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Bones may release proteins that slow aging and extend life span

Bones may not only shape how a body looks, but also how it ages. Researchers investigating the well-known antiaging effects of physical activity have found in mice that bones may be a veritable fountain of youth, dribbling out proteins that slow aging, keep the body healthy, and extend life span.

The rodent results, published last week in Cell Metabolism, show mechanical strain on the skeleton—the pushing, pulling, and twisting that normally happen during exercise and other forms of physical activity—triggers force-sensing bone cells called osteocytes to secrete the antiaging chemicals. Indeed, the research team could extend mouse lives by nearly 3 months—the equivalent of about nine human years—just by gently squeezing their leg bones.

“Bone is not just a passive scaffold; it is an active, mechanically responsive organ that helps set the pace of aging throughout the body,” says Xiaochun Bai, a leader of the study and a bone biologist at Southern Medical University. “For the first time, we demonstrated the role of bone ‘mechanosensing’ in systemic aging.”

Humans evolved through culture more than biology

Our biology is central to our survival. This is the evolutionary story and one we take to apply to all living beings equally. However, biologist, anthropologist, and UN and WWF consultant, Jonathan Loh, argues that humans are special in a fundamental way. In this article, he proposes the radical new idea that the transmission of cultural characteristics is more important for human survival than biological ones. We pass down our cultural traits using language, which allows us to transcend our ancestry and reach beyond our tribes.

The peculiar primate

By any measure, Homo sapiens is an exceptional species. The world’s 8.3 billion humans collectively weigh around 400 million tonnes, while all wild mammals combined make up only about 60 million tonnes. And if we add domesticated animals to our side of the scales, we plus our domesticates outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 17.

Quantum physics can determine a person’s location

Scientists have demonstrated a quantum technique to ensure that someone is in the location they claim to be, physicist Abigail Gookin reported March 18 at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit. Called quantum position verification, the technique is based on the concept of quantum entanglement, in which the fates of two far-flung particles are closely linked.

Abstract: Equipe Leader Fondation ARC, INSERM U932, Immunity and Cancer, Institut Curie, PSL University, Paris, France

Equipe Leader Fondation ARC, INSERM U932, Immunity and Cancer, Institut Curie, PSL University, Paris, France.

2Surgical Oncology Department, Institut Curie, Paris, France.

3Department of Biostatistics, Centre Lacassagne, Nice, France.

4Center for Immuno-Oncology, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

High-grade serous ovarian cancer arises from fallopian tube in a mouse model

Despite widespread peritoneal metastasis commonly seen in ovarian cancer at diagnosis, the ovary has long been considered the primary origin of this cancer—hence the name ovarian cancer. However, precursor lesions have not been identified in the ovary (, ). Over the past decade, new evidence has emerged to propose a different source of ovarian cancer: the fallopian tube (, ). After women with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer-susceptibility gene (BRCA1, BRCA2) mutations have their ovaries and fallopian tubes prophylactically removed to prevent ovarian cancer, early serous carcinomas have been found in the fallopian tube—not in the ovary (). Further studies demonstrated early serous lesions of fallopian tube origin in 64–71% of nonhereditary high-grade ovarian serous carcinomas (, ). These studies have spawned a notion that the fallopian tube is a potential primary site of origin of high-grade serous carcinomas (, ). Intriguing as this theory is, the direct evidence is still lacking that the fallopian tube not only can initiate but, beyond that, can also advance de novo to the full-spectrum metastatic malignancy of high-grade serous carcinomas.

In the present study, we provide direct evidence to this “fallopian tube hypothesis.” When Dicer and Pten are conditionally disabled with Amhr2-Cre in mice, high-grade serous carcinomas arise from the fallopian tube. These primary fallopian tube cancers subsequently spread to the ovary and then aggressively metastasize throughout the abdominal cavity, leading to ascites and 100% lethality. In addition to these clinical similarities to the human cancer, gene expression analyses also affirm that these fallopian tube tumors resemble human serous ovarian cancer at the molecular level. Moreover, in these Dicer-Pten double-knockout (DKO) mice, the primary epithelial cancers originate in the stroma of the fallopian tube, suggesting that the cancers arise from cells of a mesenchymal lineage (i.e., cell of a nonepithelial lineage). Our study thus presents a paradigm for the origin and initiation of deadly high-grade serous ovarian cancer.

Why obesity affects males and females differently

University of California, Riverside, scientists have an explanation for why males and females respond differently to obesity. They report in PNAS Nexus that certain immune cell populations in fat tissue may protect against obesity-related inflammation while others may contribute to harmful metabolic changes. They found these immune cells, called eosinophils and traditionally associated with asthma and allergies, behave differently in males and females.

The research, done in mice and led by biomedical scientists Meera Nair and Adam Godzik, challenges the conventional view that eosinophils are relatively uniform immune cells with a limited range of functions and suggests new possibilities for developing targeted treatments.

Using high-resolution single-cell sequencing, the team identified six distinct eosinophil populations in adipose (fat) tissue, each with different gene-expression patterns and potential functions.

Orforglipron for Obstructive Sleep Apnea: Results From 2 Randomized Clinical Trials (ATTAIN-OSA)

These 2 randomized clinical trials examine the safety and efficacy of orforglipron in adults with overweight or obesity and moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, who were receiving or not receiving positive airway pressure treatment.