Porphyry indicator minerals and their mineral chemistry as vectoring and fertility tools

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An integrative approach for building personalized gene regulatory networks for precision medicine

Only a small fraction of patients respond to the drug prescribed to treat their disease, which means that most are at risk of unnecessary exposure to side effects through ineffective drugs. This inter-individual variation in drug response is driven by differences in gene interactions caused by each patient's genetic background, environmental exposures, and the proportions of specific cell types involved in disease. These gene interactions can now be captured by building gene regulatory networks, by taking advantage of RNA velocity (the time derivative of the gene expression state), the ability to study hundreds of thousands of cells simultaneously, and the falling price of single-cell sequencing. Here, we propose an integrative approach that leverages these recent advances in single-cell data with the sensitivity of bulk data to enable the reconstruction of personalized, cell-type- and context-specific gene regulatory networks. We expect this approach will allow the prioritization of key driver genes for specific diseases and will provide knowledge that opens new avenues towards improved personalized healthcare

Apatite evidence for a fluid-saturated, crystal-rich magma reservoir forming the Quellaveco porphyry copper deposit (Southern Peru)

Large volume, intermediate-felsic magma reservoirs are the source of melt and mineralising fluids which generate porphyry copper deposits. Cooling and crystallisation of hydrous magmas drives the exsolution and expulsion of a magmatic volatile phase—a process which remains challenging to constrain in porphyry Cu systems where the record of magma volatile compositions is rarely preserved. Here, we use the halogen compositions of apatite inclusions shielded as inclusions within zircon to constrain volatile evolution in magma reservoirs which pre-date and are synchronous with porphyry Cu mineralisation at Quellaveco, Southern Peru. Geochemical and textural data confirm that the zircon-included apatites escaped re-equilibration with hydrothermal fluids, unlike apatites found in the groundmass of the same rocks. We, therefore, recommend that future studies attempting to reconcile magmatic volatile budgets using apatite in porphyry Cu systems should focus on apatite inclusions in zircon. By combining the apatite inclusion data with numerical modelling, we find evidence that the magma reservoir sourcing porphyry Cu mineralisation remained fluid-saturated for the entire period recorded by apatite crystallisation. By contrast, the pre-mineralisation batholith shows more variable, potentially fluid-undersaturated behaviour. Our modelling suggests that in order to attain the porphyry melt volatile compositions inferred from apatite, the magma reservoir must have exsolved a large proportion of its volatile budget, consistent with having been held at high crystallinity (40–60% crystals). This crystallisation interval coincides with peak chlorine and copper extraction from intermediate-felsic magmas, and would have permitted efficient fluid migration and accumulation at the roof of the system. We suggest that the storage of large-volume, long-lived, crystal-rich magma reservoirs in magmatic arcs may be a critical step in generating world-class porphyry copper deposits