Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 121, Number 29
Special Feature
Modeling Dynamic Systems for Sustainable Development
This Perspective evaluates recent progress in modeling nature–society systems to inform
sustainable development. We argue that recent work has begun to address longstanding
and often-cited challenges in bringing modeling to bear on problems of sustainable
...
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Progress in modeling dynamic systems for sustainable development
Equity is core to sustainability, but current interventions to enhance sustainability
often fall short in adequately addressing this linkage. Models are important tools
for informing action, and their development and use present opportunities to center
...
Climate oscillations ranging from years to decades drive precipitation variability
in many river basins globally. As a result, many regions will require new water infrastructure
investments to maintain reliable water supply. However, current adaptation ...
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Climate oscillation impacts on water supply augmentation planning
Despite the growing calls to integrate realistic human behavior in sustainability
science models, the representative rational agent prevails. This is especially problematic
for climate change adaptation that relies on actions at various scales: from ...
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Uncertainty in boundedly rational household adaptation to environmental shocks
Sustainability outcomes are influenced by the laws and configurations of natural and
engineered systems as well as activities in socio-economic systems. An important subset
of human activity is the creation and implementation of institutions, formal and ...
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Simulating institutional heterogeneity in sustainability science
Sustainability challenges related to food production arise from multiple nature-society
interactions occurring over long time periods. Traditional methods of quantitative
analysis do not represent long-term changes in the networks of system components,
...
Future climate change can cause more days with poor air quality. This could trigger
more alerts telling people to stay inside to protect themselves, with potential consequences
for health and health equity. Here, we study the change in US air quality ...
Limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5 °C will rely, in part, on technologies
to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. However, many carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies are
in the early stages of development, and there is limited data to inform ...
Scientists seek to understand the causal processes that generate sustainability problems
and determine effective solutions. Yet, causal inquiry in nature–society systems is
hampered by conceptual and methodological challenges that arise from nature–...
To address global sustainability challenges, (public) policy interventions are needed
to induce or accelerate technological change. While most policy interventions occur
on the local level, their innovation effects can spill over to other jurisdictions,
...
Effective policies for adaptation to climate change require understanding how impacts
are related to exposures and vulnerability, the dimensions of the climate system that
will change most and where human impacts will be most draconian, and the ...
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The need for rapid and ambitious conservation and restoration is widely acknowledged,
yet concern exists that the widespread reallocation of land to nature would disproportionately
affect the world’s poor. Conservation and restoration may limit nutrition ...
This Week in PNAS
QnAs
Profile
Commentaries
Perspective
Media exposure to graphic images of violence has proliferated in contemporary society,
particularly with the advent of social media. Extensive exposure to media coverage
immediately after the 9/11 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombings (BMB) was ...
Letters
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Key language markers of depression on social media depend on race
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Brief Report
Members of the synaptophysin and synaptogyrin family are vesicle proteins with four
transmembrane domains. In spite of their abundance in synaptic vesicle (SV) membranes,
their role remains elusive and only mild defects at the cellular and organismal ...
Physical Sciences
Biophysics and Computational Biology
After ATP-actin monomers assemble filaments, the ATP’s -phosphate is hydrolyzedwithin seconds and dissociates over minutes. We used all-atom molecular dynamics simulations
to sample the release of phosphate from filaments and study residues that gate ...
G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) control intracellular signaling cascades via agonist-dependent
coupling to intracellular transducers including heterotrimeric G proteins, GPCR kinases
(GRKs), and arrestins. In addition to their critical interactions ...
Cytokinesis is the process where the mother cell’s cytoplasm separates into daughter
cells. This is driven by an actomyosin contractile ring that produces cortical contractility
and drives cleavage furrow ingression, resulting in the formation of a thin ...
Chemistry
DNA aptamers have emerged as novel molecular tools in disease theranostics owing to
their high binding affinity and specificity for protein targets, which rely on their
ability to fold into distinctive three-dimensional (3D) structures. However, delicate
...
Mass spectrometry-based omics technologies are increasingly used in perturbation studies
to map drug effects to biological pathways by identifying significant molecular events.
Significance is influenced by fold change and variation of each molecular ...
Precise electrochemical synthesis of commodity chemicals and fuels from CO2 building blocks provides a promising route to close the anthropogenic carbon cycle,
in which renewable but intermittent electricity could be stored within the greenhouse
gas ...
Unlike inorganic nanoparticles, organic nanoparticles (oNPs) offer the advantage of
“interior tailorability,” thereby enabling the controlled variation of physicochemical
characteristics and functionalities, for example, by incorporation of diverse ...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
The ongoing and projected retreat of Arctic sea ice has garnered international interest
toward the utilization of Arctic maritime corridors for shipping, tourism, and development.
Yet, with potential for increasing traffic in Arctic regions, it’s ...
Engineering
CO2 mineralization products are often heralded as having outstanding potentials to reduce
CO2-eq. emissions. However, these claims are generally undermined by incomplete consideration
of the life cycle climate change impacts, material properties, supply ...
Turbulent flows have been used for millennia to mix solutes; a familiar example is
stirring cream into coffee. However, many energy, environmental, and industrial processes
rely on the mixing of solutes in porous media where confinement suppresses ...
Environmental Sciences
It is imperative to devise effective removal strategies for high ionization potential
(IP) organic pollutants in wastewater as their reduced electron-donating capacity
challenges the efficiency of advanced oxidation systems in degradation. Against this
...
Physics
Sr2IrO4 has attracted considerable attention due to its structural and electronic similarities
to La2CuO4, the parent compound of high-Tc superconducting cuprates. It was proposed as a strong spin–orbit-coupled Jeff = 1/2 Mott insulator, but the Mott ...
Transport networks, such as vasculature or river networks, provide key functions in
organisms and the environment. They usually contain loops whose significance for the
stability and robustness of the network is well documented. However, the dynamics
of ...
We present a renormalization group (RG) analysis of the problem of Anderson localization
on a random regular graph (RRG) which generalizes the RG of Abrahams, Anderson, Licciardello,
and Ramakrishnan to infinite-dimensional graphs. The RG equations ...
Sustainability Science
CO2 mineralization products are often heralded as having outstanding potentials to reduce
CO2-eq. emissions. However, these claims are generally undermined by incomplete consideration
of the life cycle climate change impacts, material properties, supply ...
Social Sciences
Environmental Sciences
The expansion of marine protected areas (MPAs) is a core focus of global conservation
efforts, with the “30x30” initiative to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030 serving as
a prominent example of this trend. We consider a series of proposed MPA network ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Combinatorial thought, or the ability to combine a finite set of concepts into a myriad
of complex ideas and knowledge structures, is the key to the productivity of the human
mind and underlies communication, science, technology, and art. Despite the ...
Watching movies is among the most popular entertainment and cultural activities. How
do viewers react when a movie sequel increases racial minority actors in the main
cast (“minority increase”)? On the one hand, such sequels may receive better evaluations
...
Cerebral (Aβ) plaque and (pTau) tangle deposition are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease
(AD), yet are insufficient to confer complete AD-like neurodegeneration experimentally.
Factors acting upstream of Aβ/pTau in AD remain unknown, but their ...
Human cognitive capacities that enable flexible cooperation may have evolved in parallel
with the expansion of frontoparietal cortical networks, particularly the default network.
Conversely, human antisocial behavior and trait antagonism are broadly ...
Social Sciences
Works of fiction play a crucial role in the production of cultural stereotypes. Concerning
gender, a widely held presumption is that many such works ascribe agency to men and
passivity to women. However, large-scale diachronic analyses of this notion have ...
Sustainability Science
The expansion of marine protected areas (MPAs) is a core focus of global conservation
efforts, with the “30x30” initiative to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030 serving as
a prominent example of this trend. We consider a series of proposed MPA network ...
The perceived risk of climate change and the sense of urgency for an energy transition
are both politically polarized, especially in the United States. Yet, we know relatively
little about how political polarization affects consumer energy preferences and ...
Protected areas can conserve wildlife and benefit people when managed effectively.
African governments increasingly delegate the management of protected areas to private,
nongovernmental organizations, hoping that private organizations’ significant ...
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences
Animals can alter their body compositions in anticipation of dormancy to endure seasons
with limited food availability. Accumulation of lipid reserves, mostly in the form
of triglycerides (TAGs), is observed during the preparation for dormancy in diverse
...
Biochemistry
In this study, we used cryoelectron microscopy to determine the structures of the
Flotillin protein complex, part of the Stomatin, Prohibitin, Flotillin, and HflK/C
(SPFH) superfamily, from cell-derived vesicles without detergents. It forms a right-handed
...
Defects in planar cell polarity (PCP) have been implicated in diverse human pathologies.
Vangl2 is one of the core PCP components crucial for PCP signaling. Dysregulation
of Vangl2 has been associated with severe neural tube defects and cancers. However,
...
Heat Shock Factor 1 (HSF1) is best known as the master transcriptional regulator of
the heat-shock response (HSR), a conserved adaptive mechanism critical for protein
homeostasis (proteostasis). Combining a genome-wide RNAi library with an HSR reporter,
...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
DNA aptamers have emerged as novel molecular tools in disease theranostics owing to
their high binding affinity and specificity for protein targets, which rely on their
ability to fold into distinctive three-dimensional (3D) structures. However, delicate
...
G protein–coupled receptors (GPCRs) control intracellular signaling cascades via agonist-dependent
coupling to intracellular transducers including heterotrimeric G proteins, GPCR kinases
(GRKs), and arrestins. In addition to their critical interactions ...
In the developing human brain, only 53 stochastically expressed clustered protocadherin
(cPcdh) isoforms enable neurites from individual neurons to recognize and self-avoid
while simultaneously maintaining contact with neurites from other neurons. Cell ...
Kinesin-1 ensembles maneuver vesicular cargoes through the three-dimensional (3D)
intracellular microtubule (MT) network. To define how such cargoes navigate MT intersections,
we first determined how many kinesins from an ensemble on a lipid-based cargo ...
RNA polymerases (RNAPs) carry out the first step in the central dogma of molecular
biology by transcribing DNA into RNA. Despite their importance, much about how RNAPs
work remains unclear, in part because the small (3.4 Angstrom) and fast (~40 ms/nt)
...
Stomata in leaves regulate gas (carbon dioxide and water vapor) exchange and water
transpiration between plants and the atmosphere. SLow Anion Channel 1 (SLAC1) mediates
anion efflux from guard cells and plays a crucial role in controlling stomatal ...
Cell Biology
Cytokinesis is the process where the mother cell’s cytoplasm separates into daughter
cells. This is driven by an actomyosin contractile ring that produces cortical contractility
and drives cleavage furrow ingression, resulting in the formation of a thin ...
Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide,
but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unclear. The transcription
factor (TF) specificity protein 1 (SP1) plays a crucial role in the development of
various ...
Confined cell migration hampers genome integrity and activates the ATR and ATM mechano-transduction
pathways. We investigated whether the mechanical stress generated by metastatic interstitial
migration contributes to the enhanced chromosomal instability ...
Precise segregation of chromosomes during mitosis requires assembly of a bipolar mitotic
spindle followed by correct attachment of microtubules to the kinetochores. This highly
spatiotemporally organized process is controlled by various mitotic kinases ...
Developmental Biology
Reptilian skin coloration is spectacular and diverse, yet little is known about the
ontogenetic processes that govern its establishment and the molecular signaling pathways
that determine it. Here, we focus on the development of the banded pattern of ...
Animals capable of whole-body regeneration can replace any missing cell type and regenerate
fully functional new organs, including new brains, de novo. The regeneration of a
new brain requires the formation of diverse neural cell types and their assembly ...
Genetics
We report that ~1.8% of all mesothelioma patients and 4.9% of those younger than 55,
carry rare germline variants of the BRCA1 associated RING domain 1 (BARD1) gene that were predicted to be damaging by computational analyses. We conducted functional
...
Immunology and Inflammation
Trained immunity is characterized by epigenetic and metabolic reprogramming in response
to specific stimuli. This rewiring can result in increased cytokine and effector responses
to pathogenic challenges, providing nonspecific protection against disease. ...
Upon sensing viral RNA, mammalian RIG-I-like receptors (RLRs) activate downstream
signals using caspase activation and recruitment domains (CARDs), which ultimately
promote transcriptional immune responses that have been well studied. In contrast,
the ...
Gasdermin D (GSDMD)-mediated pyroptotic cell death drives inflammatory cytokine release
and downstream immune responses upon inflammasome activation, which play important
roles in host defense and inflammatory disorders. Upon activation by proteases, the
...
Antibody-producing plasma cells fuel humoral immune responses. They also contribute
to autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus or IgA nephropathy. Interleukin-6
and the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) family ligands BAFF (B cell-activating ...
The Type-I interferon (IFN-I) response is the major outcome of stimulator of interferon
genes (STING) activation in innate cells. STING is more abundantly expressed in adaptive
T cells; nevertheless, its intrinsic function in T cells remains unclear. ...
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is a potentially lethal disease lacking effective
treatments. Its immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME) allows it to evade
host immunosurveillance and limits response to immunotherapy. Here, using the mouse
...
Medical Sciences
Urinary tract infection (UTI) commonly afflicts people with diabetes. This augmented
infection risk is partly due to deregulated insulin receptor (IR) signaling in the
kidney collecting duct. The collecting duct is composed of intercalated cells (ICs)
and ...
Hemostasis relies on a reaction network of serine proteases and their cofactors to
form a blood clot. Coagulation factor IXa (protease) plays an essential role in hemostasis
as evident from the bleeding disease associated with its absence. RNA aptamers ...
Elevated levels of miR-155 in solid and liquid malignancies correlate with aggressiveness of the disease. In
this manuscript, we show that miR-155 targets transcripts encoding IcosL, the ligand for Inducible T-cell costimulator
(Icos), thus impairing the ...
Microbiology
The kinetoplastid parasite, Trypanosoma brucei, undergoes a complex life cycle entailing slender and stumpy bloodstream forms in
mammals and procyclic and metacyclic forms (MFs) in tsetse fly hosts. The numerous
gene regulatory events that underlie T. ...
Bacitracin is a macrocyclic peptide antibiotic that is widely used as a topical treatment
for infections caused by gram-positive bacteria. Mechanistically, bacitracin targets
bacteria by specifically binding to the phospholipid undecaprenyl pyrophosphate (...
Hydrogen production through water splitting is a vital strategy for renewable and
sustainable clean energy. In this study, we developed an approach integrating nanomaterial
engineering and synthetic biology to establish a bionanoreactor system for ...
We generated a replication-competent OC43 human seasonal coronavirus (CoV) expressing
the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike in place of
the native spike (rOC43-CoV2 S). This virus is highly attenuated relative to OC43
and ...
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Structural color is an optical phenomenon resulting from light interacting with nanostructured
materials. Although structural color (SC) is widespread in the tree of life, the underlying
genetics and genomics are not well understood. Here, we collected ...
Intron-containing RNA expressed from the HIV-1 provirus activates type 1 interferon
in primary human blood cells, including CD4+ T cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells. To identify the innate immune receptor
required for detection of intron-containing ...
In a recent characterization of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus
2 (SARS-CoV-2) variability present in 30 diagnostic samples from patients of the first
COVID-19 pandemic wave, 41 amino acid substitutions were documented in the RNA-...
West Nile virus (WNV) is an arthropod-borne, positive-sense RNA virus that poses an
increasing global threat due to warming climates and lack of effective therapeutics.
Like other enzootic viruses, little is known about how host context affects the ...
Neuroscience
Spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA) is a slowly progressing neuromuscular disease
caused by a polyglutamine (polyQ)-encoding CAG trinucleotide repeat expansion in the
androgen receptor (AR) gene, leading to AR aggregation, lower motor neuron death,
...
Cerebral (Aβ) plaque and (pTau) tangle deposition are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease
(AD), yet are insufficient to confer complete AD-like neurodegeneration experimentally.
Factors acting upstream of Aβ/pTau in AD remain unknown, but their ...
How does the brain simultaneously process signals that bring complementary information,
like raw sensory signals and their transformed counterparts, without any disruptive
interference? Contemporary research underscores the brain’s adeptness in using ...
Plant Biology
Although the formation of new walls during plant cell division tends to follow maximal
tensile stress direction, analyses of individual cells over time reveal a much more
variable behavior. The origin of such variability as well as the exact role of ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Human cognitive capacities that enable flexible cooperation may have evolved in parallel
with the expansion of frontoparietal cortical networks, particularly the default network.
Conversely, human antisocial behavior and trait antagonism are broadly ...
Systems Biology
Mass spectrometry-based omics technologies are increasingly used in perturbation studies
to map drug effects to biological pathways by identifying significant molecular events.
Significance is influenced by fold change and variation of each molecular ...
Corrections
SI Correction
Cover image: Pictured is an artistic illustration of various aspects of nature–society systems relevant to sustainable development goals, including agriculture, energy, transportation, and knowledge systems. A collection of articles in the Modeling Dynamic Systems for Sustainable Development Special Feature highlights recent advances in the computational modeling of coupled natural and societal systems for sustainability science research. Together, the articles explore the potential of models and methods to advance theory and insight, mobilize quantitative and qualitative data, and evaluate interventions for sustainable development. See the Introduction to the Special Feature, e2215689121. Image credit: Zoe Pappenheimer (artist).
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