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Inbreeding depression has been observed in many different species, but in humans a systematic analysis has been difficult so far. Here, analysing more than 1.3 million individuals, the authors show that a genomic inbreeding coefficient (FROH) is associated with disadvantageous outcomes in 32 out of 100 traits tested.

Timothy Frayling, Joel Hirschhorn, Peter Visscher and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for adult height in 253,288 individuals. They identify 697 variants in 423 loci significantly associated with adult height and find that these variants cluster in pathways involved in growth and together explain one-fifth of the heritability for this trait.

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.

Two high-redshift post-starburst galaxies are in the process of quenching, although their quasars remain active, indicating the complex co-evolution between black hole activity and star formation.

Independent lines of evidence suggest that the first stars, which ended the cosmic dark ages, came in pairs rather than singly. This could change the prevailing view that the early Universe had a Swiss-cheese-like appearance.

Four recent observational results that have challenged our understanding of high-redshift galaxies are resolved simultaneously if it is taken that 10-30 per cent of the stars in many galaxies at z ≍ 3-4 are mainly primordial — unenriched by elements heavier than helium.

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.

Hundreds of genetic loci associated with age at menopause, combined with experimental evidence in mice, highlight mechanisms of reproductive ageing across the lifespan.

Large cosmological datasets have been probing the properties of our Universe and constraining the parameters of dark matter and dark energy with increasing precision. Deep learning techniques have shown potential to be smarter than — and greatly outperform — human-designed statistics.

Images and spectroscopy obtained by the JWST from two HSC-SSP quasars show massive, compact and disc-like galaxies, indicating that the relation between black holes and their host galaxies was in place less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

Genome-wide association meta-analyses of waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index in more than 224,000 individuals identify 49 loci, 33 of which are new and many showing significant sexual dimorphism with a stronger effect in women; pathway analyses implicate adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution.

A genome-wide association study and Metabochip meta-analysis of body mass index (BMI) detects 97 BMI-associated loci, of which 56 were novel, and many loci have effects on other metabolic phenotypes; pathway analyses implicate the central nervous system in obesity susceptibility and new pathways such as those related to synaptic function, energy metabolism, lipid biology and adipogenesis.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have become a key tool to discover genetic markers for complex traits; however, environmental factors that interact with genes are rarely considered. Here, the authors conduct a GWAS of obesity traits, and find that smoking may alter genetic susceptibilities.

Which came first, the stars and gas that make up a galaxy, or the giant black hole at its centre? Observations of a distant galaxy, caught as it forms, could help solve this chicken-and-egg problem.

The amplitude and sinusoid-like shape of the optical variability of the light curve of PG 1302-102 is best fitted by relativistic Doppler boosting of emission from a compact, steadily accreting, unequal-mass binary, which is consistent with archival ultraviolet data, and suggests the existence of a binary black hole in the relativistic regime.

The key ingredients for a massive cloud of gas to collapse and directly form a black hole without fragmenting and forming stars are a strong ionizing background emission and a closely timed burst of star formation in its vicinity.

A pipeline incorporating genetic fine mapping, epigenome editing, and genome editing enables functional analysis of disease-associated SNPs located in non-protein-coding regions of the genome.