Mouse eyes can photosynthesize after a plant-to-animal transplant

Hello Nature readers,
Today we discover that mouse eyes can photosynthesize after a plant-to-animal transplant and learn about the global health emergency that is the Ebola outbreak in the DRC.

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Drops let mouse eyes ‘photosynthesize’

Photosynthetic machinery can be harvested from spinach and transplanted into the eyes of mice, where it transforms light into molecules that carry energy and can tame inflammation. To see how this approach might someday translate into therapeutic applications, researchers made drops, containing light-harvesting apparatus from spinach (Spinacia oleraceae) cells, that soothed dry-eye disease in mice. “This is very exciting, even if it’s a bit crazy now,” says biologist and study co-author David Tai Leong.

Ebola outbreak is public health emergency

An outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization. At least 10 people had tested positive for the Ebola virus and more than 330 people had suspected infections, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday. Infections have also been reported in neighbouring Uganda. A lab in the DRC confirmed that the outbreak was caused by the Bundibugyo species of Ebola virus, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment. The outbreak has almost certainly been spreading undetected for weeks, and the most important action is getting more diagnostic tests to the DRC and surrounding nations, say researchers.

NIH ousts infectious-disease leaders

Three senior officials at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have been given the choice to either accept reassignment outside the institute or resign, sources at the NIAID have told Nature. With these departures, scientists in most senior positions at the NIAID will have been ousted from their jobs, including officials in eight of the top ten leadership spots, since President Donald Trump began his second term as president. The reassignment of career scientists is highly unusual, and feeds some scientists’ fears of a growing political influence over science at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which oversees the NIAID.

Smuggling inquiry locks down US labs

Dozens of researchers at Indiana University (IU) Bloomington have been locked out of their laboratories for more than a week in what some scientists say is an act of government retaliation against IU plant microbiologist Roger Innes. Innes has criticized the administration of US President Donald Trump for deporting Chinese scientists on the basis of smuggling experimental samples that it deemed to be dangerous. The university says the lockdown was done at the request of the US Department of Agriculture.

There’s no such thing as ‘bad character’

In Marked by Time, criminologist Robert Sampson explores the idea, common in modern policing and court practices, that people who become serial criminal offenders have a ‘bad character’. Sampson lays out evidence that this common assumption is fundamentally flawed because it doesn’t take into account the changing historical circumstances surrounding a person’s chances of being arrested. The book is “disquieting but effective”, says sociologist Christopher Browning in his review. It “makes a compelling case for rooting out character-based assumptions” in the criminal justice system.

Your secret science skills might surprise you

For Yasmin Proctor-Kent, the sewing skills that she needed to reach the finals of The Great British Sewing Bee are similar to what it takes to master mathematics. Biologist Chantle Edillor used a fascination with sourdough starters to pivot from studying human diseases to exploring yeast-based cures. And public-health researcher Brandon Brown says that tending to his orchard isn’t unlike his academic work: “the work is never done … the fun never ends”. They are among the scientists contributing to a six-part series of the Nature Careers Working Scientist podcast about creativity in science.

Inside the ‘interstitium’

In simple terms, the cardiovascular system moves blood around our bodies and the lymphatic system moves lymph. Now some scientists have raised the controversial idea that there is a third circulatory system, which runs through our connective tissues: the interstitium. They say that this hyaluronic acid-filled space, criss-crossed with collagen bundles, could be “a route of molecular, microbiome, and cellular trafficking and communication” — and a route of cancer spread.