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Tilt-corrected bright-field scanning transmission electron microscopy offers enhanced cryogenic electron microscopy contrast and substantial improvement in dose efficiency for thick samples such as bacterial cells and large organelles, while still being able to perform single-particle analysis.

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.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

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.

Negatively charged lysine acylations—malonylation, succinylation and glutarylation—impact protein structure and function, which can affect cellular processes. Now temporarily masked thioester derivatives of succinylation and glutarylation can be used for site-specific modification of diverse bacterial and mammalian proteins, which can facilitate the study of how these lysine modifications impact enzymatic activity and control protein–protein and protein–DNA interactions.

Analysis of snRNA genes in individuals with rare disorders identifies de novo and recurrent variants in RNU5B-1 and RNU5A-1, in addition to previously unreported cases with pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants in RNU4-2.

Acute systemic immune activation may affect gut-luminal colonisation dynamics. Here, the authors show that LPS exposure in mice elevates gut-luminal oxygen species levels, inhibiting the microbiota and enabling pathogen growth through aerobic respiration.

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.

Machine learning can be used to identify subtypes of psychiatric disease. Here the authors identified two neurostructural subgroups in schizophrenia, each showing reproducibility and generalizability across different collection locations and illness stages, using the SuStain algorithm.

Exome sequencing within a structured diagnostic process for rare diseases in Germany shows how facial image analysis and machine learning can guide variant prioritization and uncover many ultrarare diseases.

Analysis of HbA1c and FPG levels across 117 population-based studies demonstrates regional variation in prevalence of previously undiagnosed screen-detected diabetes using one or both measures and suggests that use of elevated FPG alone could underestimate diabetes prevalence in low- and middle-income countries.

This study investigates the protection provided by mRNA COVID-19 vaccine booster doses against Omicron-associated severe disease in adults aged 50 and older. The authors use data from Ontario, Canada, and find that booster doses provide strong protection but that it declined during the period of BA.4/BA.5 predominance.

Type 1 as well as type 2 diabetes are characterized by a loss of insulin-producing β-cells. Here the authors show that the FDA-approved drug neratinib has beneficial effects on β-cell survival, insulin secretion, and glycemic control in mouse models of diabetes.

Bradford, Zhang and colleagues generate a mouse model harboring a mutation that impacts PKP2 splicing and show that one-time administration of AAV-PKP2 in neonatal mice could restore PKP2 and prevent the onset of key pathological features of arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, and one-time administration in adult mice could rescue the phenotype and prevent sudden death up to 4 months post treatment.

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias identifies new loci and enables generation of a new genetic risk score associated with the risk of future Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

De novo loss of function mutations in the ubiquitin ligase-encoding gene Cullin3 (CUL3) lead to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, the authors show that Cul3 is essential to regulate neuronal migration by tightly regulating Plastin3 (Pls3). Pls3 cell-autonomously regulates cell migration by regulating the actin cytoskeleton organization.

A SARS-CoV-2-human protein contactome map uncovers an inhibitor of viral replication.

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.

Most instances of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are sporadic or not associated with a particular mutation. Here, the authors develop knock-in mice that express wildtype human Aβ under control of the mouse App locus, which may have potential for modelling some aspects of sporadic late onset AD.

Correlated quantum states in free-standing two-dimensional materials are susceptible to defects and thermal disorder. Here, the authors demonstrate two-dimensional ordered charge density wave states above room temperature in clean interleaved polytype heterostructures of a van der Waals material.

Genome-wide analysis identifies 30 loci associated with bipolar disorder, allowing for comparisons of shared genes and pathways with other psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and depression.

Roche in partnership with Ionis Pharmaceuticals is committed to supporting the needs of the community living with Huntington’s disease (HD) and developing treatments for those affected by this devastating disease. We invited journalist and HD patient advocate Charles Sabine to give his perspective at an event organized at Roche in recognition of World Rare Disease Day 2018.

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.

The Lpp lipoproteins of staphylococci trigger a TLR2-dependent immune response. Here, the authors show that commensal species (S. aureus, S. epidermidis) induce a less-intense TLR2 response than non-commensal species (S. carnosus) due to differential modification of the Lpp lipid moieties.

The authors show that eye-drop administration of an NAD⁺ precursor ameliorates age-associated meibomian gland dysfunction, a leading cause of dry eye in older individuals, by (re)activating intracrine steroidogenic activity.

Discovery of causal variants for monogenic disorders has been facilitated by whole exome and genome sequencing, but does not provide a diagnosis for all patients. Here, the authors propose a Full Spectrum of Intolerance to Loss-of-Function (FUSIL) categorization that integrates gene essentiality information to aid disease gene discovery.

GNPS is an open-access community-curated analysis platform for sharing natural product mass spectrometry data that enables continuous, automatic reanalysis of deposited 'living' data sets.

Expression of transcription factor CITED4 is necessary for exercise-induced regional remodeling of the heart’s microstructural helicity, revealing how a key molecular regulator of cardiac remodeling mediates local tissue-level changes.

Ertesvåg, Xiao et al. describe a method to evaluate neutralising antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 infection or vaccination, including variants of concern. A second mRNA-vaccine dose results in a broader antibody repertoire in adults, although with reduced cross-reactivity to beta and gamma compared to alpha and delta, particularly in the elderly.