Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 122, Number 42
This Week in PNAS
Inner Workings
Profile
Jean-Philippe Avouac, elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2025, explores
deformations in Earth’s surface in an effort to understand the formation and behavior
of earthquakes. Using geology, satellite data, radar imagery, and modeling, Avouac
...
Commentaries
Letters
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A global estimate of multiecosystem photosynthesis losses under microplastic pollution
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Larval diapause slows adult epigenetic aging in an insect model, Nasonia vitripennis
This article has a reply:Reply to Maleszka et al.: DNA methylation signals persist across insect metamorphosis
Brief Reports
Animals can typically maximize their fitness by reproducing throughout adulthood.
Yet, in a handful of species, females cease reproduction long before death, highlighting
an apparent evolutionary paradox. We used over three decades of life-history and ...
Viral lysis accounts for much of microbial mortality in the ocean, and iron (Fe) is
a critical micronutrient that can limit phytoplankton growth. However, interactions
between Fe nutrition of microbes, including both heterotrophic bacteria and ...
As Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is diagnosed more frequently in women, understanding the
role of sex has become a key priority in AD research. However, despite aging being
the primary risk factor for AD, it remains unclear whether men and women differ in
the ...
Physical Sciences
Applied Mathematics
Cutting onions often leads to tear-inducing aerosol release, yet the underlying mechanics
remain poorly understood. In this work, via high-speed characterizations, we show
that droplet formation occurs via a two-stage process: an initial high-speed ...
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly embedded in evaluative processes, from
information filtering to assessing and addressing knowledge gaps through explanation
and credibility judgments. This raises the need to examine how such evaluations are
...
Applied Physical Sciences
In the last decade, the connection between physics and topology has resulted in the
discovery of several new phenomena. A celebrated example is the field of topological
insulators [X.-L. Qi, S.-C. Zhang, Rev. Mod. Phys. 83, 1057–1110 (2011)]., in which ...
Crystalline or polycrystalline systems governed by odd elastic responses are known
to exhibit complex dynamical behaviors involving self-propelled dynamics of topological
defects with spontaneous self-rotation of chiral crystallites. Unveiling and ...
Stalagmites are isolated columns of calcium carbonate growing on a cave floor; their
growth is driven by the constant dripping of supersaturated solutions from the roof
of the cave. In this paper, we derive a closed-form expression for the shape of a
...
Understanding how bacteria interact with surfaces is critical for advancing applications
in biofilm and biofouling prevention, biomaterial development, or biosensing. However,
the biophysical mechanisms underlying these interactions remain poorly ...
Jumping can be hazardous for entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) as those that fail
to attach to an insect host face death by predation or starvation. Recently, it has
been shown that electrostatic charges on large insects can prompt a close-range ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
T cells play a key role in adaptive immunity by mounting specific responses against
diverse pathogens. Effective bindings between T cell receptors (TCRs) and pathogen
derived peptides presented on major histocompatibility complexes (MHCs) mediate immune
...
The forces exerted by cells upon the fibers of the extracellular matrix play a decisive
role in cell motility in physiopathology. How the local physical properties of the
matrix (density, stiffness, orientation) affect cellular forces remains, however,
...
Rapid and accurate estimation of protein–ligand binding affinities is crucial for
early-stage drug discovery, yet hindered by a trade-off between the accuracy of gold-standard
physics-based methods and the speed of simpler empirical scoring functions. ...
Chemistry
Structure elucidation via single-crystal methods has historically lacked experimental
access to real-space information, instead relying exclusively on diffraction-space
measurements of Bragg reflections. Here we exploit the dual-space imaging power of
4D ...
Deep learning on micro-Fourier transform infrared (µFTIR) spectra has the potential
to provide a reliable, automated approach to classify and identify microplastics.
However, deep learning models often come with certain limitations, including exhaustive
...
Apusomonads are sediment-dwelling bacterivorous protists that are sister to all Opisthokonta.
They have been found to show a negative phototactic response to blue light, mediated
by an as-yet unidentified photoreceptive system. Here, by screening ...
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a fatal genetic disease of progressive muscle
deterioration with no cure. DMD treatment requires a body-wide approach to target
all diseased striated muscles: limb, respiratory, and heart. To address this, we focus
...
Computer Sciences
Emerging marketplaces for large language models and other large-scale machine learning
models appear to exhibit market concentration, which has raised concerns about whether
there are insurmountable barriers to entry in such markets. In this work, we ...
Brain-wide association studies using functional MRI have advanced our understanding
of how behavioral traits relate to individual variability in brain function. These
studies typically identify functional connectivity (FC) patterns linked to behavioral
...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Hydrothermal vent temperatures fluctuate in response to transient magmatic and tectonic
activity at the axis of mid-ocean ridges (MORs) and modulate energy fluxes from the
deep Earth to the ocean. Such fluctuations have thus far only been documented on ...
Free tropospheric (FT) nitrogen dioxide (NO2) plays a critical role in atmospheric oxidant chemistry as a source of tropospheric
ozone and of the hydroxyl radical (OH). It also contributes significantly to satellite-observed
tropospheric NO2 columns, ...
Sedimentary basins host high-grade gold mineralization at intersections of auriferous
hydrothermal fluids and hydrocarbons. However, the precise mechanism of native gold
formation associated with organic matter remains poorly understood. Here, we ...
The Earth’s earliest magnetic field may have originated in a basal magma ocean, a
layer of silicate melt surrounding the core that could have persisted for billions
of years. Recent studies show that the electrical conductivity of liquid with a bulk
...
Engineering
The yielding of soft materials is critical to many natural and industrial processes,
yet experimental insights into microscopic aspects of yielding are limited. This study
combines angle X-ray scattering, X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy, and in situ
...
Patient-specific, human-based cellular models integrating a biomimetic blood–brain
barrier, immune, and myelinated neuron components are critically needed to enable
accelerated, translationally relevant discovery of neurological disease mechanisms
and ...
Environmental Sciences
The pace and trajectory of ecosystem development are governed by the availability
and cycling of limiting nutrients, and anthropogenic disturbances such as acid rain
and deforestation alter these trajectories by removing substantial quantities of ...
Physics
At temperatures T much lower than its superconducting critical temperature Tc = 2.1 K, the heavy fermion superconductor UTe2 has a unique phase diagram of magnetic field H vs. φ and θ, angles H is tilted from the b-axis toward the a- and c-axes, ...
Social Sciences
Anthropology
Urbanization was one of the most significant transitions in human history, yet explanations
for the rise and expansion of early cities remain contentious. Here, we propose that
simple models from population ecology can integrate existing theories for the ...
Airborne laser scanning survey of the Karst Plateau in the Adriatic hinterland has
revealed four monumental dry-stone structures, characterized by long, low stone alignments
converging into concealed enclosures. These features, strategically placed along ...
Political Sciences
Although studies of Americans’ general discussant networks have been repeated over
time, research that assesses change in the nature of Americans’ political discussion networks has yet to be conducted in nationally representative probability
surveys. In ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly embedded in evaluative processes, from
information filtering to assessing and addressing knowledge gaps through explanation
and credibility judgments. This raises the need to examine how such evaluations are
...
The statistical properties of data are often communicated using visual graphs, like
scatterplots. However, decision makers make systematic errors when processing these
graphs, with important consequences for statistical communication in science, medicine,
...
Common workplace challenges such as feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or disengaged
often remain hidden due to fear of judgment or social norms, contributing to rising
mental health crises and organizational dysfunction. This study presents a brain-based
...
Social Sciences
The digital revolution has ushered in many societal and economic benefits. Yet access
to digital technologies such as mobile phones and internet remains highly unequal,
especially by gender in the context of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). While
...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
Cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) is caused by mitochondrial genes that are constitutively
expressed in plant tissues, although the encoded proteins preferentially accumulate
in anthers. The mechanisms regulating CMS protein accumulation remain unclear. ...
Applied Biological Sciences
Cutting onions often leads to tear-inducing aerosol release, yet the underlying mechanics
remain poorly understood. In this work, via high-speed characterizations, we show
that droplet formation occurs via a two-stage process: an initial high-speed ...
Biochemistry
This study investigates the regulatory role of peptidylarginine deiminase 4 (PAD4)-mediated
citrullination on the tumor suppressor protein p53. We demonstrate that p53 serves
as a substrate for PAD4, undergoing citrullination at multiple arginine residues,...
Ubiquitin-specific protease 7 (USP7) is a deubiquitylase essential for cell homeostasis,
DNA repair, and regulation of both tumor suppressors and oncogenes. Recently, haploinsufficiency
of USP7 has been associated with Hao–Fountain syndrome (HAFOUS), a ...
The Rag GTPase heterodimer is a central mediator of amino acid sensing in eukaryotic
cells. When amino acids are abundant, it binds to the mechanistic target of rapamycin
complex 1 to activate cellular programs for growth and proliferation. In its ...
Adaptive differences in the thermal stabilities of enzyme structure and function play
critical roles in establishing the thermal optima and limits of all organisms. Thus,
understanding the mechanisms underlying these adaptations can yield insights into
...
Polycomb Repressive Complex 1 (PRC1) represses gene expression by ubiquitinating histone
H2A or physically compacting chromatin. USP16, one of the histone H2A deubiquitinases,
antagonizes PRC1-mediated H2A ubiquitination (H2Aub). Here, we report that both ...
Tissue stem cell (TSC)-derived epithelial organoids are typically cultured in Matrigel
[T. Sato et al., Nature 459, 262–265 (2009)], an extracellular matrix-like hydrogel produced from Engelbreth–Holm–Swarm
sarcoma cells. This tumor is grown in the mouse ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
T cells play a key role in adaptive immunity by mounting specific responses against
diverse pathogens. Effective bindings between T cell receptors (TCRs) and pathogen
derived peptides presented on major histocompatibility complexes (MHCs) mediate immune
...
Understanding how bacteria interact with surfaces is critical for advancing applications
in biofilm and biofouling prevention, biomaterial development, or biosensing. However,
the biophysical mechanisms underlying these interactions remain poorly ...
Apusomonads are sediment-dwelling bacterivorous protists that are sister to all Opisthokonta.
They have been found to show a negative phototactic response to blue light, mediated
by an as-yet unidentified photoreceptive system. Here, by screening ...
The forces exerted by cells upon the fibers of the extracellular matrix play a decisive
role in cell motility in physiopathology. How the local physical properties of the
matrix (density, stiffness, orientation) affect cellular forces remains, however,
...
Rapid and accurate estimation of protein–ligand binding affinities is crucial for
early-stage drug discovery, yet hindered by a trade-off between the accuracy of gold-standard
physics-based methods and the speed of simpler empirical scoring functions. ...
NMDA receptors are principal sources of postsynaptic Ca2+ in central neurons. It is widely assumed that the content of Ca2+ in the glutamate-elicited ionic flux is determined by the molecular composition of
the NMDA receptors, whose expression varies ...
AAA+ enzymes use energy from ATP hydrolysis to remodel diverse cellular targets. Structures
of substrate-bound AAA+ complexes suggest that these enzymes employ a conserved hand-over-hand
mechanism to thread substrates through their central pore. However, ...
Deep learning has advanced our ability to assess the effects that individual mutations
have on protein function; however, predicting the complex interplay between two or
more mutations remains challenging. Here, we seek to address this challenge by ...
Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) enable rapid, selective, and robust nucleocytoplasmic
transport. To explain how transport emerges from the system components and their interactions,
we used experimental data and theoretical information to construct an ...
Cell Biology
Cancer cells exhibit accelerated protein production to accommodate their high rates
of growth and proliferation. Elevated protein synthesis creates a dependency on endoplasmic
reticulum (ER)-resident proteins and chaperones, which are required to maintain ...
Cells must coordinate DNA segregation with cytokinesis to ensure that each daughter
cell inherits a complete genome. Here, we explore how DNA segregation and division
are mechanistically coupled in archaeal relatives of eukaryotes, which lack Cyclin-...
Developmental Biology
Sperm motility is essential for male fertility and is tightly controlled by signaling
events in the flagellum. Slc9c1 encodes a sperm-specific Na+/H+ exchanger (sNHE/SLC9C1) that localizes to the flagellum and is indispensable for
sperm motility and male ...
Ecology
Jumping can be hazardous for entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) as those that fail
to attach to an insect host face death by predation or starvation. Recently, it has
been shown that electrostatic charges on large insects can prompt a close-range ...
The pace and trajectory of ecosystem development are governed by the availability
and cycling of limiting nutrients, and anthropogenic disturbances such as acid rain
and deforestation alter these trajectories by removing substantial quantities of ...
Methane is ubiquitous in groundwater, and its release to surface environments through
pumping, discharge, or diffusion is an emerging environmental concern. Microbial oxidation
consumes methane and mitigates its release, but quantitative constraints in ...
Environmental Sciences
Urbanization was one of the most significant transitions in human history, yet explanations
for the rise and expansion of early cities remain contentious. Here, we propose that
simple models from population ecology can integrate existing theories for the ...
Evolution
Adaptation to different environments is thought to play a key role in speciation.
However, speciation typically begins in allopatry, where reproductive isolation can
also arise through neutral processes or selection unrelated to ecological differences.
...
Mosquitoes have a substantial impact on human and animal health, but their deeper
evolutionary relationships have been difficult to resolve. We inferred a time-calibrated
phylogenetic history of mosquitoes using conserved genome-wide markers from ...
Genetics
Innovative genetic improvements in food crops are needed to maintain global food security.
Here, we report the map-based cloning of TaWUSCHEL-D1 (WUS-D1) as the gene responsible for the multiovary phenotype in wheat, which produces three
fertile ovaries ...
Fluorescent labeling approaches are crucial for elucidating protein function and dynamics.
While robust methods to monitor gene transcription are widespread, the visualization
of proteins in vivo is more elusive. To meet this challenge, we developed ...
Mot1 in budding yeast regulates transcription by dissociating general initiation factor
TBP (TATA-binding protein) from DNA. Previous studies suggested that Mot1 preferentially
removes TBP from stress-responsive promoters containing consensus TATA ...
The human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus species complex (encompassing Cryptococcus neoformans, Cryptococcus deneoformans, and the Cryptococcus gattii species complexes) exhibits diversity in sexual reproduction, including α-a mating, pseudosexual ...
Ultraviolet light (UV) is a potent inducer of both single-base mutations and mitotic
recombination. Although these genomic alterations are often attributed to the action
of error-prone DNA polymerases on UV-induced DNA lesions during replicative DNA ...
Immunology and Inflammation
The T cell receptor (TCR), a master regulator of adaptive immunity, serves as a molecular
transducer that converts antigen recognition into precisely modulated intracellular
signals, orchestrating both T cell development and effector functions. In this ...
In arthropods, bacterial infection activates dual oxidase 2 (Duox2) to produce extracellular
reactive oxygen species (ROS), while stimulating the expression of antimicrobial peptides
(AMPs) through immune deficiency (Imd)/Relish pathway. Although both ...
Medical Sciences
Microsurgical testicular sperm extraction (microTESE) with intracytoplasmic sperm
injection (ICSI) represents the current standard treatment for nonobstructive azoospermia
(NOA). However, cures remain unavailable for NOA patients lacking retrievable ...
Microbiology
The Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) includes M. tuberculosis (M. tb), the primary cause of human tuberculosis, M. bovis, the classical zoonotic pathogen and cause of bovine tuberculosis, and M. orygis, a recently recognized multihost pathogen. ...
De novo gene birth—the emergence of genes from nongenic sequences—drives biological
innovation, yet its adaptive potential remains poorly understood. To investigate this
issue, we screened libraries of ~100 million short (semi-)random sequences, mimicking
...
Neuroscience
Patient-specific, human-based cellular models integrating a biomimetic blood–brain
barrier, immune, and myelinated neuron components are critically needed to enable
accelerated, translationally relevant discovery of neurological disease mechanisms
and ...
Altered psychomotor behavior in psychosis is poorly understood. Novel insights into
the physiology of the motor cortex prompted a revision of the motor homunculus. Next
to core motor effector areas, the primary motor cortex (M1) contains intereffector
...
Early life adversity (ELA) predisposes individuals to physical and mental disorders
lifelong. How ELA affects brain functions, leading to these vulnerabilities, is a
mystery. To understand ELA’s impacts, investigations into neural activity affected
by ELA ...
Parkinson’s disease (PD) has been associated with alterations in neuronal activity
in the basal ganglia-thalamocortical (BGTC) network. Previous studies have suggested
that cortical disinhibition is a feature of PD, but there has been little direct ...
In the absence of explicit neuronal inputs, the glial cell astrocytes exhibit recurring
intracellular Ca2+ fluctuations, primarily localized at thin processes, known as Ca2+ microdomains (MDs). Although spontaneous Ca2+ MDs are present throughout the ...
Speech comprehension involves transforming an acoustic waveform into meaning. To do
so, the human brain generates a hierarchy of features that converts the sensory input
into increasingly abstract language properties. However, little is known about how
...
Physiology
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a fatal genetic disease of progressive muscle
deterioration with no cure. DMD treatment requires a body-wide approach to target
all diseased striated muscles: limb, respiratory, and heart. To address this, we focus
...
Pathogenic threats to reproductive individuals pose a profound challenge to the stability
of insect societies. In honey bees (Apis mellifera L.), severe virus infections in queens can trigger worker-initiated supersedure,
a socially coordinated ...
Nutrient intake drives secretion of insulin and insulin-like peptides that stimulate
anabolic metabolism and tissue growth. Eight Drosophila insulin-like peptides (Dilps) are encoded in the Drosophila genome; whether these Dilps respond uniformly to ...
The immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment enables immune evasion through mechanisms
beyond canonical immune checkpoints. While phosphatidylserine (PS) externalization
coordinates apoptotic clearance under physiological conditions, tumors hijack this
...
Plant Biology
The precise timing of flowering is critical to ensure reproductive success in plants.
This process is coordinated by both endogenous and environmental cues. Light is a
pivotal environmental cue fundamentally regulating plant growth and development. In
...
NAD(P)(H) metabolism plays a crucial role in plant development and growth. NADK2,
a chloroplast-localized NAD kinase, supplies NADP+ to the photosynthetic electron transport chain. The Arabidopsis T-DNA insertion mutant of NADK2 (nadk2) exhibits a reduced ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Brain-wide association studies using functional MRI have advanced our understanding
of how behavioral traits relate to individual variability in brain function. These
studies typically identify functional connectivity (FC) patterns linked to behavioral
...
Common workplace challenges such as feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or disengaged
often remain hidden due to fear of judgment or social norms, contributing to rising
mental health crises and organizational dysfunction. This study presents a brain-based
...
Humans start new friendships and social connections throughout their lives and such
relationships foster mental and physical well-being. While friendship initiation may
depend on alignment of subtle and complex personal variables, here we investigated
...
Corrections
Cover image: Pictured are illuminated stigma hairs from the pistil of a wheat floret. Adam Schoen et al. explored the genetic origin of a phenotype of wheat that produces three fertile ovaries and grains per floret. Analysis revealed that the phenotype is marked by the activation of the WUSCHEL-1 gene. Activation of the gene is associated with increased size of meristems and florets and enables the production of multiple fertile ovaries and grains per floret. According to the authors, the findings provide a basis for gene-editing strategies to increase wheat yield. See the article by Schoen et al. e2510889122. Image credit: Guilherme V. Yoshikawa.
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