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Background Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) harbor accessory proteins that influence cellular processes and have been linked to a wide variety of diseases, including cancer. This study investigates locus-specific HERV expression and its association with gene dysregulation in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a highly prevalent and deadly form of liver cancer worldwide. Methods We analyzed RNASeq data from 424 HCC samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), which comprised 371 tumor and 50 matched normal tissues from a total of 371 hepatocellular carcinoma participants. We employed Telescope to identify and quantify HERV expression across the total RNA sequencing data. Results The majority of differentially expressed HERVs exhibited reduced expression in tumor tissue (166 downregulated vs. 50 upregulated), suggesting a potential functional role of HERV expression patterns in shaping the pathophysiological landscape of HCC. Specifically, the suppression of HERV-H family members, which are known to regulate cellular differentiation, may contribute to tumor dedifferentiation, increased plasticity, and enhanced metastatic potential. This loss of differentiation control and increased adaptability may play a critical role in driving the progression of liver cancer. Discussion Our study highlights a significant association of HERV expression with HCC, highlighting the differential regulation of specific HERV families in tumor tissue. For example, HERVH and ERVLE families showed consistent downregulation in tumor samples, while HERVE and HERV9 were more commonly upregulated. These shifts may reflect underlying changes in transcriptional regulation or chromatin structure between normal and malignant tissues. Rather than indicating a singular functional role, the observed expression patterns likely reflect a multifaceted relationship between HERVs and tumor biology. Further studies will be needed to determine whether these expression differences contribute to, or result from, tumor progression and to explore their potential as biomarkers or therapeutic targets. 

We introduce a novel approach to manipulate articulated objects with ambiguities, such as opening a door, in which multi-modality and occlusions create ambiguities about the opening side and direction. Multi-modality occurs when the method to open a fully closed door (push, pull, slide) is uncertain, or the side from which it should be opened is uncertain. Occlusions further obscure the door’s shape from certain angles, creating further ambiguities during the occlusion. To tackle these challenges, we propose a history-aware diffusion network that models the multi-modal distribution of the articulated object and uses history to disambiguate actions and make stable predictions under occlusions. Experiments and analysis demonstrate the state-of-art performance of our method and specifically improvements in ambiguity-caused failure modes. Our project website is available at https://flowbothd.github.io/. 

Abstract Multi-omics approaches have been successfully applied to investigate pregnancy and health outcomes at a molecular and genetic level in several studies. As omics technologies advance, research areas are open to study further. Here we discuss overall trends and examples of successfully using omics technologies and techniques (e.g., genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and metagenomics) to investigate the molecular epidemiology of pregnancy. In addition, we outline omics applications and study characteristics of pregnancy for understanding fundamental biology, causal health, and physiological relationships, risk and prediction modeling, diagnostics, and correlations. 

Summary Two types of tonoplast proton pumps, H⁺‐pyrophosphatase (V‐PPase) and the H⁺‐ATPase (V‐ATPase), establish the proton gradient that powers molecular traffic across the tonoplast thereby facilitating turgor regulation and nutrient homeostasis. However, how proton pumps regulate development remains unclear.In this study, we investigated the function of two types of proton pumps in Arabidopsis embryo development and pattern formation. While disruption of either V‐PPase or V‐ATPase had no obvious effect on plant embryo development, knocking out both resulted in severe defects in embryo pattern formation from the early stage.While the first division in wild‐type zygote was asymmetrical, a nearly symmetrical division occurred in the mutant, followed by abnormal pattern formation at all stages of embryo development. The embryonic defects were accompanied by dramatic differences in vacuole morphology and distribution, as well as disturbed localisation of PIN1. The development of mutant cotyledons and root, and the auxin response of mutant seedlings supported the hypothesis that mutants lacking tonoplast proton pumps were defective in auxin transport and distribution.Taking together, we proposed that two tonoplast proton pumps are required for vacuole morphology and PIN1 localisation, thereby controlling vacuole and auxin‐related developmental processes in Arabidopsis embryos and seedlings.