Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 121, Number 18
This Week in PNAS
Editorial
At the National Academies
Core Concepts
Commentaries
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Perspective
Over the past few years, machine learning models have significantly increased in size
and complexity, especially in the area of generative AI such as large language models.
These models require massive amounts of data and compute capacity to train, to the
...
Brief Reports
Regulation of subcellular messenger (m)RNA localization is a fundamental biological
mechanism, which adds a spatial dimension to the diverse layers of post-transcriptional
control of gene expression. The cellular compartment in which mRNAs are located may
...
Hutchinson–Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS) is a rare disease caused by the expression
of progerin, a mutant protein that accelerates aging and precipitates death. Given
that atherosclerosis complications are the main cause of death in progeria, here,
we ...
Physical Sciences
Applied Mathematics
Full understanding of proteostasis and energy utilization in cells will require knowledge
of the fraction of cell proteins being degraded with different half-lives and their
rates of synthesis. We therefore developed a method to determine such information
...
Applied Physical Sciences
We propose and investigate an extension of the Caspar–Klug symmetry principles for
viral capsid assembly to the programmable assembly of size-controlled triply periodic
polyhedra, discrete variants of the Primitive, Diamond, and Gyroid cubic minimal ...
Since the 1980s, the paddlewheel effect has been suggested as a mechanism to boost
lithium-ion diffusion in inorganic materials via the rotation of rotor-like anion
groups. However, it remains unclear whether the paddlewheel effect, defined as large-angle
...
Traditional metallic glasses (MGs), based on one or two principal elements, are notoriously
known for their lack of tensile ductility at room temperature. Here, we developed
a multiprincipal element MG (MPEMG), which exhibits a gigapascal yield strength, ...
Astronomy
Multimessenger searches for binary neutron star (BNS) and neutron star-black hole
(NSBH) mergers are currently one of the most exciting areas of astronomy. The search
for joint electromagnetic and neutrino counterparts to gravitational wave (GW)s has
...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Animals moving together in groups are believed to interact among each other with effective
social forces, such as attraction, repulsion, and alignment. Such forces can be inferred
using “force maps,” i.e., by analyzing the dependency of the acceleration ...
The ParABS system is crucial for the faithful segregation and inheritance of many
bacterial chromosomes and low-copy-number plasmids. However, despite extensive research,
the spatiotemporal dynamics of the ATPase ParA and its connection to the dynamics
...
Cortical neurons exhibit highly variable responses over trials and time. Theoretical
works posit that this variability arises potentially from chaotic network dynamics
of recurrently connected neurons. Here, we demonstrate that chaotic neural dynamics,
...
Chemistry
Ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs) are essential enzymes that catalyze the de novo transformation
of nucleoside 5′-di(tri)phosphates [ND(T)Ps, where N is A, U, C, or G] to their corresponding
deoxynucleotides. Despite the diversity of factors required for ...
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) that lie close to the empirical boundary
separating IDPs and folded proteins in Uversky’s charge–hydropathy plot may behave
as “marginal IDPs” and sensitively switch conformation upon changes in environment
(...
Electrochromic (EC) displays with electronically regulating the transmittance of solar
radiation offer the opportunity to increase the energy efficiency of the building
and electronic products and improve the comfort and lifestyle of people. Despite the
...
Surface energy is a fundamental property of materials and is particularly important
in describing nanomaterials where atoms or molecules at the surface constitute a large
fraction of the material. Traditionally, surface energy is considered to be a ...
The term defect tolerance (DT) is used often to rationalize the exceptional optoelectronic
properties of halide perovskites (HaPs) and their devices. Even though DT lacked direct
experimental evidence, it became a “fact” in the field. DT in semiconductors ...
Nanoelectrochemical devices have become a promising candidate technology across various
applications, including sensing and energy storage, and provide new platforms for
studying fundamental properties of electrode/electrolyte interfaces. In this work,
we ...
Defect engineering has been widely applied in semiconductors to improve photocatalytic
properties by altering the surface structures. This study is about the transformation
of inactive WO3 nanosheets to a highly effective CO2-to-CH4 conversion ...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Soil organic carbon (SOC) is vital for terrestrial ecosystems, affecting biogeochemical
processes, and soil health. It is known that soil salinity impacts SOC content, yet
the specific direction and magnitude of SOC variability in relation to soil ...
Physics
Can liquid-like and gas-like states be distinguished beyond the critical point, where
the liquid–gas phase transition no longer exists and conventionally only a single
supercritical fluid phase is defined? Recent experiments and simulations report strong
...
Many living and artificial systems show similar emergent behavior and collective motions
on different scales, starting from swarms of bacteria to synthetic active particles,
herds of mammals, and crowds of people. What all these systems often have in ...
The brain’s remarkable and efficient information processing capability is driving
research into brain-inspired (neuromorphic) computing paradigms. Artificial aqueous
ion channels are emerging as an exciting platform for neuromorphic computing, ...
Although water is almost transparent to visible light, we demonstrate that the air–water
interface interacts strongly with visible light via what we hypothesize as the photomolecular
effect. In this effect, transverse-magnetic polarized photons cleave off ...
Sustainability Science
California, a pioneer in EV adoption, has enacted ambitious electric vehicle (EV)
policies that will generate a large burden on the state’s electric distribution system.
We investigate the statewide impact of uncontrolled EV charging on the electric ...
Social Sciences
Economic Sciences
This paper studies the effect of air pollution on voting outcomes. We use data from
60 federal and state elections in Germany from 2000 to 2018 and exploit plausibly
exogenous fluctuations in ambient air pollution within counties across election dates.
...
Environmental Sciences
In deserts, water has been singled out as the most important factor for choosing where
to settle, but trees were likely an important part of the landscape for hunter-gatherers
beyond merely constituting an economic resource. Yet, this critical aspect has ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Making healthy dietary choices is essential for keeping weight within a normal range.
Yet many people struggle with dietary self-control despite good intentions. What distinguishes
neural processing in those who succeed or fail to implement healthy eating ...
Social Sciences
Older adults experienced major changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing restrictions,
and it might be expected that those who were already socially isolated before the
pandemic were particularly vulnerable. We apply an outcome-wide longitudinal ...
Sustainability Science
Sustainability challenges related to food production arise from multiple nature-society
interactions occurring over long time periods. Traditional methods of quantitative
analysis do not represent long-term changes in the networks of system components,
...
Biological Sciences
Biochemistry
Ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs) are essential enzymes that catalyze the de novo transformation
of nucleoside 5′-di(tri)phosphates [ND(T)Ps, where N is A, U, C, or G] to their corresponding
deoxynucleotides. Despite the diversity of factors required for ...
Making healthy dietary choices is essential for keeping weight within a normal range.
Yet many people struggle with dietary self-control despite good intentions. What distinguishes
neural processing in those who succeed or fail to implement healthy eating ...
Class II histone deacetylases (HDACs) are important in regulation of gene transcription
during T cell development. However, our understanding of their cell-specific functions
is limited. In this study, we reveal that class IIa Hdac4 and Hdac7 (Hdac4/7) ...
The S-phase checkpoint involving CHK1 is essential for fork stability in response
to fork stalling. PARP1 acts as a sensor of replication stress and is required for
CHK1 activation. However, it is unclear how the activity of PARP1 is regulated. Here,
we ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
We propose and investigate an extension of the Caspar–Klug symmetry principles for
viral capsid assembly to the programmable assembly of size-controlled triply periodic
polyhedra, discrete variants of the Primitive, Diamond, and Gyroid cubic minimal ...
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) that lie close to the empirical boundary
separating IDPs and folded proteins in Uversky’s charge–hydropathy plot may behave
as “marginal IDPs” and sensitively switch conformation upon changes in environment
(...
RNA velocity estimation is a potentially powerful tool to reveal the directionality
of transcriptional changes in single-cell RNA-sequencing data, but it lacks accuracy,
absent advanced metabolic labeling techniques. We developed an approach, TopicVelo, ...
The control of eukaryotic gene expression is intimately connected to highly dynamic
chromatin structures. Gene regulation relies on activator and repressor transcription
factors (TFs) that induce local chromatin opening and closing. However, it is unclear
...
The DNA sliding clamp PCNA is a multipurpose platform for DNA polymerases and many
other proteins involved in DNA metabolism. The topologically closed PCNA ring needs
to be cracked open and loaded onto DNA by a clamp loader, e.g., the well-studied ...
Cell Biology
Full understanding of proteostasis and energy utilization in cells will require knowledge
of the fraction of cell proteins being degraded with different half-lives and their
rates of synthesis. We therefore developed a method to determine such information
...
The complex interplay between malignant cells and the cellular and molecular components
of the tumor stroma is a key aspect of cancer growth and development. These tumor–host
interactions are often affected by soluble bioactive molecules such as ...
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, recently renamed metabolic dysfunction-associated
steatotic liver disease (MASLD), is a progressive metabolic disorder that begins with
aberrant triglyceride accumulation in the liver and can lead to cirrhosis and cancer.
...
Ecology
Animals moving together in groups are believed to interact among each other with effective
social forces, such as attraction, repulsion, and alignment. Such forces can be inferred
using “force maps,” i.e., by analyzing the dependency of the acceleration ...
Human actions are causing widespread increases in fire size, frequency, and severity
in diverse ecosystems globally. This alteration of fire regimes is considered a threat
to numerous animal species, but empirical evidence of how fire regimes are shifting
...
Long-distance migrations of insects contribute to ecosystem functioning but also have
important economic impacts when the migrants are pests or provide ecosystem services.
We combined radar monitoring, aerial sampling, and searchlight trapping, to ...
Evolution
Bacteria are nonsexual organisms but are capable of exchanging DNA at diverse degrees
through homologous recombination. Intriguingly, the rates of recombination vary immensely
across lineages where some species have been described as purely clonal and ...
How genomic differences contribute to phenotypic differences is a major question in
biology. The recently characterized genomes, isolation environments, and qualitative
patterns of growth on 122 sources and conditions of 1,154 strains from 1,049 fungal
...
Seasonal migration is a widespread behavior relevant for adaptation and speciation,
yet knowledge of its genetic basis is limited. We leveraged advances in tracking and
sequencing technologies to bridge this gap in a well-characterized hybrid zone between
...
Increasing environmental threats and more extreme environmental perturbations place
species at risk of population declines, with associated loss of genetic diversity
and evolutionary potential. While theory shows that rapid population declines can
cause ...
Genetics
Food intake and energy balance are tightly regulated by a group of hypothalamic arcuate
neurons expressing the proopiomelanocortin (POMC) gene. In mammals, arcuate-specific POMC expression is driven by two cis-acting transcriptional enhancers known as ...
Immunology and Inflammation
Sirt2 is a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+)-dependent protein lysine deacylase that can remove both acetyl group and long-chain
fatty acyl groups from lysine residues of many proteins. It was reported to affect
inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) ...
Here, we report recurrent focal deletions of the chr14q32.31-32 locus, including TRAF3, a negative regulator of NF-κB signaling, in de novo diffuse large B cell lymphoma
(DLBCL) (24/324 cases). Integrative analysis revealed an association between TRAF3 ...
Respiratory virus infections in humans cause a broad-spectrum of diseases that result
in substantial morbidity and mortality annually worldwide. To reduce the global burden
of respiratory viral diseases, preventative and therapeutic interventions that are
...
Medical Sciences
Congenital scoliosis (CS), affecting approximately 0.5 to 1 in 1,000 live births,
is commonly caused by congenital vertebral malformations (CVMs) arising from aberrant
somitogenesis or somite differentiation. While Wnt/ß-catenin signaling has been ...
Increased cellular senescence burden contributes in part to age-related organ dysfunction
and pathologies. In our study, using mouse models of natural aging, we observed structural
and functional decline in the aged retina, which was accompanied by the ...
The underlying mechanism(s) by which the PML::RARA fusion protein initiates acute
promyelocytic leukemia is not yet clear. We defined the genomic binding sites of PML::RARA
in primary mouse and human hematopoietic progenitor cells with V5-tagged PML::RARA,...
Microbiology
The ParABS system is crucial for the faithful segregation and inheritance of many
bacterial chromosomes and low-copy-number plasmids. However, despite extensive research,
the spatiotemporal dynamics of the ATPase ParA and its connection to the dynamics
...
In bacteria, intracellular K+ is involved in the regulation of membrane potential, cytosolic pH, and cell turgor
as well as in spore germination, environmental adaptation, cell-to-cell communication
in biofilms, antibiotic sensitivity, and infectivity. ...
Using an immunofluorescence assay based on CRISPR-dCas9-gRNA complexes that selectively
bind to the HIV LTR (HIV Cas-FISH), we traced changes in HIV DNA localization in primary
effector T cells from early infection until the cells become quiescent as they ...
Neuroscience
Cortical neurons exhibit highly variable responses over trials and time. Theoretical
works posit that this variability arises potentially from chaotic network dynamics
of recurrently connected neurons. Here, we demonstrate that chaotic neural dynamics,
...
Posttranslational modifications regulate the properties and abundance of synaptic
α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptors that mediate
fast excitatory synaptic transmission and synaptic plasticity in the central nervous
...
Affective touch—a slow, gentle, and pleasant form of touch—activates a different neural
network than which is activated during discriminative touch in humans. Affective touch
perception is enabled by specialized low-threshold mechanoreceptors in the skin ...
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) transduce the effects of many neuromodulators
including dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, acetylcholine, and opioids. The localization
of synthetic or endogenous GPCR agonists impacts their action on specific neuronal
...
Recent evidence has demonstrated that the transsynaptic nanoscale organization of
synaptic proteins plays a crucial role in regulating synaptic strength in excitatory
synapses. However, the molecular mechanism underlying this transsynaptic nanostructure
...
Pronounced differences in neurotransmitter release from a given presynaptic neuron,
depending on the synaptic target, are among the most intriguing features of cortical
networks. Hippocampal pyramidal cells (PCs) release glutamate with low probability
to ...
Physiology
Clearance of serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) from the synaptic cleft after neuronal
signaling is mediated by serotonin transporter (SERT), which couples this process
to the movement of a Na+ ion down its chemical gradient. After release of 5-HT and ...
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a leading cause of cancer-related death. HCC incidence
is on the rise, while treatment options remain limited. Thus, a better understanding
of the molecular pathways involved in HCC development has become a priority to ...
Plant Biology
Degrading cellulose is a key step in the processing of lignocellulosic biomass into
bioethanol. Cellobiose, the disaccharide product of cellulose degradation, has been
shown to inhibit cellulase activity, but the mechanisms underlying product inhibition
...
Organ-specific gene expression datasets that include hundreds to thousands of experiments
allow the reconstruction of organ-level gene regulatory networks (GRNs). However,
creating such datasets is greatly hampered by the requirements of extensive and ...
Population Biology
In the absence of universal healthcare in the United States, federal programs of Medicaid
and Medicare are vital to providing healthcare coverage for low-income households
and elderly individuals, respectively. However, both programs are under threat, ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Zebra finches, a species of songbirds, learn to sing by creating an auditory template
through the memorization of model songs (sensory learning phase) and subsequently
translating these perceptual memories into motor skills (sensorimotor learning phase).
...
Corrections
Cover image: Pictured are black neon tetra fish (Hyphessobrycon herbertaxelrodi) swimming in an experimental tank. Andreu Puy et al. examined the social dynamics of schools of fish by using agent-based modeling. The authors found that schooling fish exhibit selective social interactions; individuals tend to align with neighbors moving faster than themselves, while ignoring neighbors moving slower than themselves. The study provides insights into emergent leadership among schooling fish and into the mechanisms of movement coordination in natural systems. See the article by Puy et al. e2309733121. Image credit: Marc Alonso Martinez (photographer).
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