Hello Nature readers,
Today we take a look at the first physical evidence of lion-human combat in the Roman empire, learn that hundreds of academic papers use artificial intelligence without disclosing it and explore the use of whole-genome sequencing to diagnose rare diseases.

Roman fighters really did face lions

Bite marks found on a skeleton could be the first physical evidence that humans fought lions in the Roman empire. The young man's skeleton — excavated from a UK cemetery where gladiators might have been buried — had puncture marks on the pelvis. Working with London Zoo, researchers compared the impressions with bite marks on horse bones made by big cats such as cheetahs, lions and tigers and found a match with lion bites. The discovery “[reshapes] our perception of Roman entertainment culture in the region”, says anthropologist and study co-author Tim Thompson.

Hundreds of papers hide their AI use

Science sleuths have identified hundreds of cases in which artificial intelligence (AI) tools seem to have been used in the preparation of scientific papers without disclosure. In a preprint analysis of 500 such papers, 13% of them appeared in journals belonging to large publishers, such as Elsevier, Springer Nature and MDPI. In some cases, the papers have been silently corrected — the hallmark AI phrases removed without acknowledgement. This type of quiet change is a potential threat to scientific integrity, say some researchers.

Whole-genome sequencing for rare diseases

When trying to diagnose a rare disease, clinicians often sequence a pre-determined set of genes to try and find a disease-causing variant. This can stretch to a person’s entire exome — all of their protein-coding genes. But the exome only makes up 1.5% of our genome. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) can fill in the rest, capturing variants that might influence how genes are expressed. As WGS becomes cheaper and researchers develop tools that help analyse the data, many geneticists are calling for it to be offered much earlier in the diagnostic process for rare diseases.