Maternal immune tolerance of the fetus is critical to a successful pregnancy. In this month's issue of Cell, Brown et al. showed that the maternal microbiota, specifically tryptophan derivatives produced by commensal bacteria, promote maternal tolerance of the fetus to improve pregnancy outcomes.

No abstract

Food availability determines where and how animals use space across a landscape and, therefore, affects the risk of encounters leading to zoonotic spillover. This relationship is evident in Australian flying foxes (Pteropus spp.; fruit bats), where acute food shortages precede clusters of Hendra virus spillovers. Using machine learning, we predicted months of food shortages from climatological and ecological covariates (1996-2022) in subtropical Australia. Overall accuracy in predicting months...

Dysregulation in lipid metabolism is increasingly recognized as a key contributor to age-related diseases, including neurodegeneration and cerebrovascular dysfunction. While prior studies have largely focused on glial cells, the impact of lipid dysregulation on brain endothelial aging remains poorly understood. In this study, we conducted a secondary analysis of single-cell transcriptomic data from young and aged mouse brains, with a specific focus on endothelial cells (ECs). Our analyses...

Plasticity in meiotic recombination is a well-documented phenomenon with an unknown mechanism. Recent studies have shown variation in the magnitude and direction of plasticity with a putative connection to organismal stress. Though there have been many factors shown to contribute to recombination rate plasticity, dietary manipulations are understudied. Here we manipulated caloric density, which is known to contribute to well-known life-history trade-offs, to determine if it altered meiotic...