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Global Burden of Disease analysis found that in 2023, suboptimal diet was estimated to be responsible for 4 million deaths and 97 million morbidity burdens from ischemic heart disease.

When 100 social and behavioural science claims were examined, 34% of reanalyses closely matched the original results, with 74% reaching the same conclusion, revealing limited robustness of single-path analyses and the need to address analytical uncertainty.

Recent studies have shown that probing the heating and ionization dynamics of solid-density plasmas with x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) beams is inherently challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate sub-picosecond time resolution of solid-density Cu plasmas driven by an optical laser pulse, by combining resonant x-ray emission spectroscopy and absorption imaging from an XFEL probe beam.

Managing hydrocephalus relies on non-specific symptoms. Here, the authors report a 0.28-gram implant that measures intracranial pressure long term, tested in pediatric and adult patients.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

IL-17RA signaling on Paneth progenitors, via ADAM17, modulates Paneth cell dedifferentiation and their ability to replenish the intestinal crypt post-irradiation injury.

It remains unclear why some BRCA-deficient high-grade serous carcinomas (HGSC) do not respond to platinum-based therapy. Here, multi-omic analysis of BRCA1- and BRCA2-deficient HGSC attributes co-occurring mutations, DNA repair deficiency and tumor microenvironment features to short survival in these patients.

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma has poor survival due to frequent recurrence and limited prognostic markers. Here, the authors identify two prognostic proteomic tumor clusters, validate a classifier across independent cohorts, and introduce EIF4A1 inhibition as a potential therapeutic strategy.

Over five years, implementation of the NHS England Lung Cancer Screening Programme achieved high early-stage detection rates and demonstrated that the programme is both feasible and scalable for reaching high-risk and underserved populations.

Analyses of large-scale, multitaxa and long-term thermophilization patterns in forests, grasslands and alpine summits across Europe provide insight into shifts in community composition among different ecosystems in a warming world.

Precision oncology requires access to high quality data, as well as the application of current technologies. Here, the authors use federated learning to predict clinical outcomes in anal cancer patients across 16 centres as part of the atomCAT consortium.

It is unclear whether the harsh abiotic conditions of drylands hinder biological invasions. This global analysis shows that drylands are vulnerable to non-native plants and are likely to become more so as native plant diversity declines and grazing pressure intensifies.

Czernilofsky et al. identified factors that reprogram stromal cells into an inflammatory, dysfunctional state, leading to the structural disorganization of lymph nodes in B cell lymphoma at single-cell and spatial resolutions.

The authors conduct a national inventory on individual tree carbon stocks in Rwanda using aerial imagery and deep learning. Most mapped trees are located in farmlands; new methods allow partitioning to any landscape categories, effective planning and optimization of carbon sequestration and the economic benefits of trees.

The excitatory neuron diversity and specialized connectivity of complex, multilayered mammalian neocortex are driven by mammalian-specific cis-regulatory elements bound by ZBTB18, deletion of which disrupts gene expression and results in projection patterns resembling those of non-mammalian brains.

Bioactivity-guided isolation of specialized metabolites is an iterative process. Here, the authors demonstrate a native metabolomics approach that allows for fast screening of complex metabolite extracts against a protein of interest and simultaneous structure annotation.

The APOE-ε4 allele is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but it is not deterministic. Here, the authors show that common genetic variation changes how APOE-ε4 influences cognition.

The authors estimate genomic vulnerability for closely related species of rainbowfish. They find that narrow endemic species that have hybridized with a warm-adapted generalist show reduced vulnerability to climate change and that hybridization may facilitate evolutionary rescue for such species.

Magnon transport is confined to a plane by sandwiching BiFeO₃ between layers of non-polar antiferromagnetic LaFeO₃, resulting in efficient magnon transport and a higher voltage output through spin–charge conversion that can be controlled using electric fields. These results have implications for electric-field-controlled spin-based memory and logic elements.

Genome-wide association analyses using data from 19 biobanks identify variants influencing risk of thyroid diseases and yield polygenic risk scores associated with features of aggressive thyroid cancer.

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.

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).

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.

Mensah, Efthymiou, Mureanu, and Monreal et al. examine RNA transcripts from over 40,000 CD4+ T cells to investigate regulatory T cell states in patients with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). GDM was associated with the abundance of memory CD4+ T cells and altered expression within naive and effector Treg subsets with aberrant genes serving to identify GDM from whole blood mRNA datasets.

Genomic analyses applied to 14 childhood- and adult-onset psychiatric disorders identifies five underlying genomic factors that explain the majority of the genetic variance of the individual disorders.

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.

Polymer thin films that emit and absorb circularly polarised light are promising in achieving important technological advances, but the origin of the large chiroptical effects in such films has remained elusive. Here the authors demonstrate that in non-aligned polymer thin films, large chiroptical effects are caused by magneto-electric coupling, not structural chirality as previously assumed.

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.

In a study of four brain-dead human decedents, extracorporeal liver cross-circulation using genetically modified pig livers provides essential hepatic functions, supporting the feasibility of this approach for temporary liver support as a bridge to organ transplantation.

Tree cover gains in the moist tropics (1982–2015) were 56% naturally regenerated forests and 27% managed tree systems, with forest type influencing carbon recovery. Effective forest restoration requires robust tracking of forest types established by restoration efforts.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

LARP6 is an EMT-associated RNA-binding protein with diverse RNA targets. Here, the authors show that the N-terminal disordered region of LARP6 promotes RNA-binding selectivity by modulating the adjacent La-module and forming auxiliary contacts with RNA.

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.

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.

In a case series of five patients with treatment-refractory antisynthetase syndrome and five patients with treatment-refractory systemic sclerosis, bispecific T cell engagers blinatumomab and teclistamab improved disease activity and were well tolerated.

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.

Here the authors compare genetic testing strategies in rare movement disorders, improve diagnostic yield with genome analysis, and establish CD99L2 as an X-linked spastic ataxia gene, showing that CD99L2–CAPN1 signaling disruption likely drives neurodegeneration.

In this study, long-read RNA sequencing achieves accurate single-nucleotide polymorphism calling, haplotype phasing and allele-specific expression analysis.

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.

A follow-up analysis of a clinical trial that evaluated anti-PD-1 therapy in patients with cancer who are living with HIV provides mechanistic insights into transcriptomic, cellular and cytokine changes related to immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment and identifies a signature associated with clinical response.

Whole-genome sequencing of polioviruses in Uganda following nOPV2 use showed high genetic stability and no sustained transmission, even though a rare double recombinant strain regained virulence, but did not spread due to high vaccination coverage.

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.

Forests are essential for both climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, yet how to balance these goals in managed forests remains unclear. Here, using a Europe-wide dataset, the authors find that biodiversity increases with carbon stocks, but mostly when deadwood is included.