Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 122, Number 4
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Commentaries
Perspective
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity
worldwide, linked to numerous health, economic, and human rights outcomes. Target
5.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls for elimination of all forms of VAWG;
...
Letters
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Reply to van Schie et al.: ARK2N in TCR: Across in vivo and in vitro studies
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Reply to Boomsma: The evidence that eusociality evolved from monogamous ancestors is inconclusive
View the original article:Brief Reports
Tattoos were a prevalent art form in pre-Hispanic South America exemplified by mummified
human remains with preserved skin decoration that reflects the personal and cultural
representations of their times. Tattoos are known to fade and bleed over time and
...
Despite increased attempts to express equality in speech, biases often leak out through
subtle linguistic cues. For example, the subject–complement statement (SCS, “Girls
are as good as boys at math”) is used to advocate for equality but often reinforces
...
Postdoctoral training is a career stage often described as a demanding and anxiety-laden
time when many promising PhDs see their academic dreams slip away due to circumstances
beyond their control. We use a unique dataset of academic publishing and ...
Using administrative and survey data, we show that there has been a sea change in
the contours of American imprisonment. At the end of the twentieth century, inequality
in the prison admission rates of Black and White Americans was comparable to ...
Physical Sciences
Applied Mathematics
Social media is profoundly changing our society with its unprecedented spreading power.
Due to the complexity of human behaviors and the diversity of massive messages, the
information-spreading dynamics are complicated, and the reported mechanisms are ...
Applied Physical Sciences
Photosynthetic microbes have evolved and successfully adapted to the ever-changing
environmental conditions in complex microhabitats throughout almost all ecosystems
on Earth. In the absence of light, they can sustain their biological functionalities
...
Chiral magnetic textures give rise to unconventional magnetotransport phenomena such
as the topological Hall effect and nonreciprocal electronic transport. While the correspondence
between topology or symmetry of chiral magnetic structures and such ...
We develop a technology based on competitive adsorption between drug molecules and
water, specifically designed to address the critical issue of poor drug solubility.
By specially engineering silica nanosurfaces with ultrahigh densities of silanol,
we ...
From molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of melt-quenching and thermal aging procedures
in pure Ag, Cu, Ag–Cu binary alloys, and Cu–Zr binary alloys, we have identified two
distinct amorphous phases for a metastable undercooled liquid: the homogeneous L-...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Life is invasive, occupying all physically accessible scales, stretching between almost
nothing (protons, electrons, and photons) and almost everything (the whole biosphere).
Motivated by seventeenth-century insights into this infinity, this paper ...
The natural vibrational frequencies of biological particles such as viruses and bacteria
encode critical information about their mechanical and biological states as they interact
with their local environment and undergo structural evolution. However, ...
Frameshifting is an essential mechanism employed by many viruses including coronaviruses
to produce viral proteins from a compact RNA genome. It is facilitated by specific
RNA folds in the frameshift element (FSE), which has emerged as an important ...
The onset and development of Alzheimer’s disease is linked to the accumulation of
pathological aggregates formed from the normally monomeric amyloid-β peptide within
the central nervous system. These Aβ aggregates are increasingly successfully targeted
...
The dynamics of neuronal systems are characterized by hallmark features such as oscillations
and synchrony. However, it has remained unclear whether these characteristics are
epiphenomena or are exploited for computation. Due to the challenge of ...
Pain impacts billions of people worldwide, but treatment options are limited and have
a spectrum of adverse effects. The search for safe and nonaddictive pain treatments
has led to a focus on key mediators of nociceptor excitability. Voltage-gated sodium
(...
Chemistry
Chemical communication between marine bacteria and their algal hosts drives population
dynamics and ultimately determines the fate of major biogeochemical cycles in the
ocean. To gain deeper insights into this small molecule exchange, we screened niche-...
Atomic force microscopy–infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR) is a photothermal scanning
probe technique that combines nanoscale spatial resolution with the chemical analysis
capability of mid-infrared spectroscopy. Using this hybrid technique, chemical ...
This study presents the direct measurement of proton transport along filamentous Desulfobulbaceae, or cable bacteria. Cable bacteria are filamentous multicellular microorganisms that
have garnered much interest due to their ability to serve as electrical ...
Computer Sciences
Looking at the world often involves not just seeing things, but feeling things. Modern
feedforward machine vision systems that learn to perceive the world in the absence
of active physiology, deliberative thought, or any form of feedback that resembles
...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Tropical cyclones (TCs), particularly those that rapidly intensify (RI), pose a significant
threat due to the uncertainty in forecasting them. RI TC periods, which intensify
by at least 13 m/s within 24 h, remain challenging to forecast accurately. ...
Engineering
Joining heterogeneous materials in engineered structures remains a significant challenge
due to stress concentration at interfaces, which often leads to unexpected failures.
Investigating the complex, multiscale-graded structures found in animal tissue ...
The emerging new generation of small-scaled acoustic microrobots is poised to expedite
the adoption of microrobotics in biomedical research. Recent designs of these microrobots
have enabled intricate bioinspired motions, paving the way for their real-...
The design of new alloys is a multiscale problem that requires a holistic approach
that involves retrieving relevant knowledge, applying advanced computational methods,
conducting experimental validations, and analyzing the results, a process that is
...
We describe a microfluidic device to extract DNA from a cell lysate, without the need
for centrifuges, magnetic beads, or gels. Instead, separation is driven by transverse
migration of DNA, which occurs when a polyelectrolyte solution flowing through a ...
Environmental Sciences
Urban vegetation provides essential ecosystem services and benefits to support biodiversity
and human well-being in urban areas. However, the dynamic trends, driving factors,
and their implications to urban heat mitigation at the global scale remain ...
Arctic ecosystems are affected by accelerated warming as well as the intensification
of the hydrologic cycle, yet understanding of the impacts of compound climate extremes
(e.g., simultaneous extreme heat and rainfall) remains limited, despite their high
...
Social Sciences
Economic Sciences
Justifying a proposed government regulation intended to reduce firearm violence requires
a conceptually sound estimate of the monetized value of that impact and how that value
is distributed across the population. Some previous estimates do not serve as a ...
Americans collectively hold over $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, and over the
last decade millions of borrowers have defaulted on loans, with serious consequences
for their financial health. In a 13-million-person field experiment with the U.S.
...
Political Sciences
The recent COVID-19 pandemic offers a rare opportunity to understand how citizens
attribute responsibility for governments’ responses to unanticipated negative—and
in this case, systemic—exogenous shocks. Classical accounts of responsibility are
...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Efficient planning is a distinctive hallmark of intelligence in humans, who routinely
make rapid inferences over complex world contexts. However, studies investigating
how humans accomplish this tend to focus on naive participants engaged in simplistic
...
Looking at the world often involves not just seeing things, but feeling things. Modern
feedforward machine vision systems that learn to perceive the world in the absence
of active physiology, deliberative thought, or any form of feedback that resembles
...
Measuring and interpreting errors in behavioral tasks is critical for understanding
cognition. Conventional wisdom assumes that encoding/decoding errors for continuous
variables in behavioral tasks should naturally have Gaussian distributions, so that
...
Social Sciences
Social media is profoundly changing our society with its unprecedented spreading power.
Due to the complexity of human behaviors and the diversity of massive messages, the
information-spreading dynamics are complicated, and the reported mechanisms are ...
Sustainability Science
Urban vegetation provides essential ecosystem services and benefits to support biodiversity
and human well-being in urban areas. However, the dynamic trends, driving factors,
and their implications to urban heat mitigation at the global scale remain ...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
Light serves as an energy source for cell division and expansion during fruit development.
Cell expansion significantly influences fruit size and is closely linked to endoreduplication,
a unique cell cycle variation characterized by DNA replication ...
Applied Biological Sciences
Joining heterogeneous materials in engineered structures remains a significant challenge
due to stress concentration at interfaces, which often leads to unexpected failures.
Investigating the complex, multiscale-graded structures found in animal tissue ...
The emerging new generation of small-scaled acoustic microrobots is poised to expedite
the adoption of microrobotics in biomedical research. Recent designs of these microrobots
have enabled intricate bioinspired motions, paving the way for their real-...
This study presents the direct measurement of proton transport along filamentous Desulfobulbaceae, or cable bacteria. Cable bacteria are filamentous multicellular microorganisms that
have garnered much interest due to their ability to serve as electrical ...
Pathogen mutations present an inevitable and challenging problem for therapeutics
and the development of mutation-tolerant anti-infective drugs to strengthen global
health and combat evolving pathogens is urgently needed. While spike proteins on viral
...
Biochemistry
Lignin degradation by biocatalysts is a key strategy to develop a plant-based sustainable
carbon economy and thus alleviate global climate change. This process involves synergy
between ligninases and auxiliary enzymes. However, auxiliary enzymes within ...
Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) exerts its physiological roles through the endothelialdifferentiation
gene (EDG) family LPA receptors (LPAR1-3) or the non-EDG family LPA receptors (LPAR4-6).
LPAR6 plays crucial roles in hair loss and cancer progression, yet ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Photosynthetic microbes have evolved and successfully adapted to the ever-changing
environmental conditions in complex microhabitats throughout almost all ecosystems
on Earth. In the absence of light, they can sustain their biological functionalities
...
Life is invasive, occupying all physically accessible scales, stretching between almost
nothing (protons, electrons, and photons) and almost everything (the whole biosphere).
Motivated by seventeenth-century insights into this infinity, this paper ...
Efficient planning is a distinctive hallmark of intelligence in humans, who routinely
make rapid inferences over complex world contexts. However, studies investigating
how humans accomplish this tend to focus on naive participants engaged in simplistic
...
Frameshifting is an essential mechanism employed by many viruses including coronaviruses
to produce viral proteins from a compact RNA genome. It is facilitated by specific
RNA folds in the frameshift element (FSE), which has emerged as an important ...
The onset and development of Alzheimer’s disease is linked to the accumulation of
pathological aggregates formed from the normally monomeric amyloid-β peptide within
the central nervous system. These Aβ aggregates are increasingly successfully targeted
...
Immunological interventions, like vaccinations, are enabled by the predictive control
of humoral responses to novel antigens. While the development trajectories for many
broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) have been measured, it is less established
...
RNA G-quadruplexes (rG4s), the four-stranded structures formed by guanine-rich RNA
sequences, are recognized by regions in RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) that are enriched
in arginine-glycine repeats (RGG motifs). Importantly, arginine and glycine are ...
The glucose-6-phosphatase (G6Pase) is an integral membrane protein that catalyzes
the hydrolysis of glucose-6-phosphate (G6P) in the endoplasmic reticulum lumen and
plays a vital role in glucose homeostasis. Dysregulation or genetic mutations of G6Pase
...
The crowded bacterial cytoplasm is composed of biomolecules that span several orders
of magnitude in size and electrical charge. This complexity has been proposed as the
source of the rich spatial organization and apparent anomalous diffusion of ...
Manifold learning techniques have emerged as crucial tools for uncovering latent patterns
in high-dimensional single-cell data. However, most existing dimensionality reduction
methods primarily rely on 2D visualization, which can distort true data ...
Cell Biology
Intercellular transmission of messenger RNA (mRNA) is being explored in mammalian
species using immortal cell lines. Here, we uncover an intercellular mRNA transfer
phenomenon that allows for the adaptation and reprogramming of human primed pluripotent
...
To regulate brain function, peripheral compounds must traverse the blood–brain barrier
(BBB), an interface between the brain and the circulatory system. To determine whether
specific transport mechanisms are relevant for sleep, we conducted a BBB-specific
...
Ecology
The question of what mechanisms maintain tropical biodiversity is a critical frontier
in ecology, intensified by the heightened risk of biodiversity loss faced in tropical
regions. Ecological theory has shed light on multiple mechanisms that could lead to
...
Environmental Sciences
Arctic ecosystems are affected by accelerated warming as well as the intensification
of the hydrologic cycle, yet understanding of the impacts of compound climate extremes
(e.g., simultaneous extreme heat and rainfall) remains limited, despite their high
...
Evolution
Experiments have shown that when one plant is attacked by a pathogen or herbivore,
this can lead to other plants connected to the same mycorrhizal network up-regulating
their defense mechanisms. It has been hypothesized that this represents signaling,
...
Many proteins form paralogous multimers—molecular complexes in which evolutionarily
related proteins are arranged into specific quaternary structures. Little is known
about the mechanisms by which they acquired their stoichiometry (the number of total
...
Multicellularity spans a wide gamut in terms of complexity, from simple clonal clusters
of cells to large-scale organisms composed of differentiated cells and tissues. While
recent experiments have demonstrated that simple forms of multicellularity can ...
Mx proteins, first identified in mammals, encode potent antiviral activity against
a wide range of viruses. Mx proteins arose within the Dynamin superfamily of proteins
(DSP), which mediate critical cellular processes, such as endocytosis and ...
Genetics
SOX9 is a crucial transcriptional regulator of cartilage development and homeostasis.
Dysregulation of SOX9 is associated with a wide spectrum of skeletal disorders, including campomelic dysplasia,
acampomelic campomelic dysplasia, and scoliosis. Yet how ...
Immunology and Inflammation
The LIM-domain-only protein LMO2 interacts with LDB1 in context-dependent multiprotein
complexes and plays key roles in erythropoiesis and T cell leukemogenesis, but whether
they have any roles in B cells is unclear. Through a CRISPR/Cas9-based loss-of-...
Heterogeneous roles of complement C3 have been implicated in tumor metastasis and
are highly context dependent. However, the underlying mechanisms linking C3 to tumor
metastasis remain elusive in renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Here, we demonstrate that
C3 of ...
Medical Sciences
We hypothesized that a strategy employing tissue-specific endothelial cells (EC) might
facilitate the identification of tissue- or organ-specific vascular functions of ubiquitous
metabolites. An unbiased approach was employed to identify water-soluble ...
Ependymoma (EPN) is a common form of brain tumor in children, often resistant to available
cytotoxic therapies. Molecular profiling studies have led to a better understanding
of EPN subtypes and revealed a critical role of oncogenes ZFTA–RELA fusion and ...
Microbiology
Chemical communication between marine bacteria and their algal hosts drives population
dynamics and ultimately determines the fate of major biogeochemical cycles in the
ocean. To gain deeper insights into this small molecule exchange, we screened niche-...
Viral infections are characterized by dispersal from an initial site to secondary
locations within the host. How the resultant spatial heterogeneity shapes within-host
genetic diversity and viral evolutionary pathways is poorly understood. Here, we show
...
Although viruses subvert innate immune pathways for their replication, there is evidence
they can also co-opt antiviral responses for their benefit. The ubiquitous human pathogen,
Herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1), encodes a protein (UL12.5) that induces the ...
Itaconate, an abundant metabolite produced by macrophages upon interferon-γ stimulation,
possesses both antibacterial and immunomodulatory properties. Despite its crucial
role in immunity and antimicrobial control, its mechanism of action and ...
Bacterial cell wall assembly and remodeling require activities of peptidoglycan (PG)
hydrolases as well as PG synthases. In particular, the activity of DD-endopeptidases,
which cleave the 4-3 peptide crosslinks in PG, is essential for PG expansion in gram-...
Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) establishes persistent infection, causes infectious mononucleosis,
is a major trigger for multiple sclerosis and contributes to multiple cancers. Yet,
knowledge remains incomplete about how the virus remodels host B cells to ...
Neuroscience
Measuring and interpreting errors in behavioral tasks is critical for understanding
cognition. Conventional wisdom assumes that encoding/decoding errors for continuous
variables in behavioral tasks should naturally have Gaussian distributions, so that
...
The dynamics of neuronal systems are characterized by hallmark features such as oscillations
and synchrony. However, it has remained unclear whether these characteristics are
epiphenomena or are exploited for computation. Due to the challenge of ...
Given the influence of cognitive abilities on life outcomes, there is inherent value
in identifying genes involved in controlling learning and memory. Further, cognitive
dysfunction is a core feature of many neuropsychiatric disorders. Here, we use a ...
The sense of hearing originates in the cochlea, which detects sounds across dynamic
sensory environments. Like other peripheral organs, the cochlea is subjected to environmental
insults, including loud, damage-inducing sounds. In response to internal and ...
ANKRD11 binding to cohesin suggests a connection between KBG syndrome and Cornelia de Lange syndrome
Ankyrin Repeat Domain-containing Protein 11 (ANKRD11) is a causative gene for KBG syndrome, a significant risk factor for Cornelia de
Lange syndrome (CdLS), and a highly confident autism spectrum disorder gene. Mutations
of ANKRD11 lead to developmental ...
Neuronal processing of external sensory input is shaped by internally generated top–down
information. In the neocortex, top–down projections primarily target layer 1, which
contains NDNF (neuron-derived neurotrophic factor)-expressing interneurons and the
...
Lesions of the dorsal columns of the spinal cord in adult macaque monkeys lead to
the loss of hand inputs and large-scale expansion of the face inputs in the hand region
of the somatosensory cortex. Inputs from alternate spinal pathways do not reactivate
...
Sleep need accumulates during waking and dissipates during sleep to maintain sleep
homeostasis (process S). Besides the regulation of daily (baseline) sleep amount,
homeostatic sleep regulation commonly refers to the universal phenomenon that sleep
...
Pharmacology
Pain impacts billions of people worldwide, but treatment options are limited and have
a spectrum of adverse effects. The search for safe and nonaddictive pain treatments
has led to a focus on key mediators of nociceptor excitability. Voltage-gated sodium
(...
Physiology
Nutritional status is a determining factor for growth during development and homeostatic
maintenance in adulthood. In the context of muscle, growth hormone (GH) coordinates
growth with nutritional status; however, the detailed mechanisms remain to be ...
Plant Biology
Dynamic control of signaling events requires swift regulation of receptors at an active
state. By focusing on the Arabidopsis ERECTA (ER) receptor kinase, which perceives
peptide ligands to control multiple developmental processes, we report a mechanism
...
Phycobilisomes (PBS) are the major photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes in cyanobacteria
and red algae. While the structures of PBS have been determined in atomic resolutions,
how PBS are attached to the reaction centers of photosystems remains less ...
Corrections
SI Correction
Cover image: Pictured is the nucleus of a human primed pluripotent stem cell, with cell membrane shown in red. Digitally generated and enhanced multicolored dots represent mRNA transferred from mouse embryonic stem cells. Yosuke Yoneyama et al. cultured mouse naïve embryonic stem cells with human primed pluripotent stem cells. When in direct contact with each other, the mouse cells transferred mRNA to the human cells; the mRNA is involved in transcription/translation and stress response. The authors found that mRNA transfer plummeted when direct contact between the cells was lost and that after five days the human cells gained a naïve-like state. According to the authors, direct contact between mammalian cells may facilitate mRNA transfer and cell reprogramming. See the article by Yoneyama et al. e2413351122. Image credit: Yosuke Yoneyama and Takanori Takebe.
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