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A human embryo shortly after fertilization, seen in a light micrograph.Credit: K. H. Kjeldsen/SPL
WHO advised to lead genome-editing policy
The World Health Organization (WHO) should assume a leading, global role in efforts to regulate genome editing, according to an advisory group. The committee was formed after biophysicist He Jiankui shocked the world in 2018 by announcing that he had used the CRISPR genome-editing technique to alter embryos that were implanted and led to the birth of two children. The advisers also say that genome editing should not yet be used to make modifications that can be passed on to later generations.
Why the pandemic reduced asthma attacks
The number of asthma attacks across the United States has dropped dramatically during the pandemic, leading doctors to rethink some of their long-held assumptions about the chronic condition. The declining trend suggests that triggers such as routine cold and flu viruses, which almost disappeared during the pandemic, could play a larger role in asthma attacks than previously thought.
Research highlights: 1-minute reads
An umbrella-shaped structure of unknown function crowns a recently described species of fairy lantern.Credit: Siti Munirah Mat Yunoh et al./PhytoKeys (CC BY 4.0)
A swarm of black holes could explain Galactic fluffiness
Diffuse Milky Way formation might have been depleted by star-hurling black holes.
Cruise ships could sail now-icy Arctic seas by century’s end
Without carbon cuts, many cargo ships could ply the Northwest Passage, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, in 2040.
Telecoms satellites spy on Earth’s magnetic field
Clues to the forces generated by the planet’s core emerge from observations intended for satellite navigation.
A graphene cloak keeps artworks’ colours ageless
A layer of carbon atoms preserves a painting’s vibrant hues — and can be applied and removed without damage.
Genomics charts a deadly bug’s leap from pigs to humans
Samples collected over several decades help scientists to trace the path taken by Streptococcus suis.
Get more of Nature’s research highlights: short picks from the scientific literature.
Award winner
Step inside a trio of big-physics experiments
For more than half a century, Japan has been at the forefront of big physics, asking fundamental questions about the laws that govern the workings of the universe. Over three episodes, take a rare look inside three of its flagship experiments: Super Kamiokande, the world’s largest neutrino detector; KAGRA, the world’s most advanced gravitational-wave detector; and Belle II, the experiment that could revolutionize particle physics.
Nature | 3 ten-minute videos (from 2020)
This Super Kamiokande video just won the Association of British Science Writers’s top video award.
Where I work
Germán Orizaola Pereda is an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Oviedo in Mieres, Spain.Credit: Germán Orizaola
Evolutionary ecologist Germán Orizaola Pereda studies how amphibians in Chernobyl have changed, physically and genetically, 35 years after the nuclear accident. “Chernobyl is a phenomenal place to study rapid evolution,” says Orizaola Pereda. “Frogs in the exclusion zone are darker than those outside it, thanks to higher levels of melanin, which might be an adaptation that protects them from ionizing radiation.” (Nature | 3 min read)
