Less than 2% of the human genome encodes proteins. The remaining DNA was once dismissed as “junk DNA,” but is now known to contain thousands of regulatory sequences called cis-regulatory elements (CREs). These elements act as gene “switches” and “dials,” controlling when, where, and how strongly genes are expressed. While gene sequences are largely similar between individuals, CREs vary much more extensively, and these differences are thought to be a major source of variation in physical traits and disease risk.

A research team led by Zicong Zhang and Associate Professor Fumitaka Inoue at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Biology (WPI-ASHBi), Kyoto University, has developed a new method for studying CREs at scale. The method makes it possible to examine, within the same sample, what a CRE does and how it does it. Using this method, the researchers examined approximately 10,000 CREs and their variants by simultaneously measuring transcriptional activity, chromatin accessibility, and the active histone modification H3K27ac. This allowed them to pinpoint which DNA changes matter and to gain insight into how transcription factors coordinate gene regulation.

This This work was published in Nature Communications, with the Accelerated Article Preview released on January 14, 2026 (GMT), and the final version published on February 17, 2026 (February 18 JST).

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS) in Japan have developed a score that predicts the risk of liver cancer. The study establishes that the protein MYCN drives liver tumorigenesis, specifically of the type of tumors found in the deadliest subtype of liver cancer. The study characterizes the microenvironment of genes that permit overexpression of MYCN, and describes a machine-learning algorithm that uses this data to predict how likely a tumor-free liver is to develop tumors.

Researchers have shed new light on the features that enable tree-dwelling mammals to move effectively through their environments, providing insights into the evolution of the distinct upright postures seen in primates.

Four New York University faculty have been awarded fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: Danique Jeurissen, an assistant professor of neural science, and Marvin Parasram, an assistant professor of chemistry, as well as Florian Schäfer and Joseph Tassarotti, assistant professors in NYU’s Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science.

Brain imaging identifies the social and emotional features of wildlife photos that drive engagement on social media. Tara Srirangarajan and colleagues scanned the brains of 34 adults while the participants viewed 56 wildlife images from National Geographic’s Instagram feed and made decisions in a matter of seconds about whether to “like” posts and/or donate to depicted species. 

Podocytes are specialized cells in the kidneys that do not renew with age. Researchers from Juntendo University used electron microscopy to show that podocytes in older rats are much larger and have significant structural differences from those in young rats. These findings highlight age-related structural changes and could increase the accuracy of staging the progression of glomerular disorders in kidneys.