Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Articles in this Issue
Water-directed pinning is key to tau prion formation
Tau forms fibrillar aggregates that are pathological hallmarks of a family of neurodegenerative diseases known as tauopathies. The synthetic replication of disease-specific fibril structures is a crit...
Ultrasound-activated cilia for biofilm control in indwelling medical devices
Biofilm formation and encrustation are major issues in indwelling medical devices, such as urinary stents and catheters, as they lead to blockages and infections. Currently, to limit these effects, fr...
Inhaled <i>DNAI1</i> mRNA therapy for treatment of primary ciliary dyskinesia
Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in one of at least 50 different genes that encode proteins involved in the biogenesis, structure, or function of...
Exposing the role of individual heterogeneity in bighorn sheep population dynamics
RAD52’s active form is not a ring
A hierarchy of processing complexity and timescales for natural sounds in the human auditory cortex
Efficient behavior is supported by humans’ ability to rapidly recognize acoustically distinct sounds as members of a common category. Within the auditory cortex, critical unanswered questions remain r...
Gag proteins encoded by endogenous retroviruses are required for zebrafish development
Transposable elements (TEs) make up the bulk of eukaryotic genomes and examples abound of TE-derived sequences repurposed for organismal function. The process by which TEs become coopted remains obscu...
Exposure and health risks of livestock air resistomes
Most of the global antibiotic consumption is by the livestock industry, making livestock farms a hotspot of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Farm air poses direct ARG exposure to workers, but the h...
Integrating single-cell data with biological variables
Constructing single-cell atlases requires preserving differences attributable to biological variables, such as cell types, tissue origins, and disease states, while eliminating batch effects. However,...
Radiation protection and structural stability of fungal melanin polylactic acid biocomposites in low Earth orbit
Materials in low Earth orbit (LEO) face radiation, atomic oxygen erosion, and extreme temperature fluctuations, which can severely compromise their structural and functional integrity. Developing ligh...
Mass-independent fractionation of oxygen isotopes during high-temperature condensation in cosmochemical plasmas
Contrary to all terrestrial rocks, planets and meteorites exhibit oxygen isotope variations decorrelated with the mass difference of their atomic nuclei. It has been proposed that, in the protosolar n...
Design and structural basis of selective 1,4-dihydropyridine inhibitors of the calcium-activated potassium channel K <sub>Ca</sub> 3.1
The 1,4-dihydropyridines, drugs with well-established bioavailability and toxicity profiles, have proven efficacy in treating human hypertension, peripheral vascular disorders, and coronary artery dis...
Increased flood exposure in the Pacific Northwest following earthquake-driven subsidence and sea-level rise
Climate-driven sea-level rise is increasing the frequency of coastal flooding worldwide, exacerbated locally by factors like land subsidence from groundwater and resource extraction. However, a proces...
Popping the hood of muscle motors using time-resolved, small-angle X-ray diffraction
Anatomy of the magmatic–hydrothermal system beneath Uturuncu volcano, Bolivia, by joint seismological and petrophysical analysis
For a volcanic system, evaluating potential eruption probability requires understanding the extent of melt and gas accumulation in the upper crustal reservoir, which is challenging to resolve. Here, w...
Five-body recombination of identical bosons
This work treats resonant collisions between five identical ultracold bosons in the framework of the adiabatic hyperspherical representation. The five-body recombination rate coefficient is quantified...
Horizontal transfer of nuclear DNA in transmissible cancer
Horizontal transfer of nuclear DNA between cells of host and cancer is a potential source of adaptive variation in cancer cells. An understanding of the frequency and significance of this process in n...
Unbalanced social–ecological acceleration led to state formation failure in early medieval Poland
Rapid social–ecological intensification is a recurrent feature of human history. It occurred in different forms and contexts; its outcomes may have been sustainable or transient. Until recently, such...
Four-million-year Marinoan snowball shows multiple routes to deglaciation
Twice during the Neoproterozoic Era, Earth experienced runaway ice-albedo catastrophes that resulted in multimillion year, low-latitude glaciations: the Sturtian and Marinoan snowball Earths. In the s...
Multiple sclerosis and gut microbiota: Lachnospiraceae from the ileum of MS twins trigger MS-like disease in germfree transgenic mice—An unbiased functional study
We developed a two-tiered strategy aiming to identify gut bacteria functionally linked to the development of multiple sclerosis (MS). First, we compared gut microbial profiles in a cohort of 81 monozy...
Thermodynamic consistency of autocatalytic cycles
Autocatalysis is seen as a potential key player in the origin of life, and perhaps more generally in the emergence of Darwinian dynamics. Building on recent formalizations of this phenomenon, we tackl...
Accurate identification and mechanistic evaluation of pathogenic missense variants with <i>Rhapsody-2</i>
Understanding the effects of missense mutations or single amino acid variants (SAVs) on protein function is crucial for elucidating the molecular basis of diseases/disorders and designing rational the...
Using pledges to improve the effectiveness of environmental information campaigns: The case of biowaste recycling
Through a field study (N = 1,519) that uses a technology to record real-time data on waste sorting, we find that offering the opportunity to sign a pledge increases the effectiveness of an environment...
Understanding TAK1 deficiency in microglia: Dual mechanisms for photoreceptor protection in a mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa
Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a group of inherited retinal diseases characterized by the progressive loss of photoreceptors. Neuroinflammation has been implicated in the pathophysiology of RP and its p...
Scattering diagrams, tight gradings, and generalized positivity
In 2013, Lee, Li, and Zelevinsky introduced combinatorial objects called compatible pairs to construct the greedy bases for rank-2 cluster algebras, consisting of indecomposable positive elements incl...