The UK government has announced sweeping changes to its asylum system, eliminating automatic settlement rights and family reunification for refugees granted protection in Britain. Prime Minister Keir Starmer outlined the reforms ahead of his attendance at the European Political Community Summit in Copenhagen, where he will co-chair discussions on innovative approaches to tackling illegal migration. The fundamental policy shift represents the government's attempt to balance protection for genuine refugees with stronger border controls.

Under the new system, migrants granted asylum will no longer receive automatic resettlement rights or the ability to bring family members to join them in the UK. The government suspended new family reunion applications at the beginning of September as part of these changes, with Home Office figures showing almost 21,000 refugee family reunion visas were issued in the year to June 2025. The vast majority of these visas had been granted to women and children seeking to join family members already in Britain.

The reforms aim to create what the government describes as a "fairer system where the route to settlement should be longer, and be earned via contribution to the country." Prime Minister Starmer emphasized that "there will be no golden ticket to settling in the UK—people will have to earn it." The changes are designed to reduce what officials term "pull factors" that they believe encourage migrants to attempt dangerous Channel crossings rather than seek protection in other safe countries they pass through.

These policy announcements come alongside preparations for additional measures, including potential army-built migrant camps to replace costly hotel accommodations. Logistics teams with experience building barracks in war zones are developing plans to quickly establish facilities on government land. The government views providing less comfortable housing as a key deterrent to stopping record numbers of small boat crossings, with cross-government efforts being ramped up to close migrant hotels ahead of the previous 2029 deadline.

Attached to nearly every human cell is an antenna-like structure known as the primary cilium, which senses the cell's environment and controls how it responds to signals from its surroundings. New research from the U.S. and Sweden has mapped and identified hundreds of proteins that comprise these structures, contributing new insights for future research into ciliary biology, disease mechanisms and potential therapies.

Publishing in the journal Cell, researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stanford University used advanced imaging and antibody-based techniques to map proteins inside primary cilia across three types of human cells. They analyzed more than 128,000 individual cilia and identified 715 proteins that are located in different parts of the cilium responsible for sensing mechanical or chemical signals, such as hormones. These primary cilia are distinct from motile cilia, which are responsible for movement of fluids or cells.

Professor Emma Lundberg, a researcher in cellular and clinical proteomics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, says the study also identified a possible gene behind various disorders linked to malfunctions of the cilium. These can lead to disorders affecting many parts of the body, from the brain and eyes to the kidneys and bones. In addition, the researchers discovered 91 proteins that had never before been linked to cilia.

The study expands the current understanding of cilia, casting them as highly adaptable and versatile processors of information, which tune their protein composition to suit the needs of the cell they belong to. "Cells seem to customize the protein composition of their cilia to have them perform specific sensing tasks," Lundberg says. "These newly-discovered ciliary proteins inspire many new hypotheses about their roles in cellular function and human health."