It has long been conventional wisdom that women must not put on too much weight in pregnancy. Today, however, undernutrition and underweight during pregnancy in particular are posing a problem, because nutritional status in the womb could potentially have a major impact on the child’s future risk of developing lifestyle diseases. There are even reports that lack of protein at the fetal stage could place the child at risk of impaired blood pressure regulation later in life. Scientists believe that this is because the mother’s diet during pregnancy affects epigenetics, which controls gene function. It has also become apparent that the mother’s nutritional status can even affect her grandchildren.

Scientists long believed that epigenetic modifications were not inherited by the next generation, but rather reset when a new individual was born, because modifications of this kind employ tools such as methylation to regulate gene function without affecting the DNA base sequence. However, research has shown methylation beginning again in the offspring’s somatic cells after fertilization. More specifically, it would appear that, rather than DNA methylation itself being inherited directly, a mechanism for reactivating methylation was at work. We therefore cannot deny the possibility that characteristics acquired by the parent might be passed on to the next generation.

Research into aging is progressing, amid a focus on anti-aging. While genetic factors are known to be involved in aging, acquired factors such as environment and lifestyle also have a major influence, with some scientists attributing more than half of aging to them. The main acquired factor is the epigenome, which controls gene function through DNA methylation, among others. As epigenetic alterations play a key role in shedding light on the mechanisms of aging, efforts to investigate the inhibition of aging and treatments that regard aging as a disease look set to advance worldwide.

Epigenetics is a mechanism that changes the way genes are used, without changing the DNA sequence itself. The mechanism determines when and where genes are turned on or off by using DNA methylation to switch genes off, and also by finely controlling the switch by regulating the action of histones, the proteins around which DNA is wrapped. The crux of the matter is that even where genetic information is the same, gene function is influenced by environmental factors and life experiences. As such, epigenetics has become a major focus of research in many fields, including cancer, metabolic diseases, and other lifestyle diseases.

What kinds of soil exist in which locations? A website called the Japan Soil Inventory provides answers to questions just like these. It is a digitized version of the Soil Information Web Viewer developed by the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, which covers the whole of Japan, and it provides users with an at-a-glance understanding of the distribution of soil across the country, which has 381 different types of soil when soil on non-agricultural land is also included. As soil has a major influence on agricultural crop production, understanding which soils are suitable for cultivation is absolutely crucial. Ensuring the stable availability of soil resources is an issue that should also be top of mind from the perspective of a nation’s food security.

Rice is a wetland plant. Growing rice in paddy fields can suppress growth of upland weeds and facilitates soil managements. Paddy field soil generally shows higher fertility than upland field soil, supporting stable rice yields under low fertilization conditions. A combination of several factors resulted in the development of rice cultivation in paddy fields in Japan. The high fertility of paddy fields is supported by various functions of microorganisms in the soil. They decompose organic matter in the soil and produce inorganic nutrients requisite for growth of rice plants. On the other hand, emission of methane, one of the decomposition products of organic matter, has become an environmental problem. Mitigation of methane emission is a pressing issue since the gas has a stronger greenhouse effect than CO₂.

Soils around the world each have their individual characteristics, which are influenced by such environmental factors as climate, topography, parent material, biology and time. The black soil mainly found extensively across the Eurasian Steppe and other regions with a semiarid steppe climate is soft, rich in both organic matter and mineral nutrients, and highly productive. The lack of rain in deserts means that nutrients do not get washed away, so the soil is rich in minerals. However, some land has been degraded by human activity; for example, irrigation has caused salinization in Kazakhstan, while overcultivation in Niger has been responsible for wind erosion. Scientists are engaged in ongoing efforts to understand the diversity of soils and explore measures that also take into account sociocultural characteristics.

Soil is a complex structure composed not only of minerals released by the weathering of rocks on Earth’s surface, but also of water, air, organic and inorganic matter, and microorganisms. Formed over long periods of time under the influence of climate, topography, and living organisms, among others, soil is a living system that governs ecosystems, supports biological activity, and plays an essential role in our lives as a place where food is produced. However, it has deteriorated significantly as human activity has intensified, and is also affected by climate change. People are now becoming aware of a crucial question: how can we maintain Earth’s soil?

The mechanisms by which cancer cells transfer mitochondria into T cells and replace the T cells’ healthy mitochondria are being elucidated. A subsequent study is now starting to reveal the specific mechanisms involved. At the same time, fresh puzzles have come to light. For example, if mitochondrial DNA mutates, energy production within cells naturally diminishes, slowing the growth of the cancer cells and thus disadvantaging them. As a number of other questions have yet to be explained, research into mitochondria derived from cancer cells continues to warrant close attention.

The decline in mitochondrial function resulting from aging is known to cause a range of diseases, including stroke, neurodegenerative disorders, cardiomyopathy, and cancer. This relationship between mitochondria and aging is a key topic in research focused on healthy life expectancy. One of the many and varied impacts of aging is its connection to autophagy, the mechanism whereby old organelles and proteins are broken down. A decline in autophagy leads to the accumulation of aged mitochondria, resulting in cellular damage. Attention is focusing on the existence of substances that delay this functional decline.