Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Articles in this Issue
Ultradian rhythms of CRH <sup>PVN</sup> neuron activity, behavior, and stress hormone secretion
The stress axis is always active, even in the absence of any threat. This manifests as hourly pulses of corticosteroid stress hormone secretion over the day. Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) neur...
Absence of phonon softening across a charge density wave transition due to quantum fluctuations
Kagome metals have emerged as a frontier in condensed matter physics due to their potential to host exotic quantum states. Among these, CsV 3 Sb...
Revisiting the Eoarchean Akilia quartz-pyroxene rock with potassium isotopes: Implications for early-ocean sedimentation
The Eoarchean quartz-pyroxene rock from Akilia Island in Greenland has been proposed as one of Earth’s oldest banded iron formations (BIF) and a potential host for the earliest biosignatures. However,...
Casimir self-assembly: A platform for measuring nanoscale surface interactions in liquids
Self-assembly (SA) plays a pivotal role in nanotechnology, offering cost-effective methods for bottom–up fabrication and providing versatile model systems for investigating fundamental interactions in...
A bacteria-based search for drugs against avian and swine flu yields a potent and resistance-resilient channel blocker
Influenza represents a significant threat with seasonal epidemics that can transition to global pandemics, and cross-species infection presenting a continuous challenge. While vaccines and several ant...
A minimal model of panimmunity maintenance by horizontal gene transfer in the ecological dynamics of bacteria and phages
Bacteria and phages have been in an ongoing arms race for billions of years. To resist phages bacteria have evolved numerous defense systems, which nevertheless are still overcome by counterdefense me...
Orexin effect on physiological pulsations of the human brain
Sleep promotes cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to interstitial fluid (ISF) exchange in the brain facilitated by brain pulsations. Especially brain vasomotion and arterial pulsations modulated by noradrenali...
SCoTCH-seq reveals that 5-hydroxymethylcytosine encodes regulatory information across DNA strands
In mammalian genomes, cytosine modifications form a layer of regulatory information alongside the genetic code. Decoding this information is crucial to our understanding of biology and disease. Establ...
Foraging ants as liquid brains: Movement heterogeneity shapes collective efficiency
Liquid brains conceptualize living systems that operate without central control, where collective outcomes emerge from local and dynamic interactions. This concept extends beyond ants and other social...
In situ cryo-ET visualization of mitochondrial depolarization and mitophagic engulfment
Defective mitochondrial quality control in response to loss of mitochondrial membrane polarization is implicated in Parkinson’s disease by mutations in PINK1 an...
Physics-tailored machine learning reveals unexpected physics in dusty plasmas
Dusty plasma is a mixture of ions, electrons, and macroscopic charged particles that is commonly found in space and planetary environments. The particles interact through Coulomb forces mediated by th...
Data-driven equation discovery reveals nonlinear reinforcement learning in humans
Computational models of reinforcement learning (RL) have significantly contributed to our understanding of human behavior and decision-making. Traditional RL models, however, often adopt a linear appr...
Serum metabolic patterns reveal the diagnostic and prognostic role of alanine abnormality in ocular adnexal lymphoma
Ocular adnexal lymphoma (OAL) is the most common orbital malignancy in adults. Advanced tools for precise diagnosis and prognosis of OAL are in demand. Here, the nanoparticle-enhanced laser desorption...
How cancer arises: Genetics releases, plasticity creates, genetics stabilizes
Cancer is the origin of a novel tissue that attracts resources, spreads beyond boundaries, avoids normal controls, and escapes immunity. How does a novel tissue arise? The puzzle is that two seemingly...
Neuronal processes contain the essential components for the late steps of ribosome biogenesis
Neurons rely on spatial and temporal control of protein synthesis to respond rapidly and locally to external stimuli, a process facilitated by the dynamic localization and modification of ribosomes. W...
Six million years of vole dental evolution shaped by tooth development
Morphological change occurs over macroevolutionary timescales under the action of natural selection and genetic drift combined with developmental processes shaping organogenesis. Although determining...
SMARCA5 restricts chromatin accessibility to promote male meiosis and fertility in mammals
Establishment of correct chromatin configuration in male meiosis is essential for sperm formation and male fertility. However, how chromatin remodeling contributes to meiotic progression in male germ...
Actions of the antiseizure drug carbamazepine in the thalamic reticular nucleus: Potential mechanism of aggravating absence seizures
Carbamazepine (CBZ) is a widely used antiepileptic drug effective in managing partial and generalized tonic-clonic seizures. Despite its established therapeutic efficacy, CBZ has been reported to wors...
Active bacterial baths in droplets
Suspensions of self-propelled objects represent a novel paradigm in colloidal science. In such “active baths,” traditional concepts such as Brownian motion, fluctuation–dissipation relations, and work...
Lysosomal glucocerebrosidase is needed for ciliary Hedgehog signaling: A convergent pathway contributing to Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease is characterized by loss of dopamine neurons that project to the dorsal striatum, and mutations in LRRK2 and GBA1...
Trauma-predictive brain network connectivity adaptively responds to mild acute stress
Past traumatic experiences shape neural responses to future stress, but the mechanisms underlying this dynamic interaction remain unclear. Here, we assessed how trauma-related brain networks respond t...
Identification of an on-pathway intermediate illuminates the kinetic competition between protein folding and misfolding
Our current understanding of protein folding is based predominantly on studies of small (<150 aa) proteins that refold reversibly from a chemically denatured state. However, as protein length incre...
Generation of actionable, cancer-specific neoantigens from KRAS(G12C) with adagrasib
Effective immune therapy against cancer ideally should target a cancer-specific antigen, an antigen that is present exclusively in cancer cells. However, there is a paucity of cancer-specific antigens...
C11orf54 catalyzes L-xylulose formation in human metabolism
Excretion of L-xylulose is the hallmark of pentosuria, the fourth of Garrod’s inborn errors of metabolism, yet the molecular basis for L-xylulose formation remains unknown. Here, by projecting coevolu...
<i>DICER-LIKE 5</i> loss causes thermosensitive male sterility in durum wheat and reveals an AU-rich motif guiding 24-nt phasiRNA biogenesis
Reproductive, male-enriched small RNAs are present in flowering plants and animals, yet their role in plants remains underexplored. We generated dicer-like 5 (...