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Will we ever be able to tell cat litter from uranium?

An analysis of whole-exome sequencing data linked to longitudinal electronic health records from 44,028 British South Asians finds new gene–phenotype associations and identifies 2,991 genes with rare biallelic predicted loss-of-function genotypes.

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.

cellSTAAR advances noncoding rare variant association analysis by integrating single-cell genomics data.

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.

The number of individuals in a given space influences animal interactions and network dynamics. Here the authors identify general rules underlying density dependence in animal networks and reveal some fundamental differences between spatial and social dynamics.

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.

Studies of brain network development typically focus on a single scale. Here, the authors derived personalized functional networks across scales, and find that network development systematically adheres to and strengthens hierarchical cortical organization.

An inherently explainable AI trained on 1,015 expert-annotated prostate tissue images achieved strong Gleason pattern segmentation while providing interpretable outputs and addressing interobserver variability in pathology.

In this article, the authors characterise genetic variation in CARTaGENE, a population-based cohort from Quebec, Canada. This genomic resource enables population and disease genetic studies in a founder population and other under-represented groups.

Accurate projections of heating and cooling needs are vital for planning energy use and achieving the sustainable development goals. A global dataset now maps global heating and cooling degree days, finding future hotspots, rising cooling demand and early shifts in energy needs with major global impacts.

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.

Organisms vary in their nitrogen and phosphorus content, shaping ecological and evolutionary processes. This study shows that nitrogen deposition is a consistent global factor associated with plant and animal stoichiometry.

The extent of the hierarchical relationship between premotor and primary motor cortices has been contested. Here, the authors show that hierarchical interactions between analogous brain regions and forelimb musculature vary substantially between two motor behaviors in mice.

This study shows that brain connectivity changes in Huntington’s disease begin decades before symptoms, shifting from hyper- to hypoconnectivity, with links to specific neurotransmitter systems specially in granular and infragranular cortical layers.

Dense calcium imaging combined with co-registered high-resolution electron microscopy reconstruction of the brain of the same mouse provide a functional connectomics map of tens of thousands of neurons of a region of the primary cortex and higher visual areas.

Biological nitrogen fixation may impose stronger constraints on the carbon sink in natural terrestrial biomes and represent a larger source of agricultural nitrogen than is generally considered in analyses of the global nitrogen cycle.

David van Heel, Cisca Wijmenga and colleagues used a custom, high-density genotyping chip to examine 183 immune-related loci for their role in celiac disease. They report 13 new regions associated with celiac disease risk, identify multiple independent signals at several loci and refine the localization of many previously reported risk signals.

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.

As phase 1 of the Earth Microbiome Project, analysis of 16S ribosomal RNA sequences from more than 27,000 environmental samples delivers a global picture of the basic structure and drivers of microbial distribution.

Parallel operation of two exchange-only qubits consisting of six quantum dots arranged linearly is shown to be achievable and maintains qubit control quality compared with sequential operation, with potential for use in scaled quantum computing.

Analysing 27 years of freshwater invertebrate biomonitoring data from European rivers, the authors show that although some commonly used biodiversity metrics can reflect anthropogenic impacts at broad spatial scales, there was little consistency among other metrics in accurately reflecting community responses.

Multiscale and multiway brain network interactions during the first six months of life reveal rapid developmental changes. High-order triadic interactions provide insights beyond pairwise functional network connectivity by capturing nonlinear dynamics and yielding more reliable biomarkers of developmental trajectories.

The medium-resolution transmission spectrum of the exoplanet WASP-39b, described using observations from the Near Infrared Spectrograph G395H grating aboard JWST, shows significant absorption from CO₂ and H₂O and detection of SO₂.

An estimated area of 215 million hectares has the potential for natural forest regeneration across tropical forested countries and biomes, representing an above-ground carbon sequestration potential of 23.4 Gt C.

Analysing camera-trap data of 163 mammal species before and after the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, the authors show that responses to human activity are dependent on the degree to which the landscape is modified by humans, with carnivores being especially sensitive.

Multi-ancestry genome-wide and transcriptome-wide association studies of aortic stenosis identify more than 200 independent risk loci and provide insights into its genetic architecture.

New hominin fossils from the Grotte à Hominidés at Thomas Quarry I (ThI-GH) in Casablanca, Morocco, dated to around 773 thousand years ago are similar in age to Homo antecessor, yet are morphologically distinct.

Meta-omic analyses are commonly used for large-scale studies of microbial eukaryotes. Here, Krinos et al. explore the potential pitfalls of common approaches to taxonomic annotation of protistan meta-omic datasets, highlighting the importance of database completeness and curation and proposing that precise taxonomic annotation of meta-omic data is a clustering problem rather than a feasible alignment problem.

Cleavage Under Targets & Tagmentation is a rapidly expanding technique, but thorough evaluation and benchmarking against established ChIP-seq datasets are required. This study shows that CUT&Tag recovers ~54% of ENCODE peaks for H3K27ac/H3K27me3 in K562 cells, with CUT&Tag peaks mapping to key cell type-specific regulatory regions.

Observed 730 Myr after the Big Bang, a little red dot is found to anchor an overdensity of eight galaxies and seems to be embedded in a massive host dark matter halo.

Nascent transcription in genes and enhancers genome-wide at the single-cell level is quantified using global run-on and sequencing (GRO–seq) with click chemistry.

A vascular cell atlas integrating single-cell data of 19 organs and tissues from 62 donors identifies angiotypic and organotypic characteristics of endothelial and mural cells.

Genotype and exome sequencing of 150,000 participants and whole-genome sequencing of 9,950 selected individuals recruited into the Mexico City Prospective Study constitute a valuable, publicly available resource of non-European sequencing data.

In this Perspective, authors from the Polygenic Risk Methods Development (PRIMED) Consortium highlight the ethical and analytical impact of population descriptors in polygenic risk score development and advocate for documenting detailed justifications.

Genomic studies often lack representation from diverse populations, limiting equitable insights. Here, the authors show that the BIG Initiative captures extensive genetic diversity and reveals ancestry-linked health disparities in a community-based Mid-South cohort.

An exome-wide association study of six smoking phenotypes in up to 749,459 individuals identifies associations of rare coding variants in CHRNB2 that may reduce the likelihood of smoking.

Arousal levels regulate sleep, but accurate noninvasive measures are lacking. Here, a novel method is introduced to track pupil-indexed arousal levels during human sleep, revealing pupil size changes during sleep events critical for overall health.

_{Household survey data is vital to health and development. The study describes and maps data quality in 35 African countries, finding that data quality varies and worsens with distance from towns, indicating a need for investment in data collection.}

Genetic and testing data from England show that the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern B.1.1.7 has a transmission advantage over other lineages.

Transmission spectroscopy observations from the James Webb Space Telescope show the detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the gas giant exoplanet WASP-39b.

Disease signatures in high-dimensional biomedical data are detected with a visualization algorithm.

This paper characterizes the health impacts in the post-flood year in the United States. The researchers find elevated death risk from floods, primarily due to respiratory diseases, external causes, and specific circulatory diseases.

The identification of tools dated to the time of Homo sapiens associated with microfloral evidence of wet tropical forests indicates that West African forests were occupied by humans much earlier in human evolution than previously thought.

Ultrasound neuromodulation overcomes limitations of electrode-based stimulation through improved

targeting and long-term stability for treating neurological disorders. Here, authors present a hair-thin, implantable piezoelectric stimulator that selectively modulates neurons in the deep brain.

Choosing best chemical cross-linking (XL) reagents and conditions for studying protein-protein interactions in structural biology is laborious and lacks in accuracy. The authors develop here an accurate, fast, robust and quantiative denaturing mass photometry approach for screening of XL conditions.