Search

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.

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.

MultiSuSiE is an extension of the Sum of Single Effects fine-mapping model that allows causal effect sizes to vary across ancestries. Applying MultiSuSiE to quantitative traits in All of Us identifies fine-mapped variants not implicated by other methods.

Engineered mucus-tethering bispecific nanobodies neutralize and entrap viruses to enhance mucosal immunity, preventing influenza infection and limiting SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

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.

Challenges in simplicity and accessibility limit the current widespread applicability of neuromuscular models. Here, the authors present a readily fabricated, organised human motor assembloids-on-a-chip approach for neuromuscular research and hypoxia disease modelling.

Current clinical practice is organized according to tissue or organ of origin of tumors. Now, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network has started to identify genomic and other molecular commonalities among a dozen different types of cancer. Emerging similarities and contrasts will form the basis for targeted therapies of the future and for repurposing existing therapies by molecular rather than histological similarities of the diseases.

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.

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.

This study reports age-dependent negative correlations between temporal changes in maximal leaf area index and growing season length, indicating contrasting leaf acclimation strategies driving vegetation greening in young versus old deciduous broadleaf forests.

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.

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.

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.

CABLE harnesses cytoarchitectural information such as cell or nuclear shape to infer fiber tracts in the brain of, for example, marmosets, macaques or humans.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 functional relevance of lysine crotonylation in cancer remains to be further explored. Here, the authors show that hypoxia-induced downregulation of PGK1 lysine crotonylation promotes glycolysis and suppresses mitochondrial pyruvate metabolism, contributing to breast cancer progression.

Glasses exhibit ultra-slow relaxation dynamics in the deeply nonequilibrium regime, which remain poorly understood in both theory and experiment. Zhao et al. introduce a unifying empirical framework to characterize these dynamics, based on which they propose a kinetics-based method for dating glassy materials.

Matthew Meyerson, Ramaswamy Govindan and colleagues examine the exome sequences and copy number profiles of 660 lung adenocarcinoma and 484 lung squamous cell carcinoma tumors. They identify novel significantly mutated genes and amplification peaks and find that around half of the tumors have at least five predicted neoepitopes.

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.

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.

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.

Mesenchymal condensation is essential for cartilage development. Here, the authors report on a cell-adaptable supramolecular hydrogel to replicate the hypoxic environment and structural support needed for cartilage organoid formation and study the metabolic reprogramming involved.

Analysis of bedrock elastic deformation using high-resolution observations from 22 Greenland GNSS Network stations shows that the Greenland ice sheet buffers enough summer meltwater englacially to cause subsidence of about 5 mm during the melt season.

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.

Analysis of mitochondrial genomes (mtDNA) by using whole-genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancer samples across 38 cancer types identifies hypermutated mtDNA cases, frequent somatic nuclear transfer of mtDNA and high variability of mtDNA copy number in many cancers.

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.

While the ligand coordination microenvironment surrounding catalytic centres influences reactivity, dynamic oxygen reconstruction during water oxidation electrocatalysis complicates structure-based mechanistic insights. Now the in situ formation of lattice O–O ligands has been shown to activate Fe centres in metal oxides and hydroxides, thereby enhancing their oxygen evolution reaction activity.

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.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analysis of major depression identifies new risk loci, assesses the transferability of risk loci across ancestry groups, and improves fine-mapping resolution and prioritization of candidate effector genes.

Efficient, large-scale genomic analysis is facilitated on the cloud by a computational tool with error-diagnosing and self-healing capabilities.

Observational analyses from the China Kadoorie Biobank found that alcohol consumption was associated with higher risks of 61 diseases in Chinese men, with most of these associations confirmed by genetic analyses.

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.

Modeling a rare bone marrow failure disorder due to haploinsufficiency for the MECOM transcription factor identifies a human hematopoietic stem cell regulatory network, which is co-opted by high-risk leukemias.

Analysis of whole-genome sequencing data across 2,658 tumors spanning 38 cancer types shows that chromothripsis is pervasive, with a frequency of more than 50% in several cancer types, contributing to oncogene amplification, gene inactivation and cancer genome evolution.

A meta-analysis of genome-wide association study data from 77,418 individuals of East Asian ancestry with type 2 diabetes identifies novel variants associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes.