Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 123, Number 4
This Week in PNAS
Opinion
Retrospective
Fifty years ago, at the remarkably young age of 37, David Baltimore received the Nobel
Prize (with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco) for “discoveries concerning the interaction
between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell.” David was a ...
Commentaries
Perspective
Conservation actions often assume implicitly that heritabilities are zero and that
threatened populations cannot adapt to changing environments. To illustrate, we evaluated
the last 10 y of recovery plans for US threatened and endangered species and found
...
Letters
View the original article:
The cost of thinking is similar between large reasoning models and humans
This article has a reply:Brief Report
AI is expected to reshape society and labor markets, yet experts remain divided on
whether AI will primarily displace human labor or generate new employment opportunities.
Despite the importance of this debate, little is known about how the public ...
Physical Sciences
Applied Mathematics
Controlling bacterial surface adhesion and subsequent biofilm formation in fluid systems
is crucial for the safety and efficacy of medical and industrial processes. Here,
we theoretically examine the transport of bacteria close to surfaces, isolating how
...
This paper proposes a framework for the global optimization of a possibly multimodal
continuous function in a bounded rectangular domain. We first show that global optimization
is equivalent to an optimal (sampling) strategy formation in a two-armed ...
Applied Physical Sciences
There hardly is a fluid mechanics phenomenon attracting more attention than the impact
of a droplet, due to its undeniable beauty, many applications, and the numerous challenges
it poses. One of the crucial factors turns out to be the cushioning effect of ...
Controlling the mechanical response of soft glassy materials—such as emulsions, foams,
and colloidal suspensions—is key for many industrial processes. While their steady-state
flow behavior is reasonably well understood, their response to complex flow ...
Orthorhombic air-stable two-dimensional (2D) antiferromagnet (AFM) CrSBr has attracted
much research interest lately thanks to its rich magnetic behaviors together with
its remarkable electronic, excitonic, and polaritonic properties. Here, we report
a ...
Ralstonia solanacearum species complex (RSSC) pathogens cause destructive plant wilt diseases of a wide
variety of crops, leading to significant agricultural losses worldwide. These bacteria
rapidly spread through the water-transporting xylem where they ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Hepatitis D virus (HDV) is a small RNA satellite virus of hepatitis B virus (HBV)
which encodes a single protein, HDV delta antigen (HDAg), that is required for replication.
Viral replication occurs independently from HBV and relies primarily on host RNA ...
Intracellular transport of macromolecules is crucial for the proper functioning of
most cellular processes. Although intracellular crowding is known to strongly alter
macromolecule mobility, how cytoplasmic structures physically modulate diffusion remains
...
In the human brain, the allowed patterns of activity are constrained by the correlations
between brain regions. Yet it remains unclear which correlations—and how many—are
needed to predict large-scale neural activity. Here, we present an information-...
The low-complexity domain of Fused in Sarcoma (FUS-LC) undergoes phase separation,
forming a dense, liquid-like phase that gradually matures into an ordered, gel-like
state over long-time scales. During the maturation process, specific regions of the
FUS-...
Pyroptosis, an inflammatory form of cell death, is characterized by massive cell swelling
and plasma membrane rupture. Although swelling was recently shown to occur in two
steps, the molecular and biophysical mechanisms driving this process remained ...
Understanding the influence of activity on dense amorphous assemblies is crucial for
biological processes such as wound healing, embryogenesis, or cancer progression.
Here, we study the effect of self-propulsion forces of amplitude
We show how to localize and quantify the functional evolutionary constraints on natural
proteins. Protein folding has been one of the strongest constraints in sequence evolution.
The method we propose compares the perturbations caused by local sequence ...
Compacting chromatin within the cellular nucleus presents a significant challenge
for biology. Chromosomes must be both condensed and spatially organized to enable
essential processes such as transcription and replication. Chromosome conformation
capture ...
Synthetic cells aim to emulate living systems by reconstituting essential cellular
processes within lipid-bound architectures. However, their functional complexity remains
constrained by a key challenge: the synthesis and correct integration of ...
Abnormal expansions of trinucleotide repeats (TNRs) are a major cause of neurodegenerative
diseases, often driven by the formation of stable hairpin structures that interfere
with protein machineries in DNA cellular processes. On the other hand, human ...
Chemistry
Realization of unusual particle-to-wave-like crossover in phonon transport and understanding
its fundamental structural origin can guide the design of materials with ultralow
thermal conductivity. Here, we report such a crossover from particle-like phonon ...
Liquid water can be supercooled up to about 50 K below the melting point before undergoing
homogeneous ice nucleation. Based on experimental thermodynamic observations and computer
simulations, it was hypothesized that below this temperature and at ...
Cystobactamids are nonribosomal peptide natural products that function as DNA gyrase
inhibitors, exhibiting significant antibacterial activity. They are isolated from
Cystobacter sp. Cbv34 and contain various alkoxy groups on para-aminobenzoic acid
...
Huntington’s Disease (HD), the most prevalent polyglutamine (polyQ) neurodegenerative
disorder, features brain aggregates induced by mutant huntingtin (mHtt) proteins harboring
expanded polyQ tracts. Despite extensive efforts, molecular mechanisms of ...
Computer Sciences
Deadly infection outbreaks in confined spaces, whether it is a COVID-19 outbreak on
a cruise ship or measles and stomach flu outbreaks in schools, can be characterized
by their rapid spread due to the abundance of common spaces, shared airways, and high
...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, ~56 Mya) interval was marked by massive
13C-depleted carbon emissions into the ocean/atmosphere system, manifested as a negative
carbon isotope excursion (CIE) in sedimentary components, and ~5 °C global average
...
The Taklamakan Desert, one of the world’s largest and driest deserts, has traditionally
been considered a biological void. Here, we demonstrate that large-scale ecological
restoration is transforming this hyperarid environment into a carbon sink. By ...
The distinct polar vortex dynamics observed on Jupiter and Saturn may provide insights
into their interiors. In this study, we examine how the number and structure of polar
vortices vary with forcing strength, dissipation rate, and interior stratification
...
Paleoclimates provide examples of past climate change that inform estimates of modern
warming from greenhouse-gas emissions, known as Earth’s climate sensitivity. However,
differences between past and present climate change must be accounted for when ...
Constraints on the impactor flux to the Earth–Moon system from oxygen isotopes of the lunar regolith
The impactor flux record to Earth has largely been erased by active tectonics, weathering,
and continual reworking of the crust. Instead, a record of highly siderophile elements
(HSE: Re, Os, Ir, Ru, Rh, Pt, Pd, and Au) in lunar impactites has been used ...
Pyrite-triggered precipitation of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) is crucial for generating
high-grade gold deposits, yet its dynamic process and mechanism at the pyrite–water
interface remain unclear due to the lack of in situ observation. Here, utilizing in
...
Perissodactyls were a diverse order of mammals in the Northern Hemisphere during the
Paleogene, but very few species remain today. They first appear during the Paleocene–Eocene
Thermal Maximum (PETM; 56 Ma) on the three continents of the Northern ...
Engineering
Lymph node (LN) metastasis (LNM) frequently occurs in various cancer types and is
associated with high aggressiveness, poor prognosis, and low survival rates. However,
effective clinical interventions remain limited primarily due to the distinctive ...
Studying dopamine signaling in nonmodel organisms is crucial for understanding the
broad range of behaviors not represented in traditional model systems. However, exploring
new species is often hindered by a scarcity of tools suitable for nongenetic ...
Magnetic sensing enables contact-free, three-dimensional human–machine interactions
(HMI) with high selectivity and resilience to environmental noise. However, conventional
magnetic films, mostly obtained via vacuum deposition, remain constrained by ...
Environmental Sciences
To reduce current and future coastal flood risk, it is critical to better understand
how adaptation measures, including nature-based solutions, can reduce that risk. Globally,
hybrid coastal defenses, including a combination of coastal vegetation, such as ...
Soil salinization poses a serious environmental challenge, but the impact of global
salinity on SIC (Soil Inorganic Carbon) remains unclear. Using 94,515 samples from
0 to 200 cm depth, combined with subregional classification (such as soil type, land
use,...
Physics
Geometric Deep Learning (GDL) unifies a broad class of machine learning techniques
from the perspectives of symmetries, offering a framework for introducing problem-specific
inductive biases like Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). However, the current ...
Emergent quasiparticles in solids often exhibit unique topological properties as a
result of the complex interplay between charge, orbital, spin, and lattice degrees
of freedom. Among these quasiparticles, the polaron occupies a special place as the
first ...
The ultraslow dynamics of glass-formers has been explained by two views often considered
as mutually exclusive: One invokes locally hindered mobility, and the other rests
on the complexity of the configuration space. Here, we show that time evolution ...
In strongly correlated materials, interacting electrons are entangled and form collective
quantum states, resulting in rich low-temperature phase diagrams. Notable examples
include cuprate superconductors, in which superconductivity emerges at low doping
...
Statistics
The quadratic bound (QB) principle proposed by Böhning and Lindsay in 1988 is an important
special case of the majorization–minimization or minorization-maximization optimization
principle. The quadratic upper-bound (QUB) principle is pertinent to ...
Sustainability Science
To reduce current and future coastal flood risk, it is critical to better understand
how adaptation measures, including nature-based solutions, can reduce that risk. Globally,
hybrid coastal defenses, including a combination of coastal vegetation, such as ...
Social Sciences
Economic Sciences
This paper proposes a framework for the global optimization of a possibly multimodal
continuous function in a bounded rectangular domain. We first show that global optimization
is equivalent to an optimal (sampling) strategy formation in a two-armed ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Oxytocin plays a critical role in modulating social cognition and enhancing human
memory for faces. However, it remains unclear which phase of memory oxytocin affects
to enhance face memory. Our study explored oxytocin’s potential to selectively enhance
...
Working memory is supported by widespread and distributed brain regions spanning across
the cortical hierarchy. However, how working memory content evolves and is transmitted
across cortical regions remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated the flow ...
Social Sciences
Social scientists have long sought to investigate whether the predictors of educational
attainment (EA) have changed across time. Here, we provide insights by incorporating
genetic predictors of education in three nationally representative British birth ...
Sustainability Science
Over time, carbon sequestered in temperate forests has increased, but the relative
effects of passive and active drivers remain unclear. This study uses plot-level data
to disentangle the contributions of six drivers (temperature, precipitation, CO2, ...
Civil society has long been a catalyst for social change by reshaping structures,
influencing values, and challenging power dynamics; however, its role in driving transformative
change for biodiversity remains underexplored. To address this gap, we ...
Biological Sciences
Applied Biological Sciences
Hepatitis D virus (HDV) is a small RNA satellite virus of hepatitis B virus (HBV)
which encodes a single protein, HDV delta antigen (HDAg), that is required for replication.
Viral replication occurs independently from HBV and relies primarily on host RNA ...
Biochemistry
Synthetic cells aim to emulate living systems by reconstituting essential cellular
processes within lipid-bound architectures. However, their functional complexity remains
constrained by a key challenge: the synthesis and correct integration of ...
Cystobactamids are nonribosomal peptide natural products that function as DNA gyrase
inhibitors, exhibiting significant antibacterial activity. They are isolated from
Cystobacter sp. Cbv34 and contain various alkoxy groups on para-aminobenzoic acid
...
Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) phagy is the form of selective autophagy that governs ER
abundance and integrity by targeting dysfunctional ER fragments for degradation. How
the recognition of ER fragments as autophagy substrates is coupled to engagement of
...
Expansin-related proteins (ERPs) are a broad group of plant cell wall–loosening proteins
and are considered noncatalytic, as, to date, no cell wall–derived products have been
observed as a result of catalysis, despite the presence of a domain that ...
Aquatic photosynthetic systems account for approximately one-half of all global carbon
assimilation and could be a significant source of renewable fuels and feedstocks.
However, rapid growth and biomass production in algae have not always translated into
...
Extracellular targeted protein degradation (eTPD) is an important new modality for
manipulating the extracellular proteome. However, most eTPD receptors are expressed
broadly or are restricted to the liver, limiting specific degradation in other tissues.
...
α7 nicotinic receptors are neurotransmitter-gated ion channels involved in neurological
and inflammatory diseases. Ligands acting on its neurotransmitter binding site and
on the channel domain of α7 have been extensively developed, yielding a wide range
...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
The low-complexity domain of Fused in Sarcoma (FUS-LC) undergoes phase separation,
forming a dense, liquid-like phase that gradually matures into an ordered, gel-like
state over long-time scales. During the maturation process, specific regions of the
FUS-...
Pyroptosis, an inflammatory form of cell death, is characterized by massive cell swelling
and plasma membrane rupture. Although swelling was recently shown to occur in two
steps, the molecular and biophysical mechanisms driving this process remained ...
Huntington’s Disease (HD), the most prevalent polyglutamine (polyQ) neurodegenerative
disorder, features brain aggregates induced by mutant huntingtin (mHtt) proteins harboring
expanded polyQ tracts. Despite extensive efforts, molecular mechanisms of ...
Abnormal expansions of trinucleotide repeats (TNRs) are a major cause of neurodegenerative
diseases, often driven by the formation of stable hairpin structures that interfere
with protein machineries in DNA cellular processes. On the other hand, human ...
Topoisomerase enzymes are essential for the regulation of DNA topology. Human topoisomerase
IIIα is a Type 1A topoisomerase that exists as a complex with RMI1 and RMI2, known
as TRR. The TRR complex can unlink entwined DNA strands and is known to be ...
Lipid transport by bridge-like lipid transfer proteins (BLTPs) is emerging as a key
process in lipid and cellular metabolism in both physiological and pathological conditions.
However, the precise mechanism of lipid transport by BLTPs has remained ...
Structural dynamics are fundamental to protein functions and mutation effects. Current
protein deep learning models are predominantly trained on sequence and/or static structure
data, which often fail to capture the dynamic nature of proteins. To address ...
The nesprin protein family serves as a critical physical bridge between the cytoskeleton–a
fundamental structural scaffold and mechanotransduction hub of the cell, and the nucleus–an
intriguing and emerging mechanoresponsive element. Due to the external ...
Viral 2A sequences trigger a cotranslational peptide bond formation “skipping” event,
termed “StopGo,” to generate two separate proteins from a single open reading frame
without classical termination. To investigate the mechanism of StopGo, we determined
...
Cell Biology
Intracellular transport of macromolecules is crucial for the proper functioning of
most cellular processes. Although intracellular crowding is known to strongly alter
macromolecule mobility, how cytoplasmic structures physically modulate diffusion remains
...
BORC and BLOC-1 are multisubunit complexes that regulate endolysosomal trafficking.
Although they are presumed to be distinct, their paralogous origins and shared subunits
suggest the potential for higher-order assembly. Here, we reveal the conserved ...
Progressive lung fibrosis is linked to aging-related dysfunction in fibroblasts, which
remains poorly understood. To investigate the alterations in fibroblasts, particularly
the molecular programs driving this profibrotic evolution in the aging lung, we ...
Many transmembrane (TM) signaling receptors undergo essential posttranslational modification
in the Golgi prior to their delivery to the plasma membrane (PM). Whether and how
the passage and accompanied modification of these proteins across the Golgi is ...
The stable reactive oxygen species (ROS) hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) acts as a key signaling molecule for many vital intracellular pathways. In diverse
cell types, surface receptors control intracellular H2O2 levels by modulating the activity of NADPH ...
Developmental Biology
Platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (Pdgfra) plays a crucial role in mesenchymal cell differentiation, but the molecular signaling
involved in this process remains unclear, particularly within the fetal testis. Here,
we use XY Pdgfra-null gonads ...
Mode of Hes1 activation and its differential expression are crucial for the maintenance of neural
stem cells/progenitor cells (NSCs/NPCs) in the embryonic cortex. This differential
mode of Hes1 activation has been translated into a heterogeneous ...
Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), which sustain lifelong blood cell production, emerge
from hemogenic endothelium during embryonic development through the regulation of
multiple signaling pathways. However, generating functional HSCs in vitro remains
...
Evolution
Perissodactyls were a diverse order of mammals in the Northern Hemisphere during the
Paleogene, but very few species remain today. They first appear during the Paleocene–Eocene
Thermal Maximum (PETM; 56 Ma) on the three continents of the Northern ...
The transition from anaerobic to aerobic life was a pivotal adaptation in Earth’s
history, yet the timing and genomic drivers remain poorly resolved. Traditional approaches
relying on oxygen-utilizing genes need improvement for obligate anaerobes and ...
Plasmids are extrachromosomal DNA molecules that spread by horizontal transfer and
shape bacterial evolution. Plasmids are typically present at multiple copies per bacterial
cell, and these extra copies increase the supply of plasmid mutations, ...
Genetics
Expansion of nucleotide repeat sequences is linked to a growing number of neuromuscular
degenerative disorders. Metabolic changes, including disruptions in mitochondrial
function and dynamics, characterize these disorders and are believed to contribute
to ...
Immunology and Inflammation
Lymph node (LN) metastasis (LNM) frequently occurs in various cancer types and is
associated with high aggressiveness, poor prognosis, and low survival rates. However,
effective clinical interventions remain limited primarily due to the distinctive ...
Conventional single-positive (SP) CD4+ and CD8+ T cells recognize tumor antigens and help mediate clinical responses with cancer
immunotherapy. Double-positive CD4+CD8+ (DP) T cells have also been described in human cancers, but their role in the tumor
...
RNAseq analysis of the Drosophila genome has revealed further immune-induced genes. Two genes initially annotated as
lncRNAs, CG44404(yulü) and CG45045(shenshu), are strongly induced. We report here that these two genes actually encode highly
related ...
Medical Sciences
Mitochondrial dysfunction is a hallmark of aging and a key contributor to age-related
diseases including cardiovascular disease. However, molecular pathways that safeguard
mitochondrial homeostasis in the aging heart remain poorly understood. Here, we ...
Activation of transcription factor NRF2 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC)
promotes aggressive tumor phenotype and protection from therapy-induced oxidative
stress. We postulated that NRF2high PDAC can be selectively targeted by C29h, a prodrug ...
Human autoantibodies neutralizing type I interferons (IFNs) have emerged as strong,
common, and global determinants of a growing number of severe viral diseases, including
hypoxemic viral pneumonia, arboviral encephalitis, and adverse reaction to the live-...
Microbiology
Ralstonia solanacearum species complex (RSSC) pathogens cause destructive plant wilt diseases of a wide
variety of crops, leading to significant agricultural losses worldwide. These bacteria
rapidly spread through the water-transporting xylem where they ...
Bacterial lipoproteins are key structural components of the outer membrane in Gram-negative
bacteria and vital components of machineries required for its biosynthesis and maintenance.
The Lol system, essential for viability, directs transport of ...
Ultraviolet (UV) irradiation induces pyrimidine dimers in DNA, which block replication,
but are efficiently removed by excision, allowing replication restart. Interestingly,
soon after restart, the cells become capable of inducible stable DNA replication (...
Gram-negative bacteria have long been thought to confine primary glycerophospholipid
synthesis to the inner membrane (IM). Here, we challenge this paradigm by identifying
ClsO, an outer membrane (OM) lipoprotein from Acinetobacter baumannii that functions ...
The evolutionary arms race between viruses and hosts shapes host antiviral defenses
and viral immune evasion, yet the mechanisms driving divergence in viral cross-species
pathogenicity remain unclear. Here, we investigated the role of single amino acid
...
Microorganisms commonly exist in polymicrobial communities, where they can respond
to interspecies secreted molecules by altering behaviors and physiology; however,
the underlying mechanisms remain underexplored. Here, we investigated interactions
between ...
Bacteriophages have applications in biotechnology, including human and veterinary
medicine, agriculture, food safety, and biosecurity. One example of resurging importance
is phage therapy, the use of phages to treat antibiotic-resistant bacterial ...
Current COVID-19 vaccines have saved countless lives but primarily aim to induce immunity
to the spike or its RBD protein and often fail to confer broad or durable protection
against rapidly evolving variants and prevent transmission. Here, we invented a ...
Neuroscience
In the human brain, the allowed patterns of activity are constrained by the correlations
between brain regions. Yet it remains unclear which correlations—and how many—are
needed to predict large-scale neural activity. Here, we present an information-...
Studying dopamine signaling in nonmodel organisms is crucial for understanding the
broad range of behaviors not represented in traditional model systems. However, exploring
new species is often hindered by a scarcity of tools suitable for nongenetic ...
Increasing scientific interest has been directed toward understanding sexual dimorphism
in the brain. Although several brain structures exhibit masculine or feminine characteristics,
strictly binary anatomical feature, comparable to those observed in ...
The increasing prevalence of sleep deprivation poses a public health challenge in
modern society. Manifestations of reduced alertness, such as slowed reaction times
and increased errors, are well-documented behavioral indicators of sleep loss (SL).
Yet, ...
Functional neural circuits are sculpted by strengthening frequently used synapses
and removing unnecessary connections. At birth, cerebellar Purkinje cells receive
inputs with similar synaptic strengths from multiple climbing fibers (CFs). During
...
Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) can be either temporary or permanent, depending
on the intensity and duration of noise exposure. Excessive noise exposure activates
various cellular mechanisms in the cochlea, including oxidative stress, immune responses,
...
How positive and negative affective stimuli interact in the brain to influence behavioral
outcomes remains poorly understood. Here, we show that recall of a positively valenced
reward-associated cue (reward-conditioned stimulus, CSRew+) can prevent or ...
Two major mechanisms of axon degeneration have been identified. The first, a caspase-dependent
apoptotic pathway, is a major mediator of developmental axon degeneration triggered
by loss of trophic support. The second, a caspase-independent pathway ...
Physiology
West-to-east transmeridian flights are more disruptive than east-to-west ones due
to challenges in advancing the human circadian clock. Transient mammalian Period1 (Per1) induction was predicted to predominantly advance the clock phase in our previous
...
Current evidence suggests that the rejuvenating effects of parabiosis on brain function
arise from the exchange of blood factors that enhance synaptic plasticity, promote
neurogenesis, and reduce neuroinflammation in aged animals. However, aging is also
...
Adaptive changes in organ size and function occur in most animals, but how these changes
are regulated is not well understood. Previous research found that mating in Drosophila females promotes intestinal stem cell proliferation and increases the overall ...
Plant Biology
The plasma membrane-resident receptor-like kinases (RLKs) and their cognate peptide
ligands play crucial roles in plant growth and development. The RLK BARELY ANY MERISTEM1
(BAM1) promotes phloem formation and regulates other aspects of root development.
...
Vascular tissues provide long-distance transport and physical support in the vascular
plant lineage, providing a significant adaptive advantage. Although the cross talk
between auxin and cytokinin in promoting both vascular cell proliferation and ...
Evolutionary transitions in land plant fertilization from zooidogamy to siphonogamy
were characterized by transformations of male reproductive cells. Basal land plants
such as bryophytes and pteridophytes have motile sperm, whereas most seed plants have
...
Nitrate serves both as an essential nutrient and a key signaling molecule that shapes
plant growth. In legumes, high nitrate concentrations suppress symbiotic nitrogen
fixation, a process mediated by MtNLP1 (NIN-like protein1). Although nitrate minimally
...
Population Biology
Deadly infection outbreaks in confined spaces, whether it is a COVID-19 outbreak on
a cruise ship or measles and stomach flu outbreaks in schools, can be characterized
by their rapid spread due to the abundance of common spaces, shared airways, and high
...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Oxytocin plays a critical role in modulating social cognition and enhancing human
memory for faces. However, it remains unclear which phase of memory oxytocin affects
to enhance face memory. Our study explored oxytocin’s potential to selectively enhance
...
Working memory is supported by widespread and distributed brain regions spanning across
the cortical hierarchy. However, how working memory content evolves and is transmitted
across cortical regions remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated the flow ...
Corrections
Retraction
%20_%20PNAS_files/pnas.webp)
%20_%20PNAS_files/pnas_011.webp "View the PNAS Table of Contents Vol.123; No.4")
Cover image: Pictured is a map of plasmids, which are DNA molecules that can be transferred between bacteria. Each ring and dot represents an evolved plasmid and a mutation, respectively. Paula Ramiro-Martínez et al. developed a population genetics framework to uncover the balance between forces that drive and slow plasmid evolution. The authors report that the mutation rate in plasmids increases logarithmically with the number of plasmid copies. Such an increase counteracts the effects of random distribution of plasmid copies to daughter cells—a process that would slow plasmid evolution. According to the authors, plasmids are hotspots of bacterial evolution and can drive adaptations, such as antibiotic resistance. See the article by Ramiro-Martínez et al. e2526088123. Image credit: Paula Ramiro-Martínez.
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