Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 123, Number 12
This Week in PNAS
News Feature
Retrospective
Bert W. O’Malley, the “father/grandfather” of the field of molecular endocrinology
passed away on November 11, 2025, at the age of 88. In a distinguished career that
spanned over 60 years, he probed fundamental aspects of steroid hormone action, work
that ...
Commentaries
Perspectives
The extent of DNA methylation varies widely across animal genomes, from almost undetectable
levels in some taxa to high, pervasive methylation in others. Although DNA methylation
has been linked to gene regulation, genome defense, and cellular memory, the ...
Authorship remains the primary currency of academic credit and a cornerstone of research
integrity, yet current practices often fail to reflect the collaborative and interdisciplinary
nature of modern science and questionable authorship practices persist. ...
Letters
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The cost of thinking is similar between large reasoning models and humans
Brief Reports
Lethal toxins could become potent therapies against cancer, but their clinical utility
is limited by adverse events upon systemic administration. These could be reduced
if the toxins were delivered by effector cells that specifically infiltrate cancers,
...
Cyclin D-CDK4/6 is a component of mammalian cell-cycle machinery that drives cell
proliferation. Small-molecule inhibitors of CDK4/6 have been approved for treatment
of breast cancer patients. In addition to halting cell-cycle progression, inhibition
of ...
A defining feature of Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is the incorporation of the NSs
protein into large filamentous assemblies inside infected nuclei [R. Swanepoel, N.
K. Blackburn, J. Gen. Virol. 34, 557–561 (1977).], as judged from fixed specimens. To ...
Physical Sciences
Applied Mathematics
Sociotechnical networks, in which humans and technologies act as interacting entities
(also known as “hybrid systems”), increasingly face perturbations by automated agents.
What this implies for immersive steering of collective behavior, and how this ...
Applied Physical Sciences
With increasing interest in studying biological systems across spatial scales—from
centimeters down to nanometers—histology continues to be the gold standard for tissue
imaging at cellular resolution, providing an essential bridge between macroscopic
and ...
Flexible microsensors featuring miniature dimensions (< 100 μm), superior sensitivity
[Gauge factor (GF) > 103], and phenomenal environmental stability (> 104 uses) have been broadly applied in modern soft electronics such as implantable health
monitoring ...
In equilibrium self-assembly, microscopic building blocks spontaneously self-organize
into stable structures as dictated by their interaction potentials, which limits the
accessible structural features to those that correspond to global minima in free ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Phase-separated biomolecular condensates with liquid-like properties play a key role
in the organization and compartmentalization of the intracellular environment. Condensate-mediated
capillary forces acting on membranes drive physiologically important ...
Dust bathing is a widespread behavior among birds that helps remove ectoparasites,
but its mechanical basis remains poorly understood. Here we show that wing flapping
during dust bathing generates sand-particle collisions sufficient to dislodge feather
...
The ability to engineer enzymes for desired reactions is a cornerstone of modern biotechnology,
yet identifying suitable starting proteins remains a critical bottleneck. Although
contrastive learning offers a compelling computational approach for enzyme ...
Faithful chromosome segregation during bacterial replication requires global reorganization
of the nucleoid, where Structural Maintenance of Chromosomes (SMC) complexes play
a crucial role. Here, we develop an energy landscape framework that integrates ...
Inflammatory responses occur within the complex spatial context of tissues and organs,
and many questions remain about how tissue structure and cellular communication shape
their spatiotemporal dynamics. Here, we use a multiplexed RNA in situ ...
Chemistry
Periodic porous structures with interconnected pore channels and high specific surface
area are widely spread in natural world. These structures guarantee rapid mass transportation
and efficient biochemical reactions within organisms, thereby satisfying ...
Chemical reactions assemble supramolecular materials with finite lifetimes, responsiveness
to stimuli, and the capacity to self-heal after perturbation. These dynamic behaviors
arise from a reaction cycle that switches a molecule between associating and ...
The development of nonprecious-metal-based hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) electrocatalysts
remains as the bottleneck for achieving high-performance, platinum group metal-free
(PGM-free) alkaline/anion exchange membrane fuel cells. Numerous efforts have ...
Radical S-adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM) enzymes figure prominently in the formation of ribosomally synthesized
and posttranslationally modified peptides (RiPPs), where they catalyze peptide modifications
including epimerization, thioether crosslink ...
Computer Sciences
Magnetic graphs, originally developed to model quantum systems under magnetic fields,
have recently emerged as a powerful framework for analyzing complex directed networks.
Existing research has primarily used the spectral properties of the magnetic graph
...
Primary cell culture is fast becoming a dominant method for discovery work regarding
human disease. Currently, there are no methods to quantitatively benchmark these systems.
Here, we apply a uniform in vitro culture system of human intestinal epithelial ...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Extreme weather events cause severe ecological disruptions to the marine environment
and socioeconomic impacts, while also endangering the evidences of human history resting
underwater. Storms, in particular, generate high-intensity currents that lead to ...
The rise of atmospheric oxygen fundamentally transformed Earth’s surface environment
and enabled the evolution of complex life. However, the processes driving long-term
oxygen fluctuations remain poorly resolved, partly from limited proxy resolution and
...
The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) exhibits its weakest predictability during
boreal spring, a phenomenon known as the Spring Predictability Barrier (SPB). The
SPB arises from weak air–sea coupling that limits the growth and persistence of the
ENSO ...
The deep critical zone (CZ) has long been recognized for its importance in influencing
shallow landslides but was not considered feasible to include in slope stability models
at the watershed scale. Here, we demonstrate that simple approximations of the ...
The transition from soil-mantled to bedrock-dominated landscapes is important to hydrology,
ecology, and landscape evolution. Where classical theory predicts that this transition
abruptly occurs once erosion rates exceed soil production ones, actual ...
The number and cumulative area of ice-marginal lakes have expanded globally in recent
decades, with many lakes residing in glacier-bed overdeepenings, which are subglacial
basins formed through preferential glacial erosion. However, current lake expansion
...
Engineering
This study explores whether repowering onshore wind farms will help the United States
(US) meet a much larger share of its current electricity demand with wind. Repowering
upgrades existing wind farms with new turbines, increasing wind-farm capacity and
...
Hydrogel adhesion underlies a wide range of biological and engineering functions,
yet its rate dependence remains poorly understood. Classical adhesive systems exhibit
a monotonic increase in adhesion strength with separation rate, a behavior attributed
...
Statics and kinematics are often viewed as intertwined branches of mechanics. The
principle of virtual work indicates this interconnection: For a system in static equilibrium,
the total work performed by all forces during any virtual displacement must ...
Environmental Sciences
The marine labile dissolved organic carbon (DOC) pool is a dynamic reservoir of thousands
of molecules that cycles approximately one-quarter of Earth’s primary production within
days to weeks. After excretion by phytoplankton and other microbes, ...
The observed supersaturation of methane (CH4) in open-ocean surface waters implies widespread CH4 production within the well-oxygenated mixed layer, driving emissions of this potent
greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. The dominant CH4 production pathway ...
Physics
Nudibranchs are well known for their bright and diverse color patterns. This coloration
is typically a form of aposematism, warning predators against toxic compounds sequestered
from their prey and weaponized as a form of defense. Although many of the ...
Phase-change materials (PCMs) based on group IV, V, and VI elements, such as Ge, Sb,
and Te, exhibit distinctive liquid-state features, including thermodynamic anomalies
and unusual dynamical properties, which are believed to play a key role in their fast
...
Structural colors hold significant application value in anticounterfeiting, displays,
and smart coatings due to their high stability, eco-friendliness, and dynamic optical
response potential. However, conventional fabrication strategies for photonic ...
Motivated in part by John Wheeler’s assertion that the continuum nature of Hilbert
Space conceals the “it-from-bit” information-theoretic character of the quantum wavefunction,
a theory of quantum physics (Rational Quantum Mechanics–RaQM) is proposed ...
Social Sciences
Anthropology
This paper demonstrates the importance of applying multiple analytical methods in
ceramic analysis for understanding colonial contact in the past. We examine the Shang–Zhou
transition (circa 1000 BCE) by investigating community-specific uses of li tripod ...
Paleolithic parietal art in the Dordogne, Southwestern France, was known to present
representations solely made with mineral coloring matters. We found a significant
number of carbon black-based figures in the galleries of the Font-de-Gaume cave in
Les ...
Economic Sciences
Economic activities have transformed over half of the Earth’s surface and the large-scale
conversion of rural forests to agropastoral production is ongoing. Raising access
to credit may lead producers to expand at the expense of the forest or, instead, ...
Environmental Sciences
Extreme weather events cause severe ecological disruptions to the marine environment
and socioeconomic impacts, while also endangering the evidences of human history resting
underwater. Storms, in particular, generate high-intensity currents that lead to ...
Collective action problems emerge when individual incentives and group interests are
misaligned, as in the case of climate change. Individuals involved in these problems
are generally considered to have two options: contribute toward public solutions such
...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
For over three decades, scholars have contested whether sex differences in ideal partner
preferences for age, resources, and physical attractiveness result chiefly from evolution
or cultural gender inequality. Here, we test a perspective compatible with ...
An unwritten expectation in our everyday social interactions is that intimate personal
information about someone—“insider knowledge”—is usually confined within close relationships.
For example, it would be odd, or even unsettling, if a stranger knew about ...
Social Sciences
Magnetic graphs, originally developed to model quantum systems under magnetic fields,
have recently emerged as a powerful framework for analyzing complex directed networks.
Existing research has primarily used the spectral properties of the magnetic graph
...
Sociotechnical networks, in which humans and technologies act as interacting entities
(also known as “hybrid systems”), increasingly face perturbations by automated agents.
What this implies for immersive steering of collective behavior, and how this ...
Teachers hold a prominent place in modern societies, particularly where education
is compulsory and widely institutionalized. This ubiquity obscures an underlying puzzle:
Why do societies assign some individuals solely to the instruction of others? This
...
Sustainability Science
This study explores whether repowering onshore wind farms will help the United States
(US) meet a much larger share of its current electricity demand with wind. Repowering
upgrades existing wind farms with new turbines, increasing wind-farm capacity and
...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
Females of the oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis) disproportionately oviposit in unripe fruits, despite their lower nutritional value
compared to ripe fruits, but the sensory cues driving such counterintuitive site selection
have not been ...
Many animals rely on diapause to survive unfavorable seasons, but how environmental
cues are transduced into endocrine changes remains poorly understood. In insects,
reproductive diapause is triggered when juvenile hormone (JH) production from the
corpora ...
Applied Biological Sciences
Dust bathing is a widespread behavior among birds that helps remove ectoparasites,
but its mechanical basis remains poorly understood. Here we show that wing flapping
during dust bathing generates sand-particle collisions sufficient to dislodge feather
...
Biochemistry
The ability to engineer enzymes for desired reactions is a cornerstone of modern biotechnology,
yet identifying suitable starting proteins remains a critical bottleneck. Although
contrastive learning offers a compelling computational approach for enzyme ...
Radical S-adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM) enzymes figure prominently in the formation of ribosomally synthesized
and posttranslationally modified peptides (RiPPs), where they catalyze peptide modifications
including epimerization, thioether crosslink ...
Huntington’s disease (HD) is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder caused by a Cytosine-Adenosine-Guanine
(CAG) repeat expansion in the Huntingtin (HTT) gene, with no disease-modifying therapies currently available. The precise molecular
function of the HTT ...
Antibody effector functions such as antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC)
and various complement-dependent activities are critically influenced by the structure
and composition of Fc N-glycans. Terminal galactosylation is generally associated
...
The presence of mycolic acid is a defining feature of the mycobacterial cell wall,
which provides a highly impermeable barrier to many antibiotics. Biosynthesis of this
fatty acid, as well as tuberculostearic acid, requires precursor molecules produced
by ...
Mutually exclusive alternative pre-mRNA splicing promotes adaptive metabolic stress signaling by JNK
The JUN NH2-terminal kinase (JNK) signal transduction pathway is activated during the hepatic
metabolic stress response. The JNK1 and JNK2 pre-mRNAs expressed by hepatocytes exhibit
mutually exclusive inclusion of exons 7a or 7b that encode a segment of ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Faithful chromosome segregation during bacterial replication requires global reorganization
of the nucleoid, where Structural Maintenance of Chromosomes (SMC) complexes play
a crucial role. Here, we develop an energy landscape framework that integrates ...
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative condition that results
in a loss of mobility and muscle control. A neuropathological hallmark of PD is the
presence of aberrant inclusions, known as Lewy pathology, of which α-synuclein (α-Syn)
...
MicroRNAs regulate gene expression through sequence-specific interactions with target
messenger RNAs (mRNAs), and their misregulation is a hallmark of cancer. MicroRNA-34a
(miR-34a), a key modulator of the tumor suppressor p53, binds the mRNA encoding ...
Characterizing gene expression and regulatory dynamics underlying both normal tissue
function and disease progression requires an integrative analysis of single-cell multi-omics
data. However, the asynchrony of gene regulation and the snapshot of single-...
Receptor-interacting serine/threonine-protein kinase 1 (RIPK1) regulates cell death
pathways through RHIM domain–mediated amyloid fibril formation. While amyloid fibrils
typically exist as single filaments, we identified a higher-order architecture—the
...
Connexin36 (Cx36) is highly expressed in inhibitory and excitatory neurons as well
as pancreatic β-cells, where it forms gap junction channels that coordinate metabolic
and electrical responses. In addition, Cx36 forms hemichannels in pancreatic β-cells,
...
Cell Biology
Primary cell culture is fast becoming a dominant method for discovery work regarding
human disease. Currently, there are no methods to quantitatively benchmark these systems.
Here, we apply a uniform in vitro culture system of human intestinal epithelial ...
Mitochondrial integrity is central to energy homeostasis, particularly in brown adipose
tissue where dynamic remodeling fuels thermogenesis. Two major proteostatic systems,
the SEL1L–HRD1 endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-associated degradation (ERAD) pathway ...
Spermatozoa strongly rely on their streamlined morphology to successfully fertilize
an oocyte. A striking example of a morphological defect resulting in infertility is
acephalic spermatozoa syndrome, a rare but severe condition leading to detachment
of ...
Because plant cells cannot migrate, their position is fixed with respect to their
neighbors. Thus, placement of the new cell plate is critical for determining cell
shape, cell identity, and tissue patterning. Here, we show that TONNEAU1 (TON1), a
protein ...
Glutamine metabolism is essential for tumor cell proliferation and biosynthesis. However,
solid tumors often face chronic glutamine deprivation, and the underlying adaptive
mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Here, we show that glutamine scarcity ...
Small cell carcinoma is a highly lethal cancer variant often found with neuroendocrine
(NE) features, as exemplified by small cell lung cancer and small cell NE prostate
cancer (SCPC). A genome-wide CRISPR dependency screen using SCPC models generated
...
Developmental Biology
The origin of paired fins is an unresolved controversy in vertebrate evolutionary
biology. Karl Gegenbaur famously proposed that paired fins evolved by the transformation
of a gill arch, but this hypothesis remains largely unsupported by the fossil ...
Embryonic genome activation (EGA) marks the onset of the embryonic program and enables
the transition toward the first lineage specification. However, the molecular features
of EGA and the transcription factors (TFs) orchestrating this process remain ...
Maternal immune activation (MIA) contributes to neurodevelopmental disorders with
male-biased prevalence. To disentangle the contributions of sex chromosomes (XX vs.
XY) and gonads (ovaries vs. testes) in shaping fetal responses to MIA, we used the
four-...
Organ development and function are orchestrated by intricate transcriptional circuits.
Here, we present a comprehensive atlas profiling 1,904 transcription regulators in
the brain, cerebellum, heart, kidney, liver, ovary, and testis of fetal, neonatal,
...
Natural light is severely affected by human impact on Earth, yet little is known about
the roles light receptors have outside vision and rhythmic processes, despite their
tremendously wide abundance. Here we show that loss-of-function of the light-...
Ecology
This 37-y record (1989–2025) of field experiments tested seasonal and annual variation
in predation on juvenile blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) in a representative mesohaline site of Chesapeake Bay, USA, where the species is
a dominant epibenthic ...
The capacity of nutrient-limited forests to enhance carbon (C) sequestration under
elevated CO2 (eCO2) remains a critical uncertainty in C cycle modeling. While existing evidence suggests
that low phosphorus (P) bioavailability may constrain CO2 ...
Environmental Sciences
Economic activities have transformed over half of the Earth’s surface and the large-scale
conversion of rural forests to agropastoral production is ongoing. Raising access
to credit may lead producers to expand at the expense of the forest or, instead, ...
The marine labile dissolved organic carbon (DOC) pool is a dynamic reservoir of thousands
of molecules that cycles approximately one-quarter of Earth’s primary production within
days to weeks. After excretion by phytoplankton and other microbes, ...
The observed supersaturation of methane (CH4) in open-ocean surface waters implies widespread CH4 production within the well-oxygenated mixed layer, driving emissions of this potent
greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. The dominant CH4 production pathway ...
Evolution
Nudibranchs are well known for their bright and diverse color patterns. This coloration
is typically a form of aposematism, warning predators against toxic compounds sequestered
from their prey and weaponized as a form of defense. Although many of the ...
Teachers hold a prominent place in modern societies, particularly where education
is compulsory and widely institutionalized. This ubiquity obscures an underlying puzzle:
Why do societies assign some individuals solely to the instruction of others? This
...
Understanding how the remarkable phenotypic diversity observed in organisms arises
through shifts in macroevolutionary patterns and tempos is a fundamental challenge
in evolutionary biology. Phenotypes often evolve in a mosaic pattern during adaptive
...
Plasmalogens are a unique class of glycerophospholipids defined by a distinctive vinyl
ether bond. While these lipids are abundant in animals and important for human health,
their evolutionary history remains enigmatic, mostly due to their absence in some
...
We consider a biological system composed of multiple genetically variable components,
the combined result of which is a quantitative trait under stabilizing selection for
an optimal value. We show mathematically that, while the mean value of the system
is ...
Cephalochordates (amphioxus or lancelet) are considered as living proxies for ancestral
chordates due to their key phylogenetic position and slow evolutionary rate. The genomes
of living amphioxus thus can help to reveal the genetic basis shaping the ...
Bacterial genomes contain numerous ORFans—genes lacking homologs outside the species
in which they are found. The source of these genes remains enigmatic because the major
mechanism by which new genes originate—by duplication and divergence—is rare in ...
Global biodiversity is increasingly threatened, but still poorly known. Preserving
higher taxa (e.g., genera, families, orders) is especially important because each
higher taxon may represent more genetic, morphological, ecological, and functional
...
Genetics
Pharmaco-behavioral screens in scalable in vivo systems have critical advantages for
drug discovery relevant to large-effect autism spectrum disorder (ASD) genes. Here,
we establish a database and open-source website of the behavioral signatures of 520
US ...
Meiotic prophase is characterized by a dynamic program in which germ cells undergo
a complex series of associations and dissociations of protein complexes that drive
assembly, remodeling, and disassembly of meiosis-specific chromosome structures and
...
Immunology and Inflammation
Inflammatory responses occur within the complex spatial context of tissues and organs,
and many questions remain about how tissue structure and cellular communication shape
their spatiotemporal dynamics. Here, we use a multiplexed RNA in situ ...
The acute inflammatory response is a highly coordinated programmed sequence that enables
neutrophils to transmigrate from venules into tissues. Ideally self-limited, the active
resolution phase produces specialized molecules that stimulate resolution and ...
The clinical spectrum of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
infection ranges from asymptomatic cases to critical COVID-19 pneumonia. To investigate
the role of host genetics in susceptibility to critical COVID-19 and identify ...
Chimeric antigen receptor macrophage (CAR-M) therapy represents a promising therapeutic
approach for treating glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). However, durable antitumorigenic
macrophage phenotype of CAR-Ms is limited by the highly immunosuppressive tumor ...
Neuro-immune crosstalk is increasingly recognized in Parkinson’s disease (PD), and
ATP13A2 is well known for its neuroprotective role. However, it remains unclear whether
ATP13A2 mutations carried by PD patients contribute to immune dysfunction that ...
Glioblastoma (GBM) remains one of the most aggressive and treatment-resistant brain
tumors in adults. Its immune microenvironment is dominated by tumor-associated macrophages,
including both infiltrating monocytes and brain-resident microglia. While ...
Excessive innate immune activation drives uncontrolled inflammation and multiple inflammatory
diseases. Proper N-glycosylation of membrane-associated Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)
is essential for its trafficking to the cell membrane and subsequent innate ...
Allelic variation can impact viral clearance and disease severity. Still, our understanding
of the effect of the autoimmunity-associated allelic variant of Ptpn22 (PEP-R619W) on antiviral immunity remains incomplete, as previous reports have only
focused ...
Conventional type 1 dendritic cells (cDC1s) are specialized for cross-presenting tumor
antigens and determining the efficacy of immunotherapies, including immune checkpoint
blockade and adoptive cell therapy. However, their rarity and tumor-induced ...
Innate immune evasion is critical for productive viral replication. Activation of
the cGAS–STING antiviral signaling pathway and its downstream effector genes plays
a pivotal role in restricting viral replication during early DNA virus infection.
Through ...
Autoantibodies against phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), a major phospholipid in cell
membranes, are associated with symptoms of thrombosis and obstetric complications.
A growing body of evidence indicates the involvement of a cofactor for the reactivity
of ...
Maternal viral infection during pregnancy has been identified as a risk factor for
psychiatric disorders and neurodevelopmental abnormalities in offspring. With cumulative
SARS-CoV-2 infections now numbering in the hundreds of millions globally, there is
...
Medical Sciences
Elucidating the structure and function of enteropeptidase (EP) is essential for advancing
our understanding of its biological significance, particularly in regulating trypsinogen
activation. Using cryo-EM and enzymatic activity, we uncovered the ...
Aging is a primary risk factor for disease progression in multiple sclerosis (MS).
Because of this, treatments that can reduce the consequences of molecular aging, like
senescence, have been proposed as a strategy to address disease progression. However,
...
Microbiology
Viruses exploit extracellular vesicles (EVs) to transfer infection-enhancing viral
RNAs. However, mechanisms underlying viral RNA loading remain elusive. We leveraged
our previous discovery that dengue virus secretes transmission-enhancing subgenomic
...
Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) poses an ongoing threat to global public health. Here, we
identified the cBAF complex core ATPase subunit SMARCA4 as a host factor for CHIKV.
SMARCA4 acts as a chromatin remodeling factor to license expression of the four-pass
...
Arboviruses maintain alternative transmission routes between arthropods and vertebrates
through precise dual-host adaptation of their viral genome. However, how epigenetic
modifications impact flavivirus transmission cycle remains obscure. Depleting the
...
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a critical global health challenge. In this study,
we developed a platform based on chromosome-free and nonreplicating simple cells (SimCells,
size 1 to 2 µm) and mini-SimCells (size 100 to 400 nm) for targeted pathogen ...
Attaching and effacing pathogens, including enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC), colonize their preferred intestinal niche by sensing diverse host-, diet-,
and microbiota-derived signals and coordinating the expression of virulence factors.
D-serine,...
Neuroscience
The brain operates at the critical transition between order and disorder which supports
optimal information processing. Whole-brain computational modeling is a powerful tool
for uncovering the system-level mechanisms behind large-scale brain activity in ...
Vagus nerve stimulation offers a promising strategy for seizure control but remains
limited by its invasive delivery. Here, we reveal electroacupuncture (EA), an ancient
neuromodulatory technique rooted in traditional Chinese medicine, at specific somatic
...
The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is a key structure for processing threat and emotional
information, and plays a key role in controlling the fear memory. Previous research
has suggested that the extinction procedure generates a new memory that coexists with
...
Both axons and dendrites of a neuron are susceptible to physical insults during stroke
and trauma. Unlike axon regeneration, the mechanisms of dendrite regeneration remain
largely elusive. In this study, we developed a high-throughput method to induce ...
Sleep is essential for maintaining brain tissue homeostasis, which is facilitated
by enhanced cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) solute transport. Infraslow (<0.1 Hz) vasomotion,
CSF flow, and electrophysiological potential all increase during sleep, but their
...
Skillful hand movements are a hallmark of primates, including humans, requiring sophisticated
motor planning and execution. Building on the well-established cortical basis of dexterous
control, our findings show that spinal excitatory reflex circuits form ...
The stem cell factor SOX2 can reprogram resident glial cells into neurons in the adult
mammalian central nervous system, but the molecular mechanisms underlying this process
remain poorly understood. Here, we show that both SOX2 phosphorylation and the ...
Transglutaminase 2 (TG2) is implicated in synucleinopathies including Parkinson’s
disease (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies, as it promotes α-Synuclein (α-Syn) aggregation
in vitro, and evidence for its activity is detected in Lewy bodies in human ...
The representations of the face and oral cavity occupy a large but understudied portion
of primary somatosensory cortex (S1 or area 3b) in primates. These studies are clearly
important in processing food, taste, and vocalizations. Little is known about ...
Plant Biology
Phase-separated biomolecular condensates with liquid-like properties play a key role
in the organization and compartmentalization of the intracellular environment. Condensate-mediated
capillary forces acting on membranes drive physiologically important ...
Mitochondria are not only the powerhouses of the cell. They are also dynamic signaling
hubs, playing a key role in cellular metabolism and adaptation. Proper mitochondrial
function depends largely on the import of proteins encoded by the nucleus. Using ...
Plant nucleotide-binding domain leucine-rich repeat-containing (NLR) proteins act
as intracellular immune receptors that assemble into resistosomes to execute immune
responses. However, the subcellular processes during cell death following resistosome
...
A defining feature of circadian clocks that enables adaptation to Earth’s rotation
is their ability to sustain an approximately 24 h period with precision, regardless
of environmental factors such as temperature. This remarkable reliability of circadian
...
Dynamic regulation of auxin (indole-3-acetic acid; IAA) levels is crucial for proper
plant growth and development and is finely regulated through biosynthesis, transport,
metabolic inactivation, and signal transduction. While O-glucosylation of IAA is ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Executive functioning in children has been linked to intrinsic brain network organization
assessed during the resting state, as well as to brain network organization during
the performance of cognitive tasks. Prior work has established that task-based ...
Systems Biology
Although strong evidence links the gut microbiome to metabolic disease, the mechanisms
linking microbiota to hormonal and metabolic responses to food are not well understood.
After a meal, gut bacteria produce a wide array of small molecule, protein, and ...
Corrections
Cover image: Pictured is a commercial catch of adult blue crabs. Based on 37 years of field experiments in the Chesapeake Bay, Anson H. Hines et al. report that cannibalism by adult blue crabs accounts for more than 97% of mortality among juvenile crabs. The authors observed no predation of juvenile crabs by fish. Cannibalism rates varied according to the season and water depth as well as the size of juvenile crabs. According to the authors, cannibalism may help control juvenile crab abundance in a population density-dependent manner. See the article by Hines et al. e2533461123. Image credit: Eric Johnson.
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