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Genome assemblies of triploid Cavendish and Gros Michel bananas reveal the origins, disease resistance and fruit-ripening mechanisms of the banana cultivars.
The field of spatial omics is developing rapidly, with a potentially transformative effect across many areas of biology. Nature Genetics invites authors to submit papers that use these techniques to answer questions of broad interest to researchers working in genetics and genomics.
While the number of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences grew to over 15 million, the Ultrafast Sample placement on Existing tRees (UShER) tool suite maintained a comprehensive phylogenetic tree in near real time. This experience, and critical performance improvements throughout the pandemic, provide valuable lessons for rapidly scaling analyses.
Long segments of the genome that are shared ‘identical by descent’ (IBD) demonstrate recent relatedness between individuals. A new computational method robustly identifies shared IBD segments in human ancient DNA data, providing insights into the mobility and demography of prehistoric human societies.
CX-5461 (also known as pidnarulex), currently in phase 1/2 trials, induces selective killing of homologous-recombination-deficient or BRCA1- or BRCA2-mutated tumors in preclinical models. New work confirms these findings but shows it to be a remarkably potent mutagen that induces extensive genetic changes in cultured human cells with or without BRCA1/2 mutations, raising substantial safety issues.
The spatial biology revolution promises deep insights into tissue organization, but deriving this knowledge from diverse, complex data remains a major obstacle. Data-driven discovery of the multicellular organization of tissues is now achieved by transforming multimodal spatial imaging data using deep learning.
A new study combining experimental treatments of human blood cells from thousands of individuals with flow-cytometry-based phenotyping and then genome-wide association analyses identifies genetic loci associated with non-resting cell states. Integrating the results with disease association signals yields insights into the underlying biology.
New research reports that paused RNA polymerase II (RNAPII) enhances the targeting and activity of BAF chromatin remodelers. These findings suggest a new paradigm for understanding how the collaborative action of chromatin remodelers and the transcriptional machinery govern cell-type-specific chromatin accessibility.
Polymorphisms in the non-coding genome affect genetic circuits and result in variable immune responses across individuals. Here we report a genetic circuit involving a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) that spatially coordinates chromatin contacts to control pro- and anti-inflammatory gene expression and shape immune responses of healthy individuals to pathogens or vaccination.
The chemotherapeutic agent CX-5461 is shown to be a potent mutagen in hTERT-RPE1, HAP1 and human induced pluripotent stem cells. The compound generates distinct mutational patterns of single- and double-base substitutions, as well as of small insertions and deletions, that were detectable following a single exposure.
Multi-ancestry genome-wide association analyses identify new risk loci for Parkinson’s disease, and fine-mapping and co-localization analyses implicate candidate genes whose expression is associated with disease susceptibility.
Genome-wide analyses of blood cell phenotypes derived from perturbations coupled with flow cytometry-based functional readouts identify loci associated with latent cellular traits, yielding insights into biological mechanisms underlying common diseases.
A human genetics-informed drug prioritization tool, genetic priority score (GPS), combines genetic features and drug datasets. GPS-supported indications are more likely to progress through clinical trials, suggesting the utility of this score for target prioritization.
Analyses of in vivo models, cell lines and patient-derived samples show that apolipoprotein B mRNA-editing catalytic subunit 3B (APOBEC3B) not only restrains lung tumor initiation but also that its upregulation is associated with resistance to targeted therapies. This study highlights the complex and context-dependent role of APOBEC3B in lung cancer.
CellCharter is a flexible, platform-agnostic method for identifying cell niches in spatially resolved data. Analysis of lung cancers demonstrates the importance of considering spatial information, exemplified by a neutrophil-associated niche that correlates with an aggressive cancer cell state and patient prognosis.
The long noncoding RNA AMANZI downregulates IL-1β expression and trained immunity by inducing IL-37 transcription via long-range chromatin contacts. The common variant rs16944 present in AMANZI modulates proinflammation or immunosuppression risk.
The pilot phase of PigGTEx, re-analyzing 5,457 published RNA-seq samples, presents a pan-tissue catalog of molecular quantitative trait loci. Cross-species comparisons identify traits with shared genetic regulation in humans.
A new computational method coupled with a CRISPR–Cas12a screen identifies human long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) that lead to cell proliferation defects, which can be rescued by zebrafish homologs. Knockdown of four zebrafish lncRNAs that perturb embryonic development can be rescued by human homologs.
Chromosome-scale genome assemblies of triploid Cavendish and Gros Michel reveal the banana cultivars’ origins, disease resistance and fruit ripening mechanism.
ancIBD identifies identity-by-descent regions in ancient DNA using a hidden Markov model optimized for these low-coverage data. Analysis of 4,248 individuals demonstrates that ancIBD can identify up to sixth-degree relatives and provides genealogical insights into ancient populations.
A strategy for inferring phase for rare variant pairs is applied to exome sequencing data for 125,748 individuals from the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD). This resource will aid interpretation of rare co-occurring variants in the context of recessive disease.
A downsampling approach to assess causal variant fine-mapping, replication failure rate, finds that commonly used methods may be miscalibrated. Simulations suggest this is probably due to a nonsparse genetic architecture model misspecification. Incorporating infinitesimal effects in the SuSiE and FINEMAP frameworks improves performance.
MESuSiE extends fine-mapping approaches to multi-ancestry analysis using LD-aware bivariate normal mixture models with a variational algorithm to identify shared and ancestry-specific causal variants.
A powerful Bayesian method, BridgePRS, leverages shared genetic effects across ancestries to increase polygenic risk score portability in non-European populations.
