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Experiments at the Joint European Torus tokamak show improved thermal ion confinement in the presence of highly energetic ions and Alfvénic instabilities in the plasma.

Chiuppesi et al. demonstrate the use of a synthetic poxvirus-based platform to rapidly generate multi-antigenic vaccine candidates expressing spike and nucleocapsid antigens of SARS-CoV-2. Immunization of mice stimulates potent antigen-specific humoral and cellular immune responses, including neutralizing antibodies.

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

In this Review, the authors explore potential applications of big data in IBD research, including predictive models of disease course and response to therapy, characterization of disease heterogeneity, drug safety and development, precision medicine and cost-effectiveness of care.

A substantial percentage of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) exhibit biologic treatment failure or loss of response over time. This article explores the effectiveness and safety of monoclonal antibodies targeting the IL-23 pathway in treating IBD; continued research is needed to address lingering questions regarding long-term safety and efficacy.

Using ions of one polarity to form functional layers on surfaces is usually challenging because of counter ions which are inevitably present in the condensed phase. Here the authors demonstrate accumulation of mass-selected anions and neutral molecules from the gas phase to form a self-organizing liquid-like layer on a surface.

Infants born to obese mothers have altered microbiome and increased risk of obesity and NAFLD. Here the authors establish causality by showing that maternal obesity-shaped infant gut microbiome induces macrophage dysfunction, inflammation, and diet-induced metabolic disease in germ-free mice.

MetaSTAAR enables functionally informed rare variant association analysis in biobank-scale cohorts using an efficient, sparse matrix approach for summary statistic storage.

Kyle Gaulton, Mark McCarthy, Andrew Morris and colleagues report fine mapping and genomic annotation of 39 established type 2 diabetes susceptibility loci. They find that the set of potential causal variants is enriched for overlap with FOXA2 binding sites in human islet and liver cells, and they show that a likely causal variant near MTNR1B increases FOXA2-bound enhancer activity, providing a molecular mechanism to explain the effect of this locus on disease risk.

Breen et al. map RNA editing profiles in cortical samples from individuals with schizophrenia and controls, and find links between altered RNA editing in glutamatergic and postsynaptic density genes and schizophrenia genetic risk architecture.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach to the development of agricultural systems intended to help support food security under climate change. This Perspective outlines a set of CSA actions needed from public, private and civil society stakeholders: building evidence; increasing local institutional effectiveness; fostering coherence between climate and agricultural policies; and linking climate and agricultural financing.

As more spaceflight missions plan to take humans back to the moon — and beyond — a key goal is to understand how spaceflight affects the immune system. In this Review, researchers from academia and international space agencies discuss the emergence of the field of ‘astroimmunology’. They outline the main immunological challenges we must overcome to facilitate safe space exploration by humans.

The asteroid Ryugu experienced aqueous alteration under changing temperature and redox conditions, according to an isotopic analysis of secondary calcite and dolomite grains in samples from Ryugu obtained by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft.

Bennu’s surface presents evidence of a variety of particle sizes, from fine regolith to metre-sized boulders. Its moderate thermal inertia suggests that the boulders are very porous or blanketed by thin dust. Bennu’s boulders exhibit high albedo variations, indicating different origins and/or ages.

Signatures of phyllosilicate-like hydrated minerals are widespread on Bennu’s surface, indicating significant aqueous alteration. The lack of spatial variations in the spectra down to the scale of ~100 m indicates both a relatively uniform particle size distribution and a lack of compositional segregation, possibly due to surficial redistribution processes.

Near-Earth rubble-pile asteroid Bennu has an unexpectedly old surface, with numerous candidate impact craters and morphologically diverse boulders, according to early observations by the OSIRIS-REx mission.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an immune-mediated disease with substantial burden worldwide. In this Consensus Statement, a global multidisciplinary group of experts identify key priorities and recommendations to raise awareness and advance IBD care and research.

STAAR is a powerful rare variant association test that incorporates variant functional categories and complementary functional annotations using a dynamic weighting scheme based on annotation principal components. STAAR accounts for population structure and relatedness and is scalable for analyzing large whole-genome sequencing studies.

Metabolomics is improved by using a reference library of both known and unknown molecules.

miR-34 is known to regulate age-related gene expression in the Drosophila brain, and miR-34 overexpression can attenuate neurodegeneration induced by polyQ-expanded proteins. Here, Kennerdell and colleagues show that miR-34 confers longevity and neuroprotection via an epigenetic regulator Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 and molecular chaperone expression.

Early detection of signs of heart failure can allow fast therapeutic intervention, potentially improving a patient's prognosis and avoiding unnecessary hospitalizations. Implantable monitoring devices have been suggested as useful tools in detecting early changes in cardiac parameters, but clinical trials aimed at studying their efficacy and safety have unique problems. In this Review, Abraham et al. identify the major hurdles in trials of implantable monitoring devices, and discuss the approaches used to overcome the challenges arising during trial design.

Using data gathered from the microphones of the Perseverance rover, the first characterization of the acoustic environment on Mars is presented, showing two distinct values for the speed of sound in CO₂-dominated atmosphere.

de Vries, Conomos, Singh and Nicholson et al. identify two additional loci associated with coronary artery calcification (ARSE and MMP16) via a genome-wide association study in 22,400 participants from multiple ancestral groups and prove that ARSE is a mediator of vascular smooth muscle cell calcification and phenotype switching.

The cellular heterogeneity in brain obscures the identification of robust cellular regulatory networks. Here the authors integrate genome-wide chromosome conformation data from sorted neurons and glia, with transcriptomic and enhancer profiles, to characterize cell-type-specific gene regulatory landscapes in the human brain, and provide insights into cell-type-specific gene regulatory networks in brain disorders.

An analysis of 16 health-related quantitative traits in approximately 350,000 individuals reveals statistically significant associations between genome-wide homozygosity and four complex traits (height, lung function, cognitive ability and educational attainment); in each case increased homozygosity associates with a decreased trait value, but no evidence was seen of an influence on blood pressure, cholesterol, or ten other cardio-metabolic traits.

The SARS-CoV-2 Assessment of Viral Evolution (SAVE) programme provides a real-time risk assessment of SARS-CoV-2 variants with the potential to affect transmission, virulence and resistance to infection- and vaccine-induced immunity.

The Periodic Table of Food Initiative addresses food biomolecular composition information gaps through a standardized, accessible and enabling platform based on analytical tools, data and capacity building. Data from 1,650 foods serve as starting point for demonstrating the capacity of this initiative to contribute to nutrition, health and food systems transformations.

The management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) continues to evolve. This Review is a practical guide on the therapeutic toolkit for IBD, with a focus on current and emerging IBD medications, how they relate to management strategies beyond drugs and the importance of the clinician–patient relationship.

Neurons form synapses onto glioma cells, and depolarization of glioma membranes promotes glioma growth in vivo, whereas blocking electrochemical signalling blocks tumour growth.

Genomic and epidemiologic analyses of monkeypox cases stemming from a recent outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo suggest that a new clade I lineage is circulating and that its spread may be linked to sexual transmission.