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Traders of financial options bet that firms’ stock prices will be affected by forecasts of seasonal climate produced by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Firms are exposed throughout the economy, and traders spend more to hedge the news from more skillful forecasts

This paper explores how feedbacks involving social and material market infrastructure can both constrain and enable transformations towards more equitable, healthier food systems. It presents a comprehensive approach to guiding food system change, with a critical role for both individual and collective action across sectors.

The results obtained by seventy different teams analysing the same functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset show substantial variation, highlighting the influence of analytical choices and the importance of sharing workflows publicly and performing multiple analyses.

Analysing camera-trap data of 163 mammal species before and after the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, the authors show that responses to human activity are dependent on the degree to which the landscape is modified by humans, with carnivores being especially sensitive.

Using multi-ancestry genome-wide association study and fine-mapping, 298 loci and 36 credible genes are identified in the aetiology of bipolar disorder.

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).

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.

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.

Feedback loops in consumer behaviour can accelerate desirable phenomena and be used to create effective policy. Kaufmann et al. identify a critical green feedback loop by using Massachusetts data to show bidirectional causality among solar photovoltaic cost, adoption and electric vehicle sales.

Impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on maternal and child nutrition outcomes, and productivity losses due to childhood stunting and mortality, in 118 low- and middle-income countries are projected under optimistic, moderate and pessimistic scenarios. Six nutrition interventions to mitigate excess stunting and child mortality are financially costed.

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.

Retrosynthetic pathway design using promiscuous enzymes can provide a solution to the biosynthetic production of natural products. Here, the authors design a pathway for the production of cis-α-irone with a promiscuous methyltransferase using structure-guided enzyme engineering strategies.

Genome-wide association analyses of 41,917 bipolar disorder cases and 371,549 controls of European ancestry provide new insights into the etiology of this disorder and identify novel therapeutic leads and potential opportunities for drug repurposing.

A genome-wide association study of critically ill patients with COVID-19 identifies genetic signals that relate to important host antiviral defence mechanisms and mediators of inflammatory organ damage that may be targeted by repurposing drug treatments.

Irrigation is the most important use of water. A newly developed irrigation management scheme leads to a significant reduction in water use and increase in economic gains while maintaining crop yields, presenting opportunities for real-world impacts under current and future climate conditions.

T cell responses can be generated to either pathogen infection or from priming with a vaccine. Here the authors compare T cell generation, phenotype and single cell transcriptome of participants vaccinated with a mpox vaccine or infected with the virus showing that the virus induced T cells showed more effective function and phenotype.

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

A study of the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in England between September 2020 and June 2021 finds that interventions capable of containing previous variants were insufficient to stop the more transmissible Alpha and Delta variants.

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.

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.

Rocklage et al. find a positivity problem: 80% or more of online ratings are positive and are unreliable predictors of success. As an alternative, mass-scale emotion predicts behaviour towards and success of movies, books, commercials and restaurants.

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.

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.

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.

A sequencing chemistry that separates nucleotide identification from nucleotide incorporation achieves high accuracy.

The authors defined a roadmap for investigating the genetic covariance between structural or functional brain phenotypes and risk for psychiatric disorders. Their proof-of-concept study using the largest available common variant data sets for schizophrenia and volumes of several (mainly subcortical) brain structures did not find evidence of genetic overlap.

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.

There is currently no disease-modifying treatment for Parkinson’s disease, a common neurodegenerative disorder. Here, the authors use genetic variation associated with gene and protein expression to find putative drug targets for Parkinson’s disease using Mendelian randomization of the druggable genome.

Common polygenic variation at chromosome 16p and rare recurrent deletions of 16p11.2 influencing autism risk are associated with reduced expression of genes throughout the 16p region, suggesting functional convergence of rare and common variant effects.

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.