Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 121, Number 13
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Perspectives
Equity is core to sustainability, but current interventions to enhance sustainability
often fall short in adequately addressing this linkage. Models are important tools
for informing action, and their development and use present opportunities to center
...
It is common for social scientists to discuss the implications of our research for
policy. However, what actions can we take to inform policy in more immediate and impactful
ways, regardless of our existing institutional affiliations or personal ...
Letters
Brief Reports
Can insects weighing mere grams challenge our current understanding of fluid dynamics
in urination, jetting fluids like their larger mammalian counterparts? Current fluid
urination models, predominantly formulated for mammals, suggest that jetting is ...
The huge carbon stock in humus layers of the boreal forest plays a critical role in
the global carbon cycle. However, there remains uncertainty about the factors that
regulate below-ground carbon sequestration in this region. Notably, based on evidence
...
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
Chirality is a geometric property describing the lack of mirror symmetry. This unique
feature enables photonic spin-selectivity in light–matter interaction, which is of
great significance in stereochemistry, drug development, quantum optics, and optical
...
The structure and intensity of turbulence in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL)
drive fluxes of sediment, contaminants, heat, moisture, and CO at the Earth’s surface. Where ABL flows encounter changes in roughness—such as cities,
wind farms, forest ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Aerosols play a major role in the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The behavior
of the virus within aerosols is therefore of fundamental importance. On the surface
of a SARS-CoV-2 virus, there are about 40 spike proteins, which each have a length
of ...
Protein structure prediction has been greatly improved by deep learning in the past
few years. However, the most successful methods rely on multiple sequence alignment
(MSA) of the sequence homologs of the protein under prediction. In nature, a protein
...
The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) forms an interconnected network of tubules stretching
throughout the cell. Understanding how ER functionality relies on its structural organization
is crucial for elucidating cellular vulnerability to ER perturbations, which ...
Chemistry
The incessant mutations of viruses, variable immune responses, and likely emergence
of new viral threats necessitate multiple approaches to novel antiviral therapeutics.
Furthermore, the new antiviral agents should have broad-spectrum activity and be ...
Photothermal heating and photocatalytic treatment are two solar-driven water processing
approaches by harnessing NIR and UV-vis light, respectively, which can fully utilize
solar energy if integrated. However, it remains a challenge to achieve high ...
Label-free optical imaging of single-nanometer-scale matter is extremely important
for a variety of biomedical, physical, and chemical investigations. One central challenge
is that the background intensity is much stronger than the intensity of the ...
The extractant-assisted transport of metal ions from aqueous to organic environments
by liquid–liquid extraction has been widely used to separate and recover critical
elements on an industrial scale. While current efforts focus on designing better ...
Computer Sciences
In ecological contexts, it is conventionally expected that increased food availability
would boost consumption, particularly when animals prioritize maximizing their food
intake. This paper challenges this conventional wisdom by conducting an in-depth ...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Two recently published analyses make cases for severe bottlenecking of human populations
occurring in the late Early Pleistocene, one case at about 0.9 Mya based on a genomic
analysis of modern human populations and the low number of hominin sites of this ...
Although the last several decades have seen a dramatic reduction in emissions from
vehicular exhaust, nonexhaust emissions (e.g., brake and tire wear) represent an increasingly
significant class of traffic-related particulate pollution. Aerosol particles ...
Engineering
Alveolar soft-part sarcoma (ASPS) is a slow-growing soft tissue sarcoma with high
mortality rates that affects adolescents and young adults. ASPS resists conventional
chemotherapy; thus, decades of research have elucidated pathogenic mechanisms driving
...
Tactile perception of softness serves a critical role in the survival, well-being,
and social interaction among various species, including humans. This perception informs
activities from food selection in animals to medical palpation for disease detection
...
Multi-principal element alloys (MPEAs) exhibit outstanding strength attributed to
the complex dislocation dynamics as compared to conventional alloys. Here, we develop
an atomic-lattice-distortion-dependent discrete dislocation dynamics framework ...
Organic electrodes mainly consisting of C, O, H, and N are promising candidates for
advanced batteries. However, the sluggish ionic and electronic conductivity limit
the full play of their high theoretical capacities. Here, we integrate the idea of
metal-...
Stimuli-responsive soft robots offer new capabilities for the fields of medical and
rehabilitation robotics, artificial intelligence, and soft electronics. Precisely
programming the shape morphing and decoupling the multiresponsiveness of such robots
is ...
Environmental Sciences
During wildfires and fossil fuel combustion, biomass is converted to black carbon
(BC) via incomplete combustion. BC enters the ocean by rivers and atmospheric deposition
contributing to the marine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) pool. The fate of BC is
...
Physics
Many cells face search problems, such as finding food, mates, or shelter, where their
success depends on their search strategy. In contrast to other unicellular organisms,
the slime mold Physarum polycephalum forms a giant network-shaped plasmodium while ...
One of the fundamental steps toward understanding a complex system is identifying
variation at the scale of the system’s components that is most relevant to behavior
on a macroscopic scale. Mutual information provides a natural means of linking variation
...
Most macroscopic magnetic phenomena (including magnetic hysteresis) are typically
understood classically. Here, we examine the dynamics of a uniaxial rare-earth ferromagnet
deep within the quantum regime, so that domain wall motion, and the associated ...
We demonstrate an exceptional ability of a high-polarization 3D ferroelectric liquid
to form freely suspended fluid fibers at room temperature. Unlike fluid threads in
modulated smectics and columnar phases, where translational order is a prerequisite
for ...
Weyl semimetal showing open-arc surface states is a prominent example of topological
quantum matter in three dimensions. With the bulk-boundary correspondence present,
nontrivial surface–bulk hybridization is inevitable but less understood. Spectroscopies
...
Sustainability Science
High-entropy alloy nanoparticles (HEANs) possessing regulated defect structure and
electron interaction exhibit a guideline for constructing multifunctional catalysts.
However, the microstructure–activity relationship between active sites of HEANs for
...
Social Sciences
Environmental Sciences
Renewable power generation is the key to decarbonizing the electricity system. Wind
power is the fastest-growing renewable source of electricity in the United States.
However, expanding wind capacity often faces local opposition, partly due to a perceived
...
Political Sciences
Democratic regimes flourish only when there is broad acceptance of an extensive set
of norms and values. In the United States, fundamental democratic norms have recently
come under threat from prominent Republican officials. We investigate whether this
...
Sustainability Science
The present study examines the assumptions, modeling structure, and results of DICE-2023,
the revised Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy (DICE), updated to
2023. The revision contains major changes in the treatment of risk, the carbon and
...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
In this study, we model and predict rice yields by integrating molecular marker variation,
varietal productivity, and climate, focusing on the Southern U.S. rice-growing region.
This region spans the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and ...
By releasing specialized metabolites, plants modify their environment. Whether and
how specialized metabolites protect plants against toxic levels of trace elements
is not well understood. We evaluated whether benzoxazinoids, which are released into
the ...
The evolution of pest resistance to management tools reduces productivity and results
in economic losses in agricultural systems. To slow its emergence and spread, monitoring
and prevention practices are implemented in resistance management programs. ...
Anthropology
Two recently published analyses make cases for severe bottlenecking of human populations
occurring in the late Early Pleistocene, one case at about 0.9 Mya based on a genomic
analysis of modern human populations and the low number of hominin sites of this ...
Biochemistry
The incessant mutations of viruses, variable immune responses, and likely emergence
of new viral threats necessitate multiple approaches to novel antiviral therapeutics.
Furthermore, the new antiviral agents should have broad-spectrum activity and be ...
Lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) are monocopper enzymes that oxidatively
degrade various polysaccharides, such as cellulose. Despite extensive research on
this class of enzymes, the role played by their C-terminal regions predicted to be
...
All biological hydroxylation reactions are thought to derive the oxygen atom from
one of three inorganic oxygen donors, O2, H2O2, or H2O. Here, we have identified the organic compound prephenate as the oxygen donor for
the three hydroxylation steps of the ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Many cells face search problems, such as finding food, mates, or shelter, where their
success depends on their search strategy. In contrast to other unicellular organisms,
the slime mold Physarum polycephalum forms a giant network-shaped plasmodium while ...
In ecological contexts, it is conventionally expected that increased food availability
would boost consumption, particularly when animals prioritize maximizing their food
intake. This paper challenges this conventional wisdom by conducting an in-depth ...
Molecular motors employ chemical energy to generate unidirectional mechanical output
against a track while navigating a chaotic cellular environment, potential disorder
on the track, and against Brownian motion. Nevertheless, decades of nanometer-precise
...
The design of protein–protein interfaces using physics-based design methods such as
Rosetta requires substantial computational resources and manual refinement by expert
structural biologists. Deep learning methods promise to simplify protein–protein ...
Eukaryotic cells form condensates to sense and adapt to their environment [S. F. Banani,
H. O. Lee, A. A. Hyman, M. K. Rosen, Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 18, 285–298 (2017), H. Yoo, C. Triandafillou, D. A. Drummond, J. Biol. Chem. 294, 7151–7159 (2019)]. ...
Cell Biology
The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) forms an interconnected network of tubules stretching
throughout the cell. Understanding how ER functionality relies on its structural organization
is crucial for elucidating cellular vulnerability to ER perturbations, which ...
Huntington’s disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by an
expanded CAG repeat in the huntingtin (HTT) gene. The repeat-expanded HTT encodes a mutated HTT (mHTT), which is known to induce DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs),
activation ...
Lysosome-targeting chimeras (LYTACs) are a promising therapeutic modality to drive
the degradation of extracellular proteins. However, early versions of LYTAC contain
synthetic glycopeptides that cannot be genetically encoded. Here, we present our designs
...
Protein kinase A (PKA) is a ubiquitous, promiscuous kinase whose activity is specified
through subcellular localization mediated by A-kinase anchoring proteins (AKAPs).
PKA has complex roles as both an effector and a regulator of integrin-mediated cell
...
Developmental Biology
Alveolar soft-part sarcoma (ASPS) is a slow-growing soft tissue sarcoma with high
mortality rates that affects adolescents and young adults. ASPS resists conventional
chemotherapy; thus, decades of research have elucidated pathogenic mechanisms driving
...
During development, motor axons are guided toward muscle target by various extrinsic
cues including extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins whose identities and cellular source
remain poorly characterized. Here, using single-cell RNAseq of sorted GFP+ cells ...
Ecology
Deforestation poses a global threat to biodiversity and its capacity to deliver ecosystem
services. Yet, the impacts of deforestation on soil biodiversity and its associated
ecosystem services remain virtually unknown. We generated a global dataset ...
Multiple facets of global change affect the earth system interactively, with complex
consequences for ecosystem functioning and stability. Simultaneous climate and biodiversity
change are of particular concern, because biodiversity may contribute to ...
Evolution
With ~14,000 extant species, ants are ubiquitous and of tremendous ecological importance.
They have undergone remarkable diversification throughout their evolutionary history.
However, the drivers of their diversity dynamics are not well quantified or ...
Mating type (sex) plays a crucial role in regulating sexual reproduction in most extant
eukaryotes. One of the functions of mating types is ensuring self-incompatibility
to some extent, thereby promoting genetic diversity. However, heterothallic mating
is ...
The chronology and phylogeny of bacterial evolution are difficult to reconstruct due
to a scarce fossil record. The analysis of bacterial genomes remains challenging because
of large sequence divergence, the plasticity of bacterial genomes due to frequent
...
Microbiota comprise the bulk of life’s diversity, yet we know little about how populations
of microbes accumulate adaptive diversity across natural landscapes. Adaptation to
stressful soil conditions in plants provides seminal examples of adaptation in ...
Genetics
To maintain fertility, male mice re-repress transposable elements (TEs) that were
de-silenced in the early gonocytes before their differentiation into spermatogonia.
However, the mechanism of TE silencing re-establishment remains unknown. Here, we
found ...
Immunology and Inflammation
Memory B cells (MBCs) play a critical role in protection against homologous and variant
pathogen challenge by either differentiating to plasma cells (PCs) or to germinal
center (GC) B cells. The human MBC compartment contains both switched IgG+ and ...
Lactate–proton symporter monocarboxylate transporter 1 (MCT1) facilitates lactic acid
export from T cells. Here, we report that MCT1 is mandatory for the development of
virus-specific CD8+ T cell memory. MCT1-deficient T cells were exposed to acute ...
Maternal immunoglobulins of the class G (IgGs) protect offspring from enteric infection,
but when, where, and how these antibodies are physiologically generated and confer
protection remains enigmatic. We found that circulating IgGs in adult mice ...
The use of lipid nanoparticles (LNP) to encapsulate and deliver mRNA has become an
important therapeutic advance. In addition to vaccines, LNP-mRNA can be used in many
other applications. For example, targeting the LNP with anti-CD5 antibodies (CD5/tLNP)
...
Medical Sciences
Polyamines are a class of small polycationic alkylamines that play essential roles
in both normal and cancer cell growth. Polyamine metabolism is frequently dysregulated
and considered a therapeutic target in cancer. However, targeting polyamine ...
Microbiology
Biofilms of sulfate-reducing bacterium (SRB) like Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough (DvH) can facilitate metal corrosion in various industrial and environmental
settings leading to substantial economic losses. Although the mechanisms of biofilm
...
Human retroviruses are derived from simian ones through cross-species transmission.
These retroviruses are associated with little pathogenicity in their natural hosts,
but in humans, HIV causes AIDS, and human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) induces
...
When faced with starvation, the bacterium Bacillus subtilis transforms itself into a dormant cell type called a "spore". Sporulation initiates
with an asymmetric division event, which requires the relocation of the core divisome
components FtsA and FtsZ, ...
Glucuronidation is a detoxification process to eliminate endo- and xeno-biotics and
neurotransmitters from the host circulation. Glucuronosyltransferase binds these compounds
to glucuronic acid (GlcA), deactivating them and allowing their elimination ...
Autotrophic theories for the origin of metabolism posit that the first cells satisfied
their carbon needs from CO2 and were chemolithoautotrophs that obtained their energy and electrons from H2. The acetyl-CoA pathway of CO2 fixation is central to that ...
Neuroscience
Sleep is an evolutionarily conserved state that supports brain functions, including
synaptic plasticity, in species across the animal kingdom. Here, we examine the neuroanatomical
and cell-type distribution of presynaptic scaling in the fly brain after ...
The molecular basis for cortical expansion during evolution remains largely unknown.
Here, we report that fibroblast growth factor (FGF)-extracellular signal-regulated
kinase (ERK) signaling promotes the self-renewal and expansion of cortical radial
glial ...
We show that nocturnal aversive stimuli presented to mice while they are eating and
drinking outside of their safe nest can entrain circadian behaviors, leading to a
shift toward daytime activity. We also show that the canonical molecular circadian
clock ...
Proper expression of odor receptor genes is critical for the function of olfactory
systems. In this study, we identified exitrons (exonic introns) in four of the 39
Odorant receptor (Or) genes expressed in the Drosophila antenna. Exitrons are sequences ...
Pharmacology
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a subtype of breast cancer with aggressive
behavior and poor prognosis. Current therapeutic options available for TNBC patients
are primarily chemotherapy. With our evolving understanding of this disease, novel
...
Physiology
Orphan solute carrier (SLC) represents a group of membrane transporters whose exact
functions and substrate specificities are not known. Elucidating the function and
regulation of orphan SLC transporters is not only crucial for advancing our knowledge
of ...
Elevated cancer metabolism releases lactic acid and CO2 into the under-perfused tumor microenvironment, resulting in extracellular acidosis.
The surviving cancer cells must adapt to this selection pressure; thus, targeting
tumor acidosis is a rational ...
Sustainability Science
In this study, we model and predict rice yields by integrating molecular marker variation,
varietal productivity, and climate, focusing on the Southern U.S. rice-growing region.
This region spans the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and ...
Deforestation poses a global threat to biodiversity and its capacity to deliver ecosystem
services. Yet, the impacts of deforestation on soil biodiversity and its associated
ecosystem services remain virtually unknown. We generated a global dataset ...
Correction
Cover image: Pictured is Pseudomyrmex spinicola in an acacia tree nest. Corentin Jouault et al. explored the diversification of ants by combining data from 24,000 occurrences of ants in the fossil record with data on the evolutionary lineages of around 14,000 living ant species. The analysis revealed a major ant extinction event during the Late Cretaceous Period and three periods of diversification. Although the extinction may have been due to hyperspecialized ant morphology, ants likely diversified along with flowering plants during the Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution, between 100 million and 50 million years ago. See the article by Jouault et al. e2317795121. Image credit: Alex Wild (photographer).
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