Welcome to eLife Magazine Highlights – a fortnightly newsletter featuring some of the latest content published in our magazine. In today’s newsletter, read about the unexpected role of fluid movement in organ formation, a new reusable brain implant, and how glucose can help protect babies against a fatal illness. Plus, tune in to our latest podcast episode to hear eLife authors discuss their findings.  

— Elsa Loissel, Associate Features Editor

Sepsis is caused by the immune system (blue cells) overreacting to a threat and damaging the body. Credit: Courtesy of NIAID NIH BIOART (CC0)

A nerve of two halves

Dorsal root ganglion neurons are unique in that they have two axons, only one of which is capable of regeneration. A new study highlights how components of the cellular skeleton may explain this difference.

2-minute read

Morphogenesis: Fluid transport comes to the fore

Organ development relies on a range of signals working together to influence cell behavior. Water flux has started to emerge as an important factor contributing to these processes. In this Insight article, Yufei Wu and Sean Sun review results published in eLife, which reveal how fluid movements help create the delicate branching structure of the circulatory system.

4-minute read

Preventing sepsis in newborns

Babies born too early often require glucose to be delivered directly into their bloodstream. Research in premature piglets now suggests that lower glucose doses could help decrease the risk of the immune system responding inappropriately to infection.

2-minute read

Neurodegeneration: A role for RNA knots in Alzheimer’s disease

Complex helices forming in regions of RNA that are rich in guanine are increasingly thought to participate in important biological processes. This insight article, written by Silvia Galli and Marco Di Antonio, examines a recent eLife study that describes how these ‘G-quadruplexes’ could contribute to brain cell dysfunction.

4-minute read

A reusable brain implant

Studying cognition and behavior often involves tracking large groups of neurons for a long time in freely moving subjects. A lightweight, reusable device known as the Apollo implant bypasses current technological limitations and allows researchers to record hundreds of nerve cells for periods of over three months.

2-minute read

Transcription: The plusses and minuses of DNA torsion

Torsion is a feature of the double helix, but measuring how DNA twists during transcription is challenging because many different biomolecules are involved in this process. In this Insight article, Steven Henikoff and David Levens discuss a new approach published in eLife that allows scientists to make measurements of DNA torsion which were not  possible before. 

4-minute read

eLife Magazine Podcast: Episode 97

Need a break from reading? Listen to our latest podcast and hear the authors of eLife papers discuss their research. Learn about the impact of childhood trauma on fear learning, how to better study teamwork, and experiments that investigate the emotional brain – thanks to Hollywood.

What the eLife Magazine team is reading

Conceptualising research environments using biological niche concepts

How can we better understand the intricacies of knowledge production? In this article published in the European Journal for Philosophy of Science, Rose Trappes and Sabina Leonelli draw inspiration from ecological studies to propose a new framework that helps capture the complex dynamics of research.

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