RESEARCH | IN OTHER JOURNALS
654 16 AUGUST 2019 • VOL 365 ISSUE 6454 sciencemag.org SCIENCE
healthy individuals showed
higher stress and anxiety levels
compared with socially housed
animals. Epileptic rats and mice
also had more severe seizures
when they were isolated. Hence,
materials and methods should
systematically report housing
conditions and all efforts should
be made to maintain social inter-
action during experimentation
whenever possible. —PRS
eNeuro 6 ,
ENEURO.0179-18.2019 (2019).
OVARIAN DYSFUNCTION
Microbiota and
polycystic ovaries
Polycystic ovary syndrome
(PCOS) is a common hormonal
disorder that mainly affects
women of reproductive age. It
results in small ovarian cysts
that can affect fertility, as well
as metabolic conditions such as
insulin resistance and obesity.
Finding an increased presence
of the bacterium Bacteroides
vulgatus in PCOS patients, Qi
et al. report a link between the
gut microbiome and PCOS.
Enhanced abundance of
B. vulgatus was associated
with alterations in gut bile acid
metabolites, which up-regulated
interleukin-22 (IL-22) expres-
sion via TGR5-GATA3 signaling.
Therapeutic administration of
IL-22 perturbed browning of adi-
pose tissue and improved insulin
sensitivity and ovarian function
in mouse models. —PNK
Nat. Med. 25 , 1225 (2019).IMMUNOLOGY
Class (II) warfare
Natural killer (NK) cells are cyto-
toxic lymphocytes that recognize
virus-infected, stressed cells and
tumor cells with both activating
and inhibitory receptors. Many
NK cell receptors bind human
leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I,
which presents self-peptides but
which is often lost within tumors
and during infection. Whether
and how NK cells might then bind
HLA class II molecules, which are
required for adaptive immunity,
remains unclear. Niehrs et al.
report a direct functional
interaction between the NK cell
receptor NKp44 and a subset ofcommonly expressed HLA-DP
molecules, including HLA-DP401.
Intriguingly, the strength of
NK cell binding and activation
was both peptide- and HLA allo-
type–dependent. This work may
help explain previously reported
associations between certain
HLA allotypes and some autoim-
mune, viral, and graft-versus-host
disease outcomes. —STS
Nat. Immunol. 10.1038/
s41590-019-0448-4 (2019).ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
An E-Z resolution
Compounds with carbon-carbon
double bonds can adopt two
distinct geometries, designated E
or Z on the basis of whether the
largest substituents on each car-
bon are across from or adjacent
to each other. Majhi et al. report
a method to transform a mixture
of E and Z reactants into a single
E-configured alkylated product.
This dynamic kinetic resolution
process relies on deprotonating
the carbon next to the double
bond to facilitate the rotation.
Modeling highlights a coordinativerole of the base’s sodium counter-
ion after deprotonation. —JSY
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 141 , 11770 (2019).PSYCHOLOGY
Training to reduce
cognitive biases
Human beings are susceptible
to cognitive biases, such as the
tendency to seek out informa-
tion that confirms their prior
beliefs. Sellier et al. examined
whether a single debiasing
training intervention could
reduce confirmation bias
outside of the training setting.
Students assigned to solve a
business case exercise were
less likely to choose the inferior
confirmatory solution when
they had previously undergone
the debiasing intervention.
These results stand in contrast
to prior work, which had failed
to find evidence that debiasing
training could transfer to other
settings and have implications
for improving decision-making.
—TS R
Psychol. Sci. 1 0. 1 1 7 7/
0956797619861429 (2019).AGRICULTURAL ECOLOGYBenefits of diversity
I
ncreasingly, our planet’s landscapes are
becoming homogenized into large areas
of monoculture of very few species. This
renders food security vulnerable to pests,
disease, and natural disasters. Increasing
biodiversity by encouraging seminatural patches
in a landscape improves crop resilience by
harboring natural predators and pollinators. By
sampling a variety of agricultural landscapes
across North America and Europe, Sirami et al.
show that making fields smaller and crops more
diverse has an even stronger effect on resilience
than just leaving seminatural areas between
crops. This is because crop diversity provides
multiple refuges for predatory animals. Policies
to increase crop heterogeneity may improve
biodiversity in agricultural landscapes without
taking land out of production. —CA
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 10.1073/
pnas.1906419116 (2019).Smaller fields and diverse crops improve the
biodiversity and resilience of farmed landscapes.PHOTO: BLOM/GETTY IMAGES