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Krisai et al. compare brain structure and cognitive function in elderly patients with and without atrial fibrillation using brain MRI and cognitive testing. They find that atrial fibrillation is associated with more brain lesions and lower cognitive function, but the cognitive impairment occurs primarily through direct effects of the arrhythmia rather than through brain damage.

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.

How landscapes are arranged affects soil pathogenic fungi worldwide. The authors reveal the global pattern and pronounced scale-dependency of landscape complexity and land-cover quantity on soil pathogenic fungal diversity.

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.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis study of blood lipid levels in roughly 1.6 million individuals demonstrates the gain of power attained when diverse ancestries are included to improve fine-mapping and polygenic score generation, with gains in locus discovery related to sample size.

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.

Inbreeding depression has been observed in many different species, but in humans a systematic analysis has been difficult so far. Here, analysing more than 1.3 million individuals, the authors show that a genomic inbreeding coefficient (FROH) is associated with disadvantageous outcomes in 32 out of 100 traits tested.

Early life stress can induce lasting changes in brain function and behavior. Here, authors show that glutamatergic FKBP51 specifically in females mediates adaptive stress effects on anxiety and cognition via TCF4.

Reduced glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) is a hallmark of chronic kidney disease. Here, Pattaro et al. conduct a meta-analysis to discover several new loci associated with variation in eGFR and find that genes associated with eGFR loci often encode proteins potentially related to kidney development.

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.

Zeiser and colleagues show that CAR T cell therapy results in upregulation of the TGFβ-activated kinase-1 (TAK1)–NF-κB–p38 MAPK pathway in microglia, causing neurocognitive defects, and find that TAK1 inhibition can reduce immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome.

Amyloid fibril structures can display polymorphism. Here the authors reveal the cryo-EM structures of several different fibril morphologies of a peptide derived from an amyloidogenic immunoglobulin light chain and present a mathematical analysis of physical factors that influence fibril polymorphism.

Caroline Fox and colleagues report results of a large genome-wide association meta-analysis and replication study for indices of renal function. Their work identifies 13 new loci associated with renal function and 7 loci associated with creatinine production and secretion.

Syntheses of anilines occur through a variety of methods, most requiring transition metals or multiple steps. Here the authors disclose a protocol to form anilines from benzyl alcohols via an aza-Hock rearrangement that uses only a sulfonyl hydroxylamine and solvent.

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.

High-density multimodal soft bioelectronic fibres provide a platform for minimally invasive implantable electronics, where diverse sensing and stimulation functionalities can be effectively integrated.

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.

Benzamides are widely found structural motifs, but their syntheses are largely derived from petrochemical-based feedstocks. Here the authors present the concept of “lignin to amides” with a one-pot, multi-step oxidation process utilizing molecular oxygen and a 3d-metal catalyst with highly dispersed and stable cobalt species (Co-SACs), supported on nitrogen-doped carbon in water as solvent.

Analogue quantum simulation has looser experimental requirements than its digital counterpart, but rigorous theoretical results on the capabilities of realisable experiments are scarce. Here, the authors fill this gap by proposing an alternative mathematical framework, and showing how to overcome barriers to scalable implementations using additional resources such as engineered dissipation.

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.

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.

Data from over 700,000 individuals reveal the identity of 83 sequence variants that affect human height, implicating new candidate genes and pathways as being involved in growth.

Trans-ancestry meta-analysis of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) from 1,046,070 individuals identifies 264 associated loci, providing a resource of molecular targets for translational research of chronic kidney disease.

A cross-ancestry meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies association signals for stroke and its subtypes at 89 (61 new) independent loci, reveals putative causal genes, highlighting F11, KLKB1, PROC, GP1BA, LAMC2 and VCAM1 as potential drug targets, and provides cross-ancestry integrative risk prediction.

Precision measurements provide a sensitive test of fundamental constants and their uncertainties. Here the authors precisely measure the hyperfine structure splitting in bismuth ions, and report significant discrepancy with the theoretical prediction of quantum electrodynamics.

Lung tissue-resident memory T cells (T_RM) are important for controlling respiratory infections, but how they are regulated is still unclear. Here the author compare mouse lung T_RM induced by either intranasal vaccination or direct H1N1 infection to find distinct phenotypes that converge on protecting the mice from H1N1-induced lung pathology.

Systemic AL amyloidosis is caused by misfolding of immunoglobulin light chains (LCs) but how post-translational modifications (PTMs) of LCs influence amyloid formation is not well understood. Here, the authors present the cryo-EM structure of an AL amyloid fibril derived from the heart tissue of a patient that is partially pyroglutamylated, N-glycosylated and contains an intramolecular disulfide bond. Based on their structure and biochemical experiments the authors conclude that the mutational changes, disulfide bond and glycosylation determine the fibril protein fold and that glycosylation protects the fibril core from proteolytic degradation.

Engineered polyketide synthases (PKSs) have great potential as biocatalysts for the synthesis of chemically challenging molecules. Here the authors show a retrobiosynthesis approach to design and construct PKSs to produce a series of valerolactams for biopolymer production.

Pompe disease (PD) is a rare disorder that leads to progressive muscle weakness if left untreated. Here, the authors use multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) to map and quantify the composition of affected muscle tissue to determine disease severity and potentially monitor future therapies.

A trans-ancestry genome-wide association study of serum urate levels identifies 183 loci influencing this trait. Enrichment analyses, fine-mapping and colocalization with gene expression in 47 tissues implicate the kidney and liver as key target organs and prioritize potential causal genes.

Genome-wide analysis identifies variants associated with the volume of seven different subcortical brain regions defined by magnetic resonance imaging. Implicated genes are involved in neurodevelopmental and synaptic signaling pathways.

A multi-ancestry genome-wide association study for age at menarche followed by fine mapping and downstream analysis implicates 665 pubertal timing genes, such as the G-protein-coupled receptor 83 (GPR83) and other genes expressed in the ovaries involved in the DNA damage response.

Generalization - that is, the ability to extrapolate from training data to unseen data - is fundamental in machine learning, and thus also for quantum ML. Here, the authors show that QML algorithms are able to generalise the training they had on a specific distribution and learn over different distributions.

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.

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

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.

Paul Pharoah and colleagues report the results of a large genome-wide association study of ovarian cancer. They identify new susceptibility loci for different epithelial ovarian cancer histotypes and use integrated analyses of genes and regulatory features at each locus to predict candidate susceptibility genes, including OBFC1.

A genetic study identifies hundreds of loci associated with risk tolerance and risky behaviors, finds evidence of substantial shared genetic influences across these phenotypes, and implicates genes involved in neurotransmission.

Genome-wide association analyses of intracranial and nine subcortical brain volumes in 74,898 participants of European ancestry identify 254 independent loci and yield polygenic scores accounting for brain variation across ancestries.

Confident molecular identification is key for studying complex biochemistry. Here, the authors employ Quantum-Cascade Laser-based Mid-infrared imaging for rapid identification of ROIs, followed by MALDI imaging prm-PASEF for in-depth lipid identifications directly on complex tissues.

Inflammasome assembly promotes the cleavage and oligomerisation of gasdermin D (GSDMD) and subsequent pore formation. Here the authors raise nanobodies to human gasdermin and characterize the pore formation process mediated by GSDMD and how antagonistic nanobodies prevent pyroptosis.

Subfemtosecond selective breaking of chemical bonds—such as carbon-hydrogen bonds in organic molecules—can open up new routes for laser-driven synthesis. Here, the authors show directional control of proton ejection in a symmetric acetylene molecule.