Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Articles in this Issue
Reply to Borst et al.: Acupuncture and the placebo effect
A predisposing effect of HLA class II genes in celiac disease by skewing the naive CD4 <sup>+</sup> T cell receptor repertoire
Polymorphisms of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes confer risks for human diseases. Predisposing effects related to T cell receptor (TCR) recognition of peptide–HLA can be selection of TCR repertoir...
Wave propagation in fluid-saturated nanoporous media: Upscaling molecular mechanics into continuum-level description
Understanding how mechanical, thermodynamic, and acoustic properties emerge in fluid-saturated nanoporous materials remains a major challenge due to the breakdown of classical continuum assumptions at...
Biophysical fitness landscape design traps viral evolution
Evolutionary adaptation is often visualized as a population’s stochastic climb toward the top of a fitness landscape. While there exist approaches to design or synthetically evolve proteins into desir...
Cryo-EM of the eukaryotic purine transporter UapA demonstrates intramolecular and lipid regulation of transport
Members of the nucleobase ascorbate transporter (NAT) family (SLC23) are elevator-type transporters that are responsible for the uptake of nucleobases and ascorbate. In fungi, NAT members are also res...
Knotted solid tori in contact manifolds
In this paper, we study solid tori in contact manifolds. Specifically, we study the contact width of a knot type and give criteria for when it can be explicitly computed. We also prove there are many...
Collagen-producing eye cell atlas reveals distinct fibroblast fates in early injury vs. fibrotic subretinal disease
Fibrosis is the end-stage of a maladaptive process that occurs when the body’s normal wound-healing strategy becomes dysregulated. Subretinal fibrosis is the end stage of neovascular age-related macul...
Exploring memory effects: Sparse identification in vector-borne diseases
Predicting the human burden of vector-borne diseases from limited surveillance data remains a major challenge, particularly in the presence of nonlinear transmission dynamics and delayed effects arisi...
On the origin of PRDM9-guided recombination hotspots
Meiotic recombination is highly conserved across vertebrates and plays an essential role in ensuring chromosomal segmentation and generating genomic variation. However, species employ two strikingly d...
Rheologic controls on the depth dependence of megathrust earthquakes
The various slip behaviors of the subduction megathrust fault, including deadly megathrust earthquakes, are depth-dependent. Yet, we do not know what causes this depth dependence, in part due to varia...
HDAC inhibition sensitizes pancreatic tumors to DNA damage by global redistribution of the transcriptional machinery
The DNA damage response (DDR) is critical for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) development and therapeutic responses, including to genotoxic agents. While epigenetic modulators have been shown...
Large cities lose their growth advantage as countries urbanize
The share of the world population living in cities with more than one million people rose from 11% in 1975 to 24% in 2025 (our estimates). Will this trend toward greater concentration in large cities...
Chemical ecology and convergent evolution of natural hallucinogens: From ecological defense to conserved neural targets
Natural hallucinogenic compounds have arisen independently across plants, fungi, and animals, evolving into a diverse chemical arsenal that includes phenethylamines, indolealkylamines, and terpenoid s...
Temperature and developmental stage govern intestinal susceptibility to human coronavirus 229E
Human coronaviruses have been primarily associated with upper respiratory tract infections, yet cases of gastrointestinal symptoms in COVID-19 patients have highlighted their potential to cause system...
Profile of John P. Smol
John P. Smol has spent more than four decades demonstrating how lake sediment cores can reveal environmental changes spanning decades to centuries. His pioneering work established paleolimnology as a...
A potential overestimation of CO <sub>2</sub> physiological effects on evapotranspiration
It is generally believed that CO 2 physiological forcing can partially mitigate land surface drying under global warming by reducing stomatal conductance and ev...
Adaptive mechanochemical mechanisms of the nucleus during confined cell migration
Cell migration through spatially confined microenvironments occurs in many biological processes such as embryonic development, immune surveillance, and cancer metastasis. A major bottleneck during suc...
A receptor-like mechanosensitive protein governs preprophase band positioning for asymmetric cell divisions and SC morphogenesis
Asymmetric cell division underpins cellular diversity in multicellular plants. These divisions are mechanosensitive, and preprophase band (PPB) formation hinges on cell-wall mechanical properties in p...
GAS6 regulates mucosal langerhans cell homeostasis through cell-intrinsic and niche-dependent mechanisms
Barrier tissues with stratified epithelia rely on Langerhans cells (LCs) to maintain immune surveillance. While TAM signaling regulates skin LC homeostasis, its role in mucosal LC development remains...
Correction for McWilliams, There is no horizontal gravity force in geopotential coordinates
Resource declines shape phenological and morphological responses to climate change
Biodiversity is declining, with cascading effects of defaunation expected across trophic levels. Widespread population declines may drive general biotic responses to global change and determine their...
Identification of a master regulator Msd1 that governs meiotic entry in a global basidiomycete pathogen
Meiosis is a hallmark of sexual reproduction. Although the core meiotic machinery is evolutionarily conserved from unicellular yeasts to Metazoan, the key regulators responsible for initiating meiosis...
Extra gene coding capacity of SARS-CoV-2 provides a virus engineering platform for in vitro and in vivo applications
The genomic flexibility of orthocoronaviruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is showcased by the presence of accessory genes, which vary in number among virus...
Sex differences in <i>Drosophila</i> intestinal metabolism contribute to sexually dimorphic infection outcome and alter gut pathogen virulence
Sexual dimorphism in infection outcomes is widespread, yet its underlying mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Utilizing Pseudomonas...
Antonio García-Bellido: A brief history of flies, lineages, and a new developmental genetic logic
Antonio García-Bellido was a pioneer of developmental biology in Spain who had the rare ability to see beyond the trees and grasp not just the forest, but entire landscapes. Intellectually and persona...