Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 121, Number 9
This Week in PNAS
Opinion
Retrospective
Profile
Commentaries
Perspective
Sleep, circadian rhythms, and mental health are reciprocally interlinked. Disruption
to the quality, continuity, and timing of sleep can precipitate or exacerbate psychiatric
symptoms in susceptible individuals, while treatments that target sleep—...
Letters
This article has a reply:
Reply to Lukhtanov: Polytypic species: Old wine in a new bottle
View the original article:Physical Sciences
Applied Mathematics
How do vessels find optimal radii? Capillaries are known to adapt their radii to maintain
the shear stress of blood flow at the vessel wall at a set point, yet models of adaptation
purely based on average shear stress have not been able to produce complex ...
Applied Physical Sciences
Achieving high-performance materials with superior mechanical properties and electrical
conductivity, especially in large-sized bulk forms, has always been the goal. However,
it remains a grand challenge due to the inherent trade-off between these ...
Solutions of long, flexible polymer molecules are complex fluids that simultaneously
exhibit fluid-like and solid-like behavior. When subjected to an external flow, dilute
polymer solutions exhibit elastic turbulence—a unique, chaotic flow state absent in
...
Hydrogen (H2) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) play crucial roles as energy carriers and raw materials for industrial production.
However, the current techniques for H2 and H2O2 production rely on complex catalysts and involve multiple intermediate steps. In
...
Astronomy
We propose Multiscale Flow, a generative Normalizing Flow that creates samples and
models the field-level likelihood of two-dimensional cosmological data such as weak
lensing. Multiscale Flow uses hierarchical decomposition of cosmological fields via
a ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
The cooperative action of the subunits in oligomeric receptors enables fine-tuning
of receptor activation, as demonstrated for the regulation of voltage-activated HCN
pacemaker ion channels by relating cAMP binding to channel activation in ensemble
...
Noise control, together with other regulatory functions facilitated by microRNAs (miRNAs),
is believed to have played important roles in the evolution of multicellular eukaryotic
organisms. miRNAs can dampen protein fluctuations via enhanced degradation ...
The onset of apoptosis is characterized by a cascade of caspase activation, where
initiator caspases are activated by a multimeric adaptor complex known as the apoptosome.
In Drosophila melanogaster, the initiator caspase Dronc undergoes autocatalytic ...
Mutations at a highly conserved homologous residue in three closely related muscle
myosins cause three distinct diseases involving muscle defects: R671C in β-cardiac
myosin causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, R672C and R672H in embryonic skeletal myosin
...
Enzymes catalyze biochemical reactions through precise positioning of substrates,
cofactors, and amino acids to modulate the transition-state free energy. However,
the role of conformational dynamics remains poorly understood due to poor experimental
...
Chemistry
Additive manufacturing capable of controlling and dynamically modulating structures
down to the nanoscopic scale remains challenging. By marrying additive manufacturing
with self-assembly, we develop a UV (ultra-violet)-assisted direct ink write approach
...
Photo-catalytic CO2 reduction with perovskite quantum dots (QDs) shows potential for solar energy storage,
but it encounters challenges due to the intricate multi-electron photoreduction processes
and thermodynamic and kinetic obstacles associated with ...
The ability of thin materials to shape-shift is a common occurrence that leads to
dynamic pattern formation and function in natural and man-made structures. However,
harnessing this concept to rationally design inorganic structures at the nanoscale
has ...
Photon-controlled pyroptosis activation (PhotoPyro) is a promising technique for cancer
immunotherapy due to its noninvasive nature, precise control, and ease of operation.
Here, we report that biomolecular photoredox catalysis in cells might be an ...
Computer Sciences
Modern deep networks are trained with stochastic gradient descent (SGD) whose key
hyperparameters are the number of data considered at each step or batch size , and the step size or learning rate . For small and large , SGD corresponds to a stochastic ...
Engineering
Generating strong rapid adhesion between hydrogels has the potential to advance the
capabilities of modern medicine and surgery. Current hydrogel adhesion technologies
rely primarily on liquid-based diffusion mechanisms and the formation of covalent
bonds,...
View related content:
Creating tissue and organ equivalents with intricate architectures and multiscale
functional feature sizes is the first step toward the reconstruction of transplantable
human tissues and organs. Existing embedded ink writing approaches are limited by
...
Mechanical grasping and holding devices depend upon a firm and controlled grip. The
possibility to improve this gripping performance is severely limited by the need for
miniaturization in many applications, such as robotics, microassembly, or surgery.
In ...
Environmental Sciences
Effectively managing sewage sludge from Fenton reactions in an eco-friendly way is
vital for Fenton technology’s viability in pollution treatment. This study focuses
on sewage sludge across various treatment stages, including generation, concentration,
...
Creating efficient catalysts for simultaneous H2O2 generation and pollutant degradation is vital. Piezocatalytic H2O2 synthesis offers a promising alternative to traditional methods but faces challenges
like sacrificial reagents, harsh conditions, and low ...
Physics
Considerable progress has been made in the experimental studies on laser-induced terahertz
(THz) radiation in liquids. Liquid THz demonstrates many unique features different
from the gas and plasma THz. For example, the liquid THz can be efficiently ...
We experimentally and theoretically study the dynamics of a one-dimensional array
of pendula with a mild spatial gradient in their self-frequency and where neighboring
pendula are connected with weak and alternating coupling. We map their dynamics to
the ...
Sustainability Science
Nickel–iron oxy/hydroxides (NiFeOxHy) emerge as an attractive type of electrocatalysts for alkaline water oxidation reaction
(WOR), but which encounter a huge challenge in stability, especially at industrial-grade
large current density due to ...
Social Sciences
Anthropology
While it is commonly assumed that farmers have higher, and foragers lower, fertility
compared to populations practicing other forms of subsistence, robust supportive evidence
is lacking. We tested whether subsistence activities—incorporating market ...
Economic Sciences
This study investigates Black and White consumers’ preferences for Black versus White
people in United States advertising contexts over 66 y, from 1956 until 2022, a time
in which the United States has experienced significant ethno-racial diversification.
...
We administer a Turing test to AI chatbots. We examine how chatbots behave in a suite
of classic behavioral games that are designed to elicit characteristics such as trust,
fairness, risk-aversion, cooperation, etc., as well as how they respond to a ...
View related content:
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, aging, and the manifestation
of psychiatric and neurological disorders. However, our understanding of sex differences
in human functional brain organization and their behavioral consequences has been
...
Gossip, the exchange of personal information about absent third parties, is ubiquitous
in human societies. However, the evolution of gossip remains a puzzle. The current
article proposes an evolutionary cycle of gossip and uses an agent-based evolutionary
...
Theories of moral development propose that empathy is transmitted across individuals.
However, the mechanisms through which empathy is socially transmitted remain unclear.
Here, we combine computational learning models and functional MRI to investigate ...
Social Sciences
Deportation threat predicts Latino US citizens and noncitizens’ psychological distress, 2011 to 2018
The national context of deportation threat, defined as the federal government’s approach
to deportation and/or deportation’s salience to the US public, fluctuated between
2011 and 2018. US Latinos across citizenship statuses may have experienced growing
...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
Terrestrial enhanced weathering (EW) of silicate rocks, such as crushed basalt, on
farmlands is a promising scalable atmospheric carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy
that urgently requires performance assessment with commercial farming practices. We
...
Anthropology
While it is commonly assumed that farmers have higher, and foragers lower, fertility
compared to populations practicing other forms of subsistence, robust supportive evidence
is lacking. We tested whether subsistence activities—incorporating market ...
Applied Biological Sciences
Creating tissue and organ equivalents with intricate architectures and multiscale
functional feature sizes is the first step toward the reconstruction of transplantable
human tissues and organs. Existing embedded ink writing approaches are limited by
...
Mechanical grasping and holding devices depend upon a firm and controlled grip. The
possibility to improve this gripping performance is severely limited by the need for
miniaturization in many applications, such as robotics, microassembly, or surgery.
In ...
Biochemistry
The onset of apoptosis is characterized by a cascade of caspase activation, where
initiator caspases are activated by a multimeric adaptor complex known as the apoptosome.
In Drosophila melanogaster, the initiator caspase Dronc undergoes autocatalytic ...
The drug terazosin (TZ) binds to and can enhance the activity of the glycolytic enzyme
phosphoglycerate kinase 1 (PGK1) and can increase ATP levels. That finding prompted
studies of TZ in Parkinson’s disease (PD) in which decreased neuronal energy ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
How do vessels find optimal radii? Capillaries are known to adapt their radii to maintain
the shear stress of blood flow at the vessel wall at a set point, yet models of adaptation
purely based on average shear stress have not been able to produce complex ...
The cooperative action of the subunits in oligomeric receptors enables fine-tuning
of receptor activation, as demonstrated for the regulation of voltage-activated HCN
pacemaker ion channels by relating cAMP binding to channel activation in ensemble
...
Mutations at a highly conserved homologous residue in three closely related muscle
myosins cause three distinct diseases involving muscle defects: R671C in β-cardiac
myosin causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, R672C and R672H in embryonic skeletal myosin
...
Enzymes catalyze biochemical reactions through precise positioning of substrates,
cofactors, and amino acids to modulate the transition-state free energy. However,
the role of conformational dynamics remains poorly understood due to poor experimental
...
Apoptosis linked Gene-2 (ALG-2) is a multifunctional intracellular Ca2+ sensor and the archetypal member of the penta-EF hand protein family. ALG-2 functions
in the repair of damage to both the plasma and lysosome membranes and in COPII-dependent
budding ...
Heart muscle has the unique property that it can never rest; all cardiomyocytes contract
with each heartbeat which requires a complex control mechanism to regulate cardiac
output to physiological requirements. Changes in calcium concentration regulate the
...
The cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) is a chloride channel
that regulates transepithelial salt and fluid homeostasis. CFTR dysfunction leads
to reduced chloride secretion into the mucosal lining of epithelial tissues, thereby
...
The self-assembly of proteins into curved structures plays an important role in many
cellular processes. One good example of this phenomenon is observed in the septum-forming
protein (SepF), which forms polymerized structures with uniform curvatures. SepF ...
Glioblastomas (GBMs) are the most lethal primary brain tumors with limited survival,
even under aggressive treatments. The current therapeutics for GBMs are flawed due
to the failure to accurately discriminate between normal proliferating cells and ...
Voltage-gated sodium channels (Nav) undergo conformational shifts in response to membrane potential changes, a mechanism
known as the electromechanical coupling. To delineate the structure–function relationship
of human Nav channels, we have performed ...
Cell Biology
The intricate interplay between biomechanical and biochemical pathways in modulating
morphogenesis is an interesting research topic. How biomechanical force regulates
epithelial cell tubulogenesis remains poorly understood. Here, we established a model
of ...
The spindle protein CKAP2 regulates microtubule dynamics and ensures faithful chromosome segregation
Regulation of microtubule dynamics by microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) is essential
for mitotic spindle assembly and chromosome segregation. Altered microtubule dynamics,
particularly increased microtubule growth rates, were found to be a ...
Cell–cell apical junctions of epithelia consist of multiprotein complexes that organize
as belts regulating cell–cell adhesion, permeability, and mechanical tension: the
tight junction (zonula occludens), the zonula adherens (ZA), and the macula adherens. ...
Evolution
Genomic time series from experimental evolution studies and ancient DNA datasets offer
us a chance to directly observe the interplay of various evolutionary forces. We show
how the genome-wide variance in allele frequency change between two time points ...
Embryonic development is often considered shielded from the effects of natural selection,
being selected primarily for reliable development. However, embryos sometimes represent
virulent parasites, triggering a coevolutionary “arms race” with their host. ...
Genetics
Nascent proteins destined for the cell membrane and the secretory pathway are targeted
to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) either posttranslationally or cotranslationally.
The signal-independent pathway, containing the protein TMEM208, is one of three ...
Immunology and Inflammation
Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are innate-like T lymphocytes that express
an invariant T cell receptor α chain and contribute to bridging innate and acquired
immunity with rapid production of large amounts of cytokines after stimulation. Among
...
To ensure a robust immune response to pathogens without risking immunopathology, the
kinetics and amplitude of inflammatory gene expression in macrophages need to be exquisitely
well controlled. There is a growing appreciation for stress-responsive ...
The molecular mechanisms leading to the establishment of immunological memory are
inadequately understood, limiting the development of effective vaccines and durable
antitumor immune therapies. Here, we show that ectopic OCA-B expression is sufficient
to ...
Medical Sciences
The Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homologue KRAS is among the most commonly mutated oncogenes in human cancers, thus representing
an attractive target for precision oncology. The approval for clinical use of the
first selective inhibitors of G12C ...
Generating strong rapid adhesion between hydrogels has the potential to advance the
capabilities of modern medicine and surgery. Current hydrogel adhesion technologies
rely primarily on liquid-based diffusion mechanisms and the formation of covalent
bonds,...
View related content:
MECP2, CDKL5, and FMR1 are three X-linked neurodevelopmental genes associated with Rett, CDKL5-, and fragile-X
syndrome, respectively. These syndromes are characterized by distinct constellations
of severe cognitive and neurobehavioral anomalies, ...
Microbiology
The ubiquitous RNA chaperone Hfq is involved in the regulation of key biological processes
in many species across the bacterial kingdom. In the opportunistic human pathogen
Klebsiella pneumoniae, deletion of the hfq gene affects the global transcriptome, ...
Diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs) are used by bacteria, archaea, and viruses
as a targeted mutagenesis tool. Through error-prone reverse transcription, DGRs introduce
random mutations at specific genomic loci, enabling rapid evolution of these ...
Recurrent, ancient arms races between viruses and hosts have shaped both host immunological
defense strategies as well as viral countermeasures. One such battle is waged by the
glycoprotein US11 encoded by the persisting human cytomegalovirus. US11 ...
Babesiosis is an emerging zoonosis and widely distributed veterinary infection caused by 100+
species of Babesia parasites. The diversity of Babesia parasites and the lack of specific drugs necessitate the discovery of broadly effective
antibabesials. ...
Neuroscience
Sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, aging, and the manifestation
of psychiatric and neurological disorders. However, our understanding of sex differences
in human functional brain organization and their behavioral consequences has been
...
Social enrichment or social isolation affects a range of innate behaviors, such as
sex, aggression, and sleep, but whether there is a shared mechanism is not clear.
Here, we report a neural mechanism underlying social modulation of spontaneous locomotor
...
Auditory dorsal and ventral pathways in the human brain play important roles in supporting
speech and language processing. However, the evolutionary root of the dual auditory
pathways in the primate brain is unclear. By parcellating the auditory cortex of ...
Neuropeptide S (NPS) was postulated to be a wake-promoting neuropeptide with unknown
mechanism, and a mutation in its receptor (NPSR1) causes the short sleep duration
trait in humans. We investigated the role of different NPS+ nuclei in sleep/wake ...
Physiology
Despite numerous female contraceptive options, nearly half of all pregnancies are
unintended. Family planning choices for men are currently limited to unreliable condoms
and invasive vasectomies with questionable reversibility. Here, we report the ...
Plant Biology
To control net sodium (Na+) uptake, Arabidopsis plants utilize the plasma membrane (PM) Na+/H+ antiporter SOS1 to achieve Na+ efflux at the root and Na+ loading into the xylem, and the channel-like HKT1;1 protein that mediates the reverse
flux of Na+ ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Sleep supports the consolidation of episodic memory. It is, however, a matter of ongoing
debate how this effect is established, because, so far, it has been demonstrated almost
exclusively for simple associations, which lack the complex associative ...
Sustainability Science
Terrestrial enhanced weathering (EW) of silicate rocks, such as crushed basalt, on
farmlands is a promising scalable atmospheric carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy
that urgently requires performance assessment with commercial farming practices. We
...
Systems Biology
Noise control, together with other regulatory functions facilitated by microRNAs (miRNAs),
is believed to have played important roles in the evolution of multicellular eukaryotic
organisms. miRNAs can dampen protein fluctuations via enhanced degradation ...
Correction
SI Correction
Cover image: Pictured is a 3D-printed recreation of van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” Sanghyun Jeon et al. developed a UV light–assisted, direct-ink-writing 3D printer that uses a self-assembling, crosslinkable bottlebrush block copolymer solution as an ink to reproduce vibrant structural colors found in nature. By modulating the exposure of the ink to UV light during the printing process, the authors could dynamically tune the nanoscale structure of the printed ink and the resulting structural color. The system could produce a range of colors and gradients in one printing with a single ink. See the article by Jeon et al. e2313617121. Image credit: Sanghyun Jeon.
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