The expensive son hypothesis posits that mothers incur higher fitness costs when caring for sons versus daughters in species with male-biased size dimorphism. Evidence for maternal survival costs of sons in humans is limited to shortened overall lifespans; whether having more sons reduces short-term survival during reproductive years is unknown. Here, we utilised life-history data […]
Pursuit of biomarkers of brain diseases: beyond cohort comparisons
npj Digital Medicine, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41746-026-02614-5 Pursuit of biomarkers of brain diseases: beyond cohort comparisons
The landscape of artificial intelligence-enabled medical devices in the EU and the US intended for intensive care units
npj Digital Medicine, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41746-026-02609-2 The landscape of artificial intelligence-enabled medical devices in the EU and the US intended for intensive care units
Generation of Infectious Prions Amenable to Site-specific Click Chemistry
Prion diseases are a group of fatal neurodegenerative diseases that proceed through the templated conversion of the normal PrPC protein to a self-propagating and infectious form, termed PrPSc. This conversion process is central to disease progression. However, due to difficulties in producing functional PrPSc molecules that can be selectively modified with chemical probes, many aspects […]
Predicting bilingual aphasia treatment outcomes using digital twins: a double-blind randomized controlled trial
npj Digital Medicine, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41746-026-02583-9 Predicting bilingual aphasia treatment outcomes using digital twins: a double-blind randomized controlled trial
Ex Vivo Expansion of Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells from Human Mobilized Peripheral Blood for Gene Therapy Applications
Ex vivo expansion of mobilized peripheral blood (mPB) hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) represents a promising approach to advance cell and gene therapy strategies yet is hampered by loss of stem cell function when applying commonly used culture protocols. We performed in-depth characterization of mPB expansion cultures by single cell RNA sequencing, which highlighted differentiation trajectories […]
Phagocytic Clearance of SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid- and RNA-Containing Immune Complexes Drives Inflammatory Cytokine Production and Endothelial Dysfunction
The aberrant inflammation that characterizes severe COVID-19 is incompletely understood. Given the persistence of SARS-Cov-2 RNA and nucleocapsid protein (N) and the presence of anti-N antibody during the course of severe infection, we investigated the role of RNA-containing immune complexes (ICs) in driving inflammation. We found that ICs consisting of SARS-CoV-2 RNA, N, and anti-N […]
PERREO: An integrated pipeline for repetitive elements analysis enables the repeatome expression profiling in cancer
Transcriptome-wide profiling of repetitive elements expression reveals transposable element-derived transcripts that are deregulated in diverse biological contexts including cancer. However, most RNA-seq pipelines are optimized for annotated genes and substantially undercount repeat RNA molecules, limiting their discovery and characterization. Here we present PERREO, a comprehensive, user-friendly pipeline for analyzing repetitive RNA elements from short- and […]
Polymicrobial extracellular vesicles reduce the innate immune response of human cystic fibrosis bronchial epithelial cells
Chronic antibiotic-resistant cystic fibrosis (CF) lung infections are the leading cause of death in adults with CF. Despite advances in highly effective modulator therapies, microbial communities persist in the CF lung. The pathogenesis of CF airway infections can be exacerbated by pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa which communicates with primary human bronchial epithelial cells (pHBEC) […]
Can you run from your worries? The effects of exercise on anxiety-like behaviour and immune signaling in female and male mice
Exercise is a positive health behaviour associated with improved mood. However, the mechanisms underlying the benefits of exercise on affective health are unclear, particularly with respect to type of exercise and sex. Chronic exercise decreases neuroinflammation, which is linked to improvements in mood and anxiety. However, exercise is also a physiological stressor that can transiently […]
BrightEyes-FFS: an open-source platform for comprehensive analysis of fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy experiments with small detector arrays
Fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy (FFS) is an ensemble of techniques for quantitative measurement of molecular dynamics and interactions. Recently, the introduction of small-format array detectors has opened up a new range of spatiotemporal information, allowing for more detailed analysis of system kinetics. However, there is currently no open-source software available for analyzing the high-dimensional FFS data […]
Continental-scale multi-omics reveals a distinct microbial-viral biome in sandy beach ecosystems structured by tidal zonation
Sandy beaches are dynamic coastal interfaces shaped by strong physical forcing and intense exchange between marine and terrestrial environments, yet their microbiomes remain poorly resolved at the genomic scale. Here we present a genome-resolved survey of microbial and viral communities across sandy beaches spanning a continental-scale latitudinal gradient along the Chinese coastline. By integrating cross-shore […]