Search

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a heterogeneous disease group with CAR T cells offering therapeutic success in otherwise hard-to-treat cases. Here, authors study the in vivo expansion and persistence of CAR T cells in the peripheral blood of successfully treated DLBCL patients, demonstrating that two different CD8+ precursor phenotypes in the initial cell product give rise to two independent waves of clonally expanded CAR T cells with distinct phenotypes in peripheral blood.

Cross-phase manipulation holds potential for applications in synthetic biology and drug delivery. Here, authors present an acoustofluidic platform that enables rapid embedding of microparticles from an oil phase into aqueous droplets, offering an effective tool for studying cellular multiphase interactions and related phenomena.

The authors present a valley-Hall topological acoustofluidic chip revealing the complex interactions between elastic valley spin and nonlinear fluid dynamics, revealing its potential towards on-chip biological applications.

Efficient production of MSC secretome for therapeutic applications remains a challenging task. Here, the authors present an approach whereby an acoustofluidic mechanobiological environment can form reproducible 3D MSC aggregates, allowing for secretome production with high efficiency.

Existing apheresis devices cannot accommodate small blood volumes in infants or small animals. Here, the authors have successfully performed highly efficient plasma apheresis in mouse models, each with a blood volume of just 280 μl.

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

Shape-changing materials have potential in a range of applications, but these transformations can be challenging to control. Here, the authors report the hydrophobic pseudo-hydrogel, which utilizes absorption-induced expansion via elastocapillarity to enable versatile soft robotic applications.

The joint subarray acoustic tweezer platform offers 3D translation and rotation of bioparticles, enabling complex manipulation and cell deformation, with applications in tissue engineering, disease diagnostics, and drug testing.

Gene regulation in engineered microbial populations is often tuned at individual cell levels. Now, a population-wide amplification system has been devised that expands the dynamic range of plasmid transfer and gene regulation in bacteria.

New Zealand has been relatively successful in controlling COVID-19 due to implementation of strict non-pharmaceutical interventions. Here, the authors demonstrate a striking decline in reports of influenza and other non-influenza respiratory pathogens over winter months in which the interventions have been in place.

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.

N⁶-methyladenosine (m⁶A) modification of mRNA regulates gene expression in eukaryotes. Here, Zeng et al. show that m⁶A modification of mRNAs contributes to protection against the pathogen Helicobacter pylori by downregulating a host protein that acts as receptor for the pathogen.

Precise manipulation of colloids and cells is desired for material and life sciences. However, such control remains challenging without material modifications. Here, the authors achieve reversible single-particle manipulation with subwavelength resolution and high throughput using harmonic acoustics.

Contamination is an obstacle to the functioning of microfluidic devices. Here the authors exploit acoustic streaming to manipulate droplets which float on a layer of immiscible oil. This prevents contamination and enables rewritability by which different fluids can be used on the same substrate.

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.

Insect-like biomimetic compound eyes have many technological applications. Here, the authors present a facile fabrication scheme involving microfluidics assisted 3D printing that permits to completely separate design, optimization and construction of optical and sensor components.

Existing methods of zebrafish phenotyping rely on contact-based processes. Here the authors report on an acoustofluidic-based platform which performs contactless specimen rotation, that results in multispectral images for rapid morphological phenotyping of zebrafish larvae.

Precise and dynamic manipulation of nano-objects on a large scale has been challenging. Here, the authors introduce acoustoelectronic nanotweezers, combining precision of electronic tweezers with large-field dynamic control of acoustic tweezers, demonstrating complex patterning of sub-100 nm objects.

The valley degree of freedom gives additional flexibility to tunable phononic and photonic crystals. Here, the authors realise a honeycomb phononic structure where both the size of the cavities and of the air channel can be actively tuned, allowing several functionalities in a broad frequency range.

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.

Imputation uses genotype information from SNP arrays to infer the genotypes of missing markers. Here, the authors show that an imputation reference panel derived from whole-genome sequencing of 3,781 samples from the UK10K project improves the imputation accuracy and coverage of low frequency variants compared to existing methods.

This report from the 1000 Genomes Project describes the genomes of 1,092 individuals from 14 human populations, providing a resource for common and low-frequency variant analysis in individuals from diverse populations; hundreds of rare non-coding variants at conserved sites, such as motif-disrupting changes in transcription-factor-binding sites, can be found in each individual.

The goal of the 1000 Genomes Project is to provide in-depth information on variation in human genome sequences. In the pilot phase reported here, different strategies for genome-wide sequencing, using high-throughput sequencing platforms, were developed and compared. The resulting data set includes more than 95% of the currently accessible variants found in any individual, and can be used to inform association and functional studies.

Plasmonics offers sub-diffraction limit optical devices, but multiple functionalities are difficult to build in the solid state. By combining it with fluidics, Zhao et al. present a tunable and reconfigurable plasmonic lens using laser-controllable bubble formation in a microfluidic environment.

Population-based genome sequencing provides an increasingly rich resource for the identification of low-frequency, large effect variants associated with clinically important phenotypes. Timpson et al. use UK10K data to identify a variant of the APOC3gene strongly associated with plasma triglyceride levels.

Few-layered black phosphorus offers an infrared bandgap, complementing that of graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides. Here, the authors investigate the thickness- and strain-dependent electronic structure of black phosphorus using polarised infrared spectroscopy.

The precise rotational manipulation of single cells is technically challenging and relies on the optical, magnetic and electrical properties of the biospecimen. Here the authors develop an acoustic-based, on-chip manipulation method that can rotate single microparticles, cells and organisms.

Levels of circulating thyrotropin and free thyroxine reflect thyroid function, however, their genetic underpinnings remain poorly understood. Taylor et al. take advantage of whole-genome sequence data from cohorts within the UK10K project to identify novel variants associated with these traits.

Low read depth sequencing of whole genomes and high read depth exomes of nearly 10,000 extensively phenotyped individuals are combined to help characterize novel sequence variants, generate a highly accurate imputation reference panel and identify novel alleles associated with lipid-related traits; in addition to describing population structure and providing functional annotation of rare and low-frequency variants the authors use the data to estimate the benefits of sequencing for association studies.

The Impact of Genomic Variation on Function Consortium is combining single-cell mapping, genomic perturbations and predictive modelling to investigate relationships between human genomic variation, genome function and phenotypes and will provide an open resource to the community.

1000 Genomes imputation can increase the power of genome-wide association studies to detect genetic variants associated with human traits and diseases. Here, the authors develop a method to integrate and analyse low-coverage sequence data and SNP array data, and show that it improves imputation performance.

A protocol for the construction of acoustic tweezers to manipulate single cells in a high-throughput, precise, selective and contact-free manner, which can be broadly adapted for investigations across the materials, physical and life sciences.

Size and shape of the brain are, among others, influenced by the dimensions of the skull. Here, the authors report genome-wide association studies for head circumference and intracranial volume in children and adults and the identification of nine common or low-frequency variants associated with these traits.

We introduce a major scientific endeavour called π-HuB (proteomic navigator of the human body), its aim being to generate and harness multimodality proteomic datasets to enhance our understanding of human biology.

Acoustic techniques are moving towards the clinic. Here the authors highlight recent developments in the areas of acoustic mechanobiology, point-of-care diagnostics, in vivo manipulation and tissues engineering, and provide their thoughts on the current challenges and directions for future work.

This review discusses and contrasts different acoustic-tweezer technologies and their applications in biology.