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Global analysis of obesity trends from 1980 to 2024 in 200 countries and territories using data from 4,050 population-based studies reveals that framing obesity as a single global epidemic masks the highly varied dynamics across countries and age groups.

Identifying jets originating from heavy quarks plays a fundamental role in hadronic collider experiments. In this work, the ATLAS Collaboration describes and tests a transformer-based neural network architecture for jet flavour tagging based on low-level input and physics-inspired constraints.

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.

Timothy Frayling, Joel Hirschhorn, Peter Visscher and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for adult height in 253,288 individuals. They identify 697 variants in 423 loci significantly associated with adult height and find that these variants cluster in pathways involved in growth and together explain one-fifth of the heritability for this trait.

Genome-wide association meta-analyses of waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index in more than 224,000 individuals identify 49 loci, 33 of which are new and many showing significant sexual dimorphism with a stronger effect in women; pathway analyses implicate adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution.

Different agonists produce equilibria of at least four distinct active states of the G-protein-bound M2 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor, each with a different ability to activate G proteins.

Panos Deloukas, Nilesh Samani and colleagues report a large-scale association analysis using the Metabochip array in 63,746 coronary artery disease cases and 130,681 controls. They identify 15 susceptibility loci, refine previous associations and use network analysis to highlight biological pathways.

Neutrophilic inflammation is a hallmark of many monogenic autoinflammatory diseases. Here the authors report a case series of three unrelated boys with perinatal-onset of neutrophilic cutaneous small vessel vasculitis and systemic inflammation, and identify de novo truncating and missense variants in the Src-family tyrosine kinase LYN.

Entanglement was observed in top–antitop quark events by the ATLAS experiment produced at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN using a proton–proton collision dataset with a centre-of-mass energy of √s  = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 fb⁻¹.

A genome-wide association study and Metabochip meta-analysis of body mass index (BMI) detects 97 BMI-associated loci, of which 56 were novel, and many loci have effects on other metabolic phenotypes; pathway analyses implicate the central nervous system in obesity susceptibility and new pathways such as those related to synaptic function, energy metabolism, lipid biology and adipogenesis.

varVAMP is open-source software for designing primers for tiled-amplicon sequencing and qPCR. It simplifies primer design for viral pathogens with high genomic variability by including sequence variations into primer sequences.

Erik Ingelsson and colleagues report a large-scale genome-wide meta-analysis for associations to the extremes of anthropometric traits, including body mass index, height, waist-to-hip ratio and clinical obesity. They identify four loci newly associated with height and seven loci newly associated with clinical obesity and find overlap in the genetic structure and distribution of variants identified for these extremes of the trait distributions and for the general population.

Here the authors show that MRAP2 tunes the melanocortin-4 receptor by boosting its G-protein signaling while limiting β-arrestin2 interaction and destabilizing receptor oligomers, shaping appetite regulation.

Supersymmetric theories have partner bosonic and fermionic particles. Here, the authors use neutron spectroscopy on spin-ladder materials paired with matrix-product-states calculations to identify superpartner excitations.

Contrary to the view that urbanization is a major driver of the global rise in obesity, the global increase in body-mass index is shown to be mostly due to increases in the body-mass indexes of rural populations.

Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADDs) are a powerful tool for neuroscience, but the standard DREADD ligand, CNO, has significant drawbacks. Here the authors report two novel high-potency DREADD ligands and a novel DREADD radiotracer for imaging purposes.

A series of genetic studies have led to the discovery of novel independent loci and candidate genes associated with red blood cell phenotype; for a proportion of these genes potential single-nucleotide genetic variants are also identified, providing new insights into genetic pathways controlling red blood cell formation, function and pathology.

Integration of GWAS and single-cell transcriptomic data from the entire nervous system systematically identifies cell types underlying brain complex traits and provides insights into the etiology of Parkinson’s disease.

Excess macrophage elastase MMP-12 is a major driver of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Here the authors show that the endolysosomal ion channel TRPML3 is a regulator of the cellular reuptake of MMP-12, thus neutralizing harmful MMP-12 in the lung.

From 1980 to 2018, the levels of total and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol increased in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreased in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe.

Genome-wide association analyses based on whole-genome sequencing and imputation identify 40 new risk variants for colorectal cancer, including a strongly protective low-frequency variant at CHD1 and loci implicating signaling and immune function in disease etiology.

Osmotic swelling alters the local membrane environment, activating several GPCRs. Here the authors show that osmotic swelling enhances ligand-dependent signalling of β2-AR: this suggests regulatory mechanisms for GPCRs via their biophysical context.

A one-step preparation method of electrospun, synthetic scaffolds with controlled surface chemistry and functionality is reported. On addition of amphiphilic macromolecules, non-specific protein adsorption on the fibres’ surfaces is reduced, and by the further covalent attachment of certain peptide sequences to the fibres, specific bioactivation of the scaffold is achieved.

Genome-wide association analyses of blood glucose measurements under nonstandardized conditions provide insights into the biology of glucose regulation, diabetes complications and pathways for treatment stratification.

Whole-genome analysis of the elephant shark, a cartilaginous fish, shows that it is the slowest evolving of all known vertebrates, lacks critical bone formation genes and has an unusual adaptive immune system.

Mucolipidosis type IV is a lysosomal storage disorder caused by mutations in the endolysosomal cation channel TRPML1 and results in progressive neurodegeneration. Here, Chen et al. demonstrate that small molecules can be used to restore TRPML1 mutant channel function and rescue disease-associated symptoms.

An electron subject to a periodic potential and a constant electric field exhibit oscillatory dynamics, known as Bloch oscillations. Here, the authors demonstrate a magnetic analogue of Bloch oscillations in a ferromagnetic near-Ising chain, where magnetic excitations oscillate in response to a magnetic field.

Clinical and genetic phenotyping of consanguineous family cases of neonatal syndromic diabetes and type 2 diabetes, combined with in-depth functional studies in pluripotent stem cells, reveals a role for genetic variants of ONECUT1 in monogenic and multifactorial diabetes.

A study generates a clinicogenomics dataset resource, MSK-CHORD, that combines natural language processing-derived clinical annotations with patient medical data from various sources to improve models of cancer outcome.

Theoretically predicted fractional antiferromagnetic skyrmions are experimentally realized in MnSc₂S₄ and are found to originate from anisotropic couplings over nearest neighbours in the crystal lattice.

Jose Florez, Claudia Langenberg, Erik Ingelsson, Inga Prokopenko, Inês Barroso and colleagues perform large-scale association analyses using the Metabochip to gain further insights into the genetic architecture of glucose regulation. They identify 38 new loci influencing 1 or more glycemic traits and show that many of these loci also modify risk of type 2 diabetes.

Anna Köttgen and colleagues report genome-wide association studies for serum urate in over 140,000 individuals from the Global Urate Genetics Consortium (GUGC). They identify 18 loci newly associated with serum urate concentrations and confirm 10 known loci, characterize their associations with gout and include a network analysis suggesting a role for inhibins-activins pathways in regulating urate homeostasis.

Genome-wide analyses identify eight independent loci associated with anorexia nervosa. Genetic correlations implicate both psychiatric and metabolic components in the etiology of this disorder, even after adjusting for the effects of common variants associated with body mass index.

Single silicon nanowires are assembled onto patterned electrodes with a 98.5% yield and submicrometre precision using dielectrophoresis under constant fluid flow.

Self-organizing 3D human blood vessel organoids are generated by mesoderm induction of hPSC aggregates and subsequent differentiation into endothelial networks and pericytes in a 3D collagen I–Matrigel matrix.

A disturbed microbial network characterizes relapsing refractory Crohn’s disease and antedates disease recurrence after surgical removal of the active disease segment.

Using whole-genome data for single-nucleotide polymorphism and results from genome-wide association studies, the authors show that people’s preference for pairing with those with similar phenotypic traits has genetic causes and consequences.

Around 10% of high-grade serous ovarian carcinomas (HGSOC) harbor BRCA1 promoter methylation, but it is uncertain how it predicts response to PARP inhibition. Here, the authors show that homozygous BRCA1 methylation predicts response to rucaparib while heterozygous methylation of BRCA1 predicts resistance in HGSOC.

Magnetically confined neutral antihydrogen atoms released in a gravity field were found to fall towards Earth like ordinary matter, in accordance with Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Cristen Willer and colleagues report genome-wide association analyses for blood lipid levels in 188,578 individuals. They identify 62 loci newly associated with blood lipid levels, refine the association signals at 12 loci and examine associations with cardiovascular and metabolic traits.

In one-dimensional quantum magnets, complex bound states of magnetic excitations known as Bethe strings have long been predicted. Now, a detailed neutron scattering study of SrCo₂V₂O₈ reveals their magnetic-field-dependent dispersion relation.