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Genome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in ancestrally diverse populations implicate candidate causal genes and mechanisms underlying type 2 diabetes. Trans-ancestry genetic risk scores enhance transferability across populations.

Metagenomes from prairie soils in Kansas, USA, show how historical exposure to water stress impacts soil microorganisms and subsequently drought responses in plants.

The host microbiome may influence asthma susceptibility differently across diverse geographic or ethnic populations. Here the authors perform a microbiome study of asthma in US Hispanic/Latino adults and evaluate the influence of obesity and genetic factors on the relationship between microbiome characteristics and asthma.

Limitations in proton transport within electrode materials diminish the proton storage capacity in aqueous zinc-organic batteries. Here, authors report an organic small molecule composite electrode enabling superharmonic fast proton motion via a crosslinked short hydrogen bond network, resulting in an electrode energy density up to 400 Wh kg⁻¹.

The mechanisms that impact tumorigenesis during aging are incompletely understood. Here Shuldiner et al. show that in mice, aging represses KRAS-driven lung tumorigenesis and dampens the impact of inactivating many tumor suppressor genes, which may contribute to the deceleration in cancer incidence with extreme age in humans.

Transparent films of titania nanotubes up to 30-μm long are fabricated on transparent conducting oxide glass, and used to make dye-sensitized solar cells.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

Analysis of the longest-lived mammal, the bowhead whale, reveals an improved ability to repair DNA breaks, mediated by high levels of cold-inducible RNA-binding protein.   

SpaceBar is a cellular barcoding strategy for simultaneous analysis of cell clonal and spatial identities.

The capacity of a plasmid to express genes is constrained by parameters such as its length and copy number. Here, Maddamsetti et al. present a computational method that enables rapid and accurate determination of plasmid copy numbers at a large scale, revealing fundamental constraints on these parameters and thus on plasmid evolution and functional organization.

Body size and composition are complex traits that are challenging to characterize due to environmental and genetic influences. Here, Arehart et al. disentangle shared and distinct genetic signals underlying body size and composition.

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).

Here, the authors discuss principles of experimental design that are relevant for all biology research, along with special considerations for projects using -omics approaches, highlighting common experimental design pitfalls and how to avoid them.

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.

Exome-sequencing analyses of a large cohort of patients with type 2 diabetes and control individuals without diabetes from five ancestries are used to identify gene-level associations of rare variants that are associated with type 2 diabetes.

Wamaitha and colleagues used the rhesus macaque to characterize the transcriptional and spatial mechanisms underlying ovarian reserve formation in prenatal life providing insights into the molecular processes governing ovarian follicle establishment.

The authors present a multiomics study of type 2 diabetes and quantitative blood lipid and lipoprotein traits in Hispanic/Latino populations. They demonstrate how integrating GWAS with omics characterization can advance precision medicine.

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.

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.

The authors examine the effect of long-term experimental warming on the complexity and stability of molecular ecological networks in grassland soil microbial communities. They find warming increases network complexity, which is strongly correlated with network stability.

Identifying sources of quasiparticle poisoning is an active problem in superconducting quantum circuits. Here the authors show that the rate of quasiparticle bursts in a cryogenic calorimeter decreases by two orders of magnitude in a low-stress suspended state, suggesting stress as a key mechanism.

Structural engineering at the subatomic level remains little for boosting operational stability of organic light-emitting diodes. Here, authors show that deuteration of acceptor is critical to enhance device stability, which is commonly neglected due to limited availability and synthetic complexity.

The human Shu complex promotes homologous recombination by regulating RAD51. Here the authors reveal that the Shu complex proteins, SWSAP1-SWS1, decorate the RAD51 filament on ssDNA and facilitate its strand exchange reaction by stimulating RPA diffusion on ssDNA. Lastly, that SWSAP1-SWS1 knockouts are Olaparib sensitive.

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.

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.

Combining 32 genome-wide association studies with high-density imputation provides a comprehensive view of the genetic contribution to type 2 diabetes in individuals of European ancestry with respect to locus discovery, causal-variant resolution, and mechanistic insight.

A study identifies public neoantigens generated by tumor-wide aberrant mRNA splicing activity across distinct cancer types.

In the atmosphere, photolysis of formaldehyde generates H and HCO radicals, which then react with O₂ to form HO₂ (important in converting atmospheric carbon to CO₂). Now it has been shown that internally excited formaldehyde can also react with atmospheric O₂ to make HO₂ in a direct, one-step ‘photophysical oxidation’, a mechanism likely to be general in the troposphere.

A transancestral exome-wide association study for body-fat distribution identifies protein-coding variants that are significantly associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index.

A large, open dataset containing parallel recordings from six visual cortical and two thalamic areas of the mouse brain is presented, from which the relative timing of activity in response to visual stimuli and behaviour is used to construct a hierarchy scheme that corresponds to anatomical connectivity data.

Treatment of patients with HER2-mutant non-small-cell lung cancer with the pan-HER inhibitor pyrotinib in a phase 2 trial or compassionate use showed a favorable objective response rate, whereas patients treated in parallel by physician’s choice in a real-world study did not.

Many rocky planets formed with large, H2-rich atmospheres. Here, the authors show that the loss of these primary atmospheres from temperate planets such as TRAPPIST-1e typically leaves behind secondary atmospheres and habitable surface conditions.

Here, the authors computationally designed and produced small protein antagonists to target IL-6 and IL-1β signaling to develop modulators of CRS.

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.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide association analyses identify new risk loci for Parkinson’s disease, and fine-mapping and co-localization analyses implicate candidate genes whose expression is associated with disease susceptibility.

Predicting RNA degradation is a fundamental task in designing RNA-based therapeutics. Two crowdsourcing platforms, Kaggle and Eterna, united to develop accurate deep learning models for RNA degradation on a timescale of 6 months.

Seasonal influenza vaccine effectiveness depends on including virus strains in the vaccine that closely match those circulating in the upcoming season. In this study, the authors develop a computational model of influenza virus evolution to predict future circulating strains and therefore support vaccine strain selection.

In an observational study evaluating functional precision medicine in children and adolescents with relapsed or refractory solid and hematologic malignancies, it was feasible to provide personalized treatment recommendations to treating physicians on the basis of genomic profiling and ex vivo drug sensitivity testing within 4 weeks.

Characterising the molecular profile of soft tissue sarcomas (STS) remains critical. Here, the authors analyse samples from 321 STS patients across 11 histological subtypes using proteomics and identify prognostic signatures that can be applied to multiple subtypes.

DNA analysis of 6 individuals from eastern and south-central Africa spanning the past approximately 18,000 years, and of 28 previously published ancient individuals, provides genetic evidence supporting hypotheses of increasing regionalization at the end of the Pleistocene.

Using a season-long field manipulation with an established model fish system on the Great Barrier Reef, this study demonstrates that limiting motorboat activity on reefs leads to faster growth and survival of more fish offspring compared to reefs experiencing busy motorboat traffic. Noise mitigation and abatement could therefore present a valuable opportunity for enhancing ecosystem resilience.

The genome is actively organized in progenitors to regulate their capacity to produce different cell types. Here, the authors show that a nuclear architecture protein forms condensates and controls the physical location of the genomic locus of a key competence transcription factor.

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.