Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 122, Number 43
This Week in PNAS
Commentaries
Letters
This article has a reply:
Reply to Bosten and Franklin: Children’s color qualia structure is similar to adults’
View the original article:Comparing color qualia structures through a similarity task in young children versus adults
Brief Reports
Here, we report a series of measurements indicating that it is physically possible
to thin and vitrify a specimen for electron cryomicroscopy (cryoEM) faster than proteins
diffuse to the air–water interface. We achieved this by spraying picoliter volume
...
Achieving sustainability goals requires that humans change their behavior not just
once but persistently. Yet despite decades of research on the adoption of conservation
and climate-smart agricultural practices, little is known about the extent to which
...
The squamous cell carcinoma antigen SerpinB3 is a serum-circulating biomarker of epithelial
cancers associated with high metastasis, treatment resistance, and poor prognosis.
Despite its clinical significance, the endogenous role of SerpinB3 has remained ...
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
Imaging biological structures deep inside tissues is crucial but challenging due to
common light scattering. This study proposes a multiattention network that directly
maps degraded scattering two-photon excitation fluorescence (TPEF) images to high-...
A theory of solutions of charged polyelectrolyte (PE) macromolecules, treating them
as electric dipoles, is proposed. In a thin thread of PE solution sustained between
two disks—whether wettable or nonwettable—these dipoles are reoriented by an axial
...
Photosynthesis is essential for ecosystem survival, but while plants require light,
excessive exposure can damage cells. Chloroplasts, photosynthetic organelles, respond
via self-organized motion within cells to optimize light absorption. These disk-...
Magnons offer a promising path toward energy-efficient information transmission and
the development of next-generation classical and quantum computing technologies. However,
efficiently exciting, manipulating, and detecting magnons remains a critical ...
We present an approach to nanoscale-resolution high-sensitivity imaging of internal
material structure under in situ/operando conditions for virtually any sample environment.
When bulky or heavy sample environment is required state-of-the-art X-ray ...
An electrode in cylindrical or pouch cell batteries contains millions of active particles
embedded in a conductive network. Battery performance, such as voltage, capacity,
and cyclic efficiency, is a collective response of the particle network. We use ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
RNAs are major drivers of phase separation in the formation of biomolecular condensates
and can undergo protein-free phase separation in the presence of divalent ions or
crowding agents. Much remains to be understood regarding how the complex interplay
of ...
Enhancers regulate gene expression by physically contacting their target promoters,
yet these contacts often span large genomic distances. Phase-separated condensates
(droplet-like clusters) of transcription factors (TFs) are thought to facilitate such
...
Accurate forecasts of disease outbreaks are critical for effective public health responses,
management of healthcare surge capacity, and communication of public risk. There are
a growing number of powerful forecasting methods that fall into two broad ...
Animals respond to sensory stimuli with motor actions, which in turn generate new
sensory inputs. This sensorimotor loop is constrained by time delays that impose a
trade-off between responsiveness and stability. Additionally, as the relationship
between ...
Chemistry
The emerging electrocatalytic C–N coupling reaction provides an attractive route toward
green urea synthesis, but a lack of in-depth insight into the catalytic mechanism
and the geometric/electronic configurations that determine the key C- and N-coupling
...
Computer Sciences
Smartphones are essential tools in daily life yet concerns persist about their potential
effects on mental health and well-being. Research on these relationships often relies
on subjective measures of smartphone use, which can lack validity. These studies ...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Simultaneous measurements of HDO, H218O, and H216O in water evolved during pyrolysis of powdered rock samples acquired by the Curiosity
rover within Gale crater’s clay-bearing units indicate extreme and variable heavy-isotope
enrichments averaging ~4.5 ...
Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) particles formed by marine organisms dissolve in seawater and on the ocean floor,
constituting a key component of the global ocean carbon cycle. However, neither the
magnitude nor the distribution of CaCO3 dissolution in the ...
Engineering
This research investigates the projected risks of future climate trends on tropical
cyclone–induced power outages in the Gulf and Atlantic coast of the United States,
focusing on the disproportionate impacts on vulnerable populations and the economic
...
Low-frequency sound absorption has traditionally relied on air-resonant structures,
such as Helmholtz resonators, which are made of stiff materials that undergo negligible
deformation. In these systems, energy dissipation arises primarily from air motion
...
Intercellular mitochondrial transfer, the spontaneous exchange of mitochondria between
cells, is a recently described phenomenon crucial for cellular repair, regeneration,
and disease management. Enhancing this natural process holds promise for developing
...
Physical inhomogeneities—spanning atomic-scale crystal defects and quantum dots to
macroscopic features like bone cavities and geological faults—are fundamental to both
engineered and natural systems. The study of how these inclusions influence material
...
Physics
There is evidence that the self-assembly of complex molecular systems often proceeds
hierarchically, by first building subunits that later assemble in larger entities,
in a process that can repeat multiple times. Yet, our understanding of this phenomenon
...
We introduce a Bayesian framework for measuring spatiotemporal couplings in ultraintense
lasers that reconceptualizes what constitutes a “single-shot” measurement. Moving
beyond traditional distinctions between single- and multishot devices, our approach
...
Social Sciences
Environmental Sciences
This research investigates the projected risks of future climate trends on tropical
cyclone–induced power outages in the Gulf and Atlantic coast of the United States,
focusing on the disproportionate impacts on vulnerable populations and the economic
...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Smartphones are essential tools in daily life yet concerns persist about their potential
effects on mental health and well-being. Research on these relationships often relies
on subjective measures of smartphone use, which can lack validity. These studies ...
Although seminal studies from the early 1960s suggested quality preschool can have
lasting positive effects, agreement is lacking on the efficacy of different preschool
models. The Montessori model is longstanding but lacks rigorous impact studies; prior
...
Social Sciences
In this paper, we investigate whether better schools can compensate for the effects
of children’s genetic differences. To this end, we combine data from the Norwegian
Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) with Norwegian register data to estimate
...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
Fungi are essential members across ecosystems, yet phytopathogenic fungi pose an increasing
risk to crop yields. Despite their ecologic importance, cell–cell communication in
fungi is underexplored, partly due to the lack of high-throughput techniques. ...
Biochemistry
Many species of bacteria produce small-molecule antibiotics that enter and kill a
wide range of competitor microbes. However, diffusible antibacterial proteins (ABPs)
that share this broad-spectrum activity are not known to exist. Here, we report a
family ...
Three types of O-linked glycosylation—O-glucose, O-fucose, and O-N-acetylglucosamine— are crucial for the function of Notch receptors, which regulate
critical cell fate determination processes in a wide variety of contexts. O-Glucose glycans are ...
Agonist-induced activation of phosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C (PLC) converts
phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P2] to diacylglycerol (DAG) at the inner leaflet of the plasma membrane (PM). DAG can
be enzymatically transformed into ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Enhancers regulate gene expression by physically contacting their target promoters,
yet these contacts often span large genomic distances. Phase-separated condensates
(droplet-like clusters) of transcription factors (TFs) are thought to facilitate such
...
Accurate forecasts of disease outbreaks are critical for effective public health responses,
management of healthcare surge capacity, and communication of public risk. There are
a growing number of powerful forecasting methods that fall into two broad ...
Animals navigate their environment stably without inefficient course corrections despite
unavoidable errors. In humans, this stability is achieved by modulating the placement
of the foot on each step such that recent errors are corrected. However, it is ...
Pentameric ligand-gated ion channels (pLGICs) are vital neurotransmitter receptors
that are key therapeutic targets for neurological disorders. Although the high-resolution
structures of these channels have been elucidated, capturing their dynamic ...
Cell Biology
Intracellular pH (pHi) influences diverse cellular processes, including cell proliferation,
metabolism, and migration, and is linked to metabolic diseases and cancer. Protonation
alters protein charge and conformation, modulating different aspects of ...
Epithelial cells are inherently contractile and in homeostasis, tissue integrity is
maintained by balancing the uneven contractile forces in neighboring cells at the
cell–cell interface. By contrast, epithelial cells can utilize an imbalance in ...
Lamin A/C (LMNA), a key component of the nuclear envelope, is essential for maintaining nuclear integrity
and genome organization [W. Xie et al., Curr. Biol. 26, 2651–2658 (2016)]. While LMNA dysregulation has been implicated in genomic instability across ...
EZH2, a core component of PRC2 complex, silences global gene expression by tri-methylating
histone H3K27. It remains an elusive question that EZH2 hyperexpression discords with
its H3K27me3 activity of gene suppression in advanced prostate cancer. Here, ...
Certain TP53 mutations can confer neomorphic gain of function (GOF) activities to the p53 protein
that affect cancer progression. Yet the concept of mutant p53 GOF has been challenged.
Here, using various strategies to alter the status of mutant versions ...
Developmental Biology
Signaling pathways induce stereotyped transcriptional changes as stem cells progress
into mature cell types during embryogenesis. Signaling perturbations are necessary
to discover which genes are responsive or insensitive to pathway activity. However,
...
Ecology
Primary production in the ocean is a fundamental process that supports marine food
webs and global carbon sequestration. This process depends on nutrients that are often
limited in surface waters. Whales are known to release essential elements such as
...
Temperature has strong impacts on all biological and ecological processes, and thermal
performance curves (TPCs) have been employed recurrently to assess them. TPCs almost
always take a particular asymmetric shape across the biological hierarchy, with ...
Evolution
Pollinator declines globally threaten ecosystem stability and agricultural productivity.
Reconstructing pollinator historic demographies provides an evolutionary perspective
to understand contemporary population declines. The Franklin bumble bee (Bombus ...
Body size variation in vertebrates is a complex polygenic trait, tightly correlated
with numerous aspects of a species’ biology, ecology, and physiology. Miniaturization,
the extreme reduction of adult body size, is a common phenomenon across the Tree of
...
Zygotic reproductive isolation frequently initiates with hybrid incompatibility in
the heterogametic sex, such as males in XX/XY systems. The genetic basis of hybrid
male incompatibility has long remained elusive. Here, we show that crosses of ...
Genetics
In this paper, we investigate whether better schools can compensate for the effects
of children’s genetic differences. To this end, we combine data from the Norwegian
Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) with Norwegian register data to estimate
...
Meiotic crossovers (COs) are needed to produce genetically balanced gametes. In mammals,
CO formation is mediated by a conserved set of pro-CO proteins via mechanisms that
remain unclear. Here, we characterize a mammalian pro-CO factor HEIP1. In mouse ...
Mutations in the Lamin A (LMNA) gene, which encodes the Lamin A and C proteins, cause severe human diseases collectively
known as laminopathies. These conditions are often devastating and lack effective
therapies. In this study, we developed precise base ...
Despite extensive genetic heterogeneity, 72% of pathogenic alleles for Hirschsprung
disease (HSCR) arise from coding and regulatory variants in genes of the RET and EDNRB gene regulatory network (GRN) in the enteric nervous system (ENS). To elucidate the
...
The origins of CpG islands (CGIs) are not known. They are relatively short GC-rich
regions of DNA with a higher-than-expected occurrence of CpG dinucleotides compared
to most of the genome. They constitute less than 1% of the human genome but harbor
...
For many families severely affected with breast cancer, no inherited causal allele
has been detected in any tumor suppressor gene. In an effort to understand the genetics
underlying breast cancer in these families, we evaluated 136 such families for ...
Immunology and Inflammation
Neutrophils are central mediators of the hyperinflammatory response in severe SARS-CoV-2
infection. We report elevated cytosolic levels of proliferating cell nuclear antigen
(PCNA) in neutrophils from patients with severe and critical COVID-19, ...
Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disorder caused mainly by autoantibodies against
the acetylcholine receptor (AChR), leading to muscle weakness. While treatments targeting
AChR autoantibodies benefit many, some patients remain refractory, ...
Highly polymorphic allorecognition systems have been characterized in numerous invertebrate
species, and exhibit discriminatory capabilities reminiscent of vertebrate adaptive
immunity. As these systems utilize germline encoded receptors, the mechanisms ...
Myeloid-biased differentiation of multipotent hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells
(HSPCs) occurs with aging or exhaustion. The molecular mechanism(s) responsible for
this fate bias remain unclear. Here, we report that linker histone regulates HSPC
...
Human Leukocyte Antigen E (HLA-E) is a nonclassical MHC class I molecule that exhibits
dual immunological functions in regulating natural killer (NK) cells and T cells through
unusual trafficking patterns. We previously reported that HLA-E surface ...
Medical Sciences
The role of HIF2α, encoded by EPAS1, in neuroblastoma remains controversial. Here, we demonstrate that induction of high
levels of HIF2α in MYCN-amplified neuroblastoma cells results in a rapid and profound
reduction of the oncoprotein MYCN. This is ...
SARS-CoV-2 respiratory-tract infection affects both vaccinated and unvaccinated persons
suggesting factors besides adaptive immunity are operative. We investigated the role
of collectin-11 (CL-11), an epithelial-secreted carbohydrate-binding lectin that ...
Bone pain is a presenting feature of bone cancers such as osteosarcoma (OS), relayed
by skeletal-innervating peripheral afferent neurons. Potential functions of tumor-associated
sensory neurons in bone cancers beyond pain sensation are unknown. To uncover ...
Background: In early atherosclerosis, circulating Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) crosses
the endothelium by transcytosis. This involves caveolar uptake of LDL by scavenger
receptor BI (SR-BI) and activin-like kinase 1 (ALK1) and requires the protein ...
Microbiology
A renewed interest in bacteriophages has emerged from the explosive discovery of the
complex pan-immune bacterial defense system and a revival of the therapeutic potential
of phages in the age of widespread antimicrobial resistance to antibiotics. However,...
Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) infection causes encephalitis in humans and animals.
Following intradermal infection, JEV crosses the blood–brain barrier (BBB) and reaches
target cells in the brain parenchyma. However, the cellular dynamics and ...
Neuroscience
Imaging biological structures deep inside tissues is crucial but challenging due to
common light scattering. This study proposes a multiattention network that directly
maps degraded scattering two-photon excitation fluorescence (TPEF) images to high-...
Animals respond to sensory stimuli with motor actions, which in turn generate new
sensory inputs. This sensorimotor loop is constrained by time delays that impose a
trade-off between responsiveness and stability. Additionally, as the relationship
between ...
Testosterone administration to nonsinging adult female canaries induces song, making
this a model for behavioral plasticity and its underlying neural mechanisms in vertebrates.
The song control nucleus HVC is traditionally believed to undergo a ...
Puberty is a critical transition period to achieve reproductive capacity in all mammalian
species. At puberty, hypothalamic Kiss1 neurons release kisspeptin, stimulating gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) release
and activating the hypothalamic–...
Recent experimental findings challenge the traditional belief that vigilance is solely
attributed to the sensorimotor system, suggesting instead that hippocampal activity,
coupled with locomotor processes, enhances environmental sampling and planning. ...
Hematophagous mosquitoes use CO2 as a key arousal signal that gates behavioral responses to host-derived cues. In
Aedes aegypti, CO2 is detected by olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) housed in the sensory hairs (sensilla)
on the maxillary palp. While the ...
In Alzheimer’s disease (AD), hyperactivated microglia produce inflammatory mediators
that contribute to neuroinflammation and neuronal damage. Amyloid precursor protein
(APP), a transmembrane protein expressed in many cell types, including neurons and
...
The dynamic integration of the lateralized and specialized capacities of the two cerebral
hemispheres constitutes a hallmark feature of human brain function. This interhemispheric
exchange of information critically depends upon the corpus callosum. ...
Fluent reading requires the brain to precisely encode the positions of letters within
words, distinguishing for instance FORM and FROM across variations in size, position, and font. Early visual areas, however, are known
to encode retinotopic positions, ...
Physiology
RNAs are major drivers of phase separation in the formation of biomolecular condensates
and can undergo protein-free phase separation in the presence of divalent ions or
crowding agents. Much remains to be understood regarding how the complex interplay
of ...
Cullin Ring E3 Ligases (CRLs) belong to the largest family of multisubunit ubiquitin
E3 ligases. A cullin serves as the scaffold protein that recruits E3 ligases and substrate
receptors in a CRL complex, whose activity requires cullin neddylation, a ...
In multicellular organisms, sensory perception affects many aspects of behavior and
physiology. Perception of environmental stressors like food scarcity often leads to
physiological changes that promote survival and slow aging. However, recent work shows
...
The prevailing linear model of physical activity (PA) and total energy expenditure
(TEE) has been challenged by models that predict an upper limit of TEE linked to a
compensatory reduction elsewhere in the energy budget in response to increased PA.
We ...
Plant Biology
Soil salinization has emerged as a significant challenge for crop production worldwide.
Xylem adjustments through plastic development and sodium unloading from root xylem,
as mediated by sodium transporter HKT1, both play crucial roles in controlling ...
Plants produce valuable natural products used for a wide variety of industrial applications.
Thus, there is enormous interest in elucidating the biosynthetic pathways that are
responsible for the production of these compounds. Identification of the genes ...
Rice (Oryza sativa) was first domesticated beginning ~9,000 y ago in China as the japonica variety group/subspecies. Using genomic data from 456 japonica landraces, including data for 47 herbarium specimens collected over the last 167
y, we reconstruct ...
Corrections
Cover image: Pictured are murine bone cancer cells (outlined in gray) invading normal bone (blue) with peripheral nerves (green) and blood vessels (red) around the tumor, visualized using confocal microscopy. Sowmya Ramesh et al. report that inhibiting sensory neurons during the growth of osteosarcoma in mice reduced tumor blood vessel growth and metastasis and improved survival. Mice treated with FDA-approved drugs to relieve pain and block calcitonin gene-related peptide signaling exhibited reduced pain and tumor growth. The findings suggest that peripheral neurons regulate osteosarcoma growth and raise the possibility that inhibiting nerve signaling might help improve bone cancer outcomes. See the article by Ramesh et al. e2500161122. Image credit: Sowmya Ramesh.
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