Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 121, Number 20
This Week in PNAS
Inner Workings
Retrospective
Commentaries
Perspectives
There is increasing evidence that interactions between microbes and their hosts not
only play a role in determining health and disease but also in emotions, thought,
and behavior. Built environments greatly influence microbiome exposures because of
their ...
Individual survival and evolutionary selection require biological organisms to maximize
reward. Economic choice theories define the necessary and sufficient conditions, and
neuronal signals of decision variables provide mechanistic explanations. ...
Letters
View the original article:
Experiment aversion does not appear to generalize
This article has a reply:Reply to Vogt et al.: What does it mean that a phenomenon generalizes?
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
Mounting experimental evidence supports the existence of a liquid–liquid transition
(LLT) in high-pressure supercooled water. However, fast crystallization of supercooled
water has impeded identification of the LLT line TLL(p) in experiments. While the ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Multispecies bacterial populations often inhabit confined and densely packed environments
where spatial competition determines the ecological diversity of the community. However,
the role of mechanical interactions in shaping the ecology is still poorly ...
Chemistry
The reaction kinetics of photocatalytic CO2 reduction is highly dependent on the transfer rate of electrons and protons to the
CO2 molecules adsorbed on catalytic centers. Studies on uncovering the proton effect
in catalysts on photocatalytic activity of ...
The intrinsically disordered C-terminal peptide region of severe acute respiratory
syndrome coronavirus 2 nonstructural protein-1 (Nsp1-CT) inhibits host protein synthesis
by blocking messenger RNA (mRNA) access to the 40S ribosome entrance tunnel. ...
Computer Sciences
Large-scale online campaigns, malicious or otherwise, require a significant degree
of coordination among participants, which sparked interest in the study of coordinated online behavior. State-of-the-art methods for detecting coordinated behavior perform ...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
The increasing prevalence of low snow conditions in a warming climate has attracted
substantial attention in recent years, but a focus exclusively on low snow leaves
high snow years relatively underexplored. However, these large snow years are ...
Engineering
Soft robots often draw inspiration from nature to navigate different environments.
Although the inching motion and crawling motion of caterpillars have been widely studied
in the design of soft robots, the steering motion with local bending control ...
Environmental Sciences
Shifts in the hydrogen stable isotopic composition (2H/1H ratio) of lipids relative to water (lipid/water 2H-fractionation) at natural abundances reflect different sources of the central cellular
reductant, NADPH, in bacteria. Here, we demonstrate that ...
Social Sciences
Political Sciences
Large-scale online campaigns, malicious or otherwise, require a significant degree
of coordination among participants, which sparked interest in the study of coordinated online behavior. State-of-the-art methods for detecting coordinated behavior perform ...
This study examines the impact of residential mobility on electoral participation
among the poor by matching data from Moving to Opportunity, a US-based multicity housing-mobility
experiment, with nationwide individual voter data. Nearly all participants ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
How we reason about objectivity—whether an assertion has a ground truth—has implications
for belief formation on wide-ranging topics. For example, if someone perceives climate
change to be a matter of subjective opinion similar to the best movie genre, ...
Sustainability Science
Limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5 °C will rely, in part, on technologies
to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. However, many carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies are
in the early stages of development, and there is limited data to inform ...
Biological Sciences
Applied Biological Sciences
A TME-enlightened protein-binding photodynamic nanoinhibitor for highly effective oncology treatment
The efficiency of photodynamic therapy (PDT) is greatly dependent on intrinsic features
of photosensitizers (PSs), but most PSs suffer from narrow diffusion distances and
short life span of singlet oxygen (1O2). Here, to conquer this issue, we propose a ...
Biochemistry
Membrane tubulation coupled with fission (MTCF) is a widespread phenomenon but mechanisms
for their coordination remain unclear, partly because of the lack of assays to monitor
dynamics of membrane tubulation and subsequent fission. Using polymer ...
Protein capsids are a widespread form of compartmentalization in nature. Icosahedral
symmetry is ubiquitous in capsids derived from spherical viruses, as this geometry
maximizes the internal volume that can be enclosed within. Despite the strong ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
TipA, a MerR family transcription factor from Streptomyces lividans, promotes antibiotic resistance by sequestering broad-spectrum thiopeptide-based
antibiotics, thus counteracting their inhibitory effect on ribosomes. TipAS, a minimal
binding motif which ...
The endosomal sorting complexes required for transport (ESCRTs) are responsible for
membrane remodeling in many cellular processes, such as multivesicular body biogenesis,
viral budding, and cytokinetic abscission. ESCRT-III, the most abundant ESCRT ...
In many organisms, most notably Drosophila, homologous chromosomes associate in somatic cells, a phenomenon known as somatic
pairing, which takes place without double strand breaks or strand invasion, thus requiring
some other mechanism for homologs to ...
Developmental Biology
Successful regeneration of missing tissues requires seamless integration of positional
information along the body axes. Planarians, which regenerate from almost any injury,
use conserved, developmentally important signaling pathways to pattern the body ...
Ecology
Identifying and protecting hotspots of endemism and species richness is crucial for
mitigating the global biodiversity crisis. However, our understanding of spatial diversity
patterns is far from complete, which severely limits our ability to conserve ...
Habitat loss and isolation caused by landscape fragmentation represent a growing threat
to global biodiversity. Existing theory suggests that the process will lead to a decline
in metapopulation viability. However, since most metapopulation models are ...
The comparative studies of aging have established a negative correlation between Gompertz
postnatal growth constant and maximum lifespan across mammalian species, but the underlying
physiological mechanism remains unclear. This study shows that the ...
Decomposition of dead organic matter is fundamental to carbon (C) and nutrient cycling
in terrestrial ecosystems, influencing C fluxes from the biosphere to the atmosphere.
Theory predicts and evidence strongly supports that the availability of nitrogen (...
Environmental Sciences
Marine picocyanobacteria of the genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus, the two most abundant phototrophs on Earth, thrive in oligotrophic oceanic regions.
While it is well known that specific lineages are exquisitely adapted to prevailing
in situ light ...
Evolution
Social reputations facilitate cooperation: those who help others gain a good reputation,
making them more likely to receive help themselves. But when people hold private views
of one another, this cycle of indirect reciprocity breaks down, as ...
Infanticide and adoption have been attributed to sexual selection, where an individual
later reproduces with the parent whose offspring it killed or adopted. While sexually
selected infanticide is well known, evidence for sexually selected adoption is ...
Genetics
Chromatin replication is intricately intertwined with the recycling of parental histones
to the newly duplicated DNA strands for faithful genetic and epigenetic inheritance.
The transfer of parental histones occurs through two distinct pathways: leading ...
DNA base damage is a major source of oncogenic mutations and disruption to gene expression.
The stalling of RNA polymerase II (RNAP) at sites of DNA damage and the subsequent
triggering of repair processes have major roles in shaping the genome-wide ...
Immunology and Inflammation
Insulin is a central autoantigen in the pathogenesis of T1D, and thymic epithelial
cell expression of insulin under the control of the Autoimmune Regulator (Aire) is thought to be a key component of maintaining tolerance to insulin. In spite of
this ...
The current paradigm about the function of T cell immune checkpoints is that these
receptors switch on inhibitory signals upon cognate ligand interaction. We here revisit
this simple switch model and provide evidence that the T cell lineage protein THEMIS
...
Medical Sciences
Brain metastasis of advanced breast cancer often results in deleterious consequences.
Metastases to the brain lead to significant challenges in treatment options, as the
blood–brain barrier (BBB) prevents conventional therapy. Thus, we hypothesized that
...
The immune landscape of bladder cancer progression is not fully understood, and effective
therapies are lacking in advanced bladder cancer. Here, we visualized that bladder
cancer cells recruited neutrophils by secreting interleukin-8 (IL-8); in turn, ...
A high-fat diet (HFD) is a high-risk factor for the malignant progression of cancers
through the disruption of the intestinal microbiota. However, the role of the HFD-related
gut microbiota in cancer development remains unclear. This study found that ...
Brain metastatic breast cancer is particularly lethal largely due to therapeutic resistance.
Almost half of the patients with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer develop brain
metastases, representing a major clinical challenge. We previously described ...
Microbiology
Multispecies bacterial populations often inhabit confined and densely packed environments
where spatial competition determines the ecological diversity of the community. However,
the role of mechanical interactions in shaping the ecology is still poorly ...
Shifts in the hydrogen stable isotopic composition (2H/1H ratio) of lipids relative to water (lipid/water 2H-fractionation) at natural abundances reflect different sources of the central cellular
reductant, NADPH, in bacteria. Here, we demonstrate that ...
The evolutionary conserved YopJ family comprises numerous type-III-secretion system
(T3SS) effectors of diverse mammalian and plant pathogens that acetylate host proteins
to dampen immune responses. Acetylation is mediated by a central acetyltransferase
...
Random mutagenesis, including when it leads to loss of gene function, is a key mechanism
enabling microorganisms’ long-term adaptation to new environments. However, loss-of-function
mutations are often deleterious, triggering, in turn, cellular stress and ...
Neuroscience
Neurons regulate the microtubule-based transport of certain vesicles selectively into
axons or dendrites to ensure proper polarization of function. The mechanism of this
polarized vesicle transport is still not fully elucidated, though it is known to ...
One of the largest sex differences in brain neurochemistry is the expression of the
neuropeptide arginine vasopressin (AVP) within the vertebrate brain, with males having
more AVP cells in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) than females. ...
During development, neural stem cells in the cerebral cortex, also known as radial
glial cells (RGCs), generate excitatory neurons, followed by production of cortical
macroglia and inhibitory neurons that migrate to the olfactory bulb (OB). Understanding
...
Correction
Cover image: Pictured are a caterpillar (bottom) and a biomimetic soft origami robot (top). Inspired by the motion of caterpillars, Wu et al. fashioned a soft origami robot powered by electrothermal actuation. The lightweight modular design incorporates thermal actuators consisting of layers of liquid crystal elastomer and polyimide. Thermal extension and contraction are achieved through coordinated active and passive units, which mimic caterpillars’ forward crawling and side-to-side steering motions. According to the authors, thermal actuation may aid the design of modular soft origami robots that can grow and adapt. See the article by Wu et al. e2322625121. Image credit: Glaucio H. Paulino.
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