Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 122, Number 29
Special Feature
Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Sustainability
Indigenous peoples have long histories and diverse contemporary practices of caring
for and enhancing biodiversity at different scales, in rural and urban contexts. As
has been researched and documented by the Convention on Biological Diversity and others,...
Nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged as a key strategy for sustainably addressing
multiple urban challenges, with rapidly increasing knowledge production requiring
synthesis to better understand whether and how NbS work in different social, ...
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are used to transform existing unsustainable and undesirable
path dependencies in cities. For NBS to contribute to just urban transformations,
a stronger inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge base is needed. This knowledge ...
The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed that upcoming
decades are likely to be accompanied with an increase in climate impacts in urban
areas, thereby stressing the need for empowering cities to help them address the ...
This Week in PNAS
Opinion
QnAs
Commentaries
Brief Reports
We study the decision problem of a Proposer who has a set of applications to submit
for approval to an Authority and can choose an order of submission. The Proposer’s
utility depends on the Authority’s rulings. The Authority has to be consistent with
its ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed attention to the far-reaching social implications
of emerging infectious diseases, an issue with historical parallels in the transformative
effects of the Black Plague and Spanish Flu. However, the potential for epidemics
...
Mitochondria are multifunctional organelles central to both physiological and pathological
processes. In malignant cancer cells, mitochondrial reprogramming establishes the
metabolic foundation to meet cellular demands, which is particularly important in
...
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
Nonlinear dynamics are pervasive phenomena in natural and synthetic material systems,
where time-varying signals from different physical stimuli in the environment influence
the material system behavior. Physical reservoir computing leverages these ...
Enzyme-catalyzed depolymerization allows efficient recycling of poly(ethylene terephthalate)
(PET) bottles, which are easy to sort and made of slowly crystallizing PET. However,
because crystalline phases are recalcitrant to enzymatic hydrolysis, this ...
Characterizing the morphology of lithium (Li) is crucial for developing long-lasting
lithium metal batteries. It is well established that more uniform Li deposition correlates
with better cell performance. Li morphology is often characterized through ...
The summertime eddy-driven jet (EDJ) in the Southern Hemisphere is a critical mediator
between regional climate and large-scale phenomena, guiding synoptic systems that
shape weather patterns. Uncertainties in global climate models (GCMs)-particularly
in ...
The confliction between the stable interface in phase-separated active Brownian particles
and its negative surface tension, obtained mechanically via the active pressure, has
sparked considerable debate about the formula of active surface tension. Based ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Cell walls are critical structures of fungi, bacteria, and plants, providing mechanical
strength, maintaining shape, and protecting cells from environmental stress. In the
fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the α-glucan synthase Ags1 produces α-1,3-...
Self-replication and exponential growth are essential to all living things, the driving
force for Darwinian evolution, and potentially useful in nanotechnology for large-scale
production of nanoscopic materials. An artificial (nonliving) self-replication ...
Cells, tissues, and organs must change shape in precise ways during embryonic development
to execute their functions. Multiple mechanisms including biochemical signaling pathways
and biophysical forces help drive these morphology changes, but it has been ...
The brain encodes external stimuli through patterns of neural activity, forming internal
representations of the world. Increasing experimental evidence showed that neural
representations for a specific stimulus can change over time in a phenomenon called
“...
Hearing hinges upon the ear’s ability to enhance its responsiveness by means of an
energy-expending active process that amplifies the very mechanical inputs that it
detects. This process is defined by four properties that, although seemingly unrelated,
...
Chemistry
The recent alleged use of A-series chemical warfare agents (CWAs) highlights the urgent
need to better understand their inhibition of cholinesterase enzymes and the reported
shortcomings of traditional oxime countermeasures. Here, using high-throughput (...
Physiological environment with high ionic strength will quench the propulsion of micro/nanomotors
(MNMs) by suppressing electric double layers, especially for those motors based on
electrolyte diffusiophoresis and electrophoresis. Herein, we demonstrate ...
Lithium (Li) metal batteries offer high energy density but face significant safety
challenges due to gas evolution under thermal abuse conditions. At the anode, the
reduction of organic carbonate-based electrolytes generates flammable gases (e.g.,
H2, CH4)...
Stable isotope ratio measurements provide valuable insights into a broad range of
natural processes, from planetary atmospheres and climate to interstellar chemistry.
Nitrogen, which has two stable isotopes, exhibits varying isotope ratios across the
...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Agropastoral activities have impacted the habitable part of our planet—the “Critical
Zone”—for thousands of years, triggering a major increase in soil erosion in mountain
environments. Understanding and quantifying the impact of these activities on soil
...
Nor’easters are coastal extratropical cyclones that feed upon both thermal contrasts
(meridional and land-ocean) and oceanic latent heat release, causing them to intensify
along the U.S. East Coast. With central pressures that sometimes rival those of ...
Temporally constrained microvertebrate bone beds are powerful tools for understanding
continent-scale biotic change. Such sites are rare globally in nonmarine settings
during the 12 million years (Ma) preceding the end-Triassic extinction (ETE; ~201.5
Ma),...
Engineering
Assessment of whole-body hydration (WBH) is crucial for health management and disease
diagnosis. Traditional methods are invasive or require bulky equipment, making them
impractical for mobile, continuous sensing. We present a wearable bioimpedance sensor
...
Separation membranes are critical for a range of processes, including but not limited
to water desalination, chemical and fuel production, and recycling and recovery applications.
Fundamentally, there are intrinsic trade-offs between permeability and ...
Semiconductor microelectronics are emerging as a powerful tool for building smart,
autonomous sub-millimeter robots. Yet a number of existing microrobot platforms, despite
significant advantages in speed, robustness, power consumption, or ease of ...
Optical switches and bifurcation rely on the nonlinear response of materials. Here,
we demonstrate linear temporal bifurcation responses in a passive multimode microresonator,
with strongly coupled chaotic and whispering gallery modes (WGMs). In ...
Plastics offer innumerable societal benefits but simultaneously contribute to persistent
environmental pollution, dominated by polyethylene (PE) and isotactic polypropylene
(iPP). Melt blending and reformulating postconsumer PE and iPP into useful ...
Physics
Training has emerged as a promising materials design technique in which function can
be achieved through repeated physical modification of an existing material rather
than by direct chemical functionalization, cutting, or reprocessing. This work ...
Social Sciences
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Visual adaptation reduces bioenergetic expenditure by decreasing sensitivity to repetitive
and similar stimuli. In human adults, visual performance varies systematically around
the polar angle for many visual dimensions and tasks: Performance is superior ...
Current models suggest that musical pleasure is tied to the intrinsic reward of learning,
as it relies on predictive processes that challenge our minds. According to predictive
coding, optimal learning, which maximizes epistemic value, depends on ...
Injunctive norms are universal: Every culture has rules that specify what actions
are forbidden, obligatory, or permitted. Where do all of these norms come from? In
this paper, we identify a mechanism of cultural transmission that can explain the
...
Stress changes social behavior, yet its effects remain contradictory. Traditionally,
stress was thought to trigger an antagonistic fight-or-flight response aimed at eliminating
the stressor. However, recent studies have revealed the opposite response, ...
Biological Sciences
Anthropology
Global economic development has been associated with an increased prevalence of obesity
and related health problems. Increased caloric intake and reduced energy expenditure
are both cited as development-related contributors to the obesity crisis, but ...
Applied Biological Sciences
The recent alleged use of A-series chemical warfare agents (CWAs) highlights the urgent
need to better understand their inhibition of cholinesterase enzymes and the reported
shortcomings of traditional oxime countermeasures. Here, using high-throughput (...
Biochemistry
Cell walls are critical structures of fungi, bacteria, and plants, providing mechanical
strength, maintaining shape, and protecting cells from environmental stress. In the
fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the α-glucan synthase Ags1 produces α-1,3-...
The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is the metabolic gatekeeper to the photoreceptors,
thus playing many essential roles in healthy vision. Under certain conditions, RPE
cells may transdifferentiate and migrate from the RPE layer. Ectopic RPE cells are
...
The transcription factor p63 is an essential regulator of epithelial development.
Yet, the complexity at the 3′UTR, which gives rise to the three distinct C-terminal
protein isoforms (α, β, and γ), remains unresolved and opens an investigation on the
in ...
Human MTH1, a Nudix enzyme, hydrolyzes several oxidized nucleotides such as 8-oxo-dGTP
and 2-oxo-dATP, owing to its broad substrate specificity. MTH1 has also attracted
attention as an anticancer target, and its substrate recognition is of biological
and ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Cytochalasin D (CytoD), a widely used actin inhibitor, is typically employed in cell
studies as a simple barbed end capper. However, accumulating evidence suggests broader
effects on actin dynamics. We addressed this by observing single actin filaments ...
The aggregation of amyloid-β (Aβ) and α-synuclein (αSyn) into insoluble proteinaceous
deposits is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Recent evidence suggests
that these amyloidogenic proteins act in synergy, with their coaggregation ...
G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) play pivotal roles in cellular signaling and represent
prominent drug targets. Structural elucidation of GPCRs is crucial for drug discovery
efforts. However, structural studies of GPCRs remain challenging, particularly ...
Misfolding of the protein PrP causes prion diseases in mammals. Disease susceptibility
varies widely among species, despite PrP sequences differing by only a few amino acids.
How these differences alter PrP folding and misfolding remains unclear. We ...
Similar to T cells and B cells, mast cell surfaces are dominated by microvilli, and
like these other immune cells we showed with microvillar cartography (MVC) that key
signaling proteins for RBL mast cells localize to these topographical features. ...
Mitochondria import most of their proteins from the cytoplasm through the TOM complex.
Preproteins containing targeting signals are recognized by the TOM receptor subunits
and translocated by Tom40 across the outer mitochondrial membrane. We present four
...
Cell Biology
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is one of the most aggressive intracranial tumors for
which there is no effective treatment. Chimeric antigen receptor macrophage (CAR-M)
therapies have demonstrated impressive therapeutic efficacy in solid tumors; however,
...
Plasma membrane (PM) stains are important organelle markers for monitoring membrane
morphology and dynamics. The state-of-the-art PM stains are bright, specific, fluorogenic,
and compatible with superresolution imaging. However, when recording membrane ...
The dynamic organization of the actin cytoskeleton, crucial for numerous cellular
processes, is intricately regulated by the nucleotide state of actin filaments (F-actin).
Visualization tools for specifically detecting ADP-bound F-actin, however, remain
...
Developmental Biology
Cells, tissues, and organs must change shape in precise ways during embryonic development
to execute their functions. Multiple mechanisms including biochemical signaling pathways
and biophysical forces help drive these morphology changes, but it has been ...
Ecology
Evaluating species’ roles in food webs is critical for advancing ecological theories
on competition, coexistence, and biodiversity but is complicated by pronounced dietary
variability within species and overlap across species. We combined dietary DNA ...
Resolving the relationship between species’ traits and their relative abundance is
a central challenge in ecology. Current hypotheses assume relative abundances either
result from or are independent of traits. However, despite some success, these ...
Climate-driven variation in traits is crucial for predicting ecological responses
to environmental change, yet global patterns and drivers of microbial trait variation
remain poorly understood. Using global datasets of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal
...
Metabolic rate dictates life’s tempo, yet how ecological and environmental factors
integrate to shape metabolic traits remains contentious. Considering metabolic traits
of 114 species of ants from seven subfamily clades along a 1,500 km climatic and soil
...
Environmental Sciences
Forests are potential carbon (C) sinks that partially offset anthropogenic carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions via enhanced C assimilation and productivity. However, the question remains
whether mature trees will express sufficient plasticity in nutrient ...
Viruses are ubiquitous regulators of microbial dynamics and may thus greatly influence
global microbial-driven greenhouse gas emissions. Anthropogenic stressors, such as
chemical contamination, are likely to amplify these viral contributions; however,
...
Evolution
Temporally constrained microvertebrate bone beds are powerful tools for understanding
continent-scale biotic change. Such sites are rare globally in nonmarine settings
during the 12 million years (Ma) preceding the end-Triassic extinction (ETE; ~201.5
Ma),...
To persist under unprecedented rates of global change, populations can adapt or acclimate.
However, how these resilience mechanisms interact, particularly the role of epigenetic
variation in long-term adaptation, is unknown. To address this gap, we ...
Gut nematode worms are important parasites of people and other animals. The parasitic
nematode Strongyloides stercoralis infects an estimated 600 million people worldwide and is one of the soil-transmitted
helminthiases, a WHO-defined neglected tropical ...
Light eyes, hair, and skins probably evolved several times as Homo sapiens dispersed from Africa. In areas with lower UV radiation, light pigmentation alleles
increased in frequency because of their adaptive advantage and of other contingent
factors such ...
Theories of adaptive radiation propose predictable trajectories in which diversity
accumulates rapidly in newly formed or colonized environments with underexploited
niche space and few competing species, before slowing down as competition intensifies,
and ...
Niche partitioning within variable habitats can expose species to distinct sensory
information. Vision is the primary sensory modality used by many animals to interact
with their habitat. However, the role of terrestrial light environment properties
in ...
Prion diseases can manifest with distinct phenotypes in a single species, a phenomenon
known as prion strains. Upon cross-species transmission, alterations in the disease
phenotype can occur, interpreted as the emergence of a new strain. Two main and non–...
Immunology and Inflammation
The organismal roles of the class II PI3K isoform PI3K-C2α remain poorly understood.
Recent studies have found PI3K-C2α to promote arterial thrombosis and breast cancer
metastasis, generating interest in this kinase as a drug target, with small molecule
...
SHP1 (PTPN6) and SHP2 (PTPN11) are closely related protein-tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs),
which are autoinhibited until their SH2 domains bind paired tyrosine-phosphorylated
immunoreceptor tyrosine-based inhibitory/switch motifs (ITIMs/ITSMs). These PTPs ...
Neuroinflammation is a complex immunological phenomenon characterized by a dysregulated
inflammatory response in the central nervous system (CNS) that can be triggered by
various pathological injuries, such as toxins, which are involved in Parkinson’s and
...
Medical Sciences
Lipid nanoparticles (LNP) represent a versatile platform for improving delivery of
therapeutic nucleic acids. Yet, delivery to the myocardium remains a formidable challenge
due to local barriers in the heart and systemic hindrances. In particular, plasma
...
Microbiology
Phagosomal lysis is essential for mycobacterial infection of macrophages. Acetylation
is a protein modification mediated enzymatically by N-acetyltransferases (NATs) that
impacts bacterial pathogenesis and physiology. To identify NATs required for lytic
...
Neuroscience
Visual adaptation reduces bioenergetic expenditure by decreasing sensitivity to repetitive
and similar stimuli. In human adults, visual performance varies systematically around
the polar angle for many visual dimensions and tasks: Performance is superior ...
The brain encodes external stimuli through patterns of neural activity, forming internal
representations of the world. Increasing experimental evidence showed that neural
representations for a specific stimulus can change over time in a phenomenon called
“...
Hearing hinges upon the ear’s ability to enhance its responsiveness by means of an
energy-expending active process that amplifies the very mechanical inputs that it
detects. This process is defined by four properties that, although seemingly unrelated,
...
Stress changes social behavior, yet its effects remain contradictory. Traditionally,
stress was thought to trigger an antagonistic fight-or-flight response aimed at eliminating
the stressor. However, recent studies have revealed the opposite response, ...
The conservation of sleep among diverse animals provides clear evidence for its physiological
importance, but the extent of its regulatory conservation is unknown. The upside-down
jellyfish Cassiopea xamachana sleeps, and this behavior is controlled by ...
The retinal photoreceptors possess specialized sensory cilia critical for phototransduction
while the nonphotoreceptor cells typically exhibit simpler primary cilia or lack them
altogether. This dichotomy in ciliary architecture underpins the functional ...
Impairment of mitochondrial protein stability is associated with neurodegeneration
in Huntington’s disease (HD). However, the E3 ligase responsible for maintaining mitochondrial
protein homeostasis in HD remains poorly understood. In this study, we ...
The first phase of feeding consists in the procurement of solid foods from the environment
by biting, and their preparation for swallowing by chewing. These actions require
the precise coordination of tens of orofacial muscles for the jaw and tongue. The
...
Physical self-motion frequently happens in daily life, during which our vestibular
system is critical in various important functions including balance and visual stability
maintenance, postural and motor control, locomotion, spatial perception, and path
...
How do sensory systems account for stimuli generated by natural behavior? We addressed
this question by examining how an ethologically relevant class of saccades modulates
visual representations in the mouse superior colliculus (SC), a key region for ...
While it is widely accepted that somatic variants that activate the PI3K-mTOR pathway
are a major cause of drug-resistant focal epilepsy, typically associated with focal
cortical dysplasia (FCD) type 2, understanding the mechanism of epileptogenesis ...
Pharmacology
Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has potential in alleviating cytotoxic T lymphocyte
(CTL) exhaustion. However, resistance that impaired major histocompatibility complex
class I (MHC-I) expression on tumors can be developed in many patients after ICB ...
Physiology
The Transient Receptor Potential Vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) ion channel is expressed in primary
nociceptive afferents, which participate in processes such as pain and inflammation.
Considerable efforts have been directed toward finding inhibitors of TRPV1 and ...
Plant Biology
Salicylic acid (SA) is a major defense phytohormone. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the isochorismate (IC) pathway is the primary route for pathogen-induced SA biosynthesis.
First, the IC synthase (ICS) catalyzes the isomerization of chorismate to IC in ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Are bilingual language networks flexible enough to dynamically adapt to neurological
insult? We examined language lateralization in 24 bilingual and 46 monolingual adults
with temporal lobe epilepsy using functional MRI. In a group of primarily early ...
Systems Biology
Understanding plant response to environmental factors such as temperature, drought,
diseases, and carbon-to-nitrogen (C:N) ratio is essential for crop resilience, quality,
and adaptation to climate change. Here, we present iCitrus2616, a high-resolution ...
Corrections
SI Correction
Cover image: Pictured is Benjakitti Forest Park in Bangkok, Thailand, a wetland and green space constructed from a former industrial site. A collection of articles in the Nature-based Solutions for Urban Sustainability Special Feature reviews the potential for strategies that incorporate natural processes and Indigenous knowledge systems to improve urban environments, mitigate climate risks, and promote public health and equity. Together, the articles highlight how flexible and adaptive nature-based solutions can better respond to growing urban pressures and future uncertainties, compared to rigid and inflexible traditionally engineered infrastructure. See the Introduction to the Special Feature, e2315909122. Image credit: Erich Wolff (Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands).
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