Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 121, Number 26
This Week in PNAS
Opinion
Retrospective
Commentary
Letters
This article has a reply:
Reply to Vermeij: Challenges and opportunities in macroevolution
View the original article:The Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution buffered ants against extinction
This article replies to:
Brief Reports
Treatment with autologous chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells has emerged as a
highly effective approach in neuroimmunological disorders such as myasthenia gravis.
We report a case of successful anti-CD19 CAR T cell use in treatment-refractory stiff-...
Particular frost patterns on natural leaves had prompted Yao et al. [Y. Yao et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 6323–6329 (2020)] to investigate the underlying physics. Their work revealed why
on corrugated surfaces ice forms on crests and dries ...
Physical Sciences
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Euchromatin is an accessible phase of genetic material containing genes that encode
proteins with increased expression levels. The structure of euchromatin in vitro has
been described as a 30-nm fiber formed from ordered nucleosome arrays. However, recent
...
Predicting the effects of one or more mutations to the in vivo or in vitro properties
of a wild-type protein is a major computational challenge, due to the presence of
epistasis, that is, of interactions between amino acids in the sequence. We introduce
a ...
The photoinduced all-trans to 13-cis isomerization of the retinal Schiff base represents
the ultrafast first step in the reaction cycle of bacteriorhodopsin (BR). Extensive
experimental and theoretical work has addressed excited-state dynamics and ...
Rational design of plant cis-regulatory DNA sequences without expert intervention or prior domain knowledge is
still a daunting task. Here, we developed PhytoExpr, a deep learning framework capable
of predicting both mRNA abundance and plant species using ...
Chemistry
Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas whose production is catalyzed by nitric oxide
reductase (NOR) members of the heme-copper oxidoreductase (HCO) enzyme superfamily.
We identified several previously uncharacterized HCO families, four of which (eNOR,
...
Computer Sciences
Negative or antagonistic relationships are common in human social networks, but they
are less often studied than positive or friendly relationships. The existence of a
capacity to have and to track antagonistic ties raises the possibility that they may
...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Archaea produce unique membrane-spanning lipids (MSLs), termed glycerol dialkyl glycerol
tetraethers (GDGTs), which aid in adaptive responses to various environmental challenges.
GDGTs can be modified through cyclization, cross-linking, methylation, ...
Central North America is the global hotspot for tornadoes, fueled by elevated terrain
of the Rockies to the west and a source of warm, moist air from equatorward oceans.
This conventional wisdom argues that central South America, with the Andes to the
...
We find strong path dependence in the evolution of the Plio–Pleistocene glaciations
using CLIMBER-2 Earth System Model simulations from the mid-Pliocene to modern preindustrial
(3 My-0 My BP) driven by a gradual decrease in volcanic carbon dioxide ...
Hydrogen isotope ratios (δ2H) represent an important natural tracer of metabolic processes, but quantitative
models of processes controlling H-fractionation in aquatic photosynthetic organisms
are lacking. Here, we elucidate the underlying physiological ...
Engineering
Chirality plays a crucial role in biology, as it is highly conserved and fundamentally
important in the developmental process. To better understand the relationship between
the chirality of individual cells and that of tissues and organisms, we develop a
...
Oxytocin plays a critical role in regulating social behaviors, yet our understanding
of its function in both neurological health and disease remains incomplete. Real-time
oxytocin imaging probes with spatiotemporal resolution relevant to its endogenous
...
Many bird species commonly aggregate in flocks for reasons ranging from predator defense
to navigation. Available evidence suggests that certain types of flocks—the V and
echelon formations of large birds—may provide a benefit that reduces the aerodynamic
...
Physics
The recent theory-driven discovery of a class of clathrate hydrides (e.g., CaH6, YH6, YH9, and LaH10) with superconducting critical temperatures (Tc) well above 200 K has opened the prospects for “hot” superconductivity above room
temperature under ...
Phase transitions occurring in nonequilibrium conditions can evolve through high-energy
intermediate states inaccessible via equilibrium adiabatic conditions. Because of
the subtle nature of such hidden phases, their direct observation is extremely ...
Social Sciences
Anthropology
Cumulative culture, the accumulation of modifications, innovations, and improvements
over generations through social learning, is a key determinant of the behavioral diversity
across Homo sapiens populations and their ability to adapt to varied ecological ...
Economic Sciences
The economic case for scaling up health research and development: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments directly funded vaccine research
and development (R&D), quickly leading to multiple effective vaccines and resulting
in enormous health and economic benefits to society. We develop a simple economic
model ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Public and academic discourse on ageism focuses primarily on prejudices targeting
older adults, implicitly assuming that this age group experiences the most age bias.
We test this assumption in a large, preregistered study surveying Americans’ explicit
...
When listeners hear a voice, they rapidly form a complex first impression of who the
person behind that voice might be. We characterize how these multivariate first impressions
from voices emerge over time across different levels of abstraction using ...
Social Sciences
Negative or antagonistic relationships are common in human social networks, but they
are less often studied than positive or friendly relationships. The existence of a
capacity to have and to track antagonistic ties raises the possibility that they may
...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
RNA interference (RNAi) is more efficient in coleopteran insects than other insects.
StaufenC (StauC), a coleopteran-specific double-stranded RNA (dsRNA)-binding protein,
is required for efficient RNAi in coleopterans. We investigated the function of ...
Anthropology
Cumulative culture, the accumulation of modifications, innovations, and improvements
over generations through social learning, is a key determinant of the behavioral diversity
across Homo sapiens populations and their ability to adapt to varied ecological ...
Neandertals and Denisovans, having inhabited distinct regions in Eurasia and possibly
Oceania for over 200,000 y, experienced ample time to adapt to diverse environmental
challenges these regions presented. Among present-day human populations, Papua New
...
Applied Biological Sciences
Although most known viruses infecting fungi pathogenic to higher eukaryotes are asymptomatic
or reduce the virulence of their host fungi, those that confer hypervirulence to entomopathogenic
fungus still need to be explored. Here, we identified and ...
Biochemistry
Aminotransferases (ATs) are an ancient enzyme family that play central roles in core
nitrogen metabolism, essential to all organisms. However, many of the AT enzyme functions
remain poorly defined, limiting our fundamental understanding of the nitrogen ...
Almost all elongator tRNAs (Transfer RNAs) harbor 5-methyluridine 54 and pseudouridine
55 in the T arm, generated by the enzymes TrmA and TruB, respectively, in Escherichia coli. TrmA and TruB both act as tRNA chaperones, and strains lacking trmA or truB ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
Euchromatin is an accessible phase of genetic material containing genes that encode
proteins with increased expression levels. The structure of euchromatin in vitro has
been described as a 30-nm fiber formed from ordered nucleosome arrays. However, recent
...
Cellular membranes exhibit a multitude of highly curved morphologies such as buds,
nanotubes, cisterna-like sheets defining the outlines of organelles. Here, we mimic
cell compartmentation using an aqueous two-phase system of dextran and poly(ethylene
...
Proteomics has been revolutionized by large protein language models (PLMs), which
learn unsupervised representations from large corpora of sequences. These models are
typically fine-tuned in a supervised setting to adapt the model to specific downstream
...
Cell Biology
The cytoplasm is a complex, crowded environment that influences myriad cellular processes
including protein folding and metabolic reactions. Recent studies have suggested that
changes in the biophysical properties of the cytoplasm play a key role in ...
Upper aerodigestive squamous cell carcinoma (UASCC) is a common and aggressive malignancy
with few effective therapeutic options. Here, we investigate amino acid metabolism
in this cancer, surprisingly noting that UASCC exhibits the highest methionine ...
Developmental Biology
Germ cells are regulated by local microenvironments (niches), which secrete instructive
cues. Conserved developmental signaling molecules act as niche-derived regulatory
factors, yet other types of niche signals remain to be identified. Single-cell RNA-...
Ecology
An often-overlooked question of the biodiversity crisis is how natural hazards contribute
to species extinction risk. To address this issue, we explored how four natural hazards,
earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, overlapped with the ...
Plant functional traits hold the potential to greatly improve the understanding and
prediction of climate impacts on ecosystems and carbon cycle feedback to climate change.
Traits are commonly used to place species along a global conservative-acquisitive
...
Environmental Sciences
Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas whose production is catalyzed by nitric oxide
reductase (NOR) members of the heme-copper oxidoreductase (HCO) enzyme superfamily.
We identified several previously uncharacterized HCO families, four of which (eNOR,
...
Hydrogen isotope ratios (δ2H) represent an important natural tracer of metabolic processes, but quantitative
models of processes controlling H-fractionation in aquatic photosynthetic organisms
are lacking. Here, we elucidate the underlying physiological ...
Genetics
Predicting the effects of one or more mutations to the in vivo or in vitro properties
of a wild-type protein is a major computational challenge, due to the presence of
epistasis, that is, of interactions between amino acids in the sequence. We introduce
a ...
Aberrant regulation of chromatin modifiers is a common occurrence across many cancer
types, and a key priority is to determine how specific alterations of these proteins,
often enzymes, can be targeted therapeutically. MOZ, a histone acyltransferase, is
...
Immunology and Inflammation
Solid organ transplantation mobilizes myeloid cells, including monocytes and macrophages,
which are central protagonists of allograft rejection. However, myeloid cells can
also be functionally reprogrammed by perioperative costimulatory blockade to ...
Thymocyte selection–associated high-mobility group box (TOX) is a transcription factor
that is crucial for T cell exhaustion during chronic antigenic stimulation, but its
role in inflammation is poorly understood. Here, we report that TOX extracellularly
...
Medical Sciences
The economic case for scaling up health research and development: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments directly funded vaccine research
and development (R&D), quickly leading to multiple effective vaccines and resulting
in enormous health and economic benefits to society. We develop a simple economic
model ...
Microbiology
Archaea produce unique membrane-spanning lipids (MSLs), termed glycerol dialkyl glycerol
tetraethers (GDGTs), which aid in adaptive responses to various environmental challenges.
GDGTs can be modified through cyclization, cross-linking, methylation, ...
Neuroscience
Advancing our understanding of brain function and developing treatments for neurological
diseases hinge on the ability to modulate neuronal groups in specific brain areas
without invasive techniques. Here, we introduce Airy-beam holographic sonogenetics
(...
Synapses containing γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) constitute the primary centers for
inhibitory neurotransmission in our nervous system. It is unclear how these synaptic
structures form and align their postsynaptic machineries with presynaptic terminals.
...
MDGA (MAM domain containing glycosylphosphatidylinositol anchor) family proteins were
previously identified as synaptic suppressive factors. However, various genetic manipulations
have yielded often irreconcilable results, precluding precise evaluation of ...
Goal-directed actions are characterized by two main features: the content (i.e., the
action goal) and the form, called vitality forms (VF) (i.e., how actions are executed).
It is well established that both the action content and the capacity to understand
...
Ca2+/calmodulin (CaM)-dependent kinase II (CaMKII) plays a critical role in long-term
potentiation (LTP), a well-established model for learning and memory through the enhancement
of synaptic transmission. Biochemical studies indicate that CaMKII catalyzes ...
Pharmacology
Somatostatin receptor 5 (SSTR5) is an important G protein–coupled receptor and drug
target for neuroendocrine tumors and pituitary disorders. This study presents two
high-resolution cryogenicelectron microscope structures of the SSTR5-Gi complexes bound ...
Physiology
Many bird species commonly aggregate in flocks for reasons ranging from predator defense
to navigation. Available evidence suggests that certain types of flocks—the V and
echelon formations of large birds—may provide a benefit that reduces the aerodynamic
...
Intracellular sensors detect changes in levels of essential metals to initiate homeostatic
responses. But, a mammalian manganese (Mn) sensor is unknown, representing a major
gap in understanding of Mn homeostasis. Using human-relevant models, we recently ...
Chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) is part of the mammalian cellular proteostasis
network that ensures protein quality control, maintenance of proteome homeostasis,
and proteome changes required for the adaptation to stress. Loss of proteostasis is
one of ...
Plant Biology
Rational design of plant cis-regulatory DNA sequences without expert intervention or prior domain knowledge is
still a daunting task. Here, we developed PhytoExpr, a deep learning framework capable
of predicting both mRNA abundance and plant species using ...
How tissue-level information encoded by fields of regulatory gene activity is translated
into the patterns of cell polarity and growth that generate the diverse shapes of
different species remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate this problem in
...
Strigolactones (SLs) are plant apocarotenoids with diverse roles and structures. Canonical
SLs, widespread and characterized by structural variations in their tricyclic lactone
(ABC-ring), are classified into two types based on C-ring configurations. The ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
When listeners hear a voice, they rapidly form a complex first impression of who the
person behind that voice might be. We characterize how these multivariate first impressions
from voices emerge over time across different levels of abstraction using ...
Sustainability Science
An often-overlooked question of the biodiversity crisis is how natural hazards contribute
to species extinction risk. To address this issue, we explored how four natural hazards,
earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, overlapped with the ...
Corrections
SI Correction
Cover image: Pictured is an optical section of planarian testes, showing mRNAs expressed at different stages of spermatogenesis, including early spermatogonia (magenta) and spermatocytes (yellow-to-red). DNA staining (cyan) highlights changes in testis cell nuclei throughout spermatogenesis. Melanie Issigonis et al. found that the enzyme AADC in reproductive niche cells helps the enzyme NRPS produce the dipeptide β-alanyl-tryptamine (BATT). Inhibition of the gene for either enzyme in planarians led to the loss of female reproductive organs and accumulation of spermatogonial stem cells in testes. The defects were reversed by administering synthetic BATT. According to the authors, monoamine-derived compounds, such as BATT, can trigger development in reproductive niche cells. See the article by Issigonis et al. e2321349121. Image credit: Melanie Issigonis, Katherine Browder, and Phillip Newmark.
Sign up for PNAS alerts.
Get alerts for new articles, or get an alert when an article is cited.
Manage alertsStay connected
Recent Issues
Submit to PNAS
Submit to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and have your research discovered by millions of researchers in the Biological, Physical, and Social Sciences.
Submit your manuscript