Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 122, Number 11
This Week in PNAS
Opinion
Commentaries
Perspective
U.S. Census Bureau officials recently reaffirmed the Bureau’s ongoing efforts to replace
the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata sample with “fully synthetic”
data to protect respondent confidentiality. With the growth of computing power ...
Letters
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Brief Reports
Large-diameter trees provide vital ecological functions in forested ecosystems. Old,
large-diameter trees may also be vulnerable to climate-driven mortality events, but
past work on large tree populations has been geographically limited. Here, we ...
Adults tend to view men (more so than women) as default people, with numerous real-world consequences for gender equity. In the United States, the
tendency to center men in concepts of people develops across middle childhood, yet the specific mechanisms ...
To ensure optimal replication and spread, viruses have evolved countermeasures to
evade type 1 IFN-mediated antiviral activity. During the early viral replication cycle
steps until uncoating, the HIV-1 core protects viral pathogen associated molecular
...
The cytoskeleton is crucial for cell organization and movement. In Eukaryotes, it
largely consists of the protein actin, that forms a double-stranded linear filamentous
structure in the presence of ATP and disassemble upon ATP hydrolysis. Bacteria also
...
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
We investigate the mechanics of two asymmetric ribbons bound at one end and pulled
apart at the other ends. We characterize the elastic junction near the bonding and
conceptualize it as a bending boundary layer. While the size of this junction decreases
...
In emulsions of multicomponent fluids, the dispersed phase forms tiny droplets in
the continuous phase. In situ control and manipulation to achieve diversity in emulsion
droplets for emerging applications is challenging. In a liquid crystal-based emulsion,...
Astronomy
NASA’s Kepler mission identified over 4,000 extrasolar planets that transit (cross
in front of) their host stars. This sample has revealed detailed features in the demographics
of planet sizes and orbital spacings. However, knowledge of their orbital ...
Nonlinear plasma physics problems are usually simulated through comprehensive modeling
of phase space. The extreme computational cost of such simulations has motivated the
development of multi-moment fluid models. However, a major challenge has been ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Rapid and accurate detection of DNA from disease-causing pathogens is essential for
controlling the spread of infections and administering timely treatments. While traditional
molecular diagnostics techniques like PCR are highly sensitive, they include ...
Understanding how ecosystems respond to ubiquitous microplastic (MP) pollution is
crucial for ensuring global food security. Here, we conduct a multiecosystem meta-analysis
of 3,286 data points and reveal that MP exposure leads to a global reduction in ...
Topologically associating domains (TADs) are sub-Megabase regions in vertebrate genomes
with enriched intradomain interactions that restrict enhancer–promoter contacts across
their boundaries. However, the mechanisms that separate TADs remain incompletely ...
The flagellum is the most complex macromolecular structure known in bacteria and is
composed of around two dozen distinct proteins. The main building block of the long,
external flagellar filament, flagellin, is secreted through the flagellar type-III
...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Linear trends in total solar irradiance (TSI) between different reconstructions of
the satellite era, defined as 1978 to 2023, disagree by up to 0.17 W/m2 per decade. Furthermore, high-quality satellite radiometer observations of the most
recent solar ...
Engineering
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is notoriously immune-resistant, limiting
the clinical efficacy of single-agent immune modulators and thereby necessitating
the exploration of multimodal immunotherapy combinations. Traditional approaches combining
...
Environmental Sciences
While vegetation brings positive benefits for climate mitigation and adaptation, the
impact of ongoing global greening remains controversial due to its uncertain effects
on hydrological cycle. Here, we quantitatively assess the impact of vegetation ...
We study how self-organization in systems showing complex spatiotemporal dynamics
can increase ecosystem resilience. We consider a general simple model that includes
positive feedback as well as negative feedback mediated by an inhibitor. We apply
this ...
Physics
Active turbulence, or chaotic self-organized collective motion, is often observed
in concentrated suspensions of motile bacteria and other systems of self-propelled
interacting agents. To date, there is no fundamental understanding of how geometrical
...
Low-energy excitations play a key role in all condensed-matter systems, yet there
is limited understanding of their nature in glasses, where they correspond to local
rearrangements of groups of particles. Here, we introduce an algorithm to systematically
...
We study the driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard model with an all-to-all hopping term
in the system Hamiltonian, while subject to incoherent pumping and decay from the
environment. This system is naturally probed in several recent experiments on excitons
in ...
Statistics
The problem of combining P-values is an old and fundamental one, and the classic assumption of independence
is often violated or unverifiable in many applications. There are many well-known
rules that can combine a set of arbitrarily dependent P-values (...
Social Sciences
Economic Sciences
Despite legal protections, discrimination based on sexual orientation remains difficult
to detect and measure in labor markets. We present evidence from a field experiment
(N = 1,128) conducted in Australia on a major gig economy platform that allows ...
Deforestation frequently accompanies poverty, yet various antipoverty programs in
many countries have exhibited mixed results in addressing deforestation. Poverty Alleviation
Resettlement (PAR) stands out as one of the few government-led resettlement ...
Political Sciences
Although a growing literature has investigated the effects of various types of civil
war violence on political behavior, no study has examined the impact of assassinations
targeting politicians. This is a critical omission, as violence against local ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Pattern separation, or distinguishing similar experiences from one another, and pattern
completion, in which components of an experience prompt retrieval or forgetting of
an event pattern as a unit, are essential components of episodic memory. However,
...
Examination of the subjective qualitative aspects of an experience, or “qualia” in
short, is a fundamental and core aspect of consciousness research. How can we characterize
the particular quality of redness, i.e. a red quale? Based on a recent proposal ...
Central emotion theories assume that during threatening and dangerous events the human
face signals a prototypical, distinct, and universally recognized expression of fear
which can be accurately decoded by conspecific perceivers. Due to the importance of
...
As infants grow, they develop greater attentional control during interactions with
others, shifting from patterns of attention primarily driven by caregivers (exogenous)
to those that are also self-directed (endogenous). The ability to endogenously ...
Social Sciences
Autocratic governments around the world use clandestine propaganda campaigns to influence
the media. We document a decade-long trend in China toward the planting of government-authored
articles in party and commercial newspapers. To examine this ...
Sustainability Science
Increasing agricultural productivity is a gradual process with significant time lags
between research and development (R&D) investment and the resulting gains. We estimate
the response of US agricultural Total Factor Productivity to both R&D investment ...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
Transgenic crops that produce insecticidal toxins derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) are grown worldwide to manage insect pests. Western corn rootworm is a serious
pest of maize in the United States and is managed with Bt maize. In the ...
Applied Biological Sciences
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is notoriously immune-resistant, limiting
the clinical efficacy of single-agent immune modulators and thereby necessitating
the exploration of multimodal immunotherapy combinations. Traditional approaches combining
...
We evaluated the in vivo therapeutic efficacy and tolerability of BI-3406-mediated
pharmacological inhibition of SOS1 in comparison to genetic ablation of this universal
Ras-GEF in various KRAS-dependent experimental tumor settings. Contrary to the rapid
...
Biochemistry
CXCR4 (CXC chemokine receptor type 4), a member of the G protein–coupled receptor
superfamily, plays a role in cell migration and functions as a coreceptor for HIV
entry. Molecular therapeutics targeting CXCR4 have been under intensive investigation.
To ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Active turbulence, or chaotic self-organized collective motion, is often observed
in concentrated suspensions of motile bacteria and other systems of self-propelled
interacting agents. To date, there is no fundamental understanding of how geometrical
...
Some viruses counter host-cell efforts to digest invading viral RNA by using special
structures resistant to host RNases, known as exoribonuclease-resistant RNAs (xrRNAs).
xrRNAs typically form an unusual fold with the 5′-end threaded through a ring ...
Microsporidia are divergent fungal pathogens that employ a unique harpoon-like apparatus
called the polar tube (PT) to invade host cells. The long PT is fired out of the microsporidian
spore over the course of just a few hundred milliseconds. Once fired, ...
The cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) is a chloride channel
whose dysfunction leads to intracellular accumulation of chloride ions, dehydration
of cell surfaces, and subsequent damage to airway and ductal organs. Beyond its ...
Dynamic processes involving biomolecules are essential for the function of the cell.
Here, we introduce an integrative method for computing models of these processes based
on multiple heterogeneous sources of information, including time-resolved ...
The transthyretin (TTR) tetramer, assembled as a dimer of dimers, transports thyroxine
and retinol binding protein in blood plasma and cerebrospinal fluid. Aggregation of
wild type (WT) or pathogenic variant TTR leads to transthyretin amyloidosis, which
...
Cell Biology
The tumor suppressor p53 can trigger tumor resistance to chemotherapy by facilitating
DNA damage repair and maintaining genomic integrity. Here, we report that a p53-induced
circular RNA circASCC3 promotes chemotherapeutic resistance by resolving R-loops.
...
Inflammation is among the known causes of cisplatin-induced hearing loss (CIHL), but
its exact pathophysiological mechanisms remain unclear. Herein, we demonstrated that
pyroptosis—a recently identified inflammatory type of regulated cell death dependent
...
Mutations in the NBS1 gene result in Nijmegen breakage syndrome (NBS), and the gene encodes NBS1 that forms
a complex with MRE11 and RAD50 and participates in DNA damage repair. However, the
molecular mechanism by which NBS1 mutations cause clinical ...
The importance of macrophages in kidney diseases has been well established; however,
the mechanisms underlying the infiltration of macrophages into injured kidneys are
not well understood. RGMb is a member of the repulsive guidance molecule (RGM) family.
...
Stem cells possess inherent properties of self-renewal and differentiation, and thus
hold significant promise for regenerating damaged tissues or replacing lost cells.
Unless their therapeutic effects are solely mediated by paracrine, transplanted stem
...
Developmental Biology
Neural crest cells (NCC) comprise a heterogeneous population of cells with variable
potency that contribute to nearly every tissue and organ throughout the body. Considered
unique to vertebrates, NCC are transiently generated within the dorsolateral ...
Ecology
Microbial communities vary across space, time, and individual hosts, generating a
need for statistical methods capable of quantifying variability across multiple microbiome
samples at once. To understand heterogeneity across microbiome samples from ...
Variability in predator–prey interactions can modulate population dynamics with impacts
scalable to entire ecosystems. As notorious corallivores, crown-of-thorns sea stars
(CoTS; Acanthaster spp.) have caused extensive losses of coral habitat during ...
The daily cycle of photosynthetic primary production at the base of marine food webs
is often limited by the availability of scarce nutrients. Microbial competition for
these scarce resources can be alleviated insofar as the intensity of nutrient uptake
...
Mixed-species plantations are increasingly recognized for their potential to maintain
forest biodiversity and soil health; however, a comprehensive assessment of their
global effectiveness is lacking. To fill this knowledge gap, we conducted a meta-...
Environmental Sciences
Understanding how ecosystems respond to ubiquitous microplastic (MP) pollution is
crucial for ensuring global food security. Here, we conduct a multiecosystem meta-analysis
of 3,286 data points and reveal that MP exposure leads to a global reduction in ...
Ocean acidification caused by increasing anthropogenic CO2 is expected to impact marine phytoplankton productivity, yet the extent and even
direction of these changes are not well constrained. Here, we investigate the responses
of phytoplankton community ...
Evolution
Positive selection at the 2q21.3 enhancer region for lactase gene (LCT) expression in Europeans and Africans has long been attributed to selection for lactase
persistence (LP), the capacity of adults to digest lactose in milk, presumably because
of the ...
Genetics
Topologically associating domains (TADs) are sub-Megabase regions in vertebrate genomes
with enriched intradomain interactions that restrict enhancer–promoter contacts across
their boundaries. However, the mechanisms that separate TADs remain incompletely ...
Genetic assimilation is a process by which a trait originally driven by the environment
becomes independent of the initial cue and is expressed constitutively in a population.
More than seven decades have passed since Waddington’s pioneering demonstration ...
CRISPR-Cas9 systems have revolutionized biotechnology, creating diverse new opportunities
for biomedical research and therapeutic genome and epigenome editing. Despite the
abundance of bacterial CRISPR-Cas9 systems, relatively few are effective in human
...
Immunology and Inflammation
Infiltrating macrophages contribute to muscle dystrophic changes in Duchenne muscular
dystrophy (DMD). In a DMD mouse model, mdx5cv mice, CC chemokine receptor type 2 (CCR2) deficiency diminishes Ly6Chi macrophage infiltration by blocking blood Ly6Chi ...
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by synovial
inflammation, pannus formation, and progressive joint destruction. The inflammatory
milieu in RA drives endothelial cell activation and upregulation of adhesion molecules,
...
Currently, most cell or tissue transplantations using induced pluripotent stem cells
(iPSCs) are anticipated to involve allogeneic iPSCs. However, the immunological properties
of iPSCs in an allogeneic setting are not well understood. We previously ...
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune demyelinating disorder of the central nervous
system (CNS), which is linked to Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) infection, preceding the
disease. The molecular mechanisms underlying this connection are only partially ...
In early postnatal and young adult bone marrow, Leptin receptor–expressing (LepR+) stromal cells and endothelial cells synthesize factors required for hematopoietic
stem cell (HSC) maintenance, including Stem Cell Factor (SCF) and Cxcl12. However,
little ...
Medical Sciences
Recurrent implantation failure (RIF) is a devastating condition that leaves many undergoing
fertility treatment childless. The human endometrium is receptive to a blastocyst
for a brief period, the window of implantation. Critical knowledge underpinning ...
Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) is strongly implicated in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis
(MS), yet its exact role in disease progression remains unclear. Using high-dimensional
CO-detection by indexing, a technology for spatial imaging, this study ...
Microbiology
The flagellum is the most complex macromolecular structure known in bacteria and is
composed of around two dozen distinct proteins. The main building block of the long,
external flagellar filament, flagellin, is secreted through the flagellar type-III
...
Transmissibility of respiratory viruses is a complex viral trait that is intricately
linked to tropism. Several highly transmissible viruses, including severe acute respiratory
syndrome coronavirus 2 and Influenza viruses, specifically target ...
The long-term success of introduced populations depends on both their initial size
and ability to compete against existing residents, but it remains unclear how these
factors collectively shape colonization dynamics. Here, we investigate how initial
...
Restriction factors are dominant proteins that target different essential steps of
the viral life cycle; thus, these proteins provide an early line of defense against
viruses. Here, we found that the internalization of DR5, an important receptor of
the ...
N6-methyladnosine (m6A) modification is present in both positive- and negative-strand RNA of influenza
A virus (IAV) and affects the replication and pathogenicity of IAV. However, little
is known about the regulatory mechanism of m6A in IAV RNA. In the ...
Chronic infections with hepatitis E virus (HEV), especially those of genotype 3 (G3),
frequently lead to liver fibrosis and cirrhosis in patients. However, the causation
and mechanism of liver fibrosis triggered by chronic HEV infection remain poorly ...
Sinorhizobium meliloti is a soil bacterium that establishes a nitrogen-fixing symbiosis within root nodules
of legumes. In this symbiosis, S. meliloti undergoes a drastic cellular change leading to a terminally differentiated form,
called bacteroid, ...
Neuroscience
A key feature of biological and artificial neural networks is the progressive refinement
of their neural representations with experience. In neuroscience, this fact has inspired
several recent studies in sensory and motor systems. However, less is known ...
The hippocampus and entorhinal cortex encode spaces by spatially local and hexagonal
grid activity patterns (place cells and grid cells), respectively. In addition, the
same brain regions also implicate neural representations for nonspatial, semantic
...
Pain independent of disease activity is frequently reported by rheumatoid arthritis
patients and remains undertreated. Preclinical evidence suggests that imbalance of
neuroimmune proresolving interactions within dorsal root ganglia (DRG) rather than
at ...
Neuropathic pain is a debilitating chronic condition mainly caused by peripheral nerve
injury. However, the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying this condition remain
unclear. Transient receptor potential canonical 3 (TRPC3), a TRP channel that is ...
Dopamine (DA) signals to the striatum play critical roles in shaping and sustaining
stimulus-reward associations. In primates, however, the dynamics of the DA signals
remain unknown since conventional methods are not necessarily appropriate in terms
of ...
Triggering and modulation of a complex behavior by a single peptidergic command neuron in Drosophila
At the end of their growth phase, Drosophila larvae remodel their bodies, glue themselves to a substrate, and harden their cuticle
in preparation for metamorphosis. This process—termed pupariation—is triggered by
a surge in the hormone ecdysone. Substrate ...
The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and hippocampus are critical for memory retrieval,
decision making, and emotional regulation. While ventral CA1 (vCA1) shows direct and
reciprocal connections with mPFC, dorsal CA1 (dCA1) forms indirect pathways to mPFC,...
Glaucomatous optic neuropathy, or glaucoma, is the world’s primary cause of irreversible
blindness. Glaucoma is comorbid with other neurodegenerative diseases, but how it
might impact the environment of the full central nervous system to increase ...
Pharmacology
For decades, microtubules—composed of αβ-tubulin dimers—have been primary targets
for cancer chemotherapy. While eight binding sites on the tubulin dimer have been
structurally characterized, this study reveals a ninth. We found that the tubulin
inhibitor ...
Antibodies have the potential to target G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) with high
receptor, cellular, and tissue selectivity; however, few antibody ligands for GPCRs
exist. Here, we describe a generalizable selection method to enrich for GPCR ligands
...
Physiology
Muscle contraction is driven by myosin motors from the thick filaments pulling on
the actin-containing thin filaments of the sarcomere, and it is regulated by structural
changes in both filaments. Thin filaments are activated by an increase in ...
Regulation of mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake is critical in cardiac adaptation to chronic stressors. Abnormalities in Ca2+ handling, including mitochondrial uptake mechanisms, have been implicated in pathological
heart hypertrophy. Enhancing mitochondrial Ca2+ ...
Plant Biology
Pathogens must precisely tailor their gene expression to cause infection. However,
a signaling cascade from host signal to effector production has remained elusive for
metazoan pathogens. Here, we show that plants contain molecular signals, termed ...
The plant photoreceptor phytochrome B (phyB) mediates the responses of plants to red
(R) light. Trimethylation of histone H3 at Lys27 (H3K27me3) plays a crucial role in
governing gene expression and controlling the response of plants to environmental
...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Resting brain activity, in the absence of explicit tasks, appears as distributed spatiotemporal
patterns that reflect structural connectivity and correlate with behavioral traits.
However, its role in shaping behavior remains unclear. Recent evidence ...
Corrections
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Cover image: Pictured is a red decorator crab (Schizophrys aspera) camouflaged in coral rubble. Kennedy Wolfe et al. used surveys and environmental DNA analysis in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, to identify predators of crown-of-thorns sea stars (Acanthaster spp.), whose sporadic population outbreaks can cause extensive coral declines. The authors identified seven decapod crustacean species that preyed on juvenile crown-of-thorns sea stars, including S. aspera, and found that areas with fewer predatory decapods were more prone to crown-of-thorns sea star outbreaks. The results could help inform population management strategies for crown-of-thorns sea stars. See the article by Wolfe et al. e2424560122. Image credit: Kennedy Wolfe.
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