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Serological tests are important diagnostic and disease surveillance tools for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, the authors present a tri-part Nanoluciferase based assay to detect antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

Cells must respond to environmental changes. In three fungal species adapted to different temperatures, cellular responses are conserved yet tuned to each organism’s thermal niche, including the formation of adaptive biomolecular condensates.

A study of hospitalized patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 and who have liquid or solid cancer suggests that hematologic malignancy is an independent risk factor for mortality and that CD8⁺ T cells might limit infection in this setting irrespective of humoral immunity.

Multiple samples collected at autopsy from women with homologous recombination-deficient high-grade serous ovarian cancer highlight substantial inter- and intratumoral heterogeneity. A plethora of resistance mechanisms were identified within and between patients.

The contribution of transposable elements and endogenous retroviruses to renal fibroinflammation is currently unknown. Here, the authors comprehensively profile the expression of transposable elements and endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) in kidneys of patients and mouse disease models and find expression of ERVs in diseased kidneys activate cytosolic nucleotide sensors contributing to cytokine release and renal fibroinflammation.

Archaeogenetic study of ancient DNA from medieval northwestern Europeans reveals substantial increase of continental northern European ancestry in Britain, suggesting mass migration across the North Sea during the Early Middle Ages.

Bulk or pooled epigenomic profiling in the heterogenous brain obscures cell-type-specificity and individual subject variability in gene regulation. Here the authors optimized a hybrid protocol, ICuRuS, to profile epigenetic features in neuronal subtypes from a single mouse.

The fossil record shows a decline in dinosaur diversity preceding their mass extinction. Here, the authors apply ecological niche modelling to show that suitable dinosaur habitat was declining in areas with present-day rock-outcrop, but not across North America as a whole, possibly generating sampling bias in the fossil record.

RNA-sequencing analysis of cells in the human cortex enabled identification of diverse cell types, revealing well-conserved architecture and homologous cell types as well as extensive differences when compared with datasets covering the analogous region of the mouse brain.

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.

It is now shown that tumour-associated macrophages recruited early during tumour evolution stimulate stromal fibroblasts to express collagen crosslinking enzymes and that the stromal expression, particularly of lysyl hydroxylase 2, can predict survival in a patient cohort.

Altered hepatic glucose fluxes play a key role in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes. Here, Pittala et al. show that activation of G12/13 signaling in hepatocytes enhances hepatic glucose production, leading to greatly increased blood glucose levels.

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).

Programmed Death ligand-1 (PD-L1) protein mediates immune suppression in cancer. Here, the authors show that in breast cancer, PD-L1 expression can be up regulated post-translationally by glycosylation, which in turn acts through inhibiting GSK3β-mediated PD-L1 degradation.

Perceiving objects as lifelike is an inferential process but whether it occurs quickly and how it applies to groups of objects is not well understood. Here the authors show that observers’ percepts of crowd lifelikeness are fast and represent the average of the individual objects comprising that crowd.

A cross-reactive antibody and T cell response is identified in a large portion of patients with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.

PTSD has been associated with DNA methylation of specific loci in the genome, but studies have been limited by small sample sizes. Here, the authors perform a meta-analysis of DNA methylation data from 10 different cohorts and identify CpGs in AHRR that are associated with PTSD.

Human mobility plays a central role in the spread of infectious diseases and can help in forecasting incidence. Here the authors show a comparison of multiple mobility benchmarks in forecasting influenza, and demonstrate the value of a machine-learned mobility map with global coverage at multiple spatial scales.

Water-soluble, cell-permeable, inert fluorescent tags called OregonFluors have been developed to withstand environmental changes while resistant towards non-specific binding with subcellular structures. These tags enable quantitative imaging of drug target availability in cells and tissues, providing a route for the future assessment of personalized therapies.

There’s an emerging body of evidence to show how biological sex impacts cancer incidence, treatment and underlying biology. Here, using a large pan-cancer dataset, the authors further highlight how sex differences shape the cancer genome.

Dbr1 exhibits debranching specificity and effect on splicing. Here the authors combine co-immunoprecipitation, RNA binding and lariat analysis and suggest a role for Dbr1 interactor AQR in intron recycling. Dbr1 depletion leads to increased dwell time of spliceosome on excised lariats.

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.

Analysis of cancer genome sequencing data has enabled the discovery of driver mutations. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium the authors present DriverPower, a software package that identifies coding and non-coding driver mutations within cancer whole genomes via consideration of mutational burden and functional impact evidence.

Multi-omics datasets pose major challenges to data interpretation and hypothesis generation owing to their high-dimensional molecular profiles. Here, the authors develop ActivePathways method, which uses data fusion techniques for integrative pathway analysis of multi-omics data and candidate gene discovery.

Individuals over eighty years of age are less likely to mount a good immune response against SARS-CoV-2 (measured by neutralization titres) after the first dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine, but achieve good neutralization after the second dose.

The hippocampus in mammalian brain varies in size across individuals. Here, Hibar and colleagues perform a genome-wide association meta-analysis to find six genetic loci with significant association to hippocampus volume.

A longitudinal analysis of humoral immune responses in patients with COVID-19 with varying disease severities reveals that mortality does not correlate with antiviral antibody levels but, instead, with slower seroconversion.

Male patients with COVID-19 have higher plasma levels of innate immune cytokines and chemokines such as IL-8, IL-18 and CCL5 and more non-classical monocytes than female patients, whereas female patients mount robust T cell activation maintained even in older age.

A phase I trial of a neoantigen-targeting personalized cancer vaccine led to durable and polyfunctional T cell responses and antitumour recognition, and was associated with no recurrence in patients with high-risk clear cell renal cell carcinoma.

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.

Subcutaneous patient-derived xenografts are a common tool in cancer research. Here, the authors compare 65 paired early passage xenografts to their original paediatric tumour and show clonal evolution determines seeding of the xenograft.

Sivanand et al. survey different types of cancers and study how the metabolic profile of the primary cancer site influences the metabolism of the metastatic cells, thus influencing sites of metastasis.

Maturation of interleukin-18 (IL-18) is normally mediated by activated inflammasomes in innate immune cells as an antipathogen mechanism. Here the authors show that IL-18 maturation occurs in gut epithelial cells upon encounter with Helicobacter pylorivia a noncanonical NOD1/caspase-1 pathway to maintain epithelial homoeostasis.

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.

People spend much of their daily lives thinking about things that are unrelated to their immediate environment. Using fMRI, Kucyi et al. show that occurrence of these “stimulus-independent” thoughts can be predicted from a complex pattern of coordinated activity between distinct parts of the brain.

Large-scale screens of chemical and genetic vulnerabilities in cancer are typically limited to simple readouts of cell viability. Here, the authors develop a method for profiling post-perturbation transcriptional responses across large pools of cancer cell lines, enabling deep characterization of shared and context-specific responses.

Clinical benefit or intestinal toxicity resulting from combined immune checkpoint blockade in patients with melanoma associates with prevalent commensal bacteria and can be decoupled by IL-1R inhibition.

The authors identify that sedges in the Arctic have a different isoprene temperature response than other temperate plants, and this finding explains the high temperature sensitivity of isoprene emissions from Arctic terrestrial ecosystems.

South Africa experienced a resurgence in COVID-19 in 2022 driven by Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. Here, the authors investigate the severity of infections caused by these subvariants, and find no difference in the risk of severe outcomes when compared to Omicron BA.1, whilst all Omicron subvariants were less severe than Delta.

Combination therapy with the anti-HIV-1 monoclonal antibodies 3BNC117 and 10-1074 maintains long-term suppression in the absence of antiretroviral therapy in individuals with antibody-sensitive viral reservoirs.

RNA-interacting proteome can be identified by RNA affinity purification followed by mass spectrometry. Here the authors developed a different RNA-centric technology that combines high-throughput immunoprecipitation of RNA binding proteins and luciferase-based detection of their interaction with the RNA.

Polar microalgae have high zinc demand. Here, the authors use quantitative proteomics and transcriptomics of polar and non-polar model algae combined with cellular physiology to show that zinc plays an important role in supporting photosynthetic growth in eukaryotic polar phytoplankton.

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.

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.

This analysis comprehensively compares methods for gene regulatory network inference submitted through the DREAM5 challenge. It demonstrates that integration of predictions from multiple methods shows the most robust performance across data sets.

Invasion is a critical step in tumor development. Here, in colorectal cancer, the authors show that multiclonal invasion of the muscularis mucosae is pervasive, suggesting that invasive capacity is not a significant bottleneck in the evolution of the disease.

SARS-CoV-2 infection can lead to progressive pathology in patients with COVID-19, but information for this disease progression is sparse. Here the authors use multi-omics approach to profile the immune responses of patients, assessing immune repertoire and effects of tocilizumab treatments, to find a dyssynchrony between innate and adaptive immunity in progressive COVID-19.

The role that the striatum plays in tracking the association between actions and combinations of rewarding and aversive outcomes remains unclear. Here, by using both calcium imaging in mice and reinforcement learning models, the authors find that individual striatal neurons can encode associations between actions and multiple, sometimes conflicting, outcomes.