McGettrick et al. provide a succinct yet broad overview of the immunometabolite itaconate as an immunomodulatory molecule.

Nature Metabolism, Published online: 02 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s42255-025-01407-6The authors use Perturb-seq analysis in human pancreatic islet beta cells, as well as in vivo and in vitro analyses, to identify potential therapeutic targets for type 2 diabetes, including ZZEF1, which regulates insulin synthesis and cellular stress in islet β cells.

Despite the high utility and widespread use of Cre driver lines, lack of Cre specificity, Cre-induced toxicity or poor experimental design can affect experimental results and conclusions. Such pitfalls must be considered before embarking on any Cre-based studies in metabolic research.

The authors provide an update on the most useful biomarkers in urine and blood for assessing food intake, and delineate strategies that may accelerate the application of biomarkers of food intake for improving human nutritional research.

This Review provides an overview of the interplay between host diet and the gut microbiota, and how this affects brain function.

This Consensus Statement provides a nomenclature framework and experimental recommendations for studying mitochondrial transfer and transplantation.

This Consensus Statement provides a nomenclature framework and experimental recommendations for studying mitochondrial transfer and transplantation.

Time-restricted eating has become a popular diet for weight management and has spurred tremendous interest in the scientific community. The translation of results from TRE trials heavily depends on trial design. In this Comment, we provide general guidelines on optimizing the design and performance of time-restricted eating trials in human participants.

In this Perspective, Mattson discusses that the beneficial effects of intermittent fasting (IF) are mediated by cyclic metabolic switching between ketogenic (fasting) and non-ketogenic (fed) states and that this explains the added health benefits of IF over caloric restriction and ketogenic diets.

In this Review, the authors summarize epidemiological trends of type 2 diabetes in China, discuss unique risk factors contributing to diabetes risk in the Chinese population and highlight how recent advances from multi-omics studies can affect treatment of diabetes in China.

The field of personalized nutrition hypothesizes that ‘big data’ — biological, behavioural, social and environmental — can be leveraged to make more precise and effective dietary recommendations to individuals for improving health outcomes, compared to generic dietary advice. This article describes the research questions that need to be answered to understand whether personalized nutrition brings additional clinical utility.

This broad group of authors summarizes the impact of circadian factors on metabolic biology and offers recommendations on how to account for and report biological, environmental and experimental factors affecting circadian rhythms in metabolic studies in rodents.

This Review discusses the impact of the gut microbiota on cancer and on cancer therapy, highlighting the importance of developing microbiota-targeting strategies to improve cancer therapy outcomes

Le Thuc and García-Cáceres discuss the effect of obesity-induced systemic inflammation on the brain, including hypothalamic circuits for whole-body energy homeostasis as well as cognitive function.

In this Perspective, Noecker and Turnbaugh provide a detailed guide for studying microbial community metabolism and discuss the best practices in the field.

In this Perspective, the role of tissue-resident bacteria in metabolic diseases is discussed and the experimental challenges that this emerging field is facing are highlighted.

This Review summarizes the fundamental aspects related to coenzyme A synthesis and its implications as a central molecule in metabolism.

Rao and Xue discuss emerging evidence in mice and humans of circadian-independent regulation of metabolic responses by light.

Sharma et al. review the regulation and biological functions of apparently ‘futile’ dynamic lipid cycle in regulating whole-body metabolic homeostasis.

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Nguyen and Corvera review distinct changes that occur in adipose tissue during ageing, discuss potential mechanisms by which these changes impact whole-body metabolism, immunity and longevity, and highlight therapeutic opportunities.

Recent technological advances permit the profiling of metabolic changes in single cells, which sheds light on how metabolism regulates immune responses. We advocate for accessible and standardized tools to reduce the barrier of entry to immunometabolism studies and facilitate the translation of fundamental findings towards clinical applications.

Yurdagul and colleagues offer an integrated picture of metabolic changes at the cellular and at the lesion level in atherosclerosis.