Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 121, Number 45
This Week in PNAS
Opinion
Commentaries
Perspective
The relationship between the thermodynamic and computational properties of physical
systems has been a major theoretical interest since at least the 19th century. It
has also become of increasing practical importance over the last half-century as the
...
Letters
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Brief Reports
Biogenic isoprene emissions from herbaceous plants are generally lower than those
from trees. However, our study finds widespread isoprene emission in herbaceous sedge
plants, with a stronger temperature response surpassing current tree-derived models.
We ...
Reverse development, or the ability to rejuvenate by morphological reorganization
into the preceding life cycle stage is thought to be restricted to a few species within
Cnidaria. To date, Turritopsis dohrnii is the only known species capable of ...
Reverse-transcribing animal DNA viruses include the hepadnaviruses, a well-characterized
family of small enveloped viruses that infect vertebrates but also a sister group
of nonenveloped viruses more recently discovered in fish and termed the ...
Physical Sciences
Applied Mathematics
Mining of electronic health records (EHR) promises to automate the identification
of comprehensive disease phenotypes. However, the realization of this promise is hindered
by the unavailability of generalizable ground-truth information, data ...
Applied Physical Sciences
Tough soft materials such as multiple network elastomers (MNE) or filled elastomers
are typically stretchable and include significant energy dissipation mechanisms that
prevent or delay crack growth. Yet most studies and fracture models focus on steady-...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
The use of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for therapeutic RNA delivery has gained significant
interest, particularly highlighted by recent milestones such as the approval of Onpattro
and two mRNA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. However, despite substantial ...
The biomechanical properties of cells and tissues play an important role in our fundamental
understanding of the structures and functions of biological systems at both the cellular
and subcellular levels. Recently, Brillouin microscopy, which offers a ...
Enhanced sampling techniques have traditionally encountered two significant challenges:
identifying suitable reaction coordinates and addressing the exploration–exploitation
dilemma, particularly the difficulty of escaping local energy minima. Here, we ...
Carboxysomes are protein microcompartments found in cyanobacteria, whose shell encapsulates
rubisco at the heart of carbon fixation in the Calvin cycle. Carboxysomes are thought
to locally concentrate CO2 in the shell interior to improve rubisco ...
Chemistry
Ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs) reduce ribonucleotides to deoxyribonucleotides using
radical-based chemistry. For class Ia RNRs, the radical species is stored in a separate
subunit (β2) from the subunit housing the active site (α2), requiring the ...
The extensive deposits of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) generated by marine organisms constitute the largest and oldest carbon dioxide (CO2) reservoir. These organisms utilize macromolecules like peptides and proteins to
facilitate the nucleation and growth ...
Electrochemical pH-swing strategies offer a promising avenue for cost-effective and
energy-efficient carbon dioxide (CO2) capture, surpassing the traditional thermally activated processes and humidity-sensitive
techniques. The concept of elevating ...
Elucidating details of biology’s selective uptake and trafficking of rare earth elements,
particularly the lanthanides, has the potential to inspire sustainable biomolecular
separations of these essential metals for myriad modern technologies. Here, we ...
Computer Sciences
Raman spectroscopy is widely used across scientific domains to characterize the chemical
composition of samples in a nondestructive, label-free manner. Many applications entail
the unmixing of signals from mixtures of molecular species to identify the ...
Eleven large language models (LLMs) were assessed using 40 bespoke false-belief tasks,
considered a gold standard in testing theory of mind (ToM) in humans. Each task included
a false-belief scenario, three closely matched true-belief control scenarios, ...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Climate change and human activities alter the global freshwater cycle, causing nonstationary
processes as its distribution shifting over time, yet a comprehensive understanding
of these changes remains elusive. Here, we develop a remote sensing–informed ...
The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), originating in the central and eastern equatorial
Pacific, is a defining mode of interannual climate variability with profound impact
on global climate and ecosystems. However, an understanding of how the ENSO ...
Amino acids are present in all known life, so identifying the environmental conditions
under which they can be synthesized constrains where life on Earth might have formed
and where life might be found on other planetary bodies. All known abiotic amino ...
Abundant proxy records suggest a profound reorganization of the Atlantic Meridional
Overturning Circulation (AMOC) during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ~21,000 y ago),
with the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) shoaling significantly relative to the ...
Engineering
Extracellular matrix (ECM) viscoelasticity broadly regulates cell behavior. While
hydrogels can approximate the viscoelasticity of native ECM, it remains challenging
to recapitulate the rapid stress relaxation observed in many tissues without limiting
the ...
Multiple rows of feathers, known as the covert feathers, contour the upper and lower
surfaces of bird wings. These feathers have been observed to deploy passively during
high angle of attack maneuvers and are suggested to play an aerodynamic role. However,...
Active systems of self-propelled agents, e.g., birds, fish, and bacteria, can organize
their collective motion into myriad autonomous behaviors. Ubiquitous in nature and
across length scales, such phenomena are also amenable to artificial settings, e.g.,
...
Mechanical deformation of polymer networks causes molecular-level motion and bond
scission that ultimately lead to material failure. Mitigating this strain-induced
loss in mechanical integrity is a significant challenge, especially in the development
of ...
Environmental Sciences
Humans are widely exposed to semivolatile organic contaminants in indoor environments.
Many contaminants have long lifetimes following partitioning to the large surface
reservoirs present indoors, which leads to long exposure times to gas-phase oxidants
...
Physics
Despite the primary role of cell proliferation in tissue development and homeostatic
maintenance, the interplay between cell density, cell mechanoresponse, and cell growth
and division is not yet understood. In this article, we address this issue by ...
Several strongly correlated metals display B-linear magnetoresistance (LMR) with a
universal slope, in sharp contrast to the scaling predicted by Fermi liquid theory. We provide a unifying explanation of the
origin of LMR by focusing on a common feature ...
Two-dimensional (2D) moiré systems based on twisted bilayer graphene and transition
metal dichalcogenides provide a promising platform to investigate emergent phenomena
driven by strong electron–electron interactions in partially filled flat bands. A
...
While hydrogen-rich materials have been demonstrated to exhibit high Tc superconductivity at high pressures, there is an ongoing search for ternary, quaternary,
and more chemically complex hydrides that achieve such high critical temperatures
at much ...
Sustainability Science
Climate change and human activities alter the global freshwater cycle, causing nonstationary
processes as its distribution shifting over time, yet a comprehensive understanding
of these changes remains elusive. Here, we develop a remote sensing–informed ...
Historically, economic growth has been closely coupled to carbon emissions responsible
for climate change, but to stabilize global mean temperature, net-zero carbon emissions
are necessary. Some economies have begun to reduce emissions while continuing to ...
Social Sciences
Anthropology
We chose the “natural laboratory” provided by high-altitude native ethnic Tibetan
women who had completed childbearing to examine the hypothesis that multiple oxygen
delivery traits were associated with lifetime reproductive success and had genomic
...
Economic Sciences
In recent decades, economic activity has become increasingly concentrated in major
global metropolises. Yet, the rise of working from home threatens this dominance of
cities. Using multiple high-frequency datasets on spending, commuting, migration,
and ...
A country’s national income broadly depends on the quantity and quality of workers
and capital. But how well these factors are managed within and between firms may be
a key determinant of a country’s productivity and its GDP. Although social scientists
...
Political Sciences
Do political practitioners have good intuitions about how to persuade the public?
Longstanding theories that political elites’ messages have large effects on public
opinion and the large sums spent to secure some practitioners’ messaging advice suggest
...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Eleven large language models (LLMs) were assessed using 40 bespoke false-belief tasks,
considered a gold standard in testing theory of mind (ToM) in humans. Each task included
a false-belief scenario, three closely matched true-belief control scenarios, ...
To understand human learning and progress, it is crucial to understand curiosity.
But how consistent is curiosity’s conception and assessment across scientific research
disciplines? We present the results of a large collaborative project assessing the
...
Social interaction research is lacking an experimental paradigm enabling researchers
to make causal inferences in free social interactions. For instance, the expressive
signals that causally modulate the emergence of romantic attraction during ...
How are societal stereotypes transmitted to individual-level group preferences? We
propose that exposure to a stereotype, regardless of whether one agrees with it, can
shape how one experiences and learns from interactions with members of the stereotyped
...
Sustainability Science
Historically, economic growth has been closely coupled to carbon emissions responsible
for climate change, but to stabilize global mean temperature, net-zero carbon emissions
are necessary. Some economies have begun to reduce emissions while continuing to ...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
The precise control of flowering time is of utmost importance for crop adaptation
to varying environmental conditions and consequently determines grain yield and plant
fitness. Soybean E2, the homolog of Arabidopsis GIGANTEA, is a major locus contributing ...
Applied Biological Sciences
Extracellular matrix (ECM) viscoelasticity broadly regulates cell behavior. While
hydrogels can approximate the viscoelasticity of native ECM, it remains challenging
to recapitulate the rapid stress relaxation observed in many tissues without limiting
the ...
CRISPR-Cas13 nucleases are programmable RNA-targeting effectors that can silence gene
expression in a transient manner. Recent iterations of Cas13 nucleases are compact
for adeno-associated virus (AAV) delivery to achieve strong and persistent expression
...
Environmental concerns from plastic waste are driving interest in alternative monomers
from bio-based sources. Pseudoaromatic dicarboxylic acids are promising alternatives
with chemical structures similar to widely used petroleum-based aromatic ...
Biochemistry
Ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs) reduce ribonucleotides to deoxyribonucleotides using
radical-based chemistry. For class Ia RNRs, the radical species is stored in a separate
subunit (β2) from the subunit housing the active site (α2), requiring the ...
Elucidating details of biology’s selective uptake and trafficking of rare earth elements,
particularly the lanthanides, has the potential to inspire sustainable biomolecular
separations of these essential metals for myriad modern technologies. Here, we ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
The use of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for therapeutic RNA delivery has gained significant
interest, particularly highlighted by recent milestones such as the approval of Onpattro
and two mRNA-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. However, despite substantial ...
Raman spectroscopy is widely used across scientific domains to characterize the chemical
composition of samples in a nondestructive, label-free manner. Many applications entail
the unmixing of signals from mixtures of molecular species to identify the ...
Carboxysomes are protein microcompartments found in cyanobacteria, whose shell encapsulates
rubisco at the heart of carbon fixation in the Calvin cycle. Carboxysomes are thought
to locally concentrate CO2 in the shell interior to improve rubisco ...
Protein language models (pLMs) have emerged as potent tools for predicting and designing
protein structure and function, and the degree to which these models fundamentally
understand the inherent biophysics of protein structure stands as an open question.
...
How can a single protein domain encode a conformational landscape with multiple stably
folded states, and how do those states interconvert? Here, we use real-time and relaxation-dispersion
NMR to characterize the conformational landscape of the circadian ...
Cell Biology
In the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, exit from mitosis is coupled to spindle position to ensure successful genome partitioning
between mother and daughter cells. This coupling occurs through a GTPase signaling
cascade known as the mitotic exit ...
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a considerable threat to human health with a significant
risk for colorectal cancer (CRC). However, currently, both the molecular pathogenesis
and therapeutic treatment of IBD remain limited. In this report, using both ...
Nuclear receptors (NRs) are widely expressed transcription factors that bind small,
lipophilic compounds and regulate diverse biological processes. In the small intestine,
NRs are known to act as sensors that control transcriptional responses to ...
Developmental Biology
The human uterus is a complex and dynamic organ whose lining grows, remodels, and
regenerates every menstrual cycle or upon tissue damage. Here, we applied single-cell
RNA sequencing to profile more the 50,000 uterine cells from both the endometrium
and ...
Ecology
Marine phytoplankton are fundamental to Earth’s ecology and biogeochemistry. Our understanding
of the large-scale dynamics of phytoplankton biomass has greatly benefited from, and
is largely based on, satellite ocean color observations from which ...
At the nearly pristine hydrothermal vents of the deep sea, highly endemic animals
depend upon bacteria nourished by hydrothermal fluids that emerge as outflows from
the seafloor. These animals are remarkable in tolerating extreme conditions, including
...
Environmental Sciences
Changes driven by both unanticipated human activities and management actions are creating
wicked management landscapes in freshwater and marine ecosystems that require new
approaches to support decision-making. By linking a predictive model of nutrient-
...
The persistent DDT footprint of ocean disposal, and ecological controls on bioaccumulation in fishes
Globally, ocean dumping of chemical waste is a common method of disposal and relies
on the assumption that dilution, diffusion, and dispersion at ocean scales will mitigate
human exposure and ecosystem impacts. In southern California, extensive dumping of
...
Microplastic is globally regarded as an important factor impacting biogeochemical
cycles, yet our understanding of such influences is limited by the uncertainties of
intricate microbial processes. By multiomics analysis, coupled with soil chemodiversity
...
Coral reefs are among the most sensitive ecosystems affected by ocean warming and
acidification, and are predicted to collapse over the next few decades. Reefs are
predicted to shift from net accreting calcifier-dominated systems with exceptionally
high ...
Evolution
We chose the “natural laboratory” provided by high-altitude native ethnic Tibetan
women who had completed childbearing to examine the hypothesis that multiple oxygen
delivery traits were associated with lifetime reproductive success and had genomic
...
Approximately half of mammalian genomes are occupied by retrotransposons, highly repetitive
interspersed genetic elements expanded through the mechanism of reverse transcription.
The evolution of this “retrobiome” involved a series of explosive ...
Genetics
In sexual reproduction, selfish genetic elements known as killer meiotic drivers (KMDs)
bias inheritance by eliminating gametes that do not carry them. The selective killing
behavior of most KMDs can be explained by a toxin–antidote model, where a toxin ...
Mitochondria play diverse roles in mammalian physiology. The architecture, activity,
and physiological functions of mitochondria in oocytes are largely different from
those in somatic cells, but the mitochondrial proteins related to oocyte quality and
...
Killer meiotic drivers (KMDs) are selfish genetic elements that distort Mendelian
inheritance by selectively killing meiotic products lacking the KMD element, thereby
promoting their own propagation. Although KMDs have been found in diverse eukaryotes,
...
The molecular mechanisms underlying the neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) caused
by DDX3X variants remain poorly understood. In this study, we validated that de novo DDX3X variants are enriched in female developmental delay (DD) patients and mainly ...
The female reproductive lifespan is highly dependent on egg quality, especially the
presence of a normal number of chromosomes in an egg, known as euploidy. Mistakes
in meiosis leading to egg aneuploidy are frequent in humans. Yet, knowledge of the
...
Immunology and Inflammation
Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), essential for controlling infections, can induce
various pathologies when dysregulated. Known triggers for infection-independent NETs
release exist, yet a comprehensive understanding of the conditions prompting such
...
Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is a common cause of antibiotic-associated colitis. C. difficile proliferates and produces toxins that damage the colonic epithelium, leading to symptoms
ranging from mild diarrhea to severe pseudomembranous ...
Medical Sciences
Mining of electronic health records (EHR) promises to automate the identification
of comprehensive disease phenotypes. However, the realization of this promise is hindered
by the unavailability of generalizable ground-truth information, data ...
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are released by all cells and hold great promise as a
class of biomarkers. This promise has led to increased interest in measuring EV proteins
from both total EVs as well as brain-derived EVs in plasma. However, measuring ...
Somatic mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) are a major cause
of non–small cell lung cancer. Among these structurally diverse alterations, exon
20 insertions represent a unique subset that rarely respond to EGFR tyrosine kinase
...
Pregnant women are often prescribed or abuse opioid drugs. The placenta is likely
the key to understanding how opioids cause adverse pregnancy outcomes. Maternal oxycodone
(OXY) exposure of pregnant mice leads to disturbances in the layer of invasive ...
Microbiology
Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites invade and multiply inside red blood cells (RBCs), the most iron-rich
compartment in humans. Like all cells, P. falciparum requires nutritional iron to support essential metabolic pathways, but the critical
...
Shigella spp. are the causative agents of shigellosis, which remains a leading cause of death
in children under the age of 5. Symptoms of shigellosis include bloody diarrhea, associated
to colon hemorrhage; in more severe cases, Shigella bacteremia is ...
Classically, all hepatitis E virus (HEV) variants causing human infection belong to
the genus Paslahepevirus (HEV-A). However, the increasing cases of rat HEV infection in humans since 2018
challenged this dogma, posing increasing health threats. Herein, ...
The rising prevalence of antibiotic resistance threatens human health. While more
sophisticated strategies for antibiotic discovery are being developed, target elucidation
of new chemical entities remains challenging. In the postgenomic era, expression ...
Ribosome structure and activity are challenged at high temperatures, often demanding
modifications to ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) to retain translation fidelity. LC-MS/MS,
bisulfite-sequencing, and high-resolution cryo-EM structures of the archaeal ribosome
...
Sterols are vital nutrients and signals for eukaryotic organisms. Mammalian cells
are known to sense and respond to sterol status changes to maintain them within strict
limits, a process associated with various human diseases. However, this process is
not ...
OAS-RNase L is a double-stranded RNA-induced antiviral pathway triggered in response
to diverse viral infections. Upon activation, OAS-RNase L suppresses virus replication
by promoting the decay of host and viral RNAs and inducing translational shutdown.
...
SARS-CoV-2 uses the receptor binding domain (RBD) of its spike protein to recognize
and infect host cells by binding to the cell surface receptor angiotensin converting
enzyme 2 (ACE2). The ACE2 receptor is composed of peptidase domain (PD), collectrin-...
Neuroscience
The hippocampus is a brain region that is essential for the initial encoding of episodic
memories. However, the consolidation of these memories is thought to occur in the
neocortex, under guidance of the hippocampus, over the course of days and weeks. ...
Mutations modification enzymes including the tRNA N7-methylguanosine (m7G) methyltransferase complex component WDR4 were frequently found in patients with
neural disorders, while the pathogenic mechanism and therapeutic intervention strategies
are poorly ...
White matter (WM) abnormalities are an emerging feature of schizophrenia, yet the
underlying pathophysiological mechanisms are largely unknown. Disruption of ErbB signaling,
which is essential for peripheral myelination, has been genetically associated ...
Mechanisms controlling the movement of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) toward peripheral
nerves are poorly characterized. We found that, in addition to the foramina Magendie
and Luschka for CSF flow toward the subarachnoid space and glymphatic system, CSF
...
The relationship between neurons’ input and spiking output is central to brain computation.
Studies in vitro and in anesthetized animals suggest that nonlinearities emerge in
cells’ input–output (IO; activation) functions as network activity increases, ...
Plant Biology
Understanding the regulatory mechanisms controlling storage lipid accumulation will
inform strategies to enhance seed oil quality and quantity in crop plants. The WRINKLED1
transcription factor (WRI1 TF) is a central regulator of lipid biosynthesis. We ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Selective attention relies on neural mechanisms that facilitate processing of behaviorally
relevant sensory information while suppressing irrelevant information, consistently
linked to alpha-band oscillations in human M/EEG studies. We analyzed cortical ...
Systems Biology
Patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) show variable responses
to PD-1 inhibition. Efficient patient selection by predictive biomarkers would be
desirable but is hindered by the limited performance of existing biomarkers. Here,
we ...
Corrections
Cover image: Pictured are two adult Mnemiopsis leidyi ctenophores. Joan Soto-Angel and Pawel Burkhardt documented the ability of M. leidyi to reverse develop into an earlier life cycle stage. Being fed following a period of stress, caused by either prolonged starvation or physical injury, resulted in mature M. leidyi regressing to a tentacled, larval stage. The findings suggest that reverse development may be more widespread in animals than previously thought and that M. leidyi could serve as a model species for studying aging and rejuvenation. See the article by Soto-Angel and Burkhardt e2411499121. Image credit: Alexandre Jan (University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway).
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