Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01013-6In this Journal Club, Elena Gómez-Díaz highlights two studies that established the Malaria Cell Atlas, demonstrating how single-cell transcriptomics can resolve parasite heterogeneity across development, transmission and natural infections to advance malaria research.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 17 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01008-3In this Review, Buckley et al. discuss how DNA methylation is interpreted in mammals and plants, focusing on the reader proteins and transcription factors that bind to methylated DNA and the downstream mechanisms by which they regulate transcriptional and epigenetic states.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 07 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01024-3In this Journal Club, Liling Wan highlights a 1996 paper by Brownell et al. that linked a transcriptional coactivator to histone acetyltransferase activity, which contributed to the foundation of chromatin biology today, and reflects on the lessons it offers about the enduring value of curiosity-driven research.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 06 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01023-4In this Journal Club article, Bruno Hudry discusses how Thomas Cline’s 1984 paper on the role of Sex-lethal in sex determination in Drosophila melanogaster illustrates the power of classical genetic experiments.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01016-3In this Journal Club, Xiaoyu Song discusses a landmark paper by Gamazon et al. that introduced PrediXcan, which enabled the integration of tissue-specific transcriptomic information with population-scale genetic studies, laying the foundation for transcriptome-wide association studies.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 06 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01017-2The African DSI DataBank is a new federated platform designed to support African stewardship, governance and sharing of biodiversity and agricultural digital sequence information. This Comment outlines its architecture, rationale and roadmap for enabling African institutions to host, manage and contribute genomic and other biomolecular data types while retaining local control.

Optogenetic techniques involve the introduction of photoreceptors into selected cells to allow control over their activity using light. In this Primer, Emiliani et al. discuss the most commonly used o...

Optogenetics, our pick for Method of the Year 2010, is rapidly becoming a vital tool for neurobiologists, who are applying it to study both basic biology and...

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 28 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01022-5In this Journal Club, Kamila Naxerova reflects on two landmark studies by Knouse et al. and Davoli et al. that helped explain how disrupted epithelial tissue architecture promotes aneuploidy and why particular patterns of chromosome gain and loss recur across cancers.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 14 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01012-7Plasmids in bacteria and extrachromosomal DNA in cancer both generate copy-number variation, alter gene expression and promote rapid adaptation. In this Perspective, Shaw and Henssen explore their shared evolutionary capacities and argue that these extrachromosomal genetic elements can be viewed as convergent contingency loci with implications for evolution, drug resistance and therapeutic opportunities.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 05 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01021-6New methylome data from marsupials indicate that genome-wide DNA methylation erasure is restricted to extraembryonic tissues. Ozren Bogdanovic discusses the implications of these findings for understanding the evolution and developmental functions of epigenetic reprogramming in mammals.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 05 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01015-4Epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a dynamic cell-state transition that underpins embryonic development, tissue repair and ageing and is frequently co-opted in disease. In this Review, Narwade and Nieto discuss how single-cell, spatial and integrative multi-omics approaches, together with computational frameworks, are revealing EMT heterogeneity, trajectories, mechanisms and translational opportunities.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 05 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01019-0Despite a high mutation rate and maternal inheritance, mitochondrial genomes remain remarkably stable across generations. This Review explores how the mitochondrial bottleneck and purifying selection shape mitochondrial DNA inheritance and examines the mechanisms that limit the transmission of deleterious variants.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01010-9Advances in genome-wide selection scans and ancient DNA have greatly expanded our ability to study human evolution. This Review discusses the conceptual and statistical challenges in identifying and interpreting selection signals, and how recent approaches are reshaping our understanding of human evolution over the past 10,000 years.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01007-4Comparative functional genetics and genomics across Danio, Devario and Danionella species reveal molecular and cellular bases of phenotypic divergence, establishing danionin fishes as powerful model systems for understanding a wide range of evolutionary innovations.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01004-7Programmed DNA elimination is a developmentally regulated process in which specific DNA sequences are reproducibly removed from particular cell lineages. Here, the authors review the mechanistic diversity and evolutionary dynamics of DNA elimination, spanning chromosome breakage, whole-chromosome elimination and whole-genome elimination.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 28 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01022-5In this Journal Club, Kamila Naxerova reflects on two landmark studies by Knouse et al. and Davoli et al. that helped explain how disrupted epithelial tissue architecture promotes aneuploidy and why particular patterns of chromosome gain and loss recur across cancers.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 07 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01002-9The programmable insertion of large DNA sequences could overcome fundamental limitations of current genome-editing technologies. In this Review, Lampe, King and Sternberg describe recent advances in recombinases, retrotransposons and CRISPR-associated transposases, and discuss how these systems are enabling mutation-agnostic genome modification.

Molecular quantitative trait loci (molQTLs) provide key insights into how non-coding variants shape complex traits and disease. In this Review, the authors outline statistical and machine learning app...

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01013-6In this Journal Club, Elena Gómez-Díaz highlights two studies that established the Malaria Cell Atlas, demonstrating how single-cell transcriptomics can resolve parasite heterogeneity across development, transmission and natural infections to advance malaria research.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01018-1Undiagnosed disease networks advance the discovery of genes associated with rare diseases. However, a considerable gap in discovery remains, and genomic resources continue to exhibit population bias. A collaborative initiative in the Middle East could harness unique population structure, extensive family lineages and underrepresented genomic diversity to enhance local diagnostic capabilities and facilitate global gene discovery.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 17 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01008-3In this Review, Buckley et al. discuss how DNA methylation is interpreted in mammals and plants, focusing on the reader proteins and transcription factors that bind to methylated DNA and the downstream mechanisms by which they regulate transcriptional and epigenetic states.

In this Review, Li and Durbin discuss how to generate telomere-to-telomere assemblies for large haploid or diploid genomes using currently available data types and algorithms, and outline remaining ch...

In this Review, the authors provide an overview of the roles of individual histone variants in multiple processes, including gene regulation, DNA replication and DNA repair, and the cellular consequen...

Spatial omics has empowered the discovery of developmental and disease-associated molecular signatures, cell states and multicellular niches, as well as the evaluation of disease heterogeneity within and across organs. The authors review spatially resolved molecular changes across diseases and discuss the potential of spatial multi-omics for clinical applications, including the recent impact of artificial intelligence.

Proteoforms are the diverse protein molecules produced from a single gene whose primary sequence and composition can be diversified by genetic, transcriptomic, translational and post-translational var...

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 02 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01011-8Large-scale genome initiatives are transforming biodiversity genomics, but genomes remain taxonomically sparse and difficult to compare across species. Kapli and colleagues argue that natural history collections should play a central role in building species-dense genomic resources, creating the foundation needed for comparative and predictive biodiversity genomics.

The circadian clock controls transcriptional and signalling networks across tissues to maintain homeostasis, with pathological consequences to its disruption. Kuo et al. review our understanding of ci...

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 10 March 2025; doi:10.1038/s41576-025-00825-2This Review explores how experimental models of metastasis, such as mouse models and cell cultures, can complement the (multi)omics analysis of human metastasis…

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 01 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01001-wIn this Review, the authors discuss recent data showing that telomere attrition is a powerful tumour-suppressor mechanism that limits the development of a wide variety of human cancers.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01016-3In this Journal Club, Xiaoyu Song discusses a landmark paper by Gamazon et al. that introduced PrediXcan, which enabled the integration of tissue-specific transcriptomic information with population-scale genetic studies, laying the foundation for transcriptome-wide association studies.

Loss of Y chromosome (LOY), the most commonly occurring post-zygotic (somatic) mutation in male individuals, affects immune activity and is associated with cancer, neurodegeneration, cardiovascul...

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 14 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01012-7Plasmids in bacteria and extrachromosomal DNA in cancer both generate copy-number variation, alter gene expression and promote rapid adaptation. In this Perspective, Shaw and Henssen explore their shared evolutionary capacities and argue that these extrachromosomal genetic elements can be viewed as convergent contingency loci with implications for evolution, drug resistance and therapeutic opportunities.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01013-6In this Journal Club, Elena Gómez-Díaz highlights two studies that established the Malaria Cell Atlas, demonstrating how single-cell transcriptomics can resolve parasite heterogeneity across development, transmission and natural infections to advance malaria research.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 18 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01018-1Undiagnosed disease networks advance the discovery of genes associated with rare diseases. However, a considerable gap in discovery remains, and genomic resources continue to exhibit population bias. A collaborative initiative in the Middle East could harness unique population structure, extensive family lineages and underrepresented genomic diversity to enhance local diagnostic capabilities and facilitate global gene discovery.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01010-9Advances in genome-wide selection scans and ancient DNA have greatly expanded our ability to study human evolution. This Review discusses the conceptual and statistical challenges in identifying and interpreting selection signals, and how recent approaches are reshaping our understanding of human evolution over the past 10,000 years.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 28 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01000-xIn this Review, Liu et al. describe advances that are enabling comparative genetic studies of humans and farmed animals, which have the potential to generate insights that are beneficial for both biomedical research and agriculture.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 10 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01007-4Comparative functional genetics and genomics across Danio, Devario and Danionella species reveal molecular and cellular bases of phenotypic divergence, establishing danionin fishes as powerful model systems for understanding a wide range of evolutionary innovations.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 17 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01008-3In this Review, Buckley et al. discuss how DNA methylation is interpreted in mammals and plants, focusing on the reader proteins and transcription factors that bind to methylated DNA and the downstream mechanisms by which they regulate transcriptional and epigenetic states.

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 08 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01004-7Programmed DNA elimination is a developmentally regulated process in which specific DNA sequences are reproducibly removed from particular cell lineages. Here, the authors review the mechanistic diversity and evolutionary dynamics of DNA elimination, spanning chromosome breakage, whole-chromosome elimination and whole-genome elimination.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01016-3In this Journal Club, Xiaoyu Song discusses a landmark paper by Gamazon et al. that introduced PrediXcan, which enabled the integration of tissue-specific transcriptomic information with population-scale genetic studies, laying the foundation for transcriptome-wide association studies.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 14 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01012-7Plasmids in bacteria and extrachromosomal DNA in cancer both generate copy-number variation, alter gene expression and promote rapid adaptation. In this Perspective, Shaw and Henssen explore their shared evolutionary capacities and argue that these extrachromosomal genetic elements can be viewed as convergent contingency loci with implications for evolution, drug resistance and therapeutic opportunities.

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 07 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-01002-9The programmable insertion of large DNA sequences could overcome fundamental limitations of current genome-editing technologies. In this Review, Lampe, King and Sternberg describe recent advances in recombinases, retrotransposons and CRISPR-associated transposases, and discuss how these systems are enabling mutation-agnostic genome modification.