In today’s newsletter, learn how some monkeys clean their food, explore a new mechanism of pain detection, and uncover the relationship between the gut microbiome and inflammatory bowel disease. Plus, find out how a key metabolic pathway supports light-sensing cells in the eye
– Julia Deathridge, Associate Features Editor
Wild macaque washing sand from cucumber slices on Koram Island, Thailand. Credit: Amanda Tan (CC BY 4.0)
Retroperitoneal liposarcoma is a rare type of cancer that can be treated with surgery. Outcomes can vary, however, and determining which tumors are likely to respond to surgery is difficult. Now, researchers have discovered two genes that could be used as biomarkers to help doctors identify patients who might benefit from treatment.
Monkeys living near sandy beaches tend to remove sand from their food before eating it. Some just brush the sand off with their hands, while others wash their food carefully. New research on wild monkeys in Thailand has discovered that a number of factors – including the social status of the monkey within the group – influence how long they spend cleaning their food.
People with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) often have less diverse gut microbiomes than healthy individuals – but is this a cause or consequence of the disease? A computational analysis of more than 400 human stool samples suggests that changes in the gut microbiome are more likely a by-product than a cause of the disease. You can also read an Insight article about this work – Gut Health: The value of connections
To ensure that scientific findings can be reliably reproduced, researchers must provide comprehensive details about their experiments and data. However, a study of almost 400 articles in three leading journals in cardiovascular research found that most did not include all the information that another researcher would require to repeat the experiments.
Much like human babies, the infants of sac-winged bats learn to communicate by mimicking the sounds of the adults around them, particularly the songs of nearby males. A new study of 19 wild pups living in Panama and Costa Rica has now revealed that the level of attention baby bats receive from their mothers also influences their vocal skills.
Traditionally, it was believed that only sensory neurons could detect pain and touch. However, growing evidence suggests that other cell types may also be involved. In this Insight article, Jean-Christophe Boivin and Tomoko Ohyama discuss findings from a recent eLife paper showing how epidermal cells in fruit flies sense painful mechanical stimuli.
Photoreceptors – light-sensing cells in the retina – need a lot of energy to function. While glucose is known to be their primary source of fuel, a recent study in eLife showed that these cells also rely on glutamine metabolism to stay healthy. In this Insight article, Katherine Wert describes how the breakdown of glutamine supports photoreceptors and prevents vision from deteriorating.
The Trump administration continues to send shockwaves through the scientific community. The executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is not only influencing the kind of research being conducted, but also how research is written about in scientific journals. In this Undark article, Peter Andrey Smith tells the story of two scientists who withdrew their paper after being asked to remove vital demographic data — and examines why this kind of language policing poses a serious threat to scientific research.
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