Table Of Contents Page, PNAS Volume 112, Number 52
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PNAS 100th Anniversary Article
Commentary
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Letters (Online Only)
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Quantification of biological aging in young adults
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Inner Workings
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Commentaries
PNAS Plus Significance Statements
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
Dogs lap because they have incomplete cheeks and cannot suck. When lapping, a dog’s
tongue pulls a liquid column from the bath, suggesting that the hydrodynamics of column
formation are critical to understanding how dogs drink. We measured lapping in 19
...
The lanthanum-based materials, due to their layered structure and f-electron configuration, are relevant for electrochemical application. Particularly,
La2O2CO3 shows a prominent chemoresistive response to CO2. However, surprisingly less is known about ...
Chemistry
Developing sustainable energy strategies based on CO2 reduction is an increasingly important issue given the world’s continued reliance
on hydrocarbon fuels and the rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. An important option is electrochemical or ...
Molecular imaging agents for preoperative positron emission tomography (PET) and near-infrared
fluorescent (NIRF)-guided delineation of surgical margins could greatly enhance the
diagnosis, staging, and resection of pancreatic cancer. PET and NIRF optical ...
Ablation of androgen production through surgery is one strategy against prostate cancer,
with the current focus placed on pharmaceutical intervention to restrict androgen
synthesis selectively, an endeavor that could benefit from the enhanced ...
There are several sources of fluctuations in gene expression. Here we study the effects
of time-dependent DNA replication, itself a tightly controlled process, on noise in
mRNA levels. Stochastic simulations of constitutive and regulated gene expression
...
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Inadequate knowledge of the phase state of atmospheric particles represents a source
of uncertainty in global climate and air quality models. Hygroscopic aqueous inorganic
particles are often assumed to remain liquid throughout their atmospheric lifetime
...
Statistics
Learning the properties of an image associated with human gaze placement is important
both for understanding how biological systems explore the environment and for computer
vision applications. There is a large literature on quantitative eye movement ...
Sustainability Science
We introduce a paradigm—“hydricity”—that involves the coproduction of hydrogen and
electricity from solar thermal energy and their judicious use to enable a sustainable
economy. We identify and implement synergistic integrations while improving each of
...
Social Sciences
Economic Sciences
Integrated assessment models of climate and the economy provide estimates of the social
cost of carbon and inform climate policy. We create a variant of the Regional Integrated
model of Climate and the Economy (RICE)—a regionally disaggregated version of ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
The role of oscillatory phase for perceptual and cognitive processes is being increasingly
acknowledged. To date, little is known about the direct role of phase in categorical
perception. Here we show in two separate experiments that the identification of ...
Research on social class and generosity suggests that higher-income individuals are
less generous than poorer individuals. We propose that this pattern emerges only under
conditions of high economic inequality, contexts that can foster a sense of ...
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Social decisions require evaluation of costs and benefits to oneself and others. Long
associated with emotion and vigilance, the amygdala has recently been implicated in
both decision-making and social behavior. The amygdala signals reward and punishment,
...
Sustainability Science
Integrated assessment models of climate and the economy provide estimates of the social
cost of carbon and inform climate policy. We create a variant of the Regional Integrated
model of Climate and the Economy (RICE)—a regionally disaggregated version of ...
Separating myth and reality is essential for evaluating the effectiveness of laws.
Section 7 of the US Endangered Species Act (Act) directs federal agencies to help
conserve threatened and endangered species, including by consulting with the US Fish
and ...
Biological Sciences
Applied Biological Sciences
Dogs lap because they have incomplete cheeks and cannot suck. When lapping, a dog’s
tongue pulls a liquid column from the bath, suggesting that the hydrodynamics of column
formation are critical to understanding how dogs drink. We measured lapping in 19
...
Molecular imaging agents for preoperative positron emission tomography (PET) and near-infrared
fluorescent (NIRF)-guided delineation of surgical margins could greatly enhance the
diagnosis, staging, and resection of pancreatic cancer. PET and NIRF optical ...
Biochemistry
The bacterial Sox (sulfur oxidation) pathway is an important route for the oxidation
of inorganic sulfur compounds. Intermediates in the Sox pathway are covalently attached
to the heterodimeric carrier protein SoxYZ through conjugation to a cysteine on a
...
Although rates of protein degradation by the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway (UPS) are
determined by their rates of ubiquitination, we show here that the proteasome’s capacity
to degrade ubiquitinated proteins is also tightly regulated. We studied the ...
Growth factors and nutrients enhance protein synthesis and suppress overall protein
degradation by activating the protein kinase mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR).
Conversely, nutrient or serum deprivation inhibits mTOR and stimulates protein breakdown
...
Ablation of androgen production through surgery is one strategy against prostate cancer,
with the current focus placed on pharmaceutical intervention to restrict androgen
synthesis selectively, an endeavor that could benefit from the enhanced ...
Receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are a class of cell surface receptors that, upon
ligand binding, stimulate a variety of critical cellular functions. The orphan receptor
anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) is one of very few RTKs that remain without a firmly
...
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Pumilio/fem-3 mRNA binding factor (PUF) proteins bind RNA with sequence specificity
and modularity, and have become exemplary scaffolds in the reengineering of new RNA
specificities. Here, we report the in vivo RNA binding sites of wild-type (WT) and
...
Intersubunit rotation and movement of the L1 stalk, a mobile domain of the large ribosomal
subunit, have been shown to accompany the elongation cycle of translation. The initiation
phase of protein synthesis is crucial for translational control of gene ...
Photosynthesis relies on energy transfer from light-harvesting complexes to reaction
centers. Phycobilisomes, the light-harvesting antennas in cyanobacteria and red algae,
attach to the membrane via the multidomain core-membrane linker, LCM. The ...
Biophysics and Computational Biology
To dissect the kinetics of structural transitions underlying the stepping cycle of
kinesin-1 at physiological ATP, we used interferometric scattering microscopy to track
the position of gold nanoparticles attached to individual motor domains in ...
There are several sources of fluctuations in gene expression. Here we study the effects
of time-dependent DNA replication, itself a tightly controlled process, on noise in
mRNA levels. Stochastic simulations of constitutive and regulated gene expression
...
The endosomal sorting complexes required for transport (ESCRT) machinery functions
in HIV-1 budding, cytokinesis, multivesicular body biogenesis, and other pathways,
in the course of which it interacts with concave membrane necks and bud rims. To test
the ...
We surveyed the “dark” proteome–that is, regions of proteins never observed by experimental
structure determination and inaccessible to homology modeling. For 546,000 Swiss-Prot
proteins, we found that 44–54% of the proteome in eukaryotes and viruses was ...
Rheotaxis, the directed response to fluid velocity gradients, has been shown to facilitate
stable upstream swimming of mammalian sperm cells along solid surfaces, suggesting
a robust physical mechanism for long-distance navigation during fertilization. ...
Proteins need to be tightly regulated as they control biological processes in most
normal cellular functions. The precise mechanisms of regulation are rarely completely
understood but can involve binding of endogenous ligands and/or partner proteins at
...
Cell Biology
Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) activates the innate immune system of mammalian cells
and triggers intracellular RNA decay by the pseudokinase and endoribonuclease RNase
L. RNase L protects from pathogens and regulates cell growth and differentiation by
...
The outer segments of vertebrate rod photoreceptors are renewed every 10 d. Outer
segment components are transported from the site of synthesis in the inner segment
through the connecting cilium, followed by assembly of the highly ordered discs. Two
...
Developmental Biology
Congenital penile anomalies (CPAs) are among the most common human birth defects.
Reports of CPAs, which include hypospadias, chordee, micropenis, and ambiguous genitalia,
have risen sharply in recent decades, but the causes of these malformations are ...
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Preeclampsia (PE) is a pregnancy-specific disorder characterized by hypertension and
proteinuria after 20 wk gestation. Abnormal extravillous trophoblast (EVT) invasion
and remodeling of uterine spiral arterioles is thought to contribute to PE ...
Ecology
The extent to which different kinds of organisms have adapted to environmental temperature
regimes is central to understanding how they respond to climate change. The Scholander–Irving
(S-I) model of heat transfer lays the foundation for explaining how ...
Evolution
How rapidly can animal populations in the wild evolve when faced with sudden environmental
shifts? Uplift during the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake abruptly created freshwater
ponds on multiple islands in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska. In the ...
Extreme novelties in the shape and size of paired fins are exemplified by extinct
and extant cartilaginous and bony fishes. Pectoral fins of skates and rays, such as
the little skate (Batoid, Leucoraja erinacea), show a strikingly unique morphology where ...
Winged insects underwent an unparalleled evolutionary radiation, but mechanisms underlying
the origin and diversification of wings in basal insects are sparsely known compared
with more derived holometabolous insects. In the neopteran species Oncopeltus ...
Diploid organisms manipulate the extent to which their haploid gametes experience
selection. Animals typically produce sperm with a diploid complement of most proteins
and RNA, limiting selection on the haploid genotype. Plants, however, exhibit extensive
...
Microscopic mites of the genus Demodex live within the hair follicles of mammals and are ubiquitous symbionts of humans,
but little molecular work has been done to understand their genetic diversity or transmission.
Here we sampled mite DNA from 70 human ...
Genetics
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play essential, conserved roles in diverse developmental processes
through association with the miRNA-induced silencing complex (miRISC). Whereas fundamental
insights into the mechanistic framework of miRNA biogenesis and target gene ...
NK-lysin is an antimicrobial peptide and effector protein in the host innate immune
system. It is coded by a single gene in humans and most other mammalian species. In
this study, we provide evidence for the existence of four NK-lysin genes in a ...
In vitro fertilization (IVF), preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and preimplantation
genetic screening (PGS) help patients to select embryos free of monogenic diseases
and aneuploidy (chromosome abnormality). Next-generation sequencing (NGS) methods,...
Systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (sJIA) is an often severe, potentially life-threatening
childhood inflammatory disease, the pathophysiology of which is poorly understood.
To determine whether genetic variation within the MHC locus on chromosome 6 ...
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Autoinflammation and autoimmunity in systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the transfer of genes between species, has been
recognized recently as more pervasive than previously suspected. Here, we report evidence
for an unprecedented degree of HGT into an animal genome, based on a draft genome
...
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Genome of a tardigrade: Horizontal gene transfer or bacterial contamination?
No evidence for extensive horizontal gene transfer from the draft genome of a tardigrade
This article has a reply:During meiotic recombination, double-strand breaks (DSBs) are formed in chromosomal
DNA and then repaired as either crossovers (COs) or non–crossovers (NCOs). In most
taxa, the number of DSBs vastly exceeds the number of COs. COs are required for ...
Immunology and Inflammation
The aggressive activated B cell-like subtype of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma is characterized
by aberrant B-cell receptor (BCR) signaling and constitutive nuclear factor kappa-B
(NF-κB) activation, which is required for tumor cell survival. BCR-induced ...
Obesity-associated inflammation is accompanied by the accumulation of adipose tissue
macrophages (ATMs), which is believed to predispose obese individuals to insulin resistance.
CD11b (integrin αM) is highly expressed on monocytes and macrophages and is ...
Changes of histone modification status at critical lineage-specifying gene loci in
multipotent precursors can influence cell fate commitment. The contribution of these
epigenetic mechanisms to natural killer (NK) cell lineage determination from common
...
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune inflammatory disease of the central nervous
system with demyelination, axon damage, and paralysis. Induction of mixed chimerism
with allogeneic donors has been shown to not cause graft-versus-host disease (GVHD)
in ...
Inflammation is inextricably associated with primary tumor progression. However, the
contribution of inflammation to tumor outgrowth in metastatic organs has remained
underexplored. Here, we show that extrinsic inflammation in the lungs leads to the
...
Medical Sciences
Molecular chaperone Heat Shock Protein 70 (Hsp70) plays an important protective role
in various neurodegenerative disorders often associated with aging, but its activity
and availability in neuronal tissue decrease with age. Here we explored the effects
...
Microbiology
Whereas several mammalian proteins can restrict the replication of HIV-1 and other
viruses, these are often not expressed in relevant target cells. A potential method
to inhibit viral replication might therefore be to use synthetic transcription factors
...
Latent Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) infection and cellular hypermethylation are hallmarks
of undifferentiated nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). However, EBV infection of normal
oral epithelial cells is confined to differentiated cells and is lytic. Here we ...
Cells from all domains of life express glycan structures attached to lipids and proteins
on their surface, called glycoconjugates. Cell-to-cell contact mediated by glycan:glycan
interactions have been considered to be low-affinity interactions that ...
Neuroscience
The role of oscillatory phase for perceptual and cognitive processes is being increasingly
acknowledged. To date, little is known about the direct role of phase in categorical
perception. Here we show in two separate experiments that the identification of ...
Social decisions require evaluation of costs and benefits to oneself and others. Long
associated with emotion and vigilance, the amygdala has recently been implicated in
both decision-making and social behavior. The amygdala signals reward and punishment,
...
Dramatic increases in hippocampal spine synapse density are known to occur within
minutes of estrogen exposure. Until now, it has been assumed that enhanced spinogenesis
increased excitatory input received by the CA1 pyramidal neurons, but how this ...
Topographic maps and their continuity constitute a fundamental principle of brain
organization. In the somatosensory system, whole-body sensory impairment may be reflected
either in cortical signal reduction or disorganization of the somatotopic map, such
...
Hyperpolarization-activated, cyclic nucleotide-gated cation (HCN) channels are critical
regulators of neuronal excitability, but less is known about their possible roles
in synaptic plasticity and memory circuits. Here, we characterized the HCN gene ...
Columnar arrangements of neurons with similar preference have been suggested as the
fundamental processing units of the cerebral cortex. Within these columnar arrangements,
feed-forward information enters at middle cortical layers whereas feedback ...
Pharmacology
Itraconazole, a clinically used antifungal drug, was found to possess potent antiangiogenic
and anticancer activity that is unique among the azole antifungals. Previous mechanistic
studies have shown that itraconazole inhibits the mechanistic target of ...
Physiology
KCNE β-subunits assemble with and modulate the properties of voltage-gated K+ channels. In the colon, stomach, and kidney, KCNE3 coassembles with the α-subunit
KCNQ1 to form K+ channels important for K+ and Cl− secretion that appear to be voltage-...
Exercise remains the most effective way to promote physical and metabolic wellbeing,
but molecular mechanisms underlying exercise tolerance and its plasticity are only
partially understood. In this study we identify musclin—a peptide with high homology
to ...
Plant Biology
Phosphate (Pi) availability is a significant limiting factor for plant growth and
productivity in both natural and agricultural systems. To cope with such limiting
conditions, plants have evolved a myriad of developmental and biochemical strategies
to ...
We performed a screen for genetic suppressors of cobra, an Arabidopsis mutant with defects in cellulose formation and an increased ratio of unesterified/esterified
pectin. We identified a suppressor named mongoose1 (mon1) that suppressed the growth ...
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Learning the properties of an image associated with human gaze placement is important
both for understanding how biological systems explore the environment and for computer
vision applications. There is a large literature on quantitative eye movement ...
Sustainability Science
Separating myth and reality is essential for evaluating the effectiveness of laws.
Section 7 of the US Endangered Species Act (Act) directs federal agencies to help
conserve threatened and endangered species, including by consulting with the US Fish
and ...
Corrections (Online Only)
Cover image: Pictured is a snapshot of a dog lapping water, showing the backward curl of the dog's tongue and the column of water drawn up when the tongue retracts. Sean Gart et al. constructed a physical model of tongue–water interactions that occur when dogs drink. The model showed that dogs time their bite to coincide with the moment when the water column pinches off from the tongue, thus maximizing the water intake per bite. The model also suggests that curling the tongue might increase the size of the water column by increasing the surface area of the tongue in contact with the water. See the article by Gart et al. on pages 15798–15802. Image courtesy of John J. Socha, Sean Gart, and Sunghwan Jung.
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