Charred food in pot revealsprehistoric Europeans had surprisingly complex cuisines

 Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

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Example of Mesolithic pottery vessel analysed in this study.

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Credit: Lara González Carretero (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Thousands of years ago, European communities used a variety of plant and animal products to create elaborate meals, according to a study published March 4, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Lara González Carretero of the University of York, U.K. and colleagues.

A common technique for interpreting the diets of ancient cultures involves analyzing fatty residues in ancient pottery. This method is limited, however, as it mostly provides insights only into animal remains. In this study, the authors combined multiple techniques, including microscopic examination and chemical analysis, to identify the remains of plants that were eaten by ancient European hunter-gatherers.

Researchers examined organic remains found in 58 pieces of pottery uncovered at 13 archaeological sites across Northern and Eastern Europe dating between the 6th and 3rd millennium BC. This method recovered tissue samples of a wide variety of plants, including grasses, berries, leaves, and seeds. In many cases, plant remains were found alongside those of animals, most often fish and other seafood. The exact mixtures and ingredients varied from region to region, most likely reflecting which resources were locally available as well as local cultural practices.

These findings emphasize the important role of plants and aquatic foods in the diets of early Europeans. These results also support the idea that these communities regularly used pottery technology for food preparation and that each culture had their own complex culinary traditions. This study also demonstrates that combining multiple analytical techniques can yield detailed insights that are overlooked by traditional methods, particularly when it comes to the plants that ancient peoples were eating.

The authors add: “While conventional chemical analysis tends to highlight the animal-based components of ancient meals, our combined microscopic approach has brought these prehistoric recipes back into focus. We found that hunter-gatherer-fishers were not living on fish alone; they were actively processing and consuming a wide variety of plants. This research underscores that to truly understand ancient diets, we need to take a closer look at these food crusts, quite literally!”

 The freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4ryU2Ha

3.67 million year old fossil, Little Foot, gets a virtual facelift

 

Digital reconstruction of iconic fossil reveals unexpected similarities with Ethiopian specimens, contributing to debates on early hominin relationships.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of the Witwatersrand

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The digital reconstruction of the iconic fossil, Little Foot, reveals unexpected similarities with Ethiopian specimens, contributing to debates on early hominin relationships.

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Credit: Amelie Beaudet/Wits University

A new digital reconstruction of the face of the 3.67‑million‑year‑old Australopithecus fossil, Little Foot, provides new insight into the evolution of the human face. 

The new findings, published in Comptes Rendus Palevol, offer fresh insight into the diversity of the fossil hominin (i.e., extant human and their ancestors and relatives) face across Africa 4-3 million years ago.

Little Foot was discovered at the Wits Sterkfontein Caves, located about 40km North West of Johannesburg, South Africa, in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. It is the most complete early hominin skeleton ever found. While much of the skeleton has been, and continues to be, studied, the face has been distorted by millions of years of geological processes that were impossible to correct using physical reconstruction methods. Using high‑resolution synchrotron scanning at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron in the UK and advanced virtual reconstruction techniques, an international research team led by Dr. Amelie Beaudet and Professor Dominic Stratford has now digitally reassembled the facial bones, producing one of the most complete Australopithecus faces known.

The team analysed nine linear facial measurements and applied three‑dimensional geometric morphometrics to compare Little Foot to those of several other extant great apes as well as with three other Australopithecus fossils. These included a younger specimen from South Africa and two Ethiopian specimens. The results show that the overall size of the face, the shape and dimensions of the eye sockets, and the general facial architecture of Little Foot more closely resemble the East African fossils than the younger South African comparative specimen, although the study is limited to a couple of fossil specimens due to the scarcity of complete faces.

“This pattern is unexpected, given the geographic origin of Little Foot and suggests a more dynamic evolutionary history than previously assumed,” says Beaudet, a previous post-doctoral fellow and current honorary researcher of Wits University. Little Foot, for instance, may represent a lineage closely related to East African populations, while later South African hominins developed more distinct facial features through local evolutionary processes.

The study also identified evidence of selective pressures acting on the orbital region (the eyes), which may relate to changes in visual capacity and ecological behaviour. 

“Besides the fact that our study, limited to one anatomical region and a couple of comparative fossil specimens, provides additional data on the affinities between Australopithecus populations across Africa, we demonstrate that the orbital part of the face has possibly been under evolutionary pressure at that time,” says Beaudet.

“While we know that the hominin face evolved through time to become less projected and more gracile, we still ignore when such changes occur, and the nature of the evolutionary mechanisms involved.” 

“Rather than viewing early hominin evolution as occurring in isolated regions, the study supports the idea of Africa as a connected evolutionary landscape, with populations adapting to ecological pressures while remaining linked through shared ancestry,” says Stratford, who is also Director of Research at the Wits Sterkfontein Caves. 

Through digestive, visual, respiratory, olfactory, and non-verbal communication systems, the face plays a central role in the interactions primates have with their physical and social environments. In this context, the face is a key anatomical region for understanding how the hominins adapted to, and engaged with, their surroundings.

“Only a handful of Australopithecus fossils preserve an almost complete face, making Little Foot a rare and valuable reference point. Little Foot’s face preserves key anatomical regions involved in vision, breathing and feeding, and its skull will offer further key elements for understanding our evolutionary history,” says Beaudet. 

As further virtual reconstructions are completed, the researchers hope to refine our understanding of how early hominins moved, interacted and diversified across Africa.

“The face is only part of the story. Other parts of the skull, especially the braincase, remain distorted by plastic deformation and will require similar digital reconstruction to better understand brain size and organisation in this early hominin,” says Beaudet.

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Journal

Comptes Rendus Palevol

Maize may have more importance in pre-European Michigan than previously thought

 

Indigenous people who were the first to inhabit the area now known as Michigan — before the Europeans arrived — may have cultivated maize (corn) more prominently than previously assumed for such a northern population. Researchers from the University of New Hampshire found that using modern global satellite data in a novel way helped them connect archaeological features — like ancient burial mounds — to environmental   data of lake temperatures and gain new insights into past human–environment relationships.

In their study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, the researchers compared ten years of modern temperature data (2014 – 2024), obtained from NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite thermal sensor, to the locations of burial mounds built between A.D. 1200 and A.D. 1600. Through this process the researchers were able to analyze the temperature patterns across thousands of Michigan’s inland lakes. They found that Indigenous communities in the Great Lakes area, known as the Anishinaabeg, built burial mounds near lakes that warmed later in spring, cooled later in fall and were more circular than lakes without mounds. This suggests that placement of the mounds may have been associated with an extended maize-growing season, hinting at a greater cultural role and ceremonial significance for maize than previously thought.

“When we ran this model and we looked at the temperature of lakes and the association of burial mounds with inland lakes, what became really clear is [indigenous people] were understanding their environment so much that they're putting their mounds on lakes where they can grow corn right into an extended fall season,” said Meghan Howey, professor of anthropology and lead author. “There may even be more of a story that they were also growing maize in sophisticated and complicated ways.”

The researchers focused on maize which is a Mesoamerican crop that transformed the early societies that domesticated it for everyday living. Maize has been widely considered a marginal crop to Indigenous people in cold climates like the Great Lakes.

Burial mounds are important ceremonial monuments that signaled a shift in how Anishinaabeg communities in Michigan’s lower peninsula related to places and used resources like maize.

“When you put the ancestors somewhere, you’re staking more of a claim to your resource territories and you’re creating paths for people to come back and visit those places and remember them,” said Howey.

The global satellite-based work — done by co-author Michael Palace, associate professor of Earth sciences and a remote sensing expert — taps into a method of connecting Landsat satellite data with temperature values that Palace previously used to track cyanobacteria and algae blooms in New England lakes. Archaeologists have long used drones, satellites and even hot-air balloons to discover archaeological sites from the sky but utilizing geospatial tools to find relationships between landscapes and ecosystems represents a new frontier.

“It's a cool example of taking a free global data tool developed for an ecological application and using it for archaeological research,” said Howey.

The researchers say that study’s methodology is easily replicable, making it adaptable for analyses across the globe, advancing data-driven and landscape-focused archaeology.

Chimps’ love for crystals could help us understand our own ancestors’ fascination with these stones

 

Ancestors of modern humans collected crystals for which they had no apparent use. A new chimp study could help researchers understand the roots of this infatuation

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Frontiers

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Chimp Toti attentively observes the quartz crystal during Experiment 1. 

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Credit: García-Ruiz et al., 2026

Crystals have repeatedly been found at archaeological sites alongside Homo remains. Evidence shows hominins have been collecting these stones for as long as 780,000 years. Yet, we know that our ancestors did not use them as weapons, tools, or even jewelry. So why did they collect them at all?

Now, in a new Frontiers in Psychology study, scientists in Spain investigated which characteristics of crystals may have made them so fascinating to our ancestors. They designed experiments with chimpanzees – one of the two great ape species most closely related to modern humans – to identify the physical properties of crystals that may have attracted early hominins.

“We show that enculturated chimpanzees can distinguish crystals from other stones,” said lead author Prof Juan Manuel García-Ruiz, an Ikerbasque Research Professor on crystallography at the Donostia International Physics Center in San Sebastián. “We were pleasantly surprised by how strong and seemingly natural the chimpanzees’ attraction to crystals was. This suggests that sensitivity to such objects may have deep evolutionary roots.”

The Monolith

Modern humans diverged from chimps between six and seven million years ago, so we share substantial genetic and behavioral similarities. To find out if fascination with crystals is one of them, the researchers provided two groups of enculturated chimpanzees (Manuela, Guillermo, Yvan, Yaki, and Toti in group one and Gombe, Lulú, Pascual, and Sandy in group two) from the Rainfer Foundation with access to crystals.

In the first experiment, a large crystal – the monolith – was placed on a platform, along with a normal rock of similar size. While initially both objects caught the chimps’ attention, soon the crystal was preferred and the rock disregarded. Once they had removed it from the platform, all chimps inspected the crystal, rotating and tilting it so they could view it from specific angles. Yvan then picked up the crystal and decisively carried it to the dormitories.

Interest was strongest early after exposure and declined very gradually over time, the team observed. The same pattern is found in humans as the novelty of an objects fades. When caretakers tried to retrieve the crystal from the chimps’ enclosure, they had to exchange it for favored snacks: bananas and yogurt.

A crystal-clear preference

A second experiment showed that the chimps could identify and select smaller quartz crystals – similar in size to those collected by hominids – from a pile of 20 rounded pebbles within seconds. When pyrite and calcite crystals, which have different shapes than quartz crystals, were added to the pile, chimps still were able to pick out crystal-type stones. “The chimpanzees began to study the crystals’ transparency with extreme curiosity, holding them up to eye level and looking through them,” García-Ruiz said. Chimps repeatedly examined the crystals for hours.

Sandy, for example, carried pebbles and crystals in her mouth to a wooden platform where she separated them. “She separated the three crystal types, which themselves differed in transparency, symmetry, and luster, from all the pebbles. This ability to recognize crystals despite their differences amazed us,” García-Ruiz said. Chimps also do not usually use their mouths to carry objects, so this behavior could mean they were hiding them a behavior consistent with treating the crystals as valuable, the team pointed out.

Crystals in our minds

The study did not examine if some chimps were more interested or laid more claim to crystals than others, although future studies should take chimp personalities into account, the team said. “There are Don Quixotes and Sanchos: idealists and pragmatists. Some may find the transparency of crystals fascinating, while others are interested in their smell and whether they’re edible,” García-Ruiz pointed out. The chimps tested here also are used to contact with humans and familiar with objects not found in the natural world. Therefore, the same experiments should be carried out with less enculturated species, ideally wild apes.

The combined observations from the experiments identified both transparency and shape as alluring properties. It might have been the same qualities attracting early humans to these rocks. The clouds, trees, mountains, animals, and rivers of the natural world surrounding our ancestors were defined by curvature and ramification, so few items had straight lines and flat surfaces. Crystals are the only natural polyhedral, meaning the only natural solids with many flat surfaces. When early humans tried to make sense of their environment, their cognitive processes might have been drawn to patterns that were unlike what they knew. 

“Our work helps explain our fascination with crystals and contributes to the understanding of the evolutionary roots of aesthetics and worldview,” concluded García-Ruiz. “We now know that we’ve had crystals in our minds for at least six million years.”

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Journal

Frontiers in Psychology

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1633599 

Life and death in Late Bronze Age Central Europe

 

• Insights into the lives of people in the Late Bronze Age: Interdisciplinary analyses (DNA, isotopes) shed light on the ancestry, mobility, diet, health, and burial practices of people in Central Europe during this period.
• Genetic ancestry: Genetic data reveal gradual, regionally varying changes in ancestry, along with growing ties to the Danube region, without replacing local traditions.
• Experimenting with millet: The temporary shift to broomcorn millet as a staple food occurred within existing communities as a flexible adaptation. Later, its cultivation decreased in favour of wheat and barley.
• Health, disease, and death: Communities exhibit diverse burial practices. There is evidence of physically demanding yet stable living conditions, but no evidence of major epidemics.

A new interdisciplinary study published in Nature Communications provides the first detailed insights, from a biomolecular and archaeological perspective, into the lives of people living in Central Europe during the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1300–800 BCE), the so-called Urnfield period which was marked by cultural changes such as the widespread adoption of cremation.

Because cremation destroys biological material, this period has long remained a blind spot for genetic and isotopic research. By focusing on rare inhumation burials from Germany, Czechia and Poland, an international team of archaeogeneticists, archaeologists, and other biomolecular scientists was able to provide new insights into patterns of ancestry, mobility, diet, physiological stress and mortuary practices of LBA communities.

The study analysed ancient DNA, stable oxygen and strontium isotopes, and osteoarchaeological data from non-cremated individuals, alongside strontium isotope data from cremated individuals buried at the sites of Kuckenburg and Esperstedt in Central Germany, excavated by the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt. These results were placed in a broader regional context by comparing them with contemporaneous genetic data from neighbouring regions.

Living in times of change

“This study allows us to see how people lived through change,” says Eleftheria Orfanou, PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and lead author of the study. “The Late Bronze Age was not experienced as a single moment of change, but as a series of choices, about food and subsistence strategies, burial, and social relationships, made within communities that were closely connected to their landscapes but also to their neighbours”.

The genetic evidence in this study reveals gradual, regionally varied changes in ancestry that took place alongside established local traditions. In Central Germany, these changes became visible only in the later phases of the Late Bronze Age, highlighting how communities participated in wider networks of interaction, including increasing connections with regions to the south and southeast of the Danube.

Moreover, strontium and oxygen isotope analyses employed in this study act like a chemical record of where people grew up and lived, allowing researchers to assess whether individuals were local or had moved from elsewhere. Most individuals from Central Germany, both cremated and non-cremated, show local isotope signatures, suggesting that new ideas and practices circulated primarily through contact and exchange rather than through the movement of large numbers of people.

Introduction of millet to Europe

Dietary evidence also highlights the flexibility of Late Bronze Age societies. During the early phase of the Late Bronze Age, people began consuming broomcorn millet (a crop that had recently arrived in Europe from northeast China), likely in response to environmental or economic pressures. This dietary shift did not coincide with evidence of large-scale demographic or genetic changes, suggesting that millet adoption occurred within existing communities. However, during the later phase of the Late Bronze Age, millet consumption appears to decline, with people returning to more traditional crops such as wheat and barley. This pattern points to experimentation, adaptation, resilience, and cultural preference rather than a trajectory towards intensification in the cultivation of millet. 

The researchers also looked for traces of ancient disease and combined this information with evidence from the people’s skeletons. They found DNA from bacteria commonly associated with oral health issues, such as dental disease, but no signs of widespread epidemic infection. Evidence of childhood stress, degenerative joint conditions, and occasional trauma points to physically demanding lives. Nevertheless, most individuals appear to have been in generally good condition.

Diverse funerary culture

The study also provides insights into a diverse mortuary world that may seem unfamiliar from a modern Western perspective, including cremation, inhumation, skull-only depositions, and multi-stage rites, all of which coexisted within the same communities. “These practices do not appear to be marginal or atypical,” Orfanou explains, “but are part of a broader repertoire that people could choose from during the Urnfield period, linked to the creation of memory, identity, and ideas about what it meant to be a person in the Late Bronze Age.”

By integrating archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and isotopic evidence, the study reconstructs Late Bronze Age societies as dynamic social worlds. “Change and innovation were incorporated into existing traditions. These communities actively shaped their lifeways, and created hybrid practices that were locally meaningful within an increasingly interconnected world”, concludes Wolfgang Haak, leader of the project at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-69895-y 

New evidence that ancient floods "rewrote" civilizations along the Yangtze River

A new study has shown that an increase in rainfall and associated floods 4,000 years ago in the Middle Yangtze Valley likely caused the collapse of the Shijiahe culture

Changes in temperature and water availability have long since played a significant role in the trajectory of human civilizations. A major climate event around 4,200 years ago (known as the “4.2 kyr event”), which coincides with the decline of major ancient societies, has attracted considerable scientific attention. In China's middle Yangtze River region, the once-flourishing Shijiahe culture collapsed during this period. The reasons behind the abandonment of the ancient Shijiahe city and the abrupt disruption of its cultural development have been widely debated. Now, a research team including Dr. Jin Liao. Dr. Christopher Day, Prof. Chaoyong Hu, Prof. Gideon Henderson, Prof. Yuhui Liu from the University of Oxford’s Department of Earth Sciences and from China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), has shown that this collapse was caused by widespread flooding in the Yangtze Valley. These findings were published in National Science Review.

By analysing a stalagmite from Heshang Cave in the middle Yangtze Valley, the research team were able to create a precisely dated "rainfall yearbook". Stalagmites grow as rainwater water drips from the roof of a cave, and the dissolved minerals within add new layers of calcium carbonate to these stalagmite cave features that rise up from the floor below. The team performed high-precision measurements on the chemical makeup of these layers to determine their age and the amount of rainfall at the time they formed. A total of 925 sample measurements were used to infer how much yearly rainfall the middle Yangtze Valley received over a thousand year period.

Their new reconstruction showed that the valley experienced three low-rainfall intervals (less than 700 mm of rain per year) which lasted between 40 and 150 years, and two high-rainfall intervals (more than 1,000 mm per year) which lasted 80 and 140 years respectively. Comparing this to archaeological data from the region revealed that these high-rainfall periods were associated with increased flooding, widespread wetland expansion, and a significant decline in population within the valley.

The area experienced a particularly large climate and cultural shift 3,950 years ago, which coincided with the start of the longest high-rainfall interval reconstructed by the research team. During this period, excess rainfall caused lakes across the Middle Yangtze valley to expand, low-lying areas to become waterlogged, and suitable land for settlement and farming to sharply diminish. The impact of this change was significant for the Shijiahe culture; a decline in the number of archaeological remains starting at this time indicates a pronounced drop in population which persisted for centuries. Evidence suggests that the post‑Shijiahe population abandoned their urban centre in the valley and dispersed into surrounding higher‑elevation regions.

This study offers valuable insights for addressing current and future environmental change. The analysis reveals that even the peak precipitation during the high-rainfall period associated with the collapse of the Shijiahe civilization was lower than some extreme rainfall events observed in the modern instrumental record. This not only reflects the limited adaptive capacity of ancient societies, but also highlights the critical importance of modern day water management infrastructure, agricultural innovations, and governance systems in mitigating climate risks and safeguarding food security. Effectively managing these climate-driven extremes will thus become an essential challenge for achieving sustainable societal development in a climate-changing world.

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Journal

National Science Review

DOI

10.1093/nsr/nwaf567 

 

Preferential mating between Neanderthal males and human females

 

• Most modern humans with non-African ancestry carry small amounts of Neanderthal DNA across much of their genome but have little-to-none on their X chromosomes.
• New research from Penn challenges an old assumption that the cause was natural selection and a weeding out of “toxic” Neanderthal genes.
• The researchers found that Neanderthals have more human DNA on their X chromosomes than elsewhere in their genomes.
• Because males and females pass on X chromosomes differently, this genetic pattern, they found, points to a strong sex bias: preferential mating between Neanderthal males and human females.
• Their findings reveal the role of social interactions in human evolution—rather than just biological survival—in sculpting the human genome, challenging the idea that our evolution was driven solely by survival of the fittest.

The human genome is a rich, complex record of migration, encounters, and inheritance written over thousands of millennia. In this month of love, amid the exchange of flowers and cards, genomic research by members of Sarah Tishkoff’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania are revisiting a particularly intimate chapter, suggesting that ancient mating patterns between modern humans and Neanderthals shaped why Neanderthal DNA is largely missing from the human X Chromosome.

“Along our X chromosomes, we have these missing swaths of Neanderthal DNA we call ‘Neanderthal deserts,’” says Alexander Platt, a senior research scientist in the Tishkoff Lab. “For years, we just assumed these deserts existed because certain Neanderthal genes were biologically ‘toxic’ to humans—as tends to be the case when species diverge—so we thought the genes may have caused health problems and were likely purged by natural selection.”

Now, Tishkoff and her team have discovered a more social explanation.

In a paper published in Science, their analysis of Neanderthal and modern human genomes suggests that long-standing mating preferences—rather than genetic incompatibility—shaped which Neanderthal DNA sequences persisted in modern humans and which were gradually lost. Their findings reveal the role social interactions in sculpting the human genome, challenging the idea that human evolution was driven solely by survival of the fittest.

“We found a pattern indicating a sex bias: gene flow occurred predominantly between Neanderthal males and anatomically modern human females,” says Platt, co-first author of the paper, resulting in the loss of Neanderthal DNA X chromosomes of modern humans.

“Roughly 600,000 years ago, the ancestors of anatomically modern humans and their closest-related species, the Neanderthals, diverged, forming two distinct groups, says Tishkoff, the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor in Genetics and Biology in the Perelman School of Medicine and School of Arts & Sciences. “Our ancestors evolved in Africa, while the ancestors of Neanderthals evolved in and adapted to life in Eurasia. But that separation was far from permanent.”

Over hundreds of millennia, she adds, human populations migrated into Neanderthal territories and back again, and when these groups met, they mated, swapping segments of DNA.

To determine whether Neanderthal X chromosomes contain alleles from humans, the team identified modern human DNA preserved in three Neanderthals—Altai, Chagyrskaya, and Vindija—and compared this dataset against one of diverse African genomes, a control group who had historically never encountered a Neanderthal.

“What we found was a striking imbalance,” says Daniel Harris, a research associate in the Tishkoff lab and co-first author. “While modern humans lack Neanderthal X chromosomes, Neanderthals had a 62% excess of modern human DNA on their X chromosomes compared to their other chromosomes.”

This mirrorlike reversal was their answer. If the two species were biologically incompatible, modern human DNA should have been missing from Neanderthal X chromosomes as well. But because the team found an abundance of human DNA in Neanderthal X chromosomes, they were able to rule out reproductive incompatibility or toxic gene interactions as the barrier.

The remaining explanation, the team argues, lies in sex-biased interbreeding.

Because females carry two X chromosomes and males carry only one, mating direction matters. If Neanderthal males partnered more often with modern human females, fewer Neanderthal X chromosomes would enter the human gene pool, and more human X chromosomes would enter Neanderthal populations.

Mathematical models confirmed that this bias could reproduce the observed genetic patterns. Other possibilities, such as sex-biased migration, could theoretically produce similar results—but only through complex, shifting scenarios that varied across time and geography.

“Mating preferences provided the simplest explanation,” Platt says.

With the “who” and “how” of these ancient trysts established, the team is now turning their attention to the “why,” investigating whether similar genetic comparisons—specifically the ratio of diversity between X chromosomes and autosomes—can reveal the gender dynamics of Neanderthal society, such as whether females stayed with their birth families while males migrated to new groups.

By mapping these ancient interactions, the lab hopes to further illuminate the complex social lives of human’s closest evolutionary cousins.

Sarah Tishkoff is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor in Genetics and Biology, and a Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor with appointments in the Department of Genetics and Department of Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine and in Department of Biology in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Daniel Harris is a research associate in the Perelman School of Medicine at Penn. 

Alexander Platt is a senior research scientist in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (Grants 1R35GM134957 and R01AR076241) and the American Diabetes Association (Grant 1-19-VSN-02).

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.aea6774