Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 122, Number 8
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Commentaries
Letters
Physical Sciences
Applied Mathematics
We present results on quantum tunneling between deep potential wells, in the presence
of a strong constant magnetic field. We construct a family of double-well potentials
containing examples for which the low-energy eigenvalue splitting vanishes, and ...
Applied Physical Sciences
Charge distribution offers a unique fingerprint of important properties of electronic
systems, including dielectric response, charge ordering, and charge fractionalization.
We develop an architecture for charge sensing in two-dimensional electronic ...
Inverse design of complex flows is notoriously challenging because of the high cost
of high dimensional optimization. Usually, optimization problems are either restricted
to few control parameters, or adjoint-based approaches are used to convert the ...
Mucus supports human health by hydrating, lubricating, and preventing infection of
wet epithelial surfaces. The beneficial material properties and bioactivity of mucus
stem from glycoproteins called mucins, motivating the development of mucin-derived
...
Dark-field microscopy is a technique used in optical microscopy to increase the contrast
in unstained samples, making it possible to observe details that would otherwise be
difficult to see under bright-field microscopy; thus, it has been widely employed
...
Random packings of stiff rods are self-supporting mechanical structures stabilized
by long-range interactions induced by contacts. To understand the geometrical and
topological complexity of the packings, we first deploy X-ray computerized tomography
to ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Polarized fluorescence microscopy is a valuable tool for measuring molecular orientations
in biological samples, but techniques for recovering three-dimensional orientations
and positions of fluorescent ensembles are limited. We report a polarized dual-...
Natural selection often acts on multiple traits simultaneously. For example, the virus
HIV-1 faces pressure to evade host immunity while also preserving replicative fitness.
While past work has studied selection during HIV-1 evolution, as in other ...
Generation of membrane curvature is fundamental to cellular function. Recent studies
have established that the glycocalyx, a sugar-rich polymer layer at the cell surface,
can generate membrane curvature. While there have been some theoretical efforts to
...
Death domain fold (DDF) superfamily proteins are critically important players in pathways
of cell death and inflammation. DDFs are often essential scaffolding domains in receptors,
adaptors, or effectors of these pathways by mediating homo- and hetero-...
Chemistry
High-valent FeIV=O species are common intermediates in biological and artificial catalysts. Heme and
nonheme S=1 FeIV=O sites have been synthesized and studied for decades but little quantitative experimental
comparison of their electronic structures has ...
Electrocatalytic reduction (ECR) of furfural represents a sustainable route for biomass
valorization. Unfortunately, traditional Cu-catalyzed ECR suffers from diversified
product distribution and industrial-incompatible production rates, mainly caused by
...
Computer Sciences
Longitudinal imaging data are routinely acquired for health studies and patient monitoring.
A central goal in longitudinal studies is tracking relevant change over time. Traditional
methods remove nuisance variation with custom pipelines to focus on ...
Large language models (LLMs) are capable of writing grammatical text that follows
instructions, answers questions, and solves problems. As they have advanced, it has
become difficult to distinguish their output from human-written text. While past research
...
Large language models (LLMs) can pass explicit social bias tests but still harbor
implicit biases, similar to humans who endorse egalitarian beliefs yet exhibit subtle
biases. Measuring such implicit biases can be a challenge: As LLMs become increasingly
...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Our understanding of the patterns and processes behind the evolution of deep-marine
ecosystems is limited because the body-fossil record of the deep sea is poor. However,
that gap in knowledge may be filled as deposits are host to diverse and abundant ...
Spacecraft using combustion engines require substantial amounts of oxygen for their
propellant. The Moon could be a source of oxygen for rocket propellant, since the
material composing the lunar surface can be processed to extract oxygen. However,
little ...
The dominant organisms in modern oxic ecosystems rely on respiratory quinones with
high redox potential (HPQs) for electron transport in aerobic respiration and photosynthesis.
The diversification of quinones, from low redox potential (LPQ) in anaerobes ...
Engineering
Predictive synthesis of aqueous organic solutions with desired liquid–solid phase
equilibria could drive progress in industrial chemistry, cryopreservation, and beyond,
but is limited by the predictive power of current solution thermodynamics models.
In ...
The electricity grid has evolved from a physical system to a cyberphysical system
with digital devices that perform measurement, control, communication, computation,
and actuation. The increased penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) including
...
In aqueous ammonium-ion storage, hydrogen bonds play a pivotal role in the reversible
insertion/extraction of NH4+ within transition metal oxides/hydroxides. Although fluorine (F) is known for its
strong electronegativity and potential to form robust ...
Environmental Sciences
The collective influence of animals on the processes shaping the Earth’s surface remains
largely unknown, with most studies limited to individual species and well-known exemplars.
To establish the global geomorphic significance of animals, we ...
The Red Sea, a nascent ocean basin connected to the Indian Ocean via a shallow strait,
is assumed to have experienced significant environmental changes during the last glacial
period due to a sea-level drop likely exceeding 110 m. This study investigates ...
Sustainability Science
Groundwater is essential to urban water supplies throughout the world, but we do not
understand how quantity and quality issues may jeopardize the ability of cities to
meet their water needs. Here, we present a national analysis of both quantity and
...
Social Sciences
Anthropology
Outcomes in the cultural arena are due to many factors but are there general rules
that can suggest what makes some cultural traits successful and others not? Research
in cultural evolution theory distinguishes factors related to social influence (such
as ...
Environmental Sciences
Groundwater is essential to urban water supplies throughout the world, but we do not
understand how quantity and quality issues may jeopardize the ability of cities to
meet their water needs. Here, we present a national analysis of both quantity and
...
Political Sciences
Scholars and practitioners widely posit that listening to other people enhances efforts
to persuade them. Listening may enhance persuasion by promoting cognitive processing,
reducing defensiveness, and improving perceptions of the persuader. However, ...
An enormous body of literature argues that recommendation algorithms drive political
polarization by creating “filter bubbles” and “rabbit holes.” Using four experiments
with nearly 9,000 participants, we show that manipulating algorithmic recommendations
...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Large language models (LLMs) can pass explicit social bias tests but still harbor
implicit biases, similar to humans who endorse egalitarian beliefs yet exhibit subtle
biases. Measuring such implicit biases can be a challenge: As LLMs become increasingly
...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
Nitrogen (N) is the most important essential nutrient required by plants. Most land
plants have evolved two N uptake pathways, a direct root pathway and a symbiotic pathway,
via association with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. However, the interaction ...
Biochemistry
Predictive synthesis of aqueous organic solutions with desired liquid–solid phase
equilibria could drive progress in industrial chemistry, cryopreservation, and beyond,
but is limited by the predictive power of current solution thermodynamics models.
In ...
Axon degeneration, driven by the NAD+ hydrolyzing enzyme SARM1, is an early pathological hallmark of numerous neurodegenerative
diseases. SARM1 exists in an inactive form and is activated following nerve injury.
However, the precise molecular mechanism ...
Glycosylation of humanized antibody at Fc-Asn297 significantly affects the Fc-mediated
killing of target cells through effector functions, especially antibody-dependent
cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), antibody-dependent cell-mediated phagocytosis (ADCP),
...
The proteasome is a multisubunit degradation machinery that is essential for maintaining
protein homeostasis by breaking down unnecessary or damaged proteins into peptides.
While most of these peptides are further processed into amino acids, a subset ...
Herein we report the finding and structure determination of a natural product based
on the methyldeoxaphomin scaffold family from the fungus Trichocladium asperum that shows promising antiplasmodial activity and selectivity against host cells.
In vitro ...
Protein Serine Kinase H1 (PSKH1) was recently identified as a crucial factor in kidney
development and is overexpressed in prostate, lung, and kidney cancers. However, little
is known about PSKH1 regulatory mechanisms, leading to its classification as a “...
To investigate the structure of the mycobacterial oxidative phosphorylation machinery,
we prepared inverted membrane vesicles from Mycobacterium smegmatis, enriched for vesicles containing complexes of interest, and imaged the vesicles
with electron ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Natural selection often acts on multiple traits simultaneously. For example, the virus
HIV-1 faces pressure to evade host immunity while also preserving replicative fitness.
While past work has studied selection during HIV-1 evolution, as in other ...
Generation of membrane curvature is fundamental to cellular function. Recent studies
have established that the glycocalyx, a sugar-rich polymer layer at the cell surface,
can generate membrane curvature. While there have been some theoretical efforts to
...
Deep learning tools that predict peptide binding by major histocompatibility complex
(MHC) proteins play an essential role in developing personalized cancer immunotherapies
and vaccines. In order to ensure equitable health outcomes from their application,
...
The HIV-1 capsid protein (CA) assembles into a conical shell during viral maturation,
encasing and protecting the viral RNA genome. The C-terminal domain (CTD) of the two-domain
capsid protein dimerizes, and this dimer connects individual chains in the ...
Arp2/3 complex generates branched actin networks essential for numerous motile functions
of the cell. It comprises seven subunits: actin-related proteins (Arps) 2 and 3 and
five scaffolding subunits (ArpC1-5). The complex adopts two major conformations: ...
Loss-of-function (LOF) pathogenic variants in KCNQ1 encoding a cardiac potassium channel predispose to sudden cardiac death in type 1
congenital long QT syndrome (LQT1). To determine the spectrum of molecular mechanisms
responsible for this life-...
Viral proteins frequently mutate to evade host innate immune responses, yet the impact
of these mutations on the molecular energy landscape remains unclear. Epistasis, the
intramolecular communications between mutations, often renders the combined ...
Bone calcification is essential for vertebrate life. The mechanism by which mineral
ions are transported into collagen fibrils to induce intrafibrillar mineral formation
requires a calcium binding biopolymer that also has highly selective binding to the
...
Cell Biology
Anti-CTLA-4 Abs (ACAs) are a breakthrough for cancer therapy, but their potential
is limited by immunotherapy-related adverse events (irAE). We previously reported
that ACAs with acidic pH-sensitive binding to CTLA-4 exhibit higher antitumor activity
with ...
The cGAS–STING pathway mediates innate immune responses to cytosolic DNA. In addition
to its well-established role in inducing inflammatory cytokines, activation of the
cGAS–STING pathway also induces noncanonical autophagy, a process involving the ...
The molecular mechanisms underlying estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast carcinogenesis
and drug resistance remain incompletely understood. Elevated expression of CCND1 is
linked to enhanced invasiveness, poorer prognosis, and resistance to drug ...
G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) modulate various physiological functions by rewiring
cellular gene expression in response to extracellular signals. Control of gene expression
by GPCRs has been studied almost exclusively at the transcriptional level, ...
Developmental Biology
The often-distinctive pigment patterns of vertebrates are varied in form and function
and depend on several types of pigment cells derived from embryonic neural crest or
latent stem cells of neural crest origin. These cells and the patterns they produce
...
Evolution
Our understanding of the patterns and processes behind the evolution of deep-marine
ecosystems is limited because the body-fossil record of the deep sea is poor. However,
that gap in knowledge may be filled as deposits are host to diverse and abundant ...
Outcomes in the cultural arena are due to many factors but are there general rules
that can suggest what makes some cultural traits successful and others not? Research
in cultural evolution theory distinguishes factors related to social influence (such
as ...
Understanding how morphology evolves requires identifying the types of mutations that
contribute to changes in development. We integrated comparative genomics and transcriptomics
to reconstruct the evolution and regulation of follistatin paralogs in ...
Immunology and Inflammation
Death domain fold (DDF) superfamily proteins are critically important players in pathways
of cell death and inflammation. DDFs are often essential scaffolding domains in receptors,
adaptors, or effectors of these pathways by mediating homo- and hetero-...
Upon viral infection, retinoic acid-inducible gene-I (RIG-I)-like receptors (RLRs)
detect viral RNA to initiate antiviral innate immune response, which is mediated by
the mitochondrial adaptor protein VISA virus-induced signaling adaptor; also known
as ...
Medical Sciences
Longitudinal imaging data are routinely acquired for health studies and patient monitoring.
A central goal in longitudinal studies is tracking relevant change over time. Traditional
methods remove nuisance variation with custom pipelines to focus on ...
Adult T cell leukemia (ATL) is a highly aggressive T cell malignancy characterized
by human T cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) infection. ATL has a very poor prognosis
and lacks satisfactory treatments; therefore, it is critical to identify potential
...
Microbiology
Structures and functions of the limited natural polyclonal antibody response to parvovirus infection
Host antibody responses are key components in the protection of animals against pathogens,
yet the defining properties of viral antigens and induction of B cell responses that
result in varied protection are still poorly understood. Parvoviruses are ...
The dominant organisms in modern oxic ecosystems rely on respiratory quinones with
high redox potential (HPQs) for electron transport in aerobic respiration and photosynthesis.
The diversification of quinones, from low redox potential (LPQ) in anaerobes ...
Invertebrates mostly use innate immunity to counteract pathogenic infections. In this
study, shrimp was used as a model organism to explore the functions of circular RNAs
(circRNAs) derived from white spot syndrome virus (WSSV). We identified four viral
...
While advances in genome editing technologies have simplified gene disruption in many
organisms, the study of essential genes requires development of conditional disruption
or knockdown systems that are not available in most organisms. Such is the case ...
Crosstalk between cell death programs confers appropriate host anti-infection immune
responses, but how pathogens co-opt host molecular switches of cell death pathways
to reprogram cell death modalities for facilitating infection remains largely ...
Pathogenic Enterobacter species are of increasing clinical concern due to the multidrug-resistant nature
of these bacteria, including resistance to carbapenem antibiotics. Our understanding
of Enterobacter virulence is limited, hindering the development ...
Mosquito-borne flaviviruses, such as dengue virus (DENV), Zika virus (ZIKV), West
Nile virus, and yellow fever virus, pose significant public health threats globally.
Extensive efforts have led to the development of promising highly active compounds
...
Neuroscience
Metabolism plays a key role in the maintenance of sleep/wake states. Brain lactate
fluctuations are a biomarker of sleep/wake transitions, where increased interstitial
fluid (ISF) lactate levels are associated with wakefulness and decreased ISF lactate
is ...
Late-day eating is linked to increased obesity risk; however, whether the endogenous
circadian system independently influences caloric intake and if this control differs
among individuals based on weight status is unknown. Here, we investigated in ...
While it is known that endocannabinoids (eCB) modulate multiple neuronal functions,
the molecular mechanism governing their release and transport remains elusive. Here,
we propose an “on-demand release” model, wherein the formation of microvesicles, a ...
Understanding the evolving dynamics of the brain throughout life is pivotal for anticipating
and evaluating individual health. While previous research has described age effects
on spectral properties of neural signals, it remains unclear which ones are ...
Newborns, typically asexual, undergo a process of sexual transition to reach sexual
maturity, but the regulatory mechanism underlying this transition is not clear. Here,
we studied how female sexual behavior is modulated during sexual transition by ...
Cochlear outer hair cells (OHCs) are electromotile and implicated in amplification
of responses to sound that enhance sound sensitivity and frequency tuning. They send
afferent information through glutamatergic synapses onto type II spiral ganglion ...
Mammalian opsin 3 (OPN3) is a member of the opsin family of G-protein-coupled receptors
with ambiguous light sensitivity. OPN3 was first identified in the brain (and named
encephalopsin) and subsequently found to be expressed in other tissues. In ...
Plant Biology
Meta-analyses and theory show that with rising atmospheric [CO2], Rubisco has become the greatest limitation to light-saturated leaf CO2 assimilation rates (Asat) in C4 crops. So would transgenically increasing Rubisco increase Asat and result in ...
The ability of parasitic plants to withdraw nutrients from their hosts depends on
the formation of an infective structure known as the haustorium. How parasites regulate
their haustoria numbers is poorly understood, and here, we uncovered that existing
...
Developmental transitions require precise temporal and spatial control of gene expression.
In plants, such regulation is critical for flower formation, which involves the progressive
maturation of stem cell populations within shoot meristems to floral ...
Biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) are sets of often heterologous genes that are genetically
and functionally linked. Among eukaryotes, BGCs are most common in plants and fungi
and ensure the coexpression of the different enzymes coordinating the ...
Karrikin Insensitive 2 (KAI2), identified as the receptor protein for karrikins (KARs),
which are smoke-derived seed germination stimulants, belongs to the same α/β-hydrolase
family as D14, the receptor for strigolactones (SLs). KAI2 is believed to ...
Systems Biology
Cell populations must adjust their phenotypic composition to adapt to changing environments.
One adaptation strategy is to maintain distinct phenotypic subsets within the population
and to modulate their relative abundances via gene regulation. Another ...
Corrections
SI Correction
Editorial Expression of Concern
Cover image: Pictured is an OceanX submersible collecting deep-water corals in the Red Sea. Morgan I. Chakraborty et al. sampled 26 deep-water coral sites in the Red Sea and used uranium-thorium dating to examine periods of coral growth. The Red Sea is thought to have become uninhabitable during the last glacial maximum due to a drop in sea level that prevented seawater exchange with the Indian Ocean. However, the authors found evidence of coral growth during and after the last glacial maximum. According to the authors, the findings suggest that the Red Sea ecosystem largely survived a drop in sea level at the last glacial maximum. See the article by Chakraborty et al. e2415559122. Image credit: OceanX.
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