Following the late 2022 transition from its “dynamic zero-COVID” policy, China experienced a major nationwide severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron wave. To characterize the wave’s transmission dynamics, we used a Bayesian ...
Inference of Ancestral Recombination Graphs (ARGs) is of central interest in the analysis of genomic variation. ARGs can be specified in terms of topologies and coalescence times. The coalescence times are usually estimated using an informative prior ...
Balancing efficiency and flexibility in collective decision-making is increasingly critical in modern societies characterized by rapid sociocultural and technological change. Recent research in cognitive neuroscience has proposed two contrasting ...
The dynamic organization of chromatin governs gene expression by regulating DNA accessibility. In plants, light not only initiates photomorphogenesis but also reshapes higher-order chromatin architecture. However, the limited resolution of current ...
LAZY proteins function early in the process of orienting growth of land plants with respect to the gravity vector (gravitropism). InArabidopsis, an oppositely oriented and LAZY-independent form of gravitropism causes the inflorescence stems of alazy...
Perennial plants, such as trees native to temperate and boreal regions, exhibit meristems that undergo annual cycles of activity and rest to synchronize their growth cycles with seasonal changes, ensuring survival under harsh winter conditions. The arrest ...
The rate and spectrum of somatic mutations can diverge from that of germline mutations. This is because somatic tissues experience different mutagenic processes than germline tissues. Here, we use nanorate sequencing (NanoSeq) to identify somatic ...
Guanosine triphosphate (GTP)-hydrolyzing enzyme (GTPase) activating proteins (GAPs) negatively regulate small GTPase-mediated signaling by enhancing GTP to guanosine diphosphate (GDP) hydrolysis. The Rho small GTPase Of Plants (ROP) signaling pathway ...
In nature, plants cope with various pathogens that compete for cellular resources during infection. It has long been suggested that plant defense activity must be linked to cellular energy and metabolic states to optimize the balance between growth and ...
The timing and quality of sleep is regulated by circadian- and sleep–wake-driven processes. The core clock geneBmal1not only affects the circadian timing of sleep, but also the response to sleep deprivation (SD), which, in turn, causes long-term changes ...
Synapses must be resilient to the challenges they confront during development, experience, disease, and aging. A conserved form of adaptive plasticity, observed at the glutamatergicDrosophilaneuromuscular junction (NMJ), is expressed following acute ...
Growth hormone (GH) is a key systemic regulator of longitudinal bone growth and is widely used in pediatric endocrinology, including in patients without GH deficiency. Its primary target is the growth plate—a cartilaginous structure driving bone ...
The decisional reference point serves as a hidden benchmark for evaluating options in decision-making. Despite extensive behavioral evidence for the existence of the reference point, its neural instantiation remains unclear. To identify reference point ...
Long-range cerebellar outputs are critical for shaping brain-wide functional architecture, influencing motor, cognitive, and affective domains. Proper cerebellar development and its efferent circuits are essential for brain maturation, and disruptions in ...
Long-term memory (LTM) formation requires precise gene regulation, yet the role of redox activity in this process remains poorly understood. Here, we identifyDrosophilarecombination repair protein 1 (Rrp1), a homolog of human apurinic/apyrimidinic ...
Sensory stimuli vary across a variety of dimensions, like contrast, orientation, or texture. The brain must rely on population representations to distinguish changes in one dimension from changes in another. To understand how the visual system might ...
Glycine transporter 2 (GlyT2) regulates inhibitory glycinergic neurotransmission, and its inhibition potentiates glycinergic signaling, which is a promising strategy for managing neuropathic pain. This study presents high-resolution structures of GlyT2 in ...
Studies have implicated perturbations in the postnatal development of the gut microbiome as a contributing factor to childhood undernutrition. Compared to a standard ready-to-use supplementary food, a microbiome-directed complementary food (MDCF-2) ...
The developing brain undergoes neuroplasticity driven by learning, experience, and memory formation. The axon initial segment (AIS) is a specialized membrane domain within the proximal axon that initiates action potential. Studies have demonstrated that ...
Liver abscesses caused by hypervirulentKlebsiella pneumoniae(hvKp) can lead to severe metastatic complications, with mortality rates ranging from 5 to 40%. Even in the absence of antibiotic resistance, hvKp liver abscesses often respond poorly to ...
Bacteriophages are bacterial viruses that provide alternatives to small-molecule drugs to combat infections by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. To infect a bacterial host, a phage needs to bind to the bacterial surface via receptor binding proteins (RBPs), ...
Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) disrupts the inner nuclear Lamin A/C meshwork to facilitate virion egress. Here, we show that targeting Lamin A/C also plays a previously unrecognized role in HCMV-induced rewiring of cytoskeletal connections that control ...
Coronaviruses rely on intricate interactions with host proteins to create an environment conducive to their replication and survival. The 3CL protease of coronavirus acts as a key mediator, serving a dual role in cleaving viral polyproteins to produce ...
Our previous demonstration that replacement of murine cellular prion protein (PrPC) expression with elk or deer PrPCeliminated the resistance of mice to chronic wasting disease (CWD) prions from deer, elk, and other cervids highlighted the importance of ...
Although prenatal exposure to famine is known to increase the risk of various noncommunicable conditions, its effects on infectious diseases remain poorly understood. We examined the effect of prenatal exposure to the Great Chinese Famine on risks for 11 ...
The activation of blood monocytes and the infiltration of monocyte-derived macrophages into the vessel walls are the central part of atherosclerosis. However, the mechanisms underlying the processes remain unclear. Here, we report that G-protein signaling ...
Novel technologies are required to improve endometrial cancer diagnosis and enhance the early detection of preinvasive precursors. Herein, desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry imaging (DESI-MSI) was used to differentiate malignant from ...
Ubiquitin-specific peptidase 1 (USP1) plays a critical role in the progression and chemoresistance of various cancers, making USP1 inhibitors a promising therapeutic option in cancer treatment. However, the role of USP1 in peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL)...
Mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue threaten billions of people and cause the death of hundreds of thousands annually. Recent studies have revealed that many mosquito species regularly engage in high-altitude wind-borne migration, but its ...
The browning of white adipose tissue (WAT) enhances thermogenesis and holds great potential in obesity treatment. Membrane receptors have been proven as essential factors during WAT browning. In this study, we found that transmembrane receptor ...
Spontaneous preterm birth (SPTB) and gestational choriocarcinoma are both associated with complex physiological processes that significantly impact maternal health. While the molecular mechanisms underlying SPTB and gestational choriocarcinoma remain ...
CD8+T cell differentiation has been associated with changes in the expression of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). Yet, which and how lncRNAs regulate CD8+T cell responses following infection in vivo remains incompletely understood. We performed deep RNA-...
Multipotent progenitors (MPP) are the quantitative source of native hematopoiesis that have been thought to be replenished slowly by hematopoietic stem cells (HSC). However, recent fate mapping studies have revealed two developmentally distinct ...
All vertebrate adaptive immune systems exhibit distinct lymphocyte lineages. In jawless vertebrates, such as lampreys, T-like cells are thought to develop in lympho-epithelial structures at the tips of gill filaments, termed thymoids. However, it is ...
Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF), which is catalyzed by a large nitrogenase enzyme complex, has evolved in both bacteria and archaea. Indeed, nitrogen-fixing species are found in diverse living environments, and BNF has evolved even in aerobic bacteria, ...
Despite safety concerns regarding the toxicity of tattoo ink, no studies have reported the consequences of tattooing on the immune response. In this work, we have characterized the transport and accumulation of different tattoo inks in the lymphatic ...
Most biological populations are rich in diversity, and negative frequency-dependent (NFD) selection is a well-known mechanism thought to underlie this stable coexistence of multiple variants. Recent studies confirm its widespread presence at local spatial ...
The estimation of natural selection is used to understand ecological and evolutionary processes in wild populations and is often used to predict change. However, the direct application of quantitative genetic methods, originally developed in animal ...
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) form symbiotic relationships with roots of most terrestrial plants, playing a crucial role in regulating soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics. While precipitation increase (Pi) is a major facet of climate change, its ...
Microbial necromass carbon (MNC) constitutes a critical component of soil organic carbon. Yet, how MNC regulates microbial arsenic (As) methylation processes in soil remains unclear. Across major Chinese rice-growing regions, bacterial and fungal ...
Identifying progenitor cells in laryngeal and vocal fold (VF) mucosa is essential for advancing stem cell–based therapies for VF diseases. In this study, we usedLrig1(leucine-rich repeats and immunoglobulin-like domains 1) gene to label tissue-resident ...
CO2fertilization of the terrestrial biosphere is limited by nitrogen. Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is the dominant natural nitrogen source to the terrestrial biosphere and can alleviate nitrogen limitation but is poorly constrained in Earth system ...
Mitochondrial plasticity, coordinated by fission and fusion, is crucial to ensure cellular functions. Mitochondrial fission is mediated by the GTPase Drp1 at the constriction site, which is proposed to be driven by the actin–myosin contractile force. ...
The trophectoderm (TE), the first lineage specified during mammalian development, initiates implantation and gives rise to placental trophoblasts. While animal models have elucidated key conserved signaling pathways involved in early TE specification, ...
Pathogenic variants in the mitochondrial outer membrane GTPase MFN2 cause the peripheral neuropathy Charcot–Marie–Tooth type 2A (CMT2A). These mutations can disrupt MFN2-dependent regulation of diverse aspects of mitochondrial biology including organelle ...
Membrane fusion, the culmination of eukaryotic membrane trafficking, is orchestrated by the exocyst complex (a conserved octamer comprising SC1 and SC2 heterotetramers) and sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) complexes. Althoughtrans-...
The solute carrier (SLC)29A3 exports nucleosides from lysosomes into the cytosol, maintaining solute homeostasis and providing metabolic intermediates for cellular processes. Loss-of-function mutations in SLC29A3 cause H syndrome, characterized by ...
Skeletal muscle is essential for movement, respiration, and metabolism, with mTORC1 acting as a key regulator of protein synthesis and degradation. In aging muscle, mTORC1 becomes overactivated, contributing to sarcopenia, though the mechanisms remain ...
Adhesion G protein–coupled receptors (aGPCRs) transduce extracellular adhesion events into cytoplasmic signaling pathways. ADGRG6/GPR126 is an aGPCR critical for axon myelination, heart development, and ear development; ADGRG6 is also associated with ...
Cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) structures of multiprotein complexes such as actin filaments help explain the mechanisms of assembly and interactions with partner proteins. Yet, rapid cooling during freezing may not preserve the conformations at ...
Immunogenic cell death (ICD) enhances antitumor immunity by releasing tumor-associated antigens and activating the antitumor immune system response. Here, we develop a mathematical model to quantify the role of ICD in optimizing the efficacy of combined ...
The flexibility of tethered molecules, such as those bound to biological membranes, is an important property that can influence molecular height, mobility, and accessibility. However, quantifying the flexibility of surface-tethered biomolecules in aqueous ...
Fusidic acid (FA) is one of few remaining antibiotics active against Methicillin-resistantStaphylococcus aureus. FusB confers resistance to FA by rescuing the translocation factor Elongation Factor-G (EF-G) from FA-stalled ribosome complexes. FusB ...
Despite an evolutionary separation of over 300 Mya, there are no amino acid substitutions in certain actin isoforms from reptiles to mammals. What divergence that does exist between different actin isoforms is primarily tissue–specific, rather than ...
Octocorals are the major source of marine-derived bioactive terpenoids. However, the vast majority of explored chemistry is known from shallow-water species, leaving deep-sea octocorals largely unexplored. Recent genomic work uncovered terpene ...
Bridge-like lipid transfer proteins (BLTPs) are established to function in phospholipid transport between bilayers at organelle–organelle contact sites. However, the BLTP ATG2A also associates with lipid droplets in cells, which present a unique ...
The emerging strategy of protein–drug conjugates (PDCs) for targeted cancer therapy holds great potential to improve treatment efficacy by specifically targeting cancer biomarkers and delivering toxic payloads directly to tumor cells, minimizing off-...
Nearly all biological processes depend on protein–protein interactions (PPIs). While various methods exist to study these interactions, investigating those that involve nuclear proteins, including structurally complex proteins containing long disordered ...
Pyruvate kinase (PK) is a crucial glycolytic protein involved in vital cellular processes ranging from cell proliferation to immune responses. The activity and functions of PK are tightly regulated by diverse mechanisms, including posttranslational Nϵ-...
Plastic ingestion has been documented in nearly 1,300 marine species, including every seabird family, marine mammal family, and sea turtle species. Acute mortality, due to obstruction, perforation, or torsion of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, has been ...
Fusariumwilt, caused byFusarium oxysporumf. sp.cubensetropical race 4 (TR4), poses a severe threat to global banana production. Developing TR4-resistant banana cultivars has been challenging due to triploidy and sterility. Nevertheless, several ...
The nose of Neanderthals and its possible adaptation to harsh climatic conditions is a longstanding matter of debate in paleoanthropology. Here, we present and describe the complete inner nasal structures of the early Neanderthal skeleton from Altamura, ...
Violent sentiment is deeply tied to racial threat from the changing racial demography of the United States. Extending the historical idea of White flight, we find shifting local racial demographic conditions in tandem with a simple prime of national ...
Although messenger RNA (mRNA) technology revolutionized vaccine creation, its use is threatened by unwarranted fear that DNA left over from the vaccine manufacturing process could integrate into recipients’ DNA, increasing cancer and heritable risks. ...
Using data on millions of internal US migrants, we document that historical homicide rates follow migrants around the United States. Individuals born in historically safe states remain safer wherever they go, while individuals born in historically ...
The Roman Empire dominated large parts of western and central Europe for over half a millennium, leaving a lasting cultural imprint on the continent. In the densely forested regions north of the Alps, material culture was characterized by the use of wood ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for accurate epidemic forecasting to predict pathogen spread, evolution, and evaluate intervention strategies. Forecast reliability hinges on detailed knowledge of disease transmission across population ...
In quantum materials, charge orders typically stabilize in specific crystallographic orientations, though their formation mechanisms may vary. Here, using low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy, we find a lattice-decoupled rotatable stripe-like ...
Infinite-layer nickelates present a new family of potential unconventional superconductors. A key open question is the superconducting pairing symmetry. We present low-temperature measurements of the magnetic penetration depth in optimally doped La0.8Sr...
Magnons carrying intrinsic orbital angular momentum (OAM) hold great potential for orbitronics, optics, and communications, but the generation of such magnons poses great challenges. In this work, we propose that magnons with intrinsic OAM can be induced ...
Global warming is projected to accelerate ecosystem nitrogen (N) loss via gaseous pathways, thereby decreasing N availability, a critical nutrient for primary productivity and carbon sequestration. However, the models forecasting this ecosystem N loss are ...
Self-assembly processes in biological and synthetic biomolecular systems are often governed by the spatial separation of biochemical processes. While previous work has focused on optimizing self-assembly through fine-tuned reaction parameters or using ...
Fabricating materials within optically opaque structures, such as biological tissue, is a considerable challenge. Recently, ultrasound-based printing (“sonoprinting”) approaches have emerged as a promising strategy to address this challenge. However, an ...
Light-field microscopy (LFM) enables high-throughput functional imaging by scanlessly encoding entire volumes in single snapshots. However, LFM’s computational burden and vulnerability to scattering limit its application to biological imaging. We present ...
The marine biological carbon pump is driven by sinking particulate organic matter (POM). Sinking speed and remineralization rate determine flux attenuation in the mesopelagic. Since the fate of all marine organic matter is either complete remineralization ...
The contribution of Thwaites Glacier, Antarctica, to sea level rise is influenced by how quickly warm salty seawater of Circumpolar Deep Water origin melts basal ice near its grounding line. Satellite observations reveal tidally forced kilometer-scale ...
Given the large amplitude of prograde annual polar motion, we are able to quantify year-to-year variability of prograde annual excitation amplitude since pre-1900 observations. We obtain a Prograde Annual Amplitude Modulation (PAAM) time series and use it ...
Large, continental-scale drainage systems occupy nearly half of Earth’s land, shaping diverse ecosystems, with their activity primarily driven by climate and tectonism. Here, we investigate whether Mars, which lacks Earth’s tectonism, has similarly large ...
The tropical climate variability is characterized by various oscillations across a range of timescales. Oscillations that imprint the tropical mean state are generally attributed to slow processes, such as the seasonal cycle or interannual variability. ...
Subjective well-being is central to economic, medical, and policy decision-making. We evaluate whether large language models (LLMs) can provide valid predictions of well-being across global populations. Using natural-language profiles from 64,000 ...
Ozone plays a key role in both atmospheric and near-surface chemistry, as well as in UV absorption in planetary atmospheres. Here, we report observations of ozone from the surface of another planet, using the ozone detector included in the Mars ...
Deploying motile nanosized particles, also known as “nanobots,” in the human body promises to improve selectivity in drug delivery and reduce side effects. We consider a swarm of nanobots locating a single cancerous region and treating it by releasing an ...
High-harmonic generation (HHG) has been established as a powerful tool for studying structure and dynamics of quantum systems in gas and solid phases. To date, only a few studies have extended HHG spectroscopy to liquids, and much remains unresolved ...
Protein misfolding plays a central role in diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, type 2 diabetes, and transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTR), often driven by specific aggregation-prone segments such as Aβ17–23and Aβ37–42of amyloid-β42 (Aβ...
Qualitative and quantitative orbital properties such as bonding/antibonding character, localization, and orbital energies are critical to how chemists understand reactivity, catalysis, and excited-state behavior. Despite this, representations of orbitals ...
Cryoelectron tomography (cryo-ET) enables three-dimensional visualization of molecular structures within tissue and intact cells, providing a powerful tool for studying the spatial organization of biological components at nanometer resolution. Realizing ...
The plant hormone gibberellin (GA4) regulates numerous developmental processes. Within the root, GA4controls growth, in part, by controlling the extent of cell elongation. The nlsGPS1 FRET biosensor revealed a GA4gradient within theArabidopsisroot ...
To migrate efficiently through tissues, cells must transit through small constrictions within the extracellular matrix. However, in vivo environments are geometrically, mechanically, and chemically complex, and it has been difficult to understand how each ...
CutA, a conserved protein across all domains of life, has been suggested to be involved in copper tolerance in bacteria, though recent studies have questioned this association, leaving its biological role unknown. To clarify its function, we studiedcutA...
Given the repetitive structure of crystalline ice, it is unsurprising that highly active ice-binding proteins (IBPs), often with beta-roll structures, also have repeating motifs. Here, we introduce a de novo designed family of ice-binding twistless alpha-...
REversible Saturable Optical Linear Fluorescence Transitions (RESOLFT) superresolution microscopy fundamentally overcomes the diffraction barrier in far-field fluorescence microscopy. It relies on reversibly switchable fluorescent proteins (RSFPs) that ...
The rise velocity of bubble swarms is a fundamental property in many natural and industrial flows. A central question is whether clustering of bubbles enhances or suppresses their rise velocity compared to isolated single bubbles in quiescent fluid. We ...
The Kibble–Zurek mechanism (KZM) successfully predicts the density of topological defects deposited by the phase transitions, but it is not clear why. Its key conjecture is that, near the critical point of the second-order phase transition, critical ...
Silica-based glasses have found numerous applications in every field of human endeavor. Understanding their mechanical behavior under high strain rates is essential for the use of these materials in extreme environments. We report on a highly unusual ...
Metamaterials can stretch the envelope of attainable material properties giving rise to negative effective dynamical parameters. Metamaterials usually achieve such superior functionality through hard-coded geometry, symmetry, and periodicity that cannot ...
The analysis of policy impacts in a dynamic and uncertain reality is vital to supporting informed economic policy design and implementation. Dynamic, stochastic economic models used in policy evaluation necessarily simplify the world as we know it. This ...
The polygamous mating system of free-ranging domestic dogs (FRDs) contrasts with the social monogamy typical of gray wolves and all other wild canids. The transition to polygamy in dogs could have been initiated by a shift from apex predator to human ...
Genetic tests for behavioral and personality traits in dogs are now being marketed to pet owners, but their predictive accuracy has not been validated. To evaluate the reliability of such tests, we analyzed data from Darwin’s Ark, a community science ...
Dogs display temperamental and behavioral variation between individuals, just as psychiatric, temperamental, and cognitive traits vary in humans. In both species, these traits are highly heritable, yet causal genes remain incompletely understood. We ...
Dogs were domesticated at least once from a yet-unidentified wolf population at least ~15,000 y ago. However, how domestication took place is a topic of ongoing debate, and the ability of human groups to manage wolves in their communities during early ...
