Welcome to eLife Magazine Highlights – a fortnightly newsletter featuring some of the latest content published in our magazine. In today’s newsletter, read about multilingual brains, the genetic legacy of aurochs, and a new player in ovarian biology. Plus, how can the research community respond to the assault on science taking place in the United States?

— Elsa Loissel, Associate Features Editor

Aurochs (head) are the wild ancestors of modern cattle (tail). Image credit: Maria de La Fuente Soro (CC BY 4.0)

Science under threat in the United States

Science is under attack in the US. The new administration is terminating existing grants, preventing the review of new applications, firing staff at funding agencies, and reversing efforts to make the scientific workforce more diverse and inclusive. How should the community respond?

In a series of articles, Vaughn Cooper describes “feeling abandoned but energized”, while Ran Blekhman calls on individual researchers and university leaders to “make the case for science” to their elected representatives and the public at large. The National Institutes of Health, writes Nicholas Gilpin, is a “sound investment for the US taxpayer”, while Anna and Casey Greene stress the need for “continued federal support for research and access to care”. Mayank Chugh and his students discuss the “impact on undergraduates”, Adriana Bankston explores options for responding from a policy perspective, and Stuart Buck calls on DOGE to “completely rethink its efforts” to increase efficiency in                the funding of research. 

The importance of diversity

Biodiversity research often focuses on entire species going extinct. Much less is known, however, about the loss of genetic diversity that stems from declining numbers of individuals within a population. New work starts to uncover the impact of this phenomenon on ecosystems, highlighting the need to consider both factors in conservation efforts.

2-minute read

Ovarian Biology: Revisiting the rete ovarii

A small appendage known as the rete ovarii has long been dismissed as a vestigial structure devoid of activity or interest. In this Insight article, Yan Zhang and Hua Zhang discuss the results of an eLife study which suggests instead that it may have an important role in ovary development and homeostasis.

4-minute read

Polyglot brains

Exactly how being multilingual reshapes the organisation of the brain remains unclear. New imaging analyses reveal a link between the number and diversity of languages spoken by an individual and the thickness of an area dedicated to speech processing.

2-minute read

Inflammasomes: A tale of two caspases

Safely tucked away in a dedicated compartment within host cells, Salmonella bacteria are free to proliferate hidden from the attacks of the immune system. In response, an explosive cellular response is deployed to neutralize these invaders. Insight author Denise Monack discusses recent findings published in eLife, which uncover a key two-stage mechanism in this process.

4-minute read

Mixing with wild relatives

For thousands of years, domesticated herds of cattle roamed alongside their untamed ancestors, the aurochs. By revealing how and when these animals interbred, this study helps uncover how modern livestock breeds came to be.

2-minute read

Hippocampus: Mapping out overlapping connectivity patterns

How do differences in brain networks shape an individual’s behavior or susceptibility to disease? By untangling the functional organisation of a region crucial for memory and learning, new research reported in eLife starts to reveal how variations in wiring patterns are linked to changes in recall ability, aging and dopamine receptor distribution. In this Insight article, Myrthe Faber and Koen Haak examine the impact of these findings.

4-minute read

What the eLife Magazine team is reading

In genetics, a tense coexistence of mainstream and fringe views

“Should scientists curb their own research if they know that others may abuse it?” In this essay for Undark, Ashley Smart explores the dilemmas ​​faced by scientists whose work could be misappropriated by groups seeking to demonstrate a genetic basis for racial or ancestral-group differences in intelligence.

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