Biology subjects

Adkins, P.

Publications and source records attributed to Adkins, P..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Structural and functional MRI signatures of Gambling Disorder: a case-control study

Gambling disorder (GD) is a behavioural addiction that may help identify addiction-related neural features without the direct neurobiological effects of a primary substance of dependence. We examined regional grey matter volume (GMV) and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in the same well-characterised sample. Eighteen men with GD and 21 matched healthy controls underwent high-resolution structural and resting-state functional MRI. GMV was quantified across 214 cortical and subcortical regions, and seed-based rsFC analyses focused on striatal subdivisions and mesocorticolimbic regions. Group differences were evaluated using permutation testing and cluster-corrected mixed-effects modelling. GD was associated with lower GMV in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal regions and other cortical and subcortical areas, alongside higher GMV in a subset of limbic and default-mode regions. Participants with GD also showed lower connectivity between the limbic striatum and the hippocampus, thalamus and putamen. In exploratory analyses, somatomotor connectivity was positively associated with gambling severity (Problem Gambling Severity Index: Spearman's rho = 0.71, p = 0.003, false-discovery-rate-adjusted q = 0.016). Structural and functional findings overlapped spatially in regions associated with valuation, memory, reward and habit formation, but regional GMV did not mediate group differences in rsFC. These findings are broadly consistent with corticostriatal models of GD and identify candidate circuit-level differences for independent replication. Larger, more diverse and longitudinal samples are required to establish their reproducibility, temporal direction and clinical relevance.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Somatic and germline mutational processes across the tree of life

The characterisation of mutational processes active in somatic and germline cells in vivo has predominantly focused on human cancers1,2, normal tissues3-5 and model organisms6-8. Beyond mammals9, little is known about mutational processes across the tree of life. We developed himut (high-fidelity mutation), an algorithm to identify somatic mutations from circular consensus long-read sequencing data, deploying it on 708 samples from 661 species from Britain and Ireland10. The spectra of somatic mutations, categorised by mutation type and local sequence context, showed considerable between-species divergence but within-species similarity. From normalised spectra across the dataset, we extracted 95 distinct patterns, or signatures, of somatic mutations, together with 18 signatures of germline mutational processes. Only two of the somatic signatures resembled mutational signatures extracted from human cancers1,2. Of the somatic signatures, 22 had significant clustering within the taxonomic classification, with some distributed across an entire kingdom or phylum, while others were restricted to a single family or species. Three somatic signatures were found only in water-dwelling species, with one distributed across multiple clades that might suggest it derives from a water-borne mutagen. Of germline signatures, eight were found in multiple species, showed significant clustering by taxonomic classification and had counterpart somatic signatures with matching mutational spectrum and species distribution. Thus, there is considerably greater diversity of mutational processes across the tree of life than found in human samples, likely reflecting either cell-intrinsic biological processes or environmental exposures (or both) operative within distinct clades.

genomics↗