Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 122, Number 1
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Research that better aligns policy, practice, and research communities is gaining
momentum around the world. This includes engaged research strategies that bring partners,
and their diverse perspectives and kinds of knowledge, together to shape research
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Letters
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Parallel vector memories in the brain of a bee as foundation for flexible navigation
This article has a reply:Brief Reports
There is a widespread perception that China’s digital censorship distances its people
from the global internet, and the Chinese Communist Party, through state-controlled
media, is the main gatekeeper of information about foreign affairs. Our analysis of
...
In many plants, the asymmetric division of the zygote sets up the apical–basal body
axis. In the cress Arabidopsis, the zygote coexpresses regulators of the apical and basal embryo lineages, the transcription
factors WOX2 and WRKY2/WOX8, respectively. ...
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
Collective migration of cancer cells is often interpreted using concepts derived from
the physics of active matter, but the experimental evidence is mostly restricted to
observations made in vitro. Here, we study collective invasion of metastatic cancer
...
Ferroelectric hafnia exhibits promising robust polarization and silicon compatibility
for ferroelectric devices. Unfortunately, it suffers from difficult polarization switching.
Methods to enable easier polarization switching are needed, and the ...
Mechanical systems with moving points of contact—including rolling, sliding, and impacts—are
common in engineering applications and everyday experiences. The challenges in analyzing
such systems are compounded when an object dynamically explores the ...
Moiré excitons and moiré magnetism are essential to semiconducting van der Waals magnets.
In this work, we perform a comprehensive first-principles study to elucidate the interplay
of electronic excitation and magnetism in twisted magnetic CrSBr bilayers. ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
The diversity and heterogeneity of biomarkers has made the development of general
methods for single-step quantification of analytes difficult. For individual biomarkers,
electrochemical methods that detect a conformational change in an affinity binder
...
Dorsal closure is a process that occurs during embryogenesis of Drosophila melanogaster. During dorsal closure, the amnioserosa (AS), a one-cell thick epithelial tissue
that fills the dorsal opening, shrinks as the lateral epidermis sheets converge and
...
Carnivory in plants is an unusual trait that has arisen multiple times, independently,
throughout evolutionary history. Plants in the genus Genlisea are carnivorous and feed on microorganisms that live in soil using modified subterranean
leaf structures (...
Biophysical constraints limit the specificity with which transcription factors (TFs)
can target regulatory DNA. While individual nontarget binding events may be low affinity,
the sheer number of such interactions could present a challenge for gene ...
We examine the role of higher-order transient structures (HOTS) in M2R regulation
of GIRK channels. Electron microscopic membrane protein location maps show that both
proteins form HOTS that exhibit a statistical bias to be near each other. Theoretical
...
This study shows that five membrane proteins—three GPCRs, an ion channel, and an enzyme—form
self-clusters under natural expression levels in a cardiac-derived cell line. The
cluster size distributions imply that these proteins self-oligomerize reversibly ...
Animal morphogenesis, the development of an organism’s body form, is commonly perceived
as a directed and almost deterministic process. However, noise and stochastic fluctuations
are ubiquitous in biological systems. The questions on the role of ...
As structural biology and drug discovery depend on high-quality protein structures,
assessment tools are essential. We describe a new method for validating amino-acid
conformations: “PhiSiCal (al) Checkup.” Twenty new joint probability distributions in ...
Chemistry
Class II photolyases (PLs) are a distant subclade in the photolyase/cryptochrome superfamily,
displaying a unique Trp–Tyr tetrad for photoreduction and exhibiting a lower quantum
yield (QY) of DNA repair (49%) than class I photolyases (82%) [M. Zhang, L. ...
Dissolution of CO2 in water followed by the subsequent hydrolysis reactions is of great importance to
the global carbon cycle, and carbon capture and storage. Despite numerous previous
studies, the reactions are still not fully understood at the atomistic ...
Monitoring subcellular organelle dynamics in real time and precisely assessing membrane
heterogeneity in living cells are very important for studying fundamental biological
mechanisms and gaining a comprehensive understanding of cellular processes. ...
Emulsion interface engineering has been widely employed for the synthesis of nanomaterials
with various morphologies. However, the instability of the liquid–liquid interface
and uncertain interfacial interactions impose significant limitations on ...
Multiconfiguration pair-density functional theory (MC-PDFT) was proposed a decade
ago, but it is still in the early stage of density functional development. MC-PDFT
uses functionals that are called on-top functionals; they depend on the density and
the on-...
A single-component flavin-dependent halogenase, AetF, has emerged as an attractive
biocatalyst for catalyzing halogenation. However, its flavin chemistry remains unexplored
and cannot be predicted due to its uniqueness in sequence and structure compared ...
Infections caused by gram-negative pathogens continue to be a major risk to human
health because of the innate antibiotic resistance endowed by their unique cell membrane
architecture. Nature has developed an elegant solution to target gram-negative ...
Computer Sciences
We study image segmentation using spatiotemporal dynamics in a recurrent neural network
where the state of each unit is given by a complex number. We show that this network
generates sophisticated spatiotemporal dynamics that can effectively divide an ...
Understanding the structure of real data is paramount in advancing modern deep-learning
methodologies. Natural data such as images are believed to be composed of features
organized in a hierarchical and combinatorial manner, which neural networks capture
...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a key component of the global
climate that is projected to weaken under future anthropogenic climate change. While
many studies have investigated the AMOC’s response to different levels and types ...
Polar ice cores and historical records evidence a large-magnitude volcanic eruption
in 1831 CE. This event was estimated to have injected ~13 Tg of sulfur (S) into the
stratosphere which produced various atmospheric optical phenomena and led to Northern
...
Subducted plates often stagnate in the mantle transition zone (MTZ), and the fate
of the stagnant slabs is still debatable. They may sink into the lower mantle, or
remain partially trapped in the MTZ, but it is uncertain whether they can return to
the ...
Precipitation recycling, where evapotranspiration (ET) from the land surface contributes
to precipitation within the same region, is a critical component of the water cycle.
This process is especially important for the US Corn Belt, where extensive ...
Understanding the dynamic response of granular shear zones under cyclic loading is
fundamental to elucidating the mechanisms triggering earthquake-induced landslides,
with implications for broader fields such as seismology and granular physics. Existing
...
Aerosol light absorption has been widely considered as a contributing factor to the
worsening of particulate pollution in large urban areas, primarily through its role
in stabilizing the planetary boundary layer (PBL). Here, we report that absorption-...
The Qin and Western Han dynasties (221 BCE to 24 CE) represent an era of societal
prosperity in China. However, due to a lack of high-resolution paleoclimate records
it is still unclear whether the agricultural boost documented for this period was
...
Engineering
Silicon (Si) anodes have long been recognized to significantly improve the energy
density and fast-charging capability of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, the
implementation of these anodes in commercial LIB cells has progressed incrementally
due to ...
Physics
Camouflage is often considered a daytime phenomenon based on light and shade. Nocturnal
camouflage can also occur, but its mechanistic basis remains unclear. Here, we analyze
the conditions for background matching (BM) of avian predators against the night ...
The pseudogap phenomena have been a long-standing mystery of the cuprate high-temperature
superconductors. The pseudogap in the electron-doped cuprates has been attributed
to band folding due to antiferromagnetic (AFM) long-range order or short-range ...
We introduce a time-energy uncertainty relation within the context of restarts in
monitored quantum dynamics. Previous studies have established that the mean recurrence
time, which represents the time taken to return to the initial state, is quantized
as ...
Introducing an experimental technique of time-resolved inelastic neutron scattering
(TRINS), we explore the time-dependent effects of resonant pulsed microwaves on the
molecular magnet Cr8F8Piv16. The octagonal rings of magnetic Cr3+ atoms with ...
The abrupt drop of resistance to zero at a critical temperature is a key signature
of the current paradigm of the metal–superconductor transition. However, the emergence
of an intermediate bosonic insulating state characterized by a resistance peak ...
Many biological systems operate near the physical limits to their performance, suggesting
that aspects of their behavior and underlying mechanisms could be derived from optimization
principles. However, such principles have often been applied only in ...
Sustainability Science
Limiting climate change to targets enshrined in the Paris Agreement will require both
deep decarbonization of the energy system and the deployment of carbon dioxide removal
at potentially large scale (gigatons of annual removal). Nations are pursuing ...
CO2 mineralization, a process where CO2 reacts with minerals to form stable carbonates, presents a sustainable approach for
CO2 sequestration and mitigation of global warming. While the crucial role of water in
regulating CO2 mineralization efficiency is ...
Social Sciences
Anthropology
The early populations that inhabited the Antilles were traditionally understood as
highly mobile groups of hunters/fishers and gatherers. Although more recent data have
demonstrated that some populations engaged in the production of domestic plants and
...
The Moche archaeological culture flourished along Peru’s North Coast between the 4th
and 10th centuries CE and was characterized by a complex social hierarchy dominated
by political and religious elites. Previous archaeological evidence suggests kinship
...
Demography
In recent years, Brazil’s non-White (Brown and Black) population became a numerical
majority for the first time since the 19th century. Although we know this change was
mostly due to racial reclassification, we do not know how such changes are related
to ...
Economic Sciences
We study the adoption of ChatGPT, the icon of Generative AI, using a large-scale survey
linked to comprehensive register data in Denmark. Surveying 18,000 workers from 11
exposed occupations, we document that ChatGPT is widespread, especially among ...
Political Sciences
Among the most pressing problems societies face today are economic inequality and
the erosion of democratic norms and institutions. In fact the two problems—inequality
and democratic erosion—are linked. In a large cross-national statistical study of
risk ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
We examined associations of self-reports on the HEXACO Personality Inventory—Revised
(HEXACO-PI-R) with birth order category and sibship size, controlling for participant
sex and age. In a first sample (N > 700,000 online adults, mainly from English-...
To what extent does concept formation require language? Here, we exploit color to
address this question and ask whether macaque monkeys have color concepts evident
as categories. Macaques have similar cone photoreceptors and central visual circuits
to ...
View related content:
Social Sciences
Job loss is a common and disruptive life event. It is known to have numerous long-term
negative effects on financial, health, and social outcomes. While the negative effects
of becoming unemployed on health and well-being are well understood, the ...
Biological ensembles use collective intelligence to tackle challenges together, but
suboptimal coordination can undermine the effectiveness of group cognition. Testing
whether collective cognition exceeds that of the individual is often impractical since
...
Sustainability Science
Affordable and clean energy, eliminating poverty, and reducing inequality are important
goals of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper examines
the role of access to clean cooking fuels in promoting income growth and reducing
...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
Host plants and various fungicides inhibit plant pathogens by inducing the release
of excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) and causing DNA damage, either directly
or indirectly leading to cell death. The mechanisms by which the oomycete Phytophthora ...
Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) in agricultural systems is a primary nature-based
option for mitigating climate change, improving soil fertility, and ensuring food
security. However, the consequences of global warming and increases in carbon inputs
...
Anthropology
The early populations that inhabited the Antilles were traditionally understood as
highly mobile groups of hunters/fishers and gatherers. Although more recent data have
demonstrated that some populations engaged in the production of domestic plants and
...
The Moche archaeological culture flourished along Peru’s North Coast between the 4th
and 10th centuries CE and was characterized by a complex social hierarchy dominated
by political and religious elites. Previous archaeological evidence suggests kinship
...
Applied Biological Sciences
The diversity and heterogeneity of biomarkers has made the development of general
methods for single-step quantification of analytes difficult. For individual biomarkers,
electrochemical methods that detect a conformational change in an affinity binder
...
Recurrent missense mutations in the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)
have been identified across various human cancers. Among these mutations, the active
S310F mutation in the HER2 extracellular domain stands out as not only oncogenic but
...
Documented worldwide, impaired immunity is a cardinal signature resulting from loss
of dietary zinc, an essential micronutrient. A steady supply of zinc to meet cellular
requirements is regulated by an array of zinc transporters. Deletion of the ...
Biochemistry
A single-component flavin-dependent halogenase, AetF, has emerged as an attractive
biocatalyst for catalyzing halogenation. However, its flavin chemistry remains unexplored
and cannot be predicted due to its uniqueness in sequence and structure compared ...
Infections caused by gram-negative pathogens continue to be a major risk to human
health because of the innate antibiotic resistance endowed by their unique cell membrane
architecture. Nature has developed an elegant solution to target gram-negative ...
Reversible protein phosphorylation directs essential cellular processes including
cell division, cell growth, cell death, inflammation, and differentiation. Because
protein phosphorylation drives diverse diseases, kinases and phosphatases have been
...
To successfully mount infections, nearly all bacterial pathogens must acquire iron,
a key metal cofactor that primarily resides within human hemoglobin. Corynebacterium diphtheriae causes the life-threatening respiratory disease diphtheria and captures ...
Eubacterium limosum is a dominant member of the human gut microbiome and produces short-chain fatty acids
(SCFAs). These promote immune system function and inhibit inflammation, making this
microbe important for human health. Lactate is a primary source ...
Posttranslational modifications (PTMs) of proteins play critical roles in regulating
many cellular events. Antibodies targeting site-specific PTMs are essential tools
for detecting and enriching PTMs at sites of interest. However, fundamental difficulties
...
C-Terminal cyclic imides are posttranslational modifications that can arise from spontaneous
intramolecular cleavage of asparagine or glutamine residues resulting in a form of
irreversible protein damage. These protein damage events are recognized and ...
TMEM16A, a key calcium-activated chloride channel, is crucial for many physiological
and pathological processes such as cancer, hypertension, and osteoporosis, etc. However,
the regulatory mechanism of TMEM16A is poorly understood, limiting the discovery ...
Cone cGMP-phosphodiesterase (PDE6) is the key effector enzyme for daylight vision,
and its properties are critical for shaping distinct physiology of cone photoreceptors.
We determined the structures of human cone PDE6C in various liganded states by ...
Methane- and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria play key roles in the global carbon and nitrogen
cycles, respectively. These bacteria use homologous copper membrane monooxygenases
to accomplish the defining chemical transformations of their metabolisms: the ...
The TRAMP complex contains two enzymatic activities essential for RNA processing upstream
of the nuclear exosome. Within TRAMP, RNA is 3′ polyadenylated by a subcomplex of
Trf4/5 and Air1/2 and unwound 3′ to 5′ by Mtr4, a DExH helicase. The molecular ...
Protein misfolding and aggregation are a hallmark of various neurodegenerative disorders.
However, the underlying mechanisms driving protein misfolding in the cellular context
are incompletely understood. Here, we show that the two-dimensional confinement ...
The CYLD–PARP1 feedback loop regulates DNA damage repair and chemosensitivity in breast cancer cells
Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1) plays a crucial role in DNA repair and genomic
stability maintenance. However, the regulatory mechanisms governing PARP1 activity,
particularly through deubiquitination, remain poorly elucidated. Using a ...
Polysaccharide monooxygenase (PMO) catalysis involves the chemically difficult hydroxylation
of unactivated C–H bonds in carbohydrates. The reaction requires reducing equivalents
and will utilize either oxygen or hydrogen peroxide as a cosubstrate. Two ...
Matrigel®/BME®, a basement membrane-like preparation, supports long-term growth of epithelial 3D
organoids from adult stem cells [T. Sato et al., Nature 459, 262–265 (2009); T. Sato et al., Gastroenterology 141, 1762–1772 (2011)]. Here, we show that ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Collective migration of cancer cells is often interpreted using concepts derived from
the physics of active matter, but the experimental evidence is mostly restricted to
observations made in vitro. Here, we study collective invasion of metastatic cancer
...
We examine the role of higher-order transient structures (HOTS) in M2R regulation
of GIRK channels. Electron microscopic membrane protein location maps show that both
proteins form HOTS that exhibit a statistical bias to be near each other. Theoretical
...
This study shows that five membrane proteins—three GPCRs, an ion channel, and an enzyme—form
self-clusters under natural expression levels in a cardiac-derived cell line. The
cluster size distributions imply that these proteins self-oligomerize reversibly ...
Class II photolyases (PLs) are a distant subclade in the photolyase/cryptochrome superfamily,
displaying a unique Trp–Tyr tetrad for photoreduction and exhibiting a lower quantum
yield (QY) of DNA repair (49%) than class I photolyases (82%) [M. Zhang, L. ...
As structural biology and drug discovery depend on high-quality protein structures,
assessment tools are essential. We describe a new method for validating amino-acid
conformations: “PhiSiCal (al) Checkup.” Twenty new joint probability distributions in ...
The homo-dodecameric ring-shaped trp RNA binding attenuation protein (TRAP) from Alkalihalobacillus halodurans (Aha) binds up to twelve tryptophan ligands (Trp) and becomes activated to bind a specific
sequence in the 5’ leader region of the trp operon ...
Neurotransmitter release is triggered in microseconds by Ca2+-binding to the Synaptotagmin-1 C2-domains and by SNARE complexes that form four-helix bundles between synaptic vesicles
and plasma membranes, but the coupling mechanism between Ca2+-sensing and ...
Selective pressure acts on the codon use, optimizing multiple, overlapping signals
that are only partially understood. We trained AI models to predict codons given their
amino acid sequence in the eukaryotes Saccharomyces cerevisiae and ...
Spns1 mediates the rate-limiting efflux of lysophospholipids from the lysosome to
the cytosol. Deficiency of Spns1 is associated with embryonic senescence, as well
as liver and skeletal muscle atrophy in animal models. However, the mechanisms by
which ...
The bacterial chaperone Trigger factor (TF) binds to ribosome-nascent chain complexes
(RNCs) and cotranslationally aids the folding of proteins in bacteria. Decades of
studies have given a broad, but often conflicting, description of the substrate ...
Despite the recent breakthrough in structure determination and prediction of proteins,
the structural investigation of carbohydrates remains a challenge. Here, we report
the cryo-EM analysis of a glycofibril found in the freshwater in the Tsinghua Lotus
...
Protein language models (PLMs) have demonstrated impressive success in modeling proteins.
However, general-purpose “foundational” PLMs have limited performance in modeling
antibodies due to the latter’s hypervariable regions, which do not conform to the
...
Cell Biology
Mitochondrial endonuclease G (EndoG) contributes to chromosomal degradation when it
is released from mitochondria during apoptosis. It is presumed to also have a mitochondrial
function because EndoG deficiency causes mitochondrial dysfunction. However, ...
Tsg101 is a highly conserved protein best known as an early-functioning component
of cellular ESCRT machinery participating in recognition, sorting, and trafficking
of cellular cargo to various intracellular destinations. It shares sequence and structural
...
Ferroptosis, a unique form of iron-dependent cell death triggered by lipid peroxidation
accumulation, holds great promise for cancer therapy. Despite the crucial role of
GPX4 in regulating ferroptosis, our understanding of GPX4 protein regulation remains
...
Developmental Biology
Dorsal closure is a process that occurs during embryogenesis of Drosophila melanogaster. During dorsal closure, the amnioserosa (AS), a one-cell thick epithelial tissue
that fills the dorsal opening, shrinks as the lateral epidermis sheets converge and
...
A spectacular diversity of forms and features allow species to thrive in different
environments, yet some structures remain relatively unchanged. Insect compound eyes
are easily recognizable despite dramatic differences in visual abilities across species.
...
Identifying why complex tissue regeneration is present or absent in specific vertebrate
lineages has remained elusive. One also wonders whether the isolated examples where
regeneration is observed represent cases of convergent evolution or are instead the
...
In species with genetic sex determination (GSD), the sex identity of the soma determines
germ cell fate. For example, in mice, XY germ cells that enter an ovary differentiate
as oogonia, whereas XX germ cells that enter a testis initiate differentiation ...
Induction of cell fates by growth factors impacts many facets of developmental biology
and disease. LIN-3/EGF induces the equipotent vulval precursor cells (VPCs) in Caenorhabditis elegans to assume the 3˚−3˚−2˚−1˚−2˚−3˚ pattern of cell fates. 1˚ and 2˚ ...
Biomineralization is the utilization of different minerals by a vast array of organisms
to form hard tissues and shape them in various forms. Within this diversity, a common
feature of all mineralized tissues is their high stiffness, implying that ...
Ecology
Camouflage is often considered a daytime phenomenon based on light and shade. Nocturnal
camouflage can also occur, but its mechanistic basis remains unclear. Here, we analyze
the conditions for background matching (BM) of avian predators against the night ...
Biological ensembles use collective intelligence to tackle challenges together, but
suboptimal coordination can undermine the effectiveness of group cognition. Testing
whether collective cognition exceeds that of the individual is often impractical since
...
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from bacteria to insects is widely reported and often
associated with the adaptation and diversification of insects. However, compelling
evidence demonstrating how HGT-conferred metabolic adjustments enable species to adapt
...
Environmental Sciences
The Qin and Western Han dynasties (221 BCE to 24 CE) represent an era of societal
prosperity in China. However, due to a lack of high-resolution paleoclimate records
it is still unclear whether the agricultural boost documented for this period was
...
Evolution
A wave of studies has recently emphasized the influence of sex chromosomes on both
lifespan and actuarial senescence patterns across vertebrates and invertebrates. Basically,
the heterogametic sex (XY males in XX/XY systems or ZW females in ZW/ZZ systems) ...
Life at all scales is surprisingly effective at exploiting new opportunities, as demonstrated
by the rapid emergence of antimicrobial resistance and novel pathogens. How populations
acquire this level of evolvability and the various ways it aids survival ...
Independent evolution of similar traits in lineages inhabiting similar environments
(convergent or repeated evolution) is often taken as evidence for adaptation by natural
selection, and used to illustrate the predictability of evolution. Yet convergence
...
Genetics
Malignant gliomas are heterogeneous tumors, mostly incurable, arising in the central
nervous system (CNS) driven by genetic, epigenetic, and metabolic aberrations. Mutations
in isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH1/2mut) enzymes are predominantly found in low-...
Heterozygotic GATA6 mutations are responsible for various congenital diseases in the heart, pancreas,
liver, and other organs in humans. However, there is lack of an animal that can comprehensively
model these diseases since GATA6 is essential for early ...
ASXL transcriptional regulator 1 (ASXL1) is one of the three most frequently mutated genes in age-related clonal hematopoiesis
(CH), alongside DNA methyltransferase 3 alpha (DNMT3A) and Tet methylcytosine dioxygenase 2 (TET2). CH can progress to myeloid ...
Immunology and Inflammation
The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) has greatly diminished the
neutralizing activity of previously FDA-approved monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), including
that of antibody cocktails and of first-generation broadly neutralizing antibodies
...
Medical Sciences
Dysregulation of GABAergic inhibition is associated with pathological pain. Consequently,
enhancement of GABAergic transmission represents a potential analgesic strategy. However,
therapeutic potential of current GABA agonists and modulators is limited by ...
Postnatal establishment of enteric metabolic, host–microbial and immune homeostasis
is the result of precisely timed and tightly regulated developmental and adaptive
processes. Here, we show that infection with the invasive enteropathogen Salmonella ...
Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNSTs) are aggressive sarcomas and the
primary cause of mortality in patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). These
malignancies develop within preexisting benign lesions called plexiform neurofibromas
(PNs)...
Uncovering rates at which susceptible individuals become infected with a pathogen,
i.e., the force of infection (FOI), is essential for assessing transmission risk and
reconstructing distribution of immunity in a population. For dengue, reconstructing
...
The widespread application of genome editing to treat and cure disease requires the
delivery of genome editors into the nucleus of target cells. Enveloped delivery vehicles
(EDVs) are engineered virally derived particles capable of packaging and ...
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is highly polymorphic, and host mtDNA variation has been
associated with altered cancer severity. To determine the basis of this mtDNA–cancer
association, we analyzed conplastic mice with the C57BL/6J (B6) nucleus but two ...
Microbiology
Many bacteria swim in liquid or swarm on surface using the flagellum rotated by a
motor driven by specific ion flow. The motor consists of the rotor and stator, and
the stator converts the energy of ion flow to mechanical rotation. However, the ion
...
Historically considered to be nonenveloped, hepatitis E virus (HEV), an important
zoonotic pathogen, has recently been discovered to egress from infected cells as quasi-enveloped
virions. These quasi-enveloped virions circulating in the blood are ...
Rotation of the bacterial flagellum, the first identified biological rotary machine,
is driven by its stator units. Knowledge gained about the function of stator units
has increasingly led to studies of rotary complexes in different cellular pathways.
...
In most bacteria, cell division depends on the tubulin-homolog FtsZ that polymerizes
in a GTP-dependent manner to form the cytokinetic Z-ring at the future division site.
Subsequently, the Z-ring recruits, directly or indirectly, all other proteins of the
...
Invasive fungal infections are a leading cause of death worldwide. Translating molecular
insights into clinical benefits is challenging because fungal pathogens and their
hosts share similar eukaryotic physiology. Consequently, current antifungal ...
Neuroscience
The novelty, saliency, and valency of ongoing experiences potently influence the firing
rate of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the locus coeruleus (LC). Associative
experience, in turn, is recorded into memory by means of hippocampal synaptic ...
Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) typically respond to light stimulation over their spatially
restricted receptive field. Using large-scale recordings in the mouse retina, we show
that a subset of non- direction-selective (DS) RGCs exhibit asymmetric activity,...
Myosin-VIIA (MYO7A) is an unconventional myosin responsible for syndromic (Usher 1B)
or nonsyndromic forms of deafness in humans when mutated. In the cochlea, MYO7A is
expressed in hair cells, where it is believed to act as the motor protein tensioning
...
Ubiquitin-proteasomal degradation of K+/Cl− cotransporter 2 (KCC2) in the ventral posteromedial nucleus (VPM) has been demonstrated
to serve as a common mechanism by which the brain emerges from anesthesia and regains
consciousness. Ubiquitin-proteasomal ...
Age-dependent sensory impairment, memory loss, and cognitive decline are generally
attributed to neuron loss, synaptic dysfunction, and decreased neuronal activities
over time. Concurrently, increased neuronal activity is reported in humans and other
...
Use-dependent spike broadening (UDSB) results from inactivation of the voltage-gated
K+ (Kv) channels that regulate the repolarization of the action potential. However,
the specific signaling and molecular processes that modulate UDSB have remained ...
This study presents the construction of a comprehensive spatiotemporal atlas of white
matter tracts in the fetal brain for every gestational week between 23 and 36 wk using
diffusion MRI (dMRI). Our research leverages data collected from fetal MRI scans,
...
The auditory system is unique among sensory systems in its ability to phase lock to
and precisely follow very fast cycle-by-cycle fluctuations in the phase of sound-driven
cochlear vibrations. Yet, the perceptual role of this temporal fine structure (TFS)
...
Cognition relies on transforming sensory inputs into a generalizable understanding
of the world. Mirror neurons have been proposed to underlie this process, mapping
visual representations of others’ actions and sensations onto neurons that mediate
our own,...
Norepinephrine in vertebrates and its invertebrate analog, octopamine, regulate the
activity of neural circuits. We find that, when hungry, Drosophila larvae switch activity in type II octopaminergic motor neurons (MNs) to high-frequency
bursts, which ...
Physiology
Resilin, an elastomeric protein with remarkable physical properties that outperforms
synthetic rubbers, is a near-ubiquitous feature of the power amplification mechanisms
used by jumping insects. Catapult-like mechanisms, which incorporate elastic energy
...
Ion channels are generally allosteric proteins, involving specialized stimulus sensor
domains conformationally linked to the gate to drive channel opening. Temperature
receptors are a group of ion channels from the transient receptor potential family.
...
With over 14 million people living above 3,500 m, the study of acclimatization and
adaptation to high altitude in human populations is of increasing importance, where
exposure to high altitude (HA) imposes a blood oxygenation and acid–base challenge.
A ...
Plant Biology
Carnivory in plants is an unusual trait that has arisen multiple times, independently,
throughout evolutionary history. Plants in the genus Genlisea are carnivorous and feed on microorganisms that live in soil using modified subterranean
leaf structures (...
While iron (Fe) is essential for life and plays important roles for almost all growth
related processes, it can trigger cell death in both animals and plants. However,
the underlying mechanisms for Fe-induced cell death in plants remain largely unknown.
S-...
Transgenic expression of a double-stranded RNA in plants can induce silencing of homologous
mRNAs in fungal pathogens. Although such host-induced gene silencing is well documented,
the molecular mechanisms by which RNAs can move from the cytoplasm of ...
Plants have colonized lands 450 million years ago. This terrestrialization was facilitated
by developmental and functional innovations. Recent evo-devo approaches have demonstrated
that one of these innovations was the mutualistic arbuscular mycorrhizal ...
Seeds are complex structures composed of three regions, embryo, endosperm, and seed
coat, with each further divided into subregions that consist of tissues, cell layers,
and cell types. Although the seed is well characterized anatomically, much less is
...
Population Biology
Climate change is increasing the frequency of large-scale, extreme environmental events
and flattening environmental gradients. Whether such changes will cause spatially
synchronous, large-scale population declines depends on mechanisms that limit ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
To what extent does concept formation require language? Here, we exploit color to
address this question and ask whether macaque monkeys have color concepts evident
as categories. Macaques have similar cone photoreceptors and central visual circuits
to ...
View related content:
Sleep disturbances are associated with intrusive memories, but the neurocognitive
mechanisms underpinning this relationship are poorly understood. Here, we show that
sleep deprivation disrupts prefrontal inhibition of memory retrieval, and that the
...
Sustainability Science
Collaborative management partnerships (CMPs) between state wildlife authorities and
nonprofit conservation organizations to manage protected areas (PAs) have been used
increasingly across Sub-Saharan Africa since the 2000s. They aim to attract funding,
...
Systems Biology
Biophysical constraints limit the specificity with which transcription factors (TFs)
can target regulatory DNA. While individual nontarget binding events may be low affinity,
the sheer number of such interactions could present a challenge for gene ...
A fundamental topological principle is that the container always shapes the content.
In neuroscience, this translates into how the brain anatomy shapes brain dynamics.
From neuroanatomy, the topology of the mammalian brain can be approximated by local
...
Microbial metabolism is impressively flexible, enabling growth even when available
nutrients differ greatly from biomass in redox state. Escherichia coli, for example, rearranges its physiology to grow on reduced and oxidized carbon sources
through ...
Corrections
Cover image: Pictured is a barn owl (Tyto alba) landing on snow. Juan J. Negro et al. examined the light-reflecting properties of the sky, ground, and white undersides of barn owls on moonlit nights. On such nights, rodents are unlikely to be able to distinguish the owls from the sky due to the high reflectivity of the owls’ undersides. The authors found that the reflectivity confers nighttime camouflage on the owls by matching their radiometric properties with those of the sky. See the article by Negro et al. e2406808121. Image credit: Mario Cea (photographer).
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