Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Vol. 123, Issue 20 Issue 20 2026
89
Articles

Articles in this Issue

Alleviating administrative burdens in rental assistance promotes access and program efficiency

Tyler Simko, Rebecca A. Johnson May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2512756123

Applicants to government programs often face “administrative burdens” that can prevent people from accessing benefits for which they are qualified. However, it is difficult to evaluate the causal impa...

Geometric ordering in bacterial communities

Melika Gorgi, Summer J. Kasallis, Calvin Trinh et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2526643123

The organization of bacteria has a central role in shaping interactions, dynamics, and composition within communities and microbiomes. Bacteria form distinct spatial patterns that have often been attr...

Bioinspired ultrasound-driven ultrafast soft microgripper

Chengxi Zhong, Vincent Winderoll, Khemraj Gautam Kshetri et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2537655123

Understanding how acoustic waves interact with soft matter is critical for developing new strategies for dynamic control, actuation, sensors, and manipulation at small scales. A major challenge in sof...

Identification of immunostimulatory antigens in Group A <i> <i>Streptococcus</i> </i> –derived vesicles

Meztlli O. Gaytán, Rebecca S. Dookie, Sayoni Chakraborty et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2537351123

An effective vaccine against Streptococcus pyogenes (Group A Streptococcu...

NEXT-FRET maps nonequilibrium rerouting of <i>Escherichia coli</i> maltose-binding protein folding by its signal peptide and chaperones

Chara Sarafoglou, Andreas Kofidis, Marijn de Boer et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2529979123

Proteins fold through dynamic intermediates that dictate their routes to functional structures, with ensembles predominantly displaying heterogeneity across nanosecond-to-microsecond timescales. Direc...

Beyond antibodies in GAD65 autoimmunity: Reframing pathogenesis through intrathecal B–T cell cross-talk

Simon Faissner, Ralf Gold May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2609144123

Politics embodied: How politics shapes and is shaped by the bodily experience of emotions

Andrea Vik, Alejandro Galvez-Pol, Sohee Park et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2534895123

Political emotions are widely acknowledged as key drivers of political participation and polarization. Yet while it is well established that political emotions matter, far less is known about how they...

Swartkrans <i>Paranthropus</i> and Sterkfontein <i>Australopithecus</i> from southern Africa had different locomotor repertoires

Marine Cazenave, Annalisa Pietrobelli, Andrea Luková et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2532193123

Southern African hominin fossils traditionally attributed to Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus africanus are di...

Oak masting breaks down in a highly fragmented, pollen-limited landscape

Ian S. Pearse, Jill H. Baty, Mario B. Pesendorfer et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2533900123

Masting, the production of variable and synchronous seed crops, is common among wind pollinated trees, and periodic pollen limitation is thought to be an important component of the process of masting....

Correction for Asimovic et al., Testing the effects of Facebook usage in an ethnically polarized setting

May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2614308123

Global and regional climate modes modulate armed conflict risk

Tyler E. Bagwell, Sylvia G. Dee, Xinyue Luo et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2532935123

Because of their impacts on droughts, famines, and floods, modes of climate variability can shape patterns of social instability. Yet the mechanisms linking climate variability to armed conflict remai...

Peripheral complement C4 protein in schizophrenia: Association with gene copy number and immune cell subtypes

Agnieszka Kalinowski, Claudia Macaubas, Hanmin Guo et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2536376123

The lack of highly effective disease-modifying treatments for schizophrenia necessitates exploration of novel aspects of its pathophysiology, including attention to innate immune mechanisms outside th...

Deep-learning endomicroscope with large field-of-view and depth-of-field for real-time in vivo imaging of epithelial cancer hallmarks

Huayu Hou, Jimin Wu, Jinyun Liu et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2602705123

In vivo microscopy (IVM) has shown great promise to improve early detection of epithelial precancer, but it suffers from fundamental trade-offs that limit the resolution, field-of-view (FOV) and depth...

Structural and dynamic basis of indirect apoptosis inhibition by Bcl-xL: A case study with Bid

Christina Elsner, Anton Hanke, Oscar Vadas et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2527963123

Intrinsic apoptosis is a form of cell death which is activated, executed, and inhibited by the Bcl-2 protein family. The structural basis of the inhibition mechanisms remains elusive. Here, we charact...

Hard and soft power in immigration enforcement

Emily Ryo May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2609140123

Exploring entropy landscapes using hard particle Monte Carlo metadynamics

Charlotte Shiqi Zhao, Sun-Ting Tsai, Sharon C. Glotzer May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2537764123

For more than two decades, metadynamics has been a powerful tool for improving the sampling of rare events and metastable states in molecular systems. It has been sparingly used, however, to study the...

Chaperone-mediated autophagy protects against retinal photoreceptor degeneration by modulating proteostasis of glucose metabolism enzymes

Raquel Gómez-Sintes, Inmaculada Tasset, Ignacio Ramírez-Pardo et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2527503123

Defective proteostasis is a hallmark of aging cells and tissues. Among the different components of the proteostasis network, in this study, we focus on a selective form of autophagy known as chaperone...

Energetic interactions of water around ions determine transport properties of electrolyte solutions

Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2611092123

Observing the mechanism of delayed collapse in colloidal gels: Yielding while becoming stronger

Rui Cheng, Malcolm A. Faers, Francesco Turci et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2528499123

The delayed collapse of colloidal gels is a vexing problem. Although the equilibrium behavior of colloid-polymer mixtures is well understood, that of far-from-equilibrium gels is surprisingly complex....

Refining the mechanism of heme acquisition from free hemoglobin by <i> <i>Staphylococcus aureus</i> </i> IsdH

Valeria Buoli Comani, Omar De Bei, Giulia Paris et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2601134123

Staphylococcus aureus is a human pathogen whose virulence depends on iron acquisition. The bacterium expresses the hemophores IsdB and IsdH that enable heme ca...

Reply to Zhang: Causal identification, social networks, and biological aging

Byungkyu Lee, Gabriele Ciciurkaite, Siyun Peng et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2611082123

Correction for Kuhlisch et al., Mapping of the viral shunt across widespread coccolithophore blooms using metabolic biomarkers

May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2614660123

A multinational megastudy of the effects of gratitude practices on subjective well-being

Nicholas A. Coles, Annabel V. Dang, Shigehiro Oishi et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2537789123

Scholars have observed people from a variety of cultures using a variety of gratitude-related practices to change their emotions, outlooks, and social relationships. Across 34 countries purposively sa...

Synovial fibroblasts modulate endothelial activation in an acute injury-on-a-chip model

Hannah M. Zlotnick, Declan N. Goddard, Christopher J. Calo et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2524677123

Most patients who sustain an acute joint injury develop degenerative joint disease or osteoarthritis (OA). Animal models have informed the design of OA therapeutics; however, no disease-modifying ther...

Anoxic photo-oxidation of Mn(II)-bearing carbonates on Mars and early Earth

Jiye Guo, Yuke Zhu, Nicholas J. Tosca et al. May 19, 2026 10.1073/pnas.2607260123

Manganese oxides, thought to form almost exclusively through reactions between Mn 2+ and O 2 , catalyze oxidative transf...

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Journal Info

Publisher National Academy of Sciences
ISSN 0027-8424
E-ISSN 1091-6490
Subject Life Sciences
Language English
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