Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 121, Number 48
Special Feature
Half a Century of Cultural Evolution
Quantitative studies of cultural evolution and gene-culture coevolution (henceforth
“CE” and “GCC”) emerged in the 1970s, in the aftermath of the “race and intelligence
quotient (IQ)” and “human sociobiology” debates, as a counter to extreme hereditarian
...
This article retraces the career of geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, from his days
as a student researcher to his tenure as a Stanford University professor, and beyond.
We show how Cavalli-Sforza’s untiring curiosity, enthusiasm, and global knowledge
...
The study of cultural evolution using ideas from population biology began about 50
y ago, with the work of L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, Marcus Feldman, and ourselves. It has
grown from this small beginning into a vital field with many publications and its
own ...
We examine from whom children learn in mobile hunter-gatherers, a way of life that
characterized much of human history. Recent studies on the modes of transmission in
hunter-gatherers are reviewed before presenting an analysis of five modes of ...
Cultural evolutionary processes can often lead to a statistical association between
neutral and adaptive traits during episodes of population dispersal and the introduction
of a beneficial technology in a geographic region. Here, we examine such cultural
...
The history of people’s movements and interactions shapes both genetic and linguistic
variation. Genes and languages are transmitted separately and their distributions
reflect different aspects of human history, but some demographic processes can cause
...
Modern cultural evolution theory adopts a variety of concepts and methods developed
in mathematical biology, in particular population genetics theory. In addition to
forward-looking approaches such as two-locus models, backward-looking approaches such
as ...
Human evolution is intricately linked with culture, which permeates almost all facets
of human life from health and reproduction, to the environments in which we live.
Nevertheless, our understanding of the ways in which stably transmitted, evolutionarily
...
Cultural practices perceived to be adaptive—from clearing land for food production
to medical innovations—can disseminate quickly through human populations. However,
these same practices often have unintended maladaptive effects. A particularly ...
The last two decades have seen great advances in the study of social learning (learning
from others), in part due to efforts to identify it in the wild as the basis of behavioral
traditions. Theoretical frameworks suggest that both the dynamics of social ...
Although the theoretical foundations of the modern field of cultural evolution have
been in place for over 50 y, laboratory experiments specifically designed to test
cultural evolutionary theory have only existed for the last two decades. Here, we
review ...
Cultural evolution applies evolutionary concepts and tools to explain the change of
culture over time. Despite advances in both theoretical and empirical methods, the
connections between cultural evolutionary theory and evidence are often vague, limiting
...
This Week in PNAS
Opinion
Retrospective
Commentaries
Perspectives
Climate change poses complex risks without precedent that challenge established planning
and risk management tools, including property insurance. The nature and timing of
transitions in markets and institutions in response to growing climate risks will
...
Sugar is the largest agricultural crop by mass and has seen a rapid increase in consumption
around the world. There are widespread public health efforts to curb sugar intake
through targeted policies given its association with noncommunicable diseases. ...
Letters
This article has a reply:
Reply to Materić: Appropriate blanks should avoid major contamination sources in the lab
View the original article:Rapid single-particle chemical imaging of nanoplastics by SRS microscopy
View the original article:
Microglia-mediated neuroimmune suppression in PTSD is associated with anhedonia
This article has a reply:Brief Reports
The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in US history. However, incomplete records
have made it difficult to estimate the exact death toll both nationally, and especially,
at the state level. In this article, we leverage the recently released full count
...
The proportionality of oxygen-to-nitrogen isotope effects (18ε/15ε) is used as a key isotopic signature of nitrogen cycling processes in the environment.
Dissimilatory nitrate reduction is observed to have an 18ε/15ε proportionality of ~0.9 in marine and ~...
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
Oxygen vacancies and their correlation with the nanomagnetism and electronic structure
are crucial for applications in dilute magnetic semiconductors design applications.
Here, we report on cobalt single atom-incorporated titanium dioxide (TiO2) ...
Recent experiments revealed a new amorphous ice phase, medium-density amorphous ice
(MDA), formed by ball-milling ice Ih at 77 K [Rosu-Finsen et al., Science 379, 474–478 (2023)]. MDA has density between that of low-density amorphous (LDA) and
high-...
Biological mixtures, such as the cellular cytoplasm, are composed of a large number
of different components. From this heterogeneity, ordered mesoscopic structures emerge,
such as liquid phases with controlled composition. The competition of these ...
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is a wide-gap semiconductor with numerous applications in photocatalysis, photovoltaics,
and neuromorphic computing. The unique functional properties of this material critically
depend on its ability to transport charge in the form ...
The immunomodulatory function of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is plastic and susceptible
to resident microenvironment in vivo or inflammatory factors in vitro. We propose
a unique method to enhance the immunoregulatory functions of mesenchymal stem cells
...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
We describe design principles for accurate folding of three-dimensional DNA origami.
To evaluate design rules, we reduced the problem of DNA strand routing to the known
problem of shortest-path finding in a weighted graph. To score candidate DNA strand
...
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) regulate multiple cellular responses and represent
highly successful therapeutic targets. The mechanisms by which agonists activate the
G protein are unclear for many GPCR families, including the bitter taste receptors
(...
Natural visual scenes are dominated by spatiotemporal image dynamics, but how the
visual system integrates “movie” information over time is unclear. We characterized
optic tectal neuronal receptive fields using sparse noise stimuli and reverse correlation
...
The X-C motif chemokine receptor XCR1, which selectively binds to the chemokine XCL1,
is highly expressed in conventional dendritic cells subtype 1 (cDC1s) and crucial
for their activation. Modulating XCR1 signaling in cDC1s could offer novel ...
Chemistry
Group VIA calcium-independent phospholipase A2 (iPLA2) is a member of the PLA2 superfamily that exhibits calcium-independent activity in contrast to the other two
major types, secreted phospholipase A2 (sPLA2) and cytosolic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2), which ...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
In response to a recent challenge to the longstanding practice in modeling large-scale
circulations in the atmosphere and ocean that neglects any horizontal component of
Earth’s gravity-rotation force, this paper demonstrates that a coordinate ...
Engineering
Symmetry lies at the heart of two-dimensional (2D) bioelectronics, determining material
properties at the fundamental level. Breaking the symmetry allows emergent functionalities
and effects. However, symmetry modulation in 2D bioelectronics and the ...
One driver of the high failure rates of clinical trials for therapeutic cancer vaccines
is likely the inability to sufficiently engage conventional dendritic cells (cDCs),
the antigen-presenting cell (APC) subset that is specialized in priming antitumor
T ...
Environmental Sciences
The loss of phosphorous (P) from the land to aquatic systems has polluted waters and
threatened food production worldwide. Systematic trend analysis of P, a nonrenewable
resource, has been challenging, primarily due to sparse and inconsistent historical
...
Physics
Bulk and surface Dirac states accompanied by two superconducting domes in FeSe-based superconductors
Recent investigations of FeSe-based superconductors have revealed the presence of
two superconducting domes and suggest possible distinct pairing mechanisms. Two superconducting
domes are commonly found in unconventional superconductors and exhibit unique ...
We ask the question of how angular momentum is conserved in electroweak interaction
processes. To introduce the problem with a minimum of mathematics, we first raise
the same issue in elastic scattering of a circularly polarized photon by an atom,
where ...
Social Sciences
Anthropology
Cultivation studies evaluating land-use histories and coevolutionary dynamics between
humans and plants focus predominantly on domesticated species. Traditional anthropological
divisions of “foragers” and “farmers” have shaped our understanding of ancient ...
Economic Sciences
We develop a game-theoretic model of strategic interdependence and tipping in public
policy choices and show that the model can be estimated by probit and logit estimators.
We test its validity and applicability by using daily data on state-level COVID-19
...
We provide experimental evidence that role models can galvanize prosocial actions
amid global crises, exemplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. In a randomized control
trial comparing role models, cash incentives, and celebrity endorsements, only role
models ...
In response to the disruption of gas supplies from Russia following the invasion of
Ukraine in 2022, European politicians and public utilities appealed to citizens and
customers to conserve natural gas. Moreover, they strengthened economic incentives
for ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
A subpopulation of human retinal ganglion cells contains the melanopsin photopigment,
allowing them to act as a fifth photoreceptor class. These ganglion cells project
to the visual cortex, but to reveal its intrinsic contribution to conscious vision
is ...
Indirect reciprocity is a key explanation for the exceptional magnitude of cooperation
among humans. This literature suggests that a large proportion of human cooperation
is driven by social norms and individuals’ incentives to maintain a good reputation.
...
The Bayesian confidence hypothesis (BCH), which postulates that confidence reflects
the posterior probability that a decision is correct, is currently the most prominent
theory of confidence. Although several recent studies have found evidence against
it ...
Biological Sciences
Anthropology
All organisms use limited energy to grow, survive, and reproduce, necessitating energy
allocation tradeoffs, but there is debate over how selection impacted metabolic budgets
and tradeoffs in primates, including humans. Here, we develop a method to ...
Biochemistry
Group VIA calcium-independent phospholipase A2 (iPLA2) is a member of the PLA2 superfamily that exhibits calcium-independent activity in contrast to the other two
major types, secreted phospholipase A2 (sPLA2) and cytosolic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2), which ...
2′-O-methylation is one of the most prevalent RNA modifications found in different
RNA types. However, the identities of enzymes participating in the transfer of methyl
groups are not well defined. To date, fibrillarin (FBL) is the only known small ...
Advances in singe-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) have made it possible
to solve the structures of numerous Family A and Family B G protein-coupled receptors
(GPCRs) in complex with G proteins and arrestins, as well as several Family C GPCRs.
...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
We describe design principles for accurate folding of three-dimensional DNA origami.
To evaluate design rules, we reduced the problem of DNA strand routing to the known
problem of shortest-path finding in a weighted graph. To score candidate DNA strand
...
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) regulate multiple cellular responses and represent
highly successful therapeutic targets. The mechanisms by which agonists activate the
G protein are unclear for many GPCR families, including the bitter taste receptors
(...
The goal of this paper is predicting the conformational distributions of ligand binding
sites using the AlphaFold2 (AF2) protein structure prediction program with stochastic
subsampling of the multiple sequence alignment (MSA). We explored the opening of ...
Cell Biology
The immunomodulatory function of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is plastic and susceptible
to resident microenvironment in vivo or inflammatory factors in vitro. We propose
a unique method to enhance the immunoregulatory functions of mesenchymal stem cells
...
Many enveloped viruses bud from the plasma membrane that is tightly associated with
a dense and thick actin cortex. This actin network represents a significant challenge
for membrane deformation and scission, and how it is remodeled during the late steps
...
Developmental Biology
The human lens is composed of a monolayer of lens epithelial cells (LECs) and elongated
fibers that align tightly but are separated by the plasma membrane. The integrity
of the lens plasma membrane is crucial for maintaining lens cellular structure, ...
Ecology
Urbanization has reshaped the distribution of biodiversity on Earth, but we are only
beginning to understand its effects on ecological communities. While urbanization
may have homogenization effects strong enough to blur the large-scale patterns in
...
Nest predation rates critically influence avian biodiversity and evolution. In the
north temperate zone, increased nest failure along edges of forest fragments is hypothesized
to play a major role in the disappearance of bird species from disturbed ...
Mutualisms are mediated by adaptive traits of interacting organisms and play a central
role in the ecology and evolution of species. Thousands of plant species possess tiny
structures called “domatia” that house mites which protect plants from pests, yet
...
Evolution
Indirect reciprocity is a key explanation for the exceptional magnitude of cooperation
among humans. This literature suggests that a large proportion of human cooperation
is driven by social norms and individuals’ incentives to maintain a good reputation.
...
Variability within species is key for adaptability and biological evolution. To understand
individualities in the context of animal movement, we focused on one of the most remarkable
migrations—the journey of the endangered European eel from their ...
Emergence is a fundamental concept in biology and other disciplines, but whether emergent
phenotypes evolve similarly to nonemergent phenotypes is unclear. The hypothesized
process of emergent evolution posits that evolutionary change in at least some ...
Understanding the processes that link genotype to phenotype is a central challenge
in biology. Despite progress in discovering genes associated with ecologically relevant
traits, a poor understanding of the processes and functions via which molecules ...
Genetics
Cultivation studies evaluating land-use histories and coevolutionary dynamics between
humans and plants focus predominantly on domesticated species. Traditional anthropological
divisions of “foragers” and “farmers” have shaped our understanding of ancient ...
Delineating a protein's essential and dispensable domains provides critical insight
into how it carries out its function. Here, we developed a high-throughput method
to synthesize and test the functionality of all possible in-frame and continuous ...
The H3K27M oncogenic histone (oncohistone) mutation drives ~80% of incurable childhood
brain tumors known as diffuse midline gliomas (DMGs). The major molecular feature
of H3K27M mutant DMGs is a global loss of H3K27 trimethylation (H3K27me3), a phenotype
...
Immunology and Inflammation
One driver of the high failure rates of clinical trials for therapeutic cancer vaccines
is likely the inability to sufficiently engage conventional dendritic cells (cDCs),
the antigen-presenting cell (APC) subset that is specialized in priming antitumor
T ...
NLR family, apoptosis inhibitory proteins (NAIPs) detect bacterial flagellin and structurally
related components of bacterial type III secretion systems (T3SS), and recruit NLR
family CARD domain containing protein 4 (NLRC4) and caspase-1 into an ...
Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) is the most widely used rodent model
for multiple sclerosis. Interferon-γ (IFN-γ) and regulatory T cells (Tregs) are individually
well known to play beneficial roles in amelioration of EAE. However, little ...
Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a chronic, debilitating inflammatory skin disease
with a poorly understood immunopathogenesis. Here, we report that HS lesional skin
is characterized by the expansion of innate lymphocytes and T cells expressing CD2,
an ...
A critical host response against viral infections entails the activation of innate
immune signaling that culminates in the production of antiviral proteins. DNA viruses
are sensed by the cytosolic pattern recognition receptor cyclic GMP–AMP synthase (cGAS)...
Medical Sciences
Dry eye disease (DED) is characterized by a dysfunctional tear film in which the corneal
epithelium and its abundant nerves are affected by ocular desiccation and inflammation.
Although adaptive immunity and specifically CD4+ T cells play a role in DED ...
Sustained androgen receptor (AR) signaling during relapse is a central driver of metastatic
castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). Current AR antagonists, such as enzalutamide,
fail to provide long-term benefit for the mCRPC patients who have ...
Rhodopsin, the prototypical class-A G-protein coupled receptor, is a highly sensitive
receptor for light that enables phototransduction in rod photoreceptors. Rhodopsin
plays not only a sensory role but also a structural role as a major component of the
...
Microbiology
Viruses with broad tissue distribution and cell tropism successfully replicate in
various nutrient environments in the body. Several viruses reprogram metabolism for
viral replication. However, many studies focus on metabolic reprogramming in nutrient-...
Investigating microbe–microbe interactions at the single-cell level is critical to
unraveling the ecology and dynamics of microbial communities. In many situations,
microbes assemble themselves into densely packed multispecies biofilms. The density
and ...
The establishment of a productive dengue virus (DENV) infection in the midgut epithelial
cells of Aedes aegypti is critical for the viral transmission cycle. The hypothesis that DENV virions interact
directly with specific mosquito midgut proteins was ...
Neuroscience
A subpopulation of human retinal ganglion cells contains the melanopsin photopigment,
allowing them to act as a fifth photoreceptor class. These ganglion cells project
to the visual cortex, but to reveal its intrinsic contribution to conscious vision
is ...
Natural visual scenes are dominated by spatiotemporal image dynamics, but how the
visual system integrates “movie” information over time is unclear. We characterized
optic tectal neuronal receptive fields using sparse noise stimuli and reverse correlation
...
Primates are known for their exceptional ability to recognize faces. However, we still
have much to learn about how their brains process faces when they are partially hidden.
When we cover parts of a face, it affects how our brains respond, even though we ...
Persistent pain frequently precipitates the development of anxiety disorders, yet
the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. In this study, we employed a mouse
model that simulates trigeminal neuralgia and observed a marked reduction in the ...
KCTD10, a member of the potassium channel tetramerization domain (KCTD) family, is
implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders and functions as a substrate recognition
component within the RING-type ubiquitin ligase complex. A rare de novo variant of
KCTD10, ...
Odors are key signals for guiding spatial behaviors such as foraging and navigation
in rodents. Recent findings reveal that odor representations in the piriform cortex
(PCx) also encode spatial context information. However, the brain origins of this
...
Pharmacology
The X-C motif chemokine receptor XCR1, which selectively binds to the chemokine XCL1,
is highly expressed in conventional dendritic cells subtype 1 (cDC1s) and crucial
for their activation. Modulating XCR1 signaling in cDC1s could offer novel ...
Highsucrose diet (HSD) was reported as a causative factor for multiorgan injuries.
The underlying mechanisms and therapeutic strategies remain largely uncharted. In
the present study, by using a metabolomics approach, we identified the soluble epoxide
...
Physiology
For many animals, color change is a critical adaptive mechanism believed to carry
a substantial energetic cost. Yet, no study to date has directly measured the energy
expenditure associated with this process. We examined the metabolic cost of color
change ...
Plant Biology
Ethylene is widely recognized as a positive regulator of leaf senescence. However,
how plants coordinate the biosynthesis of ethylene to meet the requirements of senescence
progression has not been determined. The rate-limiting enzyme in the ethylene ...
Population Biology
Long-term quantification of temporal species trends is fundamental to the assignment
of conservation status, which in turn is critical for planning and targeting management
interventions. However, monitoring effort and methodologies can change over the ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
The Bayesian confidence hypothesis (BCH), which postulates that confidence reflects
the posterior probability that a decision is correct, is currently the most prominent
theory of confidence. Although several recent studies have found evidence against
it ...
Desert ants are known to rely heavily on vision while venturing for food and returning
to the nest. During these foraging trips, ants memorize and recognize their visual
surroundings, which enables them to recapitulate individually learned routes in a
...
Detecting the motion of an object relative to a world-fixed frame of reference is
an exquisite human capability [G. E. Legge, F. Campbell, Vis. Res. 21, 205–213 (1981)]. However, there is a special condition where humans are unable to
accurately detect ...
Correction
Cover image: Pictured is an artistic illustration of cultural evolution depicting the evolution of harnessing light and heat, with equations handwritten by Marcus W. Feldman, a key figure in the development of modern quantitative cultural evolution. A collection of articles in the Half a Century of Cultural Evolution Special Feature highlights advances in the field of theoretical cultural evolution over the past 50 years. Together, the articles illustrate the insights and progress of cultural evolutionary theory and its spread to a wide array of academic fields that study human and animal culture. See the Introduction to the Special Feature, e2418106121. Image credit: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
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