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The Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues Network aims to create a reference catalogue of somatic mosaicism across different tissues and cells within individuals.

Opacities are considered to be the source of the disagreement between theoretical solar models and helioseismic data. Here, the authors show solar opacity profiles derived from seismic inferences, which differs from theoretical values used in the solar models.

The first lasing results at SwissFEL, an X-ray free-electron laser, are presented, highlighting the facility’s unique capabilities. A general comparison to other major facilities is also provided.

An exciting genome-wide association study in the British population for seven common diseases. This analysis confirms previously identified loci and provides strong evidence for many novel disease susceptibility loci.

Acute respiratory distress in macaques and baboons recapitulates COVID-19 disease progression in humans, making them suitable as models to test vaccines and therapies.

The actin-based molecular motors, myosins, have also been linked to transcription, but their precise role has remained elusive. Here the authors show RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) is lost from chromatin upon myosin perturbation and that myosin acts as a molecular anchor to maintain RNAPII spatial organisation.

The authors test for temperature dependency of ecosystem respiration rates across globally distributed eddy covariance sites, revealing consistent temperature thresholds where ecosystem metabolism changes.

Spatial information in the tumour microenvironment may be exploited to optimise diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. Here, the authors develop a spatial analytics computational and systems pathology platform (SpAn) based on highly multiplexed antibody imaging on colorectal cancer samples to infer emergent network biology and predict 5-year risk of recurrence.

Mammalian genomes are scattered with repetitive sequences, but their biology remains largely elusive. Here, the authors show that transcription can initiate from short tandem repetitive sequences, and that genetic variants linked to human diseases are preferentially found at repeats with high transcription initiation level.

Three key axes of variation of ecosystem functional changes and their underlying causes are identified from a dataset of surface gas exchange measurements across major terrestrial biomes and climate zones.

The seasonal cycle in the methane mixing ratio observed at Gale Crater on Mars can be explained by adsorption onto and diffusion through the regolith, suggests a one-dimensional numerical model with geological constraints.

Peter Donnelly and colleagues report fine mapping of 14 susceptibility loci in 8,000 cases and controls for type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease and Graves' disease. They apply a new Bayesian method for analysis of fine-mapping data sets, using this to define sets of SNPs likely to contain causal disease-associated variants.

Many genetic variants have been associated with human traits, but the mechanism is often unknown. Here, the authors integrate local and distal genetic associations with multi-omics datasets to provide a roadmap to understand the underlying mechanisms of GWAS variants on complex traits.

New methods and larger sample groups are used to precisely determine the alleles in the HLA complex which contribute susceptibility to type 1 diabetes.

Clinical multi-omics data are integrated and analyzed using a generative deep-learning model.

The levels of 1,251 metabolites are measured in 475 phenotyped individuals, and machine-learning algorithms reveal that diet and the microbiome are the determinants with the strongest predictive power for the levels of these metabolites.

Copy number variants (CNVs) account for a major proportion of human genetic diversity and may contribute to genetic susceptibility to disease. Here, a large, genome-wide study of association between common CNVs and eight common human diseases is presented. The study provides a wealth of technical insights that will inform future study design and analysis. The results also indicate that common CNVs that can be 'typed' on existing platforms are unlikely to contribute much to the genetic basis of common diseases.

A study from the FANTOM consortium using single-molecule cDNA sequencing of transcription start sites and their usage in human and mouse primary cells, cell lines and tissues reveals insights into the specificity and diversity of transcription patterns across different mammalian cell types.

The FANTOM4 study identified transcriptional start sites active during proliferation arrest and differentiation of the human monocytic cell line THP-1. Systematic knockdown of 52 transcription factors provide support for their model in which a complex transcriptional network regulates the differentiation process.

Rising pre-season daytime and night-time temperatures have contrasting effects on the timing of autumn-leaf senescence date in the Northern Hemisphere. Diurnal differences in drought stress may be the underlying mechanism.

Global soil respiration is rising, probably in response to environmental changes, suggesting that climate-driven losses of soil carbon are occurring worldwide.

A small-molecule agonist for the cGAS–STING pathway has systemic activity in a mouse model of colon cancer.

A search for variants in coding exons of 25 genome-wide association study risk genes in a large cohort of autoimmune patients finds that rare coding-region variants at known loci have a negligible role in common autoimmune disease susceptibility, arguing against the previously proposed rare-variant synthetic genome-wide association hypothesis.

New animal models of Zika virus (ZIKV) infection are imperative to accelerating efforts to treat or prevent disease in humans. Adams Waldorf et al. now report that ZIKV infection of a pregnant female pigtailed macaque caused brain lesions in the developing fetus, suggesting that this model may be useful for understanding ZIKV-associated congenital abnormalities in humans.

A report on the results of the first large-scale community-based critical assessment of protein function annotation (CAFA) experiment.

Upon its 'reinvention', thalidomide was quickly applied to 'microenvironment-dependent' diseases such as multiple myeloma, yet its role in the solid tumor spectrum has not been validated. A report into recurrent prostate cancer by Figg et al.¹ shows that thalidomide can reduce time to PSA progression in patients treated with androgen deprivation therapy.

Cytotoxic lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4) blockade plus vaccine as a combination therapy strategy to promote the immune response to cancer has demonstrated similar toxicities to anti-CTLA-4 monotherapy. As anti-CTLA-4 therapy has demonstrated clinical efficacy, continued exploration and optimization is warranted and must include investigations of combination strategies and management of adverse events.