The central sinus of mouse bone marrow, stained with antibodies for CD105 (cyan; endothelial and hematopoietic cells), Sca1 (magenta; hematopoietic cells, arteries and arterioles) and SM22 (white; smooth muscle cells). Coutu et al. (p 1202) present a detailed atlas of cell-type distribution and marker expression patterns in the bone marrow of mice. Credit: Konstantinos D. Kokkaliaris, Daniel L. Coutu and Leo Kunz

Increasingly powerful genetic technologies are moving us closer to the ability to read and manipulate human genomes not only in somatic cells, but also in germ cells and zygotes. In this issue, the 'Humans 2.0' focus looks at how these technologies are impacting embryo research and how this may ultimately affect our lives and offspring. Cover image: Erin Dewalt ©A-Digit/DigitalVision Vectors and Jakarin2521/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Network of promoter–promoter and promoter–enhancer connectivity in the genome of a human cell line. The colors of the connections represent the different chromosomes; white dots correspond to protein-coding genes, green dots to lncRNAs and red dots to small RNAs. In this issue, Li et al. (p. 940) describe a method for the comprehensive mapping of the entire repertoire of chromatin-interacting RNAs and their respective binding sites and use it to infer regions of the genome that interact with each other. Credit: Bing Zhou.

Antisense oligonucleotides are commonly generated as mixtures of a vast number of stereoisomers. A scalable chemical method (p 845) now provides control over phosphorothioate stereochemistry, enabling production of antisense oligonucleotides with high stereopurity. Iwamoto et al. show that the properties of stereoisomers vary substantially depending on their stereochemistry, with some mediating better target RNA cleavage than a mixture of stereorandom isomers. Image credit: Eric D. Smith

A subset of statistically significant correlations are extruded in three-dimensional space. Price et al. (p 747) describe the integration of whole genome sequences; clinical tests, metabolomes, proteomes, and microbiomes at three time points; and regular quantified self-measurements for 108 individuals over 9 months. They obtain thousands of cross-sectional interomic correlations, each represented by a line in the circular figure, to better understand health and disease. Image credit: Allison Kudla, John C. Earls (Institute for Systems Biology)

Artist's impression of a gasoline pump that delivers an algallipid-based biofuel, inspired by the study from Ajjawi et al. (p 647), who report a method to double lipid production in the oleaginous microalga Nannochloropsis gaditana without reducing growth. Image credit: Synthetic Genomics

A cross-section of a cell aggregate with several human inner ear organoids, highlighting sensory hair cells (red and yellow), supporting cells (green), the actin-rich luminal surface (purple), and nuclei of all cells (cyan). Koehler et al. (p 583) describe the generation of human inner ear organoids from pluripotent stem cells. Image credit: Emma Longworth-Mills and Karl R. Koehler

Artist's impression of a base editor. K. Kim et al. (p 435) show that base-editing can efficiently create genetically modified mice, and Shimatani et al. (p 441) and Zong et al. (p 438) base-edit the genomes of crop plants. D. Kim et al. (p 475) present a genome-wide analysis of the specificity of a base editor. Image credit: Younghee Lee, CUBE3D graphic

An oilseed rape field in Denmark. Nour-Eldin et al. (p. 377) show that engineering of transporter genes can translate from the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana to two Brassica oilseed crops to reduce the production of glucosinolates in seeds. Glucosinolate transporter genes were mutated in the polyploid crops Brassica rapa and Brassica juncea. Stable reduction of glucosinolates in seeds was observed in multiple field trials. Image credit: Torben åndahl / Bayer ImageBank (Media number: 00101328)

"Targeting RNA", inspired by the focus on RNA-based therapies. Image credit: Suzanne Harris

Yarrowia lipolytica colonies growing on YPD agar at 28 °C. Qiao et al. (p 173) improve the productivity and yield of carbohydrate-to-lipid conversion in this industrial yeast by redox engineering. Image credit: Hortensia Rico, Department of Microbiology, University of Valencia, Spain.

A colored scanning electron micrograph of human intestinal bacteria that colonize the small-intestine epithelia. Magnúsdóttir et al. (p 81) present a set of 773 semi-automatically generated microbial metabolic models that are fully compatible with the human genome-scale metabolic reconstruction Recon 2. These models could be used to probe the functions of the human gut microbiota. Magnification is ×2,400 when the shortest axis is printed at 25 mm. Image credit: Dennis Kunkel Microscopy/Science Photo Library (C032/1846)