Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 121, Number 12
This Week in PNAS
News Feature
Commentaries
Perspective
Transition from laminar to turbulent states of classical viscous fluids is complex
and incompletely understood. Transition to quantum turbulence (QT), by which we mean
the turbulent motion of quantum fluids such as helium II, whose physical properties
...
Letters
View the original article:
Pleiotropic role of TRAF7 in skull-base meningiomas and congenital heart disease
This article has a reply:Reply to Pisan et al.: Pathogenicity of inherited TRAF7 mutations in congenital heart disease
Brief Reports
The bad metallic phase with resistivity above the Mott–Ioffe–Regel (MIR) limit, which
appears also in cuprate superconductors, was recently understood by cold atom and
computer simulations of the Hubbard model via charge susceptibility and charge ...
RN7SL1 (RNA component of signal recognition particle 7SL1), a component of the signal
recognition particle, is a non-coding RNA possessing a small ORF (smORF). However,
whether it is translated into peptides is unknown. Here, we generated the RN7SL1-Green
...
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
Higher-order network models are becoming increasingly relevant for their ability to
explicitly capture interactions between three or more entities in a complex system
at once. In this paper, we study homophily, the tendency for alike individuals to
form ...
Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as “forever chemicals,” are a growing concern
in the sphere of human and environmental health. In response, rapid, reproducible,
and inexpensive methods for PFAS detection in the environment and home water supplies
...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
The organization of interphase chromosomes in a number of species is starting to emerge
thanks to advances in a variety of experimental techniques. However, much less is
known about the dynamics, especially in the functional states of chromatin. Some ...
Many biomolecular condensates, including transcriptional condensates, are formed in
elastic mediums. In this work, we study the nonequilibrium condensate dynamics in
a chromatin-like environment modeled as a heterogeneous elastic medium. We demonstrate
...
Bestrhodopsins constitute a class of light-regulated pentameric ion channels that
consist of one or two rhodopsins in tandem fused with bestrophin ion channel domains.
Here, we report on the isomerization dynamics in the rhodopsin tandem domains of ...
Collective properties of complex systems composed of many interacting components such
as neurons in our brain can be modeled by artificial networks based on disordered
systems. We show that a disordered neural network of superconducting loops with ...
Cells often migrate on curved surfaces inside the body, such as curved tissues, blood
vessels, or highly curved protrusions of other cells. Recent in vitro experiments
provide clear evidence that motile cells are affected by the curvature of the substrate
...
Chemistry
The phlebotomine sandfly, Lutzomyia longipalpis, a major vector of the Leishmania parasite, uses terpene pheromones to attract conspecifics for mating. Examination
of the L. longipalpis genome revealed a putative terpene synthase (TPS), which—upon ...
Accelerating the measurement for discrimination of samples, such as classification
of cell phenotype, is crucial when faced with significant time and cost constraints.
Spontaneous Raman microscopy offers label-free, rich chemical information but suffers
...
Covalent bonding interactions determine the energy–momentum (E–k) dispersion (band structure) of solid-state materials. Here, we show that noncovalent
interactions can modulate the E–k dispersion near the Fermi level of a low-dimensional nanoscale ...
Recent reports have detailed the striking observation that electroactive molecules,
such as hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and radical water species (H2O.+/H2O.−), are spontaneously produced in aqueous microdroplets. Stochastic electrochemistry
allows one to ...
The chemisorption energy of reactants on a catalyst surface, , is among the most informative characteristics of understanding and pinpointing the
optimal catalyst. The intrinsic complexity of catalyst surfaces and chemisorption
reactions presents ...
Nitrogen doped lutetium hydride has drawn global attention in the pursuit of room-temperature
superconductivity near ambient pressure and temperature. However, variable synthesis
techniques and uncertainty surrounding nitrogen concentration have ...
Water microdroplets (7 to 11 µm average diameter, depending on flow rate) are sprayed
in a closed chamber at ambient temperature, whose relative humidity (RH) is controlled.
The resulting concentration of ROS (reactive oxygen species) formed in the ...
TMC-anti and TMC-syn, the two topological isomers of [FeIV(O)(TMC)(CH3CN)]2+ (TMC = 1,4,8,11-tetramethyl-1,4,8,11-tetraazacyclotetradecane, or Me4cyclam), differ in the orientations of their FeIV=O units relative to the four methyl groups of the TMC ...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Deep sea cold seeps are sites where hydrogen sulfide, methane, and other hydrocarbon-rich
fluids vent from the ocean floor. They are an important component of Earth’s carbon
cycle in which subsurface hydrocarbons form the energy source for highly diverse ...
Magnetic fields in protoplanetary disks are thought to play a prominent role in the
formation of planetary bodies. Acting upon turbulence and angular momentum transport,
they may influence the motion of solids and accretion onto the central star. By ...
Terrestrial glacial records from the Patagonian Andes and New Zealand Alps document
quasi-synchronous Southern Hemisphere–wide glacier advances during the late Quaternary.
However, these records are inherently incomplete. Here, we provide a continuous ...
Mercury (Hg) is a contaminant of global concern, and an accurate understanding of
its atmospheric fate is needed to assess its risks to humans and ecosystem health.
Atmospheric oxidation of Hg is key to the deposition of this toxic metal to the Earth’s
...
Deep convection in the Asian summer monsoon is a significant transport process for
lifting pollutants from the planetary boundary layer to the tropopause level. This
process enables efficient injection into the stratosphere of reactive species such
as ...
Delamination of the continental lithospheric mantle is well recorded beneath several
continents. However, the fate of the removed continental lithosphere has been rarely
noted, unlike subducted slabs reasonably well imaged in the upper and mid mantle.
...
The debate on the sign of the soil moisture–precipitation feedback remains open. On
the one hand, studies using global coarse-resolution climate models have found strong
positive feedback. However, such models cannot represent convection explicitly. On
...
Biogeochemical reactions modulate the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere,
providing feedbacks that sustain planetary habitability over geological time. Here,
we mathematically evaluate a suite of biogeochemical processes to identify ...
Many environmental and industrial processes depend on how fluids displace each other
in porous materials. However, the flow dynamics that govern this process are still
poorly understood, hampered by the lack of methods to measure flows in optically opaque,...
Magmatism in the Quaternary Clear Lake volcanic field (CLVF), with its youngest eruption
having only occurred c. 10 ka ago, is commonly invoked as the heat source for the
world’s largest commercial geothermal reservoir, The Geysers, in northern ...
The observed rate of global warming since the 1970s has been proposed as a strong
constraint on equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) and transient climate response
(TCR)—key metrics of the global climate response to greenhouse-gas forcing. Using
CMIP5/6 ...
Engineering
There are many fields where it is of interest to measure the elastic moduli of tiny
fragile fibers, such as filamentous bacteria, actin filaments, DNA, carbon nanotubes,
and functional microfibers. The elastic modulus is typically deduced from a ...
Grain boundaries (GBs) serve not only as strong barriers to dislocation motion, but
also as important carriers to accommodate plastic deformation in crystalline solids.
During deformation, the inherent excess volume associated with loose atomic packing
in ...
Environmental Sciences
Global atmospheric methane concentrations rose by 10 to 15 ppb/y in the 1980s before
abruptly slowing to 2 to 8 ppb/y in the early 1990s. This period in the 1990s is known
as the “methane slowdown” and has been attributed in part to the collapse of the ...
Manipulating exciton dissociation and charge-carrier transfer processes to selectively
generate free radicals of more robust photocatalytic oxidation capacity for mineralizing
refractory pollutants remains challenging. Herein, we propose a strategy by ...
Physics
In conventional thin materials, the diffraction limit of light constrains the number
of waveguide modes that can exist at a given frequency. However, layered van der Waals
(vdW) materials, such as hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), can surpass this limitation
...
Weyl semimetals resulting from either inversion (P) or time-reversal (T) symmetry breaking have been revealed to show the record-breaking large optical response
due to intense Berry curvature of Weyl-node pairs. Different classes of Weyl semimetals
with ...
We develop information-geometric techniques to analyze the trajectories of the predictions
of deep networks during training. By examining the underlying high-dimensional probabilistic
models, we reveal that the training process explores an effectively low-...
Social Sciences
Anthropology
Over the last 12,000 y, human populations have expanded and transformed critical earth
systems. Yet, a key unresolved question in the environmental and social sciences remains:
Why did human populations grow and, sometimes, decline in the first place? Our ...
Environmental Sciences
Addressing the total energy cost burden of elderly people is essential for designing
equitable and effective energy policies, especially in responding to energy crisis
in an aging society. It is due to the double impact of energy price hikes on households—...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
COVID-19 forced students to rely on online learning using multimedia tools, and multimedia
learning continues to impact education beyond the pandemic. In this study, we combined
behavioral, eye-tracking, and neuroimaging paradigms to identify multimedia ...
Humans coordinate their eye, head, and body movements to gather information from a
dynamic environment while maximizing reward and minimizing biomechanical and energetic
costs. However, such natural behavior is not possible in traditional experiments ...
Sociality is a defining feature of the human experience: We rely on others to ensure
survival and cooperate in complex social networks to thrive. Are there brain mechanisms
that help ensure we quickly learn about our social world to optimally navigate it?
...
Policymakers increasingly rely on behavioral science in response to global challenges,
such as climate change or global health crises. But applications of behavioral science
face an important problem: Interventions often exert substantially different ...
Do people’s attitudes toward the (a)symmetry of an outcome distribution affect their
choices? Financial investors seek return distributions with frequent small returns
but few large ones, consistent with leading models of choice in economics and finance
...
Individuals differ in where they fixate on a face, with some looking closer to the
eyes while others prefer the mouth region. These individual biases are highly robust,
generalize from the lab to the outside world, and have been associated with social
...
Social Sciences
Higher-order network models are becoming increasingly relevant for their ability to
explicitly capture interactions between three or more entities in a complex system
at once. In this paper, we study homophily, the tendency for alike individuals to
form ...
Sustainability Science
Addressing the total energy cost burden of elderly people is essential for designing
equitable and effective energy policies, especially in responding to energy crisis
in an aging society. It is due to the double impact of energy price hikes on households—...
Biological Sciences
Biochemistry
The organization of interphase chromosomes in a number of species is starting to emerge
thanks to advances in a variety of experimental techniques. However, much less is
known about the dynamics, especially in the functional states of chromatin. Some ...
The phlebotomine sandfly, Lutzomyia longipalpis, a major vector of the Leishmania parasite, uses terpene pheromones to attract conspecifics for mating. Examination
of the L. longipalpis genome revealed a putative terpene synthase (TPS), which—upon ...
Mutations in the PKD2 gene, which encodes the polycystin-2 (PC2, also called TRPP2) protein, lead to autosomal
dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). As a member of the transient receptor
potential (TRP) channel superfamily, PC2 functions as a non-...
Hsp90s are ATP-dependent chaperones that collaborate with co-chaperones and Hsp70s
to remodel client proteins. Grp94 is the ER Hsp90 homolog essential for folding multiple
secretory and membrane proteins. Grp94 interacts with the ER Hsp70, BiP, although
...
Hydrogen sulfide exposure in moderate doses can induce profound but reversible hypometabolism
in mammals. At a cellular level, H2S inhibits the electron transport chain (ETC), augments aerobic glycolysis, and glutamine-dependent
carbon utilization via ...
Cooperative interactions between amino acids are critical for protein function. A
genetic reflection of cooperativity is epistasis, which is when a change in the amino
acid at one position changes the sequence requirements at another position. To assess
...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Many biomolecular condensates, including transcriptional condensates, are formed in
elastic mediums. In this work, we study the nonequilibrium condensate dynamics in
a chromatin-like environment modeled as a heterogeneous elastic medium. We demonstrate
...
Accelerating the measurement for discrimination of samples, such as classification
of cell phenotype, is crucial when faced with significant time and cost constraints.
Spontaneous Raman microscopy offers label-free, rich chemical information but suffers
...
Cells often migrate on curved surfaces inside the body, such as curved tissues, blood
vessels, or highly curved protrusions of other cells. Recent in vitro experiments
provide clear evidence that motile cells are affected by the curvature of the substrate
...
The marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus is a main contributor to global photosynthesis, whilst being limited by iron availability.
Cyanobacterial genomes generally encode two different types of FutA iron-binding proteins:
periplasmic FutA2 ABC ...
Phase separation drives compartmentalization of intracellular contents into various
biomolecular condensates. Individual condensate components are thought to differentially
contribute to the organization and function of condensates. However, how ...
Since its emergence in late 2019, SARS-CoV-2 has diversified into a large number of
lineages and caused multiple waves of infection globally. Novel lineages have the
potential to spread rapidly and internationally if they have higher intrinsic ...
Replication fork reversal is a fundamental process required for resolution of encounters
with DNA damage. A key step in the stabilization and eventual resolution of reversed
forks is formation of RAD51 nucleoprotein filaments on exposed single strand DNA (...
Cell Biology
FBXW7 is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that targets proteins for proteasome-mediated degradation
and is mutated in various cancer types. Here, we use CRISPR base editors to introduce
different FBXW7 hotspot mutations in human colon organoids. Functionally, FBXW7 ...
Developmental Biology
Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are frequently reactivated in mammalian placenta. It
has been proposed that ERVs contribute to shaping the gene regulatory network of mammalian
trophoblasts, dominantly acting as species- and placental-specific enhancers. ...
During metazoan development, how cell division and metabolic programs are coordinated
with nutrient availability remains unclear. Here, we show that nutrient availability
signaled by the neuronal cytokine, ILC-17.1, switches Caenorhabditis elegans ...
KCTD10 belongs to the KCTD (potassiumchannel tetramerization domain) family, many
members of which are associated with neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the biological
function underlying the association with brain disorders remains to be explored. ...
Ecology
The social system of animals involves a complex interplay between physiology, natural
history, and the environment. Long relied upon discrete categorizations of “social”
and “solitary” inhibit our capacity to understand species and their interactions with
...
View related content:
The green-up of vegetation in spring brings a pulse of food resources that many animals
track during migration. However, green-up phenology is changing with climate change,
posing an immense challenge for species that time their migrations to coincide ...
How animals refine migratory behavior over their lifetime (i.e., the ontogeny of migration)
is an enduring question with important implications for predicting the adaptive capacity
of migrants in a changing world. Yet, our inability to monitor the ...
Environmental Sciences
Over the last 12,000 y, human populations have expanded and transformed critical earth
systems. Yet, a key unresolved question in the environmental and social sciences remains:
Why did human populations grow and, sometimes, decline in the first place? Our ...
Evolution
Introgression is pervasive across the tree of life but varies across taxa, geography,
and genomic regions. However, the factors modulating this variation and how they may
be affected by global change are not well understood. Here, we used 200 genomes and
...
Fossils encompassing multiple individuals provide rare direct evidence of behavioral
interactions among extinct organisms. However, the fossilization process can alter
the spatial relationship between individuals and hinder behavioral reconstruction.
Here,...
Genomic evidence supports an important role for selection in shaping patterns of introgression
along the genome, but frameworks for understanding the evolutionary dynamics within
hybrid populations that underlie these patterns have been lacking. Due to ...
Coevolution is common and frequently governs host–pathogen interaction outcomes. Phenotypes
underlying these interactions often manifest as the combined products of the genomes
of interacting species, yet traditional quantitative trait mapping approaches ...
Genetics
The discovery of the 32-bp deletion allele of the chemokine receptor gene CCR5 showed that homozygous carriers display near-complete resistance to HIV infection,
irrespective of exposure. Algorithms of molecular evolutionary theory suggested that
the CCR5-...
A-to-I RNA editing catalyzed by adenosine-deaminase-acting-on-RNA (ADARs) was assumed
to be unique to metazoans because fungi and plants lack ADAR homologs. However, genome-wide
messenger RNA (mRNA) editing was found to occur specifically during sexual ...
Without the ability to control or randomize environments (or genotypes), it is difficult
to determine the degree to which observed phenotypic differences between two groups
of individuals are due to genetic vs. environmental differences. However, some ...
Meiotic recombination shows broad variations across species and along chromosomes
and is often suppressed at and around genomic regions determining sexual compatibility
such as mating type loci in fungi. Here, we show that the absence of Spo11-DSBs and
...
Immunology and Inflammation
Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) produce type I interferons (IFNs) after sensing
viral/bacterial RNA or DNA by toll-like receptor (TLR) 7 or TLR9, respectively. However,
aberrant pDCs activation can cause adverse effects on the host and contributes to
...
Lymphocyte activation gene-3 (LAG-3) is an inhibitory receptor expressed on activated
T cells and an emerging immunotherapy target. Domain 1 (D1) of LAG-3, which has been
purported to directly interact with major histocompatibility complex class II (MHCII)...
Microbiology
The presence of viruses that spread to both plant and fungal populations in nature
has posed intriguingly scientific question. We found a negative-strand RNA virus related
to members of the family Phenuiviridae, named Valsa mali negative-strand RNA virus ...
This study supports the development of predictive bacteriophage (phage) therapy: the
concept of phage cocktail selection to treat a bacterial infection based on machine
learning (ML) models. For this purpose, ML models were trained on thousands of ...
Potential Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) transmission during different pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) disease states is poorly
understood. We quantified viable aerosolized Mtb from TB clinic attendees following diagnosis and through six months’ follow-up ...
Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection of monocytes is essential for viral dissemination
and persistence. We previously identified that HCMV entry/internalization and subsequent
productive infection of this clinically relevant cell type is distinct when ...
Neuroscience
COVID-19 forced students to rely on online learning using multimedia tools, and multimedia
learning continues to impact education beyond the pandemic. In this study, we combined
behavioral, eye-tracking, and neuroimaging paradigms to identify multimedia ...
Myelination of neuronal axons is essential for nervous system development. Myelination
requires dramatic cytoskeletal dynamics in oligodendrocytes, but how actin is regulated
during myelination is poorly understood. We recently identified serum response ...
Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex (EC) encode an individual’s location in space,
integrating both environmental and multisensory bodily cues. Notably, body-derived
signals are also primary signals for the sense of self. While studies have demonstrated
...
Across the animal kingdom, visual predation relies on motion-sensing neurons in the
superior colliculus (SC) and its orthologs. These neurons exhibit complex stimulus
preferences, including direction selectivity, which is thought to be critical for
...
Plant Biology
The spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) ensures faithful chromosome segregation during
cell division by monitoring kinetochore-microtubule attachment. Plants produce both
sequence-conserved and diverged SAC components, and it has been largely unknown how
...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Humans coordinate their eye, head, and body movements to gather information from a
dynamic environment while maximizing reward and minimizing biomechanical and energetic
costs. However, such natural behavior is not possible in traditional experiments ...
Individuals differ in where they fixate on a face, with some looking closer to the
eyes while others prefer the mouth region. These individual biases are highly robust,
generalize from the lab to the outside world, and have been associated with social
...
The memory benefit that arises from distributing learning over time rather than in
consecutive sessions is one of the most robust effects in cognitive psychology. While
prior work has mainly focused on repeated exposures to the same information, in the
...
Correction
Cover image: Pictured is an oligodendrocyte cell extending actin-rich processes (blue) built by actin-nucleating proteins (magenta). Tal Iram, Miguel Garcia et al. used genetic sequencing and mouse models to explore the cellular mechanisms controlling the formation of myelin sheaths by oligodendrocytes during central nervous system development. The authors found that serum response factor (SRF) directly regulated the expression of actin regulatory genes involved in the morphological changes oligodendrocytes undergo during myelination. SRF also inhibited gene expression associated with aging and neurodegenerative diseases, which could inform the development of treatments for myelin loss or dysfunction. See the article by Iram, Garcia, et al. e2307250121. Image credit: Andrew Olson and J. Bradley Zuchero (Stanford University, Stanford, CA).
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