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Pacific salmon transport of nutrients and contaminants to freshwaters increased by 30% and 20%, respectively, between 1976 and 2015, an increase dominated by pink salmon, which had the highest nutrient-to-contaminant ratios.

During chemotherapy Endonuclease G triggers chromosomal breakage and leukemogenic rearrangements in hematopoietic cells. Here the authors identify a peptide derived from Ku80 antagonizing this mutagenic effect through specific Endonuclease G inhibition.

Despite high levels of trade, the basic characteristics of the aquatic food trade are largely unknown. Here, the authors present a global seafood trade database showing the increasing globalization of farmed and wild aquatic foods.

Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) analysis in patients with inflammatory bowel disease identify potential target genes for IBD GWAS loci not readily detected in individuals without disease highlighting the importance disease-focused studies.

Data on aquatic food loss and waste are limited outside small-scale fisheries, and major gaps exist for aquaculture species that make up half of global production. This study estimates loss and waste in the US aquatic food supply chain from 2014 to 2018, including the top ten species groups that together represent 89% of the country’s aquatic food supply.

Scabies is a parasitic skin disease with limited treatment options and major global impact. Here, the authors describe structures of a pH sensitive ion channel from the scabies mite, identify residues likely involved in pH sensing, and show pH-dependent ivermectin action and gating impact.

A novel variant annotation metric that quantifies the level of expression of genetic variants across tissues is validated in the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) and is shown to improve rare variant interpretation.

Avian influenza jumped from wild birds into dairy cattle. Here, the authors report that two mutations in the viral polymerase helped the virus to quickly adapt to cattle. Mutations increased the polymerase activity and made the virus better at replicating in human cells.

Here, the authors find that relative abundances of stress-sensitive gastrointestinal microbes at age 2 years predicts internalizing symptoms in middle childhood through altered emotion-related brain network connectivity.

Evolutionarily conserved gene modules mediate neurodegenerative dementia in a variety of mouse models and in postmortem brain tissue from patients.

Global demand for “blue food” is growing. In this quantitative synthesis, the authors analyse global seafood demand and project trends to 2050, finding considerable regional variation in the relationship between wealth and consumption.

A range of environmental stressors are estimated for farmed and wild capture blue foods, including bivalves, seaweed, crustaceans and finfish, with the potential to inform more sustainable diets.

Targeting neurons that regulate energy balance may offer new approaches for obesity treatment. Here, authors show that chemogenetic and pharmacological manipulation of GABAergic neurons in the DRN/vlPAG increases adaptive thermogenesis and reduces weight gain in mice fed a highfat diet.

Here, the authors provide molecular insight into the remarkable ability of Tardigrades to withstand high levels of radiation by demonstrating that their Dsup protein interacts with multiple surfaces of the nucleosome to protect the genome from oxidative DNA damage.

A previously uncharacterized microbial enzyme is responsible for the production of molecular hydrogen in the gut, which drives the growth of other bacteria and has implications for human health.

Atherosclerosis is the major driver of mortality worldwide and recent studies provide first insights at single cell resolution. Here, the authors show that integrating all available studies enables coherent automatic cell type annotation, optimal experimental design and bulk deconvolution.

The Tasman Sea experienced an unprecedented marine heatwave in 2015/16, with important ecological impacts. Oliveret al. link this event to warm, southwards flowing waters from East Australia and find that climate change has made these events almost seven times more likely.

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).

Mirusviruses were detected in metagenomic datasets, but little is known about how they infect their hosts. Here, the authors characterize mirusviruses in the marine protist Aurantiochytrium, detecting virions, viral genes and proteins, and establishing this as a valuable model system.

In this work, fragments identified by 19F-NMR are optimized into submicromolar binders of the MITF transcription factor. These results support direct targeting of bHLH-LZ DNA binding domains and provide a foundation for the development of new melanoma therapies.

Research on sustainable diets has primarily focused on human and planetary health, neglecting workers in food value chains. This study quantifies the risk of forced labour embedded in five different diets in the USA, underscoring the need to integrate such risk in sustainable diet transition efforts.

A population of macrophages with exclusive molecular and functional signatures in the muscle spindles express machinery for synthesizing and releasing glutamate, and a cellular component, the muscle spindle macrophages, directly regulates neural activity and muscle contraction.

Korobkina et al. show that ACLY in brown fat prevents metabolic overload in the tricarboxylic acid cycle, thus ensuring adequate thermogenesis by avoiding cellular stress.

Dietary cysteine enhances intestinal stem cell-mediated intestinal repair following injury by promoting CD8 T cell-regenerative immune responses.

A CRISPR-based screening platform was used to identify previously uncharacterized genes that regulate the regulatory T cell-specific master transcription factor Foxp3, indicating that this screening method may be broadly applicable for the discovery of other genes involved in autoimmunity and immune responses to cancer.

Pulmonary large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma is an aggressive subtype of lung cancer. Here, the authors identify distinct subtypes based on genomic alterations and transcriptomic alterations.

Cui and colleagues identify the chromatin organizer protein SATB1 as a critical regulator of quiescence in stem-like progenitor CD8⁺ T cells that arise during chronic viral infection and cancer.

Antibodies directed against DNA in systemic lupus erythematosus are functionally diverse. This study demonstrates that DNAse1L3 is the primary target of a subset of autoantibodies previously considered specific for double-stranded DNA.

Resistance-nodulation-cell division (RND)-type tripartite efflux pumps confer multidrug resistance to Gram-negative bacteria. Here, structural and functional analyses of AdeB from Acinetobacter baumannii and AcrB from Escherichia coli provide insight into their different drug-binding and conformational drug transport states.

Data on the nutrient content of almost 3,000 aquatic animal-source foods is combined with a food-systems model to show that an increase in aquatic-food production could reduce the inadequate intake of most nutrients.

Subpopulations of cytokine-producing and myofibroblastic hepatic stellate cells, identified by single-cell RNA sequencing, protect against or promote the development of hepatocellular carcinoma via high expression of hepatocyte growth factor or type I collagen, respectively..

Here the authors reveal that a neomorphic mutation in chromatin protein SMCHD1 enhances SMCHD1-mediated gene silencing, including at the FSHD disease-relevant locus, while depleting SMCHD1-mediated chromatin interactions, suggesting these SMCHD1 functions are unlinked.

How accurate are social scientists in predicting societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? Grossmann et al. report the findings of two forecasting tournaments. Social scientists’ forecasts were on average no more accurate than those of simple statistical models.

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.

Food biodiversity is likely to benefit both human health and agrifood systems. To assess food biodiversity, this epidemiological study proposes the use of dietary species richness, which is highly heterogeneous—both between and within countries—and is associated with lower rates of mortality in Europe and similar levels of micronutrient adequacy in low- and middle-income countries, as opposed to other classical indices.

RNA Polymerase III (Pol III) transcribes non-coding RNA, including tRNAs. Applying different RNA-Seq techniques, Dremel et al. provide the Pol III transcriptional landscape of Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) infected cells. Infection leads to an increase in tRNA expression from host euchromatin and Pol II re-localization to tRNA loci. They also find that Pol III – associated factors bind to the viral genome.

Single-cell whole-genome sequencing shows that 'foreground' cell-to-cell structural variation and alterations in copy number are associated with genomic diversity and evolution in triple-negative breast and high-grade serous ovarian cancers.

Using CRISPR-guided editing, Liesenfelder et al. modify DNA methylation at epigenetic clock sites, which evokes genome-wide age-associated epigenetic modifications. Their findings suggest age-associated DNA methylation changes can be coherently modified within an epigenetic network.

Cells survive starvation by activating protective pathways. Here, the authors describe that kinase EFK-1/eEF2K defends against oxidative damage in long term starvation in C. elegans independently from its kinase activity and translation regulation.

Pappalardi and colleagues identify a potent noncovalent DNMT1-selective inhibitor with improved tolerability and efficacy in preclinical AML models compared with clinically validated covalent pan-DNMT inhibitors.

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.

The long noncoding RNA AMANZI downregulates IL-1β expression and trained immunity by inducing IL-37 transcription via long-range chromatin contacts. The common variant rs16944 present in AMANZI modulates proinflammation or immunosuppression risk.

Stress-associated catecholamines promote CD8⁺ T cell exhaustion through the β₁-adrenergic receptor, and blocking β-adrenergic signalling may help restore anti-tumour functions.

Some bacterial lineages appear to be pre-disposed to evolving antibiotic resistance. Here, the authors show that differential expression of an efflux pump causes widespread variation in evolvability across Staphylococcus aureus isolates, and chemical inhibition of the pump prevents resistance evolution.

Liver dysfunctions are understudied in myotonic dystrophy (DM1) but impact metabolic health, drug sensitivity and treatment paradigms for the affected population. Here, Dewald et al. generated liver-specific DM1 mice to demonstrate that CUG-repeat RNA toxicity predisposes the liver to MAFLD and drug metabolism defects.

The gut-derived molecule 4-ethylphenol influences complex behaviours in mice through effects on oligodendrocyte function and myelin patterning in the brain.