Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 121, Number 52
Special Feature
Water on the Moon and Mars
Despite the increasing number of space launches, growth of the commercial space sector,
signing of the Artemis Accords, maturation of space mining technologies, the emergence
of a regulatory environment through domestic legislation, and a comprehensive ...
The presence of water on the Moon has been indicated by various remote-sensing observations
and analyses of returned samples. Several missions are planned to conduct new in situ
research on the lunar surface to directly observe and characterize lunar ...
The possible presence of brines on Mars adds an intriguing dimension to the exploration
of Martian environments. Their potential involvement in the formation of recurring
slope lineae has sparked debates on the existence of liquid water versus alternative
...
The origin of water in the Earth-Moon system is a pivotal question in planetary science,
particularly with the need for water resources in the race to establish lunar bases.
The candidate origins of lunar water are an indigenous lunar component, solar ...
The Moon formed 4.5 Ga ago through a collision between proto-Earth and a planetesimal
known as Theia. The compositional similarity of Earth and Moon puts tight limits on
the isotopic contrast between Theia and proto-Earth, or it requires intense ...
Numerous missions to the Moon have identified and documented volatile deposits associated
with permanently shadowed regions. A series of science goals for the Artemis Program
is to explore these volatile deposits and return samples to Earth. Volatiles in ...
Understanding the history of water on Mars is important for understanding both its
geological and potential biological history. The abundance and physical state of water
has evolved through time, from the surface having an early warmer and wetter ...
This Week in PNAS
Core Concepts
Commentaries
Letters
Brief Reports
For human infants, producing recognizable speech is more than a cognitive process.
It is a motor skill that requires infants to learn to coordinate multiple muscles
of varying functions across their body. This coordination is directly linked to ongoing
...
Seaweed farming comprises over half of global coastal and marine aquaculture production
by mass; however, the future of the industry is increasingly threatened by disease
outbreaks. Nature-based solutions provided by enhancing functions of coinciding ...
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
Inferring phase transitions and critical exponents from limited observations with thermodynamic maps
Phase transitions are ubiquitous across life, yet hard to quantify and describe accurately.
In this work, we develop an approach for characterizing generic attributes of phase
transitions from very limited observations made deep within different phases’ ...
Optical imaging access to nanometer-level protein distributions in intact tissue is
a highly sought-after goal, as it would provide visualization in physiologically relevant
contexts. Under the unfavorable signal-to-background conditions of increased ...
Ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals are polar fluids characterized by microscopic
orientational ordering and macroscopic spontaneous polarizations. Within these fluids,
domain walls that separate regions of different polarizations are ubiquitous. We ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
In view of changing climatic conditions and disappearing natural resources such as
fertile soil and water, exploring alternatives to today’s industrial monocrop farming
becomes essential. One promising farming practice is intercropping (IC), in which
two ...
Photosystem II (PSII) catalyzes light-driven water oxidation that releases dioxygen
into our atmosphere and provides the electrons needed for the synthesis of biomass.
The catalysis occurs in the oxygen-evolving oxo-manganese-calcium (Mn4O5Ca) cluster ...
Proteins become asymmetrically distributed in the one-cell Caenorhabditis elegans embryo thanks to reaction–diffusion mechanisms that are often entangled in complex
feedback loops. Cortical polarity drives the enrichment of the RNA-binding proteins
MEX-5 ...
Decades of research have established that mammalian transcription factors (TFs) bind
to each gene’s regulatory regions and cooperatively control tissue specificity, timing,
and intensity of gene transcription. Mapping the combination of TF binding sites ...
Chemistry
The adsorption of ellipsoidal colloidal particles on liquid interfaces induces interfacial
deformation, resulting in anisotropic interface-mediated interactions and the formation
of superstructures. Soft prolate-shaped microgels at the air-water interface ...
Artificially functional RNAs, such as fluorogenic RNA aptamer (FRApt)-based biosensing
tag, represent significant advancements in various biological applications but are
limited by the lack of insight into dynamic structure ensembles and universal design
...
Computer Sciences
Tracking the spread of emerging pathogens is critical to the design of timely and
effective public health responses. Policymakers face the challenge of allocating finite
resources for testing and surveillance across locations, with the goal of maximizing
...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Oxidation of the sub-arc mantle driven by slab-derived fluids has been hypothesized
to contribute to the formation of gold deposits in magmatic arc environments that
host the majority of metal resources on Earth. However, the mechanism by which the
...
Engineering
Decades after being replaced with digital platforms, analogue computing has experienced
a surging interest following developments in metamaterials and intricate fabrication
techniques. Specifically, wave-based analogue computers which impart spatial ...
Rare earth elements (REEs) are critical materials to modern technologies. They are
obtained by selective separation from mining feedstocks consisting of mixtures of
their trivalent cation. We are developing an all-aqueous, bioinspired, interfacial
...
Inhibiting indoleamine 2,3 dioxygenase (IDO) for anticancer therapy has garnered significant
attention in recent years. However, current IDO inhibitors face significant challenges
which limit their clinical application. Here, we genetically engineered a ...
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is often associated with excessive inflammatory response
and highly dysregulated gut microbiota. Traditional treatments utilize drugs to manage
inflammation, potentially with probiotic therapy as an adjuvant. However, ...
Environmental Sciences
Resource availability dictates how fast and how much microbial populations grow. Quantifying
the relationship between microbial growth and resource concentrations makes it possible
to promote, inhibit, and predict microbial activity. Microbes require many ...
Physics
Quasiparticles are low-energy excitations with important roles in condensed matter
physics. An intriguing example is provided by Majorana quasiparticles, which are equivalent
to their antiparticles. Despite being implicated in neutrino oscillations and ...
Randomly moving active particles can be herded into directed motion by asymmetric
geometric structures. Although such a rectification process has been extensively studied
due to its fundamental, biological, and technological relevance, a comprehensive ...
Sustainability Science
Estimating the cost to society from a ton of CO2—termed the social cost of carbon (SCC)—requires connecting a model of the climate
system with a representation of the economic and social effects of changes in climate,
and the aggregation of diverse, ...
Social Sciences
Demography
Nuclear family structures are often thought to be essential for the well-being of
children. Divorce, the loss of either biological parent, the presence of step-parents,
and the practice of polygynous marriage have all been claimed to negatively impact
...
Economic Sciences
Modeling how and why aquatic vegetation removal can free rural households from poverty-disease traps
Infectious disease can reduce labor productivity and incomes, trapping subpopulations
in a vicious cycle of ill health and poverty. Efforts to boost African farmers’ agricultural
production through fertilizer use can inadvertently promote the growth of ...
Estimating the cost to society from a ton of CO2—termed the social cost of carbon (SCC)—requires connecting a model of the climate
system with a representation of the economic and social effects of changes in climate,
and the aggregation of diverse, ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
The sharing of personal memories is a unique aspect of the human experience. Humans
communicate to provide information, to influence, or even to amuse. How do we distinguish
between credible and noncredible narratives? Forensic science has identified race,...
Sustainability Science
Decisions about solar geoengineering (SG) entail risk–risk tradeoffs between the direct
risks of SG and SG’s ability to reduce climate risks. Quantitative comparisons between
these risks are needed to inform public policy. We evaluate idealized SG’s ...
More than 16,000 chemicals are incorporated into plastics to impart properties such
as color, flexibility, and durability. These chemicals may leach from plastics, resulting
in widespread human exposure during everyday use. Two plastic-associated ...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
In view of changing climatic conditions and disappearing natural resources such as
fertile soil and water, exploring alternatives to today’s industrial monocrop farming
becomes essential. One promising farming practice is intercropping (IC), in which
two ...
Anthropology
Nuclear family structures are often thought to be essential for the well-being of
children. Divorce, the loss of either biological parent, the presence of step-parents,
and the practice of polygynous marriage have all been claimed to negatively impact
...
Applied Biological Sciences
Inhibiting indoleamine 2,3 dioxygenase (IDO) for anticancer therapy has garnered significant
attention in recent years. However, current IDO inhibitors face significant challenges
which limit their clinical application. Here, we genetically engineered a ...
Biochemistry
Detecting viral infection is a key role of the innate immune system. The genomes of
some RNA viruses have a high CpG dinucleotide content relative to most vertebrate
cell RNAs, making CpGs a molecular marker of infection. The human zinc-finger antiviral
...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Inferring phase transitions and critical exponents from limited observations with thermodynamic maps
Phase transitions are ubiquitous across life, yet hard to quantify and describe accurately.
In this work, we develop an approach for characterizing generic attributes of phase
transitions from very limited observations made deep within different phases’ ...
Randomly moving active particles can be herded into directed motion by asymmetric
geometric structures. Although such a rectification process has been extensively studied
due to its fundamental, biological, and technological relevance, a comprehensive ...
Photosystem II (PSII) catalyzes light-driven water oxidation that releases dioxygen
into our atmosphere and provides the electrons needed for the synthesis of biomass.
The catalysis occurs in the oxygen-evolving oxo-manganese-calcium (Mn4O5Ca) cluster ...
Diverse tissues in vivo present varying degrees of confinement, constriction, and
compression to migrating cells in both homeostasis and disease. The nucleus in particular
is subjected to external forces by the physical environment during confined ...
Adaptor protein complex-3 (AP-3) mediates cargo sorting from endosomes to lysosomes
and lysosome-related organelles. Recently, it was shown that AP-3 adopts a constitutively
open conformation compared to the related AP-1 and AP-2 coat complexes, which are
...
The pathological deposition of proteins is a hallmark of several devastating neurodegenerative
diseases. These pathological deposits comprise aggregates of proteins that adopt distinct
structures named strains. However, the molecular factors responsible ...
Macromolecular assembly depends on tightly regulated pairwise binding interactions
that are selectively favored at assembly sites while being disfavored in the soluble
phase. This selective control can arise due to molecular density-enhanced binding,
as ...
Cell Biology
Plasma membrane protein degradation and recycling are regulated by the endolysosomal
system, wherein endocytic vesicles bud from the plasma membrane into the cytoplasm
and mature into endosomes and then degradative lysosomes. As such, the endolysosomal
...
Taxanes are frequently used anticancer drugs known to kill tumor cells by inducing
mitotic aberrations and segregation defects. A defining feature of specific cancers,
notably triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and particularly those deficient in BRCA1,
...
Cytokines constitute a family of proteins that modulate the immune system and are
secreted by many cells. CXCL12, along with its receptor CXCR4, are essential players
in numerous processes. Dysregulation of their function underlie the mechanism(s) of
...
Brain neurons utilize the primary cilium as a privileged compartment to detect and
respond to extracellular ligands such as Sonic hedgehog (SHH). However, cilia in cerebellar
granule cell (GC) neurons disassemble during differentiation through ...
Developmental Biology
Proteins become asymmetrically distributed in the one-cell Caenorhabditis elegans embryo thanks to reaction–diffusion mechanisms that are often entangled in complex
feedback loops. Cortical polarity drives the enrichment of the RNA-binding proteins
MEX-5 ...
Zygotic genome activation occurs in two-cell (2C) embryos, and a 2C-like state is
also activated in sporadic (~1%) naïve embryonic stem cells in mice. Elevated chromatin
accessibility is critical for the 2C-like state to occur, yet the underlying ...
The H3K9me3-specific histone methyltransferase SETDB1 is critical for proper regulation
of developmental processes, but the underlying mechanisms are only partially understood.
Here, we show that deletion of Setdb1 in mouse fetal liver hematopoietic stem ...
The formation of functional epithelial tubules is critical for the development and
maintenance of many organ systems. While the mechanisms of tubule formation by epithelial
cells are well studied, the process of tubule anastomosis—where tubules connect to
...
Ecology
Predator–prey interactions are a major driver of microbiome dynamics, but remain difficult
to predict. While several prey traits potentially impact resistance to predation,
their effects in a multispecies context remain unclear. Here, we leverage ...
Microorganisms in marine oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) drive globally impactful biogeochemical
processes. One such process is multistep denitrification (NO3–→NO2–→NO→N2O→N2), which dominates OMZ bioavailable nitrogen (N) loss and nitrous oxide (N2O) ...
Semiaquatic taxa, including humans, often swim at the air–water interface where they
waste energy generating surface waves. For fully marine animals however, theory predicts
the most cost-efficient depth-use pattern for migrating, air-breathing species ...
Coral populations are being progressively thinned by climate change, which elevates
the risk of reproductive failure from Allee effects during fertilization. Studies
have shown that fertilization success improves during more intense and synchronized
...
Environmental Sciences
Tracking the spread of emerging pathogens is critical to the design of timely and
effective public health responses. Policymakers face the challenge of allocating finite
resources for testing and surveillance across locations, with the goal of maximizing
...
Evolution
The molecular basis of human brain evolution is a key piece in understanding the evolution
of human-specific cognitive and behavioral traits. Comparative studies have suggested
that human brain evolution was accompanied by accelerated changes of gene ...
The discovery that sponges (Porifera) can fully regenerate from aggregates of dissociated
cells launched them as one of the earliest experimental models to study the evolution
of cell adhesion and allorecognition in animals. This process depends on an ...
The issue of antibiotic resistance is a critical concern for public health, prompting
numerous investigations into the impact of treatment strategies on preventing or slowing
down the emergence of resistance. While existing studies have predominantly ...
Global adaptation occurs when all populations of a species undergo selection toward
a common optimum. This can occur by a hard selective sweep with the emergence of a
new globally advantageous allele that spreads throughout a species’ natural range
until ...
Eukaryotic nuclear genomes often encode distinct sets of translation machinery for
function in the cytosol vs. organelles (mitochondria and plastids). This raises questions
about why multiple translation systems are maintained even though they are capable
...
The current “consensus” order in which amino acids were added to the genetic code
is based on potentially biased criteria, such as the absence of sulfur-containing
amino acids from the Urey–Miller experiment which lacked sulfur. More broadly, abiotic
...
The epidemiology and evolution of diseases unfold in populations that are rarely homogeneous.
Instead, hosts infected by pathogens often form metapopulations, in which local populations
connected by the movement of hosts experience different demographic ...
Genetics
Decades of research have established that mammalian transcription factors (TFs) bind
to each gene’s regulatory regions and cooperatively control tissue specificity, timing,
and intensity of gene transcription. Mapping the combination of TF binding sites ...
The tropical archipelago of Wallacea was first settled by anatomically modern humans
(AMH) by 50 thousand years ago (kya), with descendent populations thought to have
remained genetically isolated prior to the arrival of Austronesian seafarers around
3.5 ...
Drugs that eliminate senescent cells, senolytics, can be powerful when combined with
prosenescence cancer therapies. Using a CRISPR/Cas9-based genetic screen, we identify
here SLC25A23 as a vulnerability of senescent cancer cells. Suppressing SLC25A23 ...
Immunology and Inflammation
Immunotherapies have emerged as an effective treatment option for immune-related diseases,
such as cancer and inflammatory diseases. However, variations in patient responsiveness
limit the broad applicability and success of these immunotherapies. ...
Fever confers significant survival benefits on endotherms by optimizing both innate
and adaptive immunity. Ectotherms achieve thermoregulation using behavioral strategies,
but existing evidence supports its enhancement effect on innate immunity only. ...
Medical Sciences
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is often associated with excessive inflammatory response
and highly dysregulated gut microbiota. Traditional treatments utilize drugs to manage
inflammation, potentially with probiotic therapy as an adjuvant. However, ...
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has profound unmet medical need globally for
its devastating clinical outcome associated with rapid metastasis and lack of targeted
therapies. Recently, lipid metabolic reprogramming especially fatty acid oxidation
(...
Immune surveillance depends in part on the recognition of peptide variants by T cell
antigen receptors. Given that both normal B cells and malignant B cells accumulate
mutations we chose a murine model of multiple myeloma to test conditions to induce
cell-...
Tissue inflammation is often broadly associated with cellular damage, yet sterile
inflammation also plays critical roles in beneficial tissue remodeling. In the central
nervous system, this is observed through a predominantly innate immune response in
...
Microbiology
Resource availability dictates how fast and how much microbial populations grow. Quantifying
the relationship between microbial growth and resource concentrations makes it possible
to promote, inhibit, and predict microbial activity. Microbes require many ...
Sandfly vectors transmit Leishmania through egestion of parasites into the host skin. The transmissible dose is shaped
by Leishmania development in the sandfly gut, described as a sequential differentiation of promastigote
morphotypes. Apart from isolated ...
Formerly a common childhood pathogen, mumps virus (MuV) remains active worldwide,
despite relatively high vaccine coverage. MuV is thought to infect the upper respiratory
tract before disseminating to other organs; however, the early cellular targets of
...
The bacterial pathogen Staphylococcus aureus forms multicellular communities known as biofilms in which cells are held together
by an extracellular matrix principally composed of repurposed cytoplasmic proteins
and extracellular DNA. These biofilms ...
Phages, viruses of bacteria, play a pivotal role in Earth’s biosphere and hold great
promise as therapeutic and diagnostic tools in combating infectious diseases. Attachment
of phages to bacterial cells is a crucial initial step of the interaction. The ...
Neuroscience
Optical imaging access to nanometer-level protein distributions in intact tissue is
a highly sought-after goal, as it would provide visualization in physiologically relevant
contexts. Under the unfavorable signal-to-background conditions of increased ...
Combinatorial networks of cell adhesion molecules and cell surface receptors drive
fundamental aspects of neural circuit establishment and function. However, the intracellular
signals orchestrated by these cell surface complexes remain less understood. ...
Nested sleep oscillations, emerging from asynchronous states in coordinated bursts,
are critical for memory consolidation. Whether these bursts emerge intrinsically or
from an underlying rhythm is unknown. Here, we show a previously undescribed ...
Everything that the brain sees must first be encoded by the retina, which maintains
a reliable representation of the visual world in many different, complex natural scenes
while also adapting to stimulus changes. This study quantifies whether and how the
...
Genes involved in regulating the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, including
the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), are linked to various stress-related psychopathologies
including bipolar disorder as well as other mood and trauma-related disorders. ...
Physiology
In muscle, titin proteins connect myofilaments together and are thought to be critical
for contraction, especially during residual force enhancement (RFE) when steady-state
force is elevated after an active stretch. We investigated titin’s function during
...
Growth hormone (GH) has several metabolic effects, including a profound impact on
glucose homeostasis. For example, GH oversecretion induces insulin resistance and
increases the risk of developing diabetes mellitus. Here, we show that GH receptor
(GHR) ...
The integrity of the blood–retina barrier (BRB) is crucial for phototransduction and
vision, by tightly restricting transport of molecules between the blood and surrounding
neuronal cells. Breakdown of the BRB leads to the development of retinal diseases.
...
Plant Biology
CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing systems have revolutionized plant gene functional studies
by enabling the targeted introduction of insertion-deletions (INDELs) via the nonhomologous
end-joining (NHEJ) pathway. Frameshift-inducing INDELs can introduce a ...
When plants are exposed to drought stress, there is a trade-off between plant growth
and stress responses. Here, we identified a signaling mechanism for the initial steps
of the drought-growth trade-off. Phosphoproteomic profiling revealed that Raf13, a
...
Light is a major determinant of plant growth and survival. NONEXPRESSER OF PATHOGENESIS-RELATED
GENES 1 (NPR1) acts as a receptor for salicylic acid (SA) and serves as the key regulator
of SA-mediated immune responses. However, the mechanisms by which ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Emotion and cognition involve an intricate crosstalk of neural and endocrine systems
that support dynamic reallocation of neural resources and optimal adaptation for upcoming
challenges, an active process analogous to allostasis. As a hallmark of human ...
Sustainability Science
Modeling how and why aquatic vegetation removal can free rural households from poverty-disease traps
Infectious disease can reduce labor productivity and incomes, trapping subpopulations
in a vicious cycle of ill health and poverty. Efforts to boost African farmers’ agricultural
production through fertilizer use can inadvertently promote the growth of ...
Corrections
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%20_%20PNAS_files/pnas.webp "View the PNAS Table of Contents Vol.121; No.52")
Cover image: Pictured is NASA’s Artemis 1 beneath the full Moon. A collection of articles in the Water on the Moon and Mars Special Feature describes diverse scientific methodologies for detecting, quantifying, and characterizing the volumes and sources of water on the Moon and Mars. Together, the articles outline the importance of understanding and managing extraterrestrial water sources for future exploration and habitation of the Moon and Mars. See the Introduction to the Special Feature, e2421996121. Image credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky (photographer).
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