Genetics articles from across Nature Portfolio

Many transcriptomic pathways in the liver show circadian rhythms, which have been reported to be disrupted in aged mice. Here the authors report that the expression of transcription factor Egr-1 decreases and its rhythm is shifted with age in the liver of male mice, and that deletion of Egr-1 results in increased liver fat accumulation.

Modification of RNA with m6A has been shown to be important during spermatogenesis. Here they identify post-transcriptional functions of PRRC2A, showing it promotes transcriptome transition from spermatogonia to spermatocytes and the translation of genes related to cell division.

Adjusting for common variant polygenic scores improves yield in gene-based rare variant association tests for quantitative traits, particularly when using sparse mixed models or simple linear models as an alternative to dense mixed-model approaches.