Naked mole-rat

Two science communications projects of the Max Delbrück Center have received funding from the Stiftung Charité. About 100,000 Euro will go to Gary Lewin and illustrator Kat Menschik for a book on unusual animals in research, and to Russ Hodge and Jennifer von Schlichting for a board game on gene expression.

The UK’s Physiological Society has named Gary Lewin an Honorary Fellow. Two Nobel Prize laureates in Physiology or Medicine also received the distinction. It is the highest honor that the tradition-rich society presents to an individual.

For his outstanding doctoral thesis on sexual communication in fruit flies, the Max Planck Society awards an Otto Hahn Medal to neuroscientist Mohammed Khallaf Ali. At the MDC, he works in the Lewin lab and is dedicated to the sensation of touch and pain in animals.

Gary Lewin conducts research at MDC on signaling in human bodies. He looks at how the sense of touch and pain function, especially in the naked mole rat. It can survive for a very long time without oxygen, is largely insensitive to pain, and lives remarkably long. In the Resonator podcast, Lewin talks about these animals and his research.

Naked mole-rats are full of surprises. The latest is that higher-ranked mole-rats most likely have an immunological advantage over animals with lower social status, a discovery made by Professor Gary Lewin’s lab at the MDC. The team is now reporting its findings in "Open Biology".

Both researchers study communication, but at different levels: Dr. Stefanie Grosswendt and Dr. Alison Barker have been awarded European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants. The prestigious grants provide about €1.5 million in funding over a period of five years.

Some converse in Creole, while others speak Scots, but it’s not only humans who can be identified by the diversity of language they speak. Naked mole-rats have their own dialects, too. Shared dialect also strengthens cohesion within a colony, a team led by MDC researcher Gary Lewin reports in the current "Science" cover story.

What can we learn from prairie voles, Burmese pythons, shortfin mollies, and naked mole rats? Researchers from across the world are studying unusual laboratory animals with astonishing traits in their quest to answer important questions in the fields of biomedicine and neuroscience.

Learning from naked mole-rats is key to Jane Reznick’s research into new therapies for heart disease and strokes. She has now been awarded an ERC Starting Grant, which will help her to start her own group and fund her work to the tune of €1.55 million over five years.

African mole-rats are insensitive to many different kinds of pain. As an international research team led by the MDC’s Gary Lewin reports in Science, this characteristic has even allowed mole-rats to populate new habitats. Thanks to a genetic change, the highveld mole-rat is able to live alongside venomous ants with painful stings that other mole-rats avoid.