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Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

A new ultraluminous X-ray source has been discovered in M 31, whose variability and associated bright, compact radio emission identify it as a stellar-mass black hole accreting close to the Eddington limit.

Although the genetic basis of breast cancer has been explored, most studies have been on European populations. Here, the authors perform a genome-wide association study of breast cancer in Black South African women to identify new genetic variants associated with breast cancer risk.

The tidal disruption event AT2019dsg is probably associated with a high-energy neutrino, suggesting that such events can contribute to the cosmic neutrino flux. The electromagnetic emission is explained in terms of a central engine, a photosphere and an extended synchrotron-emitting outflow.

Rob Phillips celebrates the US physicist's seminal series as it nears its 50th anniversary.

A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

Using the MeerKAT radio telescope, the authors have discovered a neutron star with an ultra-long spin period of 76 s. Though it resides in the neutron star graveyard, it emits radio waves and challenges our understanding of neutron star evolution.

The Arctic is melting at an unprecedented rate and key drivers are changes in snow and ice albedo. Here, the authors show that red pigmented snow algae play a crucial role in decreasing surface albedo and their patterns for diversity, pigmentation, and consequently albedo, are ubiquitous across the Arctic.

The authors build a reference phylogeny of 10,575 evenly-sampled bacterial and archaeal genomes, based on 381 markers. The results indicate a remarkably closer evolutionary proximity between Archaea and Bacteria than previous estimates that used fewer “core” genes, such as the ribosomal proteins.

A global network of researchers was formed to investigate the role of human genetics in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity; this paper reports 13 genome-wide significant loci and potentially actionable mechanisms in response to infection.

Temporal multi-omic analysis of tissues from rats undergoing up to eight weeks of endurance exercise training reveals widespread shared, tissue-specific and sex-specific changes, including immune, metabolic, stress response and mitochondrial pathways.

A genome-wide association study including over 76,000 individuals with schizophrenia and over 243,000 control individuals identifies common variant associations at 287 genomic loci, and further fine-mapping analyses highlight the importance of genes involved in synaptic processes.

Whole-genome sequencing, transcriptome-wide association and fine-mapping analyses in over 7,000 individuals with critical COVID-19 are used to identify 16 independent variants that are associated with severe illness in COVID-19.

Genome-wide association meta-analyses identify 26 risk loci for epilepsy, including 19 loci specific to genetic generalized epilepsy. Prioritized candidate genes implicate synaptic processes and overlap with targets of antiseizure medications.

It is known that exercise influences many human traits, but not which tissues and genes are most important. This study connects transcriptome data collected across 15 tissues during exercise training in rats as part of the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium with human data to identify traits with similar tissue specific gene expression signatures to exercise.

Polygenic risk scores predict the likelihood that an individual will develop a certain cancer, however these are often specific for a given population. Here, the authors show that a risk score developed to assess the risk of breast cancer in European women can also predict risk in Asian populations.

Data from three citizen science programmes on the occurrence, abundance, community structure and demography of birds across the UK show that protected areas are associated with improved state for most species and provide the most benefit to specialist, rare and declining species.

High-yield farming systems have the potential to spare non-farmed land for other uses (such as nature conservation), but raise concerns about their other environmental impacts (such as greenhouse gas emissions and soil erosion). This study argues such impacts should be measured per unit of production and shows that viewed this way, some land-efficient systems have less impact than lower-yielding alternatives.

The SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein is flexible, and its receptor-binding domain (RBD) fluctuates between up or down conformations. Mutations engineered into the spike ectodomain either lock the RBD in the down state or make it adopt the up conformation more readily.

A mobile robot autonomously operates analytical instruments in a wet chemistry laboratory, performing a photocatalyst optimization task much faster than a human would be able to.

Openshaw and colleagues find myeloid inflammation and complement activation signatures in patients with long COVID who were previously hospitalized.

Mechanisms underlying increasing artemisinin resistance of Plasmodium in Southeast Asia remain unclear. Here, Zhu et al. integrate TWAS, GWAS and eQTL analyses for 773 P. falciparum isolates and identify genetic and transcriptomic backgrounds to artemisinin resistance.

Ephemeral snow and ice melt contribute substantially to dry season runoff in the Rio Santa basin, with snowmelt accounting for up to 55% and ice melt up to 44% of inputs, according to results from a distributed glacio-hydrological model applied to quantify cryospheric contributions to the Andean water cycle.

The relativistic jets associated with the black-hole X-ray binary system V404 Cygni change their orientation on time scales of minutes to hours, implying that the direction of the jets is being affected by the dynamics of the surrounding accretion flow that powers them.

Transcriptomic analysis of isolates from the malaria parasite (Plasmodium falciparum) in the Greater Mekong Subregion of Southeast Asia identifies gene expression patterns that are correlated with resistance to a common anti-malaria drug, artemisinin.

Most cancer-related deaths are attributable to metastasis, but few treatments are specifically designed to disrupt this process. In this Position Paper, representatives of the joint Cancer Research UK and Cancer Therapeutics CRC Australia Metastasis Working Group describe the challenges associated with discovering and developing anticancer agents designed specifically to prevent or delay the metastatic outgrowth of cancer and provide guidance on how these challenges might be overcome.

Priscilla Y. L. Tng et al. report a Cas13b-dependent way to suppress the transmissibility of RNA viruses chikungunya and dengue in mosquitoes. They use a virus-derived reporter and a CHIKV split replication system and demonstrate that Cas13b and gRNAs can inhibit virus-derived reporter RNAs in insect cells in vitro.