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Small genes have been ignored for years in the genome of every organism due to experimental and computational limitations. Here, the authors describe a computational tool named Rp3 that integrates two high throughput approaches to identify microproteins encoded by these short genes.

Co-designed pathways to net-zero farm greenhouse gas emissions revealed that stacking several interventions to mitigate livestock methane, improve animal genetics and sequester carbon were able to negate enterprise emissions in a profitable way.

Preventing deforestation—a key goal of international climate policy—can incur an opportunity cost for local communities who depend on forest resources for their livelihoods. A study compares the cost of carbon conservation through forest protection with that of a scheme that directly alleviates the demand for forest conversion.

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.

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).

Nature benefits people in diverse ways, but insight on the relative value of conserving or restoring versus using intensively is limited. Synthesizing data from 62 sites worldwide, this study finds benefits from conservation and restoration often outweighing private ones and that these rise with the social cost of carbon.

This week's section focuses on cell biology tools — items viewed include imaging and microscopy systems, an intracellular injector, media and media additives, oligosaccharide selections and systems for plant cell biology.

Brendan Bulik-Sullivan, Benjamin Neale, Hilary Finucane, Alkes Price and colleagues introduce a new technique for estimating genetic correlation that requires only genome-wide association summary statistics and that is not biased by sample overlap. Using this method, they find genetic correlations between anorexia nervosa and schizophrenia, and between educational attainment and autism spectrum disorder.

Ways of deciphering and analysing genetic code are the focus in this issue — including clone-design software, a personal server for database searching, a system for site-directed mutagenesis and microsatellite analysis gels.

Producing beef sustainably at a global level is a challenge given the multiple trade-offs between the economic and environmental objectives involved. This study presents an approach that helps to identify such trade-offs at the scale needed for the beef industry to become more sustainable.

This compilation covers a variety of chemistry packages for process monitoring, molecular visualization and kinetic simulation, as well as mapping and data processing software for geological and environment study.

Hilary Finucane, Brendan Bulik-Sullivan, Benjamin Neale, Alkes Price and colleagues introduce a new method, called stratified LD score regression, for partitioning heritability by functional category using genome-wide association study summary statistics. They observe a substantial enrichment of heritability in conserved regions and illustrate how this approach can provide insights into the biological basis of disease and direction for functional follow-up.

Using survey and internet browsing data and expert ratings, Bhadani et al. find that incorporating partisan audience diversity into algorithmic rankings of news websites increases the trustworthiness of the sites they recommend and maintains relevance.

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.

Chromatography selections for this issue include a system designed to increase the productivity of automated microbore analysis, a column for capillary electrochromatography and chromatography data system software.

Product review puts image analysis on stage - there is an epifluorescence illuminator, an inverted fluorescence microscope, a high-performance digital camera and an environmental scanning electron microscope.

For labelling technology, here is the ᤘshort listᤙ of new products — a radiolabelled DNA purification kit, reagents for analysis of cytokine reagents, a DIG detection ELISA kit and a line of streptavidin-coated microplates.

The COVID-19 response has led to unparalleled changes in the functioning of human society, from travel restrictions to changes in consumption. Here the authors use high resolution satellite data to track the global reduction in marine traffic during the pandemic, and more recent hints of recovery to pre-lockdown levels.

The peptide platter serves up a variety of goodies including antimicrobial peptides, a deamidation detection kit, a molecular-sizing instrument and a new line of separation products for peptides, polypeptides and proteins.

This week focuses on laser optics. A whole spectrum of accoutrements including a HeNe laser, an optical design tool system, a particle sizer and personal densitometer.

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.

After decades of work, a pioneering malaria vaccine may soon reach the final phase of clinical trials. In the first of two features on efforts against malaria, Brendan Maher reports on a vaccine that is far from perfect - but which may provide new direction and save thousands of lives.

COVID-19 can be associated with neurological complications. Here the authors show that markers of brain injury, but not immune markers, are elevated in the blood of patients with COVID-19 both early and months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, particularly in those with brain dysfunction or neurological diagnoses.

An ongoing elephant poaching crisis is threatening not only elephant populations but also the local economies that rely on nature-based tourism. Here, Naidoo and colleagues use an economic model to estimate the financial contribution of elephants to tourism and the possible consequences of their loss.

Genome-wide ancient DNA data from individuals from the Middle Bronze Age to Iron Age documents large-scale movement of people from the European continent between 1300 and 800 bc that was probably responsible for spreading early Celtic languages to Britain.

Stratified medicine promises to tailor treatment for individual patients, however it remains a major challenge to leverage genetic risk data to aid patient stratification. Here the authors introduce an approach to stratify individuals based on the aggregated impact of their genetic risk factor profiles on tissue-specific gene expression levels, and highlight its ability to identify biologically meaningful and clinically actionable patient subgroups, supporting the notion of different patient ‘biotypes’ characterized by partially distinct disease mechanisms.

New items on the market this issue include an uninterruptible power supply, a biomedical interlaboratory service, an electrochemistry labstation, scientific cameras, capillary electrophoresis accessories and solvent handling equipment.

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

Global environmental change complicates the goal of securing adequate nutrition for a growing world population. This study assesses the per capita availability of food nutrients for various scenarios to the year 2050. Results suggest that economic growth will expand food and macronutrient access more than climate change will suppress it, but that micronutrient inadequacies will plague some regions.

Sera from vaccinated individuals and some monoclonal antibodies show a modest reduction in neutralizing activity against the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2; but the E484K substitution leads to a considerable loss of neutralizing activity.

This week's issue offers items for cracking the genetic code, such as labelling reagents, transgenic laboratory products, an on-line molecular biology computing resource, a mammalian vector system, and more.

The CNV analysis group of the Psychiatric Genomic Consortium analyzes a large schizophrenia cohort to examine genomic copy number variants (CNVs) and disease risk. They find an enrichment of CNV burden in cases versus controls and identify 8 genome-wide significant loci as well as novel suggestive loci conferring either risk or protection to schizophrenia.

When scientists opened up the human genome, they expected to find the genetic components of common traits and diseases. But they were nowhere to be seen. Brendan Maher shines a light on six places where the missing loot could be stashed away.

Chronic infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to the emergence of viral variants that show reduced susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies in an immunosuppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma.

John Perry and colleagues report the results of a large genome-wide association study meta-analysis to identify variants influencing age at natural menopause. They identify 54 independent signals and find enrichment near genes involved in delayed puberty and DNA damage response.

Chromosomal rearrangements are key events in the pathogenesis of a range of disorders. Here the authors utilize a zinc finger nuclease translocation reporter to identify PARP3 as a regulator of these events at sites enriched for G quadruplex DNA.

The Seshat database has made it possible to reveal large-scale patterns in human cultural evolution. Here, Shin et al. investigate transitions in social complexity and find alternating thresholds of polity size and information processing required for further sociopolitical development.

Benjamin Neale and colleagues report the LD Score regression method, used to distinguish the relative contributions of confounding bias and polygenicity to inflated test statistics in GWAS. They apply their method to summary statistics from GWAS for over 30 phenotypes, confirm that polygenicity accounts for the majority of inflation in test statistics and demonstrate use of this method as a correction factor.

China’s Grain for Green Program is the world’s largest reforestation program, encompassing tens of millions of hectares since 1999. Here, Hua et al. show that the majority of areas have been reforested with tree monocultures, but that planting mixed forests could increase animal biodiversity without imposing additional economic costs.

SCENT is a nonparametric method that models association between chromatin accessibility and gene expression in single-cell multimodal datasets, enabling construction of cell-type-specific enhancer–gene maps to aid mapping of candidate causal variants and genes for common diseases.

In this study, Aggarwal and colleagues perform prospective sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 isolates derived from asymptomatic student screening and symptomatic testing of students and staff at the University of Cambridge. They identify important factors that contributed to within university transmission and onward spread into the wider community.

The Omicron variant evades vaccine-induced neutralization but also fails to form syncytia, shows reduced replication in human lung cells and preferentially uses a TMPRSS2-independent cell entry pathway, which may contribute to enhanced replication in cells of the upper airway. Altered fusion and cell entry characteristics are linked to distinct regions of the Omicron spike protein.

Despite the identification of genetic risk loci for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD), the genetic architecture and prediction remains unclear. Here, the authors use genetic risk scores for prediction of LOAD across three datasets and show evidence suggesting oligogenic variant architecture for this disease.

Post-international travel quarantine has been widely implemented to mitigate SARS-CoV-2 transmission, but the impacts of such policies are unclear. Here, the authors used linked genomic and contact tracing data to assess the impacts of a 14-day quarantine on return to England in summer 2020.

Sexual dimorphism in genetic vulnerability to schizophrenia, systemic lupus erythematosus and Sjögren’s syndrome is linked to differential protein abundance from alleles of complement component 4.

This product update shows its new style but maintains its old function of providing information on products, such as a video tape analysis system, new autofluorescent proteins, and a microplate and reagent handling system.

Genetic and testing data from England show that the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern B.1.1.7 has a transmission advantage over other lineages.