance between structural or functional brain phenotypes and risk for psychiatric disorders. Their proof-of-concept study using the largest available common variant data sets for schizophrenia and volumes of several (mainly subcortical) brain structures did not find evidence of genetic overlap.

An insufficient amount of pollen transfer by pollinators (pollen limitation) could reduce plant reproduction in human-impacted landscapes. Here the authors conduct a global meta-analysis and find that pollen limitation is high in urban environments and depends of plant traits such as pollinator dependency.

Mark Caulfield, Paul Elliott and colleagues use data from the UK Biobank to perform genome-wide association analysis for blood pressure traits. They identify and validate 107 novel loci and highlight new biological pathways for potential therapeutic intervention for hypertension.

This study presents a global analysis of seafloor roughness derived from marine gravity data and finds that residual roughness anomalies remain over large swaths of ocean floor. The Atlantic ocean floor that formed over mantle previously overlain by the Pangaea supercontinent displays anomalously low roughness, and attribute this observation to a sub-Pangaean supercontinental mantle temperature anomaly leading to slightly thicker than normal Atlantic crust. In contrast, ocean crust formed above Pacific superswells is not associated with basement roughness anomalies.

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant is associated with high rates of vaccine breakthrough infections, but the immunological basis for this is not well characterised. Here, the authors show that increased anti-Spike IgG antibody levels are associated with a reduced risk of infection with the Delta variant, but not with Omicron.

Here, the authors used electronic healthcare records to analyse the genetic basis of variation in 42 routinely-acquired quantitative blood tests among up to 40,000 British South Asian volunteers from the Genes and Health study. By combining their results with genetic findings from UK Biobank, they explore similarities and differences between ancestries in the genetic basis of these traits.

Association analyses in over 1 million individuals identify 535 new loci influencing blood pressure traits. The results provide new insights into blood pressure regulation and highlight shared genetic architecture between blood pressure and lifestyle exposures.

Necroptosis is a regulated form of inflammatory cell death driven by activated MLKL. Here, the authors identify a mutation in the brace region that confers constitutive activation, leading to lethal inflammation in homozygous mutant mice and providing insight into human mutations in this region.

This study finds that sST2 is a disease-causing factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Higher sST2 levels impair microglial Aβ clearance in APOE4⁺ female individuals. A genetic variant, rs1921622, is associated with a reduction in sST2 level and protects against AD in APOE4⁺ female individuals.

The interplay between amyloid and tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease is still not well understood. Here, the authors show that amyloid-related increased in soluble p-tau is related to subsequent accumulation of tau aggregates and cognitive decline in early stage of the disease.

In Alzheimer’s disease (AD) tau and neurodegeneration have complex regional relationships. Here, the authors show neuronal hypometabolism discordant with tau burden defines functional resilience or susceptibility to Alzheimer’s pathology via limbic/cortical axes. Susceptible groups have faster cognitive decline and evidence of non-Alzheimer’s pathologies.

Alzheimer’s disease is heterogeneous in its neuroimaging and clinical phenotypes. Here the authors present a semi-supervised deep learning method, Smile-GAN, to show four neurodegenerative patterns and two progression pathways providing prognostic and clinical information.

Systematic characterization of longitudinal tau variability in human Alzheimer’s disease using an unbiased subtyping algorithm reveals four trajectories of tau deposition with distinct clinical features.

The KL-VS haplotype of the Klotho gene has been associated with reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Here the authors show an association between the KL-VS haplotype and amyloid-dependent tau accumulation using PET data.

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

The BIN1 SNP rs744373 is associated with higher CSF tau and phosphorylated tau levels. Here the authors show, using PET imaging, that this SNP is associated with tau accumulation in the brain as well as impaired memory in older individuals without dementia.

Muscle weakness has been associated with morbidity and mortality in older people. Here, the authors have investigated this trait further by performing a genome-wide meta-analysis of grip strength and Mendelian randomization to discover causal relationships between muscle weakness and other diseases.

Tau accumulation is associated with disease progression in Alzheimer’s disease. Here the authors use resting state fMRI and tau-PET to demonstrate that baseline connectivity in Alzheimer's disease is associated with tau spreading.

How the necroptosis executioner, MLKL, converts to a killer form has been mysterious. Here, authors show RIPK3-mediated phosphorylation of human MLKL is the cue for pseudokinase domain dimerization before assembly of pro-necroptotic MLKL tetramers.

In a GWAS study of 32,438 adults, the authors discovered five novel loci for intracranial volume and confirmed two known signals. Variants for intracranial volume were also related to childhood and adult cognitive function and to Parkinson's disease, and enriched near genes involved in growth pathways, including PI3K-AKT signaling.

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.

It has been increasingly recognised that tumours are not made up of a homogeneous population of cells. Here, the authors show heterogeneous expression of five protein markers in renal cell cancer and demonstrate that the progression of the tumour does not influence the degree of heterogeneity in the tumour.

Whether Alzheimer’s disease originates in basal forebrain or entorhinal cortex remains highly debated. Here the authors use structural magnetic resonance data from a longitudinal sample of participants stratified by cerebrospinal biomarker and clinical diagnosis to show that tissue volume changes appear earlier in the basal forebrain than in the entorhinal cortex.