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In This Issue Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 121, Issue 20, May 2024.
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I’m worried I’ve been contacted by a predatory publisher — how do I find out? Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-15
Researchers frequently receive invitations to publish in journals that they might not have heard of. Nature asked two scientists how they would check whether a publication is legitimate.
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Forestry social science is failing the needs of the people who need it most Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-15
Rich nations’ fixation on forests as climate offsets has resulted in the needs of those who live in or make a living from these resources being ignored. A broader view and more collaboration between disciplines is required.
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Explaining novel scientific concepts to people whose technical acumen does not extend to turning it off, then turning it on again Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-15
Guided by the light.
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Neglecting sex and gender in research is a public-health risk Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-15 Sue Haupt, Cheryl Carcel, Robyn Norton
The data are clear: taking sex and gender into account in research and using that knowledge to change health care could benefit billions of people.
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How to kill the ‘zombie’ cells that make you age Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-15
Researchers are using new molecules, engineered immune cells and gene therapy to kill senescent cells and treat age-related diseases.
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2023 summer warmth unparalleled over the past 2,000 years Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Jan Esper, Max Torbenson, Ulf Büntgen
Including an exceptionally warm Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer1,2, 2023 has been reported as the hottest year on record3-5. Contextualizing recent anthropogenic warming against past natural variability is nontrivial, however, because the sparse 19th century meteorological records tend to be too warm6. Here, we combine observed and reconstructed June-August (JJA) surface air temperatures to show that
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Africa’s lush tropical forests face a surprising threat: fire Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
Climate change and deforestation have increased the frequency of blazes in the humid forests of West and Central Africa.
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AI & robotics briefing: Why AI needs to see the ‘ugly’ side of science Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
The absence of negative results in the scientific literature is affecting AI tools trained on published data. Plus, why animals still outrun robots and AlphaFold gets major upgrade.
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Daily briefing: Amazing auroras are just a warm-up — more solar storms are coming Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
The upcoming solar maximum means more and bigger solar storms to come. Plus, how to decarbonise the workhorse of fossil fuel production: oil refineries.
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Real-world plastic-waste success stories can help to boost global treaty Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
Letter to the Editor
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Interpersonal therapy can be an effective tool against the devastating effects of loneliness Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
Letter to the Editor
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Inequality is bad — but that doesn’t mean the rich are Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
Letter to the Editor
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Balls of lightning and flames from the sky: can science explain? Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Standardized metadata for biological samples could unlock the potential of collections Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
Letter to the Editor
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Why mathematics is set to be revolutionized by AI Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
Cheap data and the absence of coincidences make maths an ideal testing ground for AI-assisted discovery — but only humans will be able to tell good conjectures from bad ones.
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How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
Researchers are striving to reverse-engineer artificial intelligence and scan the ‘brains’ of LLMs to see what they are doing, how and why.
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The phenomenon of genomic imprinting was discovered 40 years ago Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Anne C. Ferguson-Smith, Marisa S. Bartolomei
Landmark 1984 experiments gave rise to a new epigenetics concept.
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How men evolved to care for babies — before society got in the way Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
An exploration of the evolution of male nurturing shows why, unlike fathers among other great apes, human dads are biologically wired to be hands-on parents.
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A DARPA-like agency could boost EU innovation — but cannot come at the expense of existing schemes Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
If Europe wants to create a high-risk, high-reward research body, it needs grass-roots backing.
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Mega study charts how genetic variants affect metabolism Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-14
The discovery of hundreds of genomic regions linked with metabolism promises to improve our understanding of metabolic diseases.
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Plasmid targeting and destruction by the DdmDE bacterial defence system Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Jack P. K. Bravo, Delisa A. Ramos, Rodrigo Fregoso Ocampo, Caiden Ingram, David W. Taylor
While eukaryotic Argonautes play a pivotal role in post-transcriptional gene regulation through nucleic acid cleavage, some short prokaryotic Argonaute variants (pAgos) rely on auxiliary nuclease factors for efficient foreign DNA degradation (1). Here, we elucidate the activation pathway of the DNA Defense Module DdmDE system, which rapidly eliminates small, multicopy plasmids from Vibrio cholerae
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Dazzling auroras are just a warm-up as more solar storms are likely, scientists say Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-13
Nature talks to physicists about what to expect in the next months and beyond as the Sun hits its 'maximum'.
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Brain-reading device is best yet at decoding ‘internal speech’ Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-13
Technology that enables researchers to interpret brain signals could one day allow people to talk using only their thoughts.
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Human embryos embrace asymmetry to form the body Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-13
The cells generated by the very first division of the fertilized egg make a lopsided contribution to the body’s organs and tissues.
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Daily briefing: Internet use seems to boost well-being Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-10
A survey of people in 168 countries finds that Internet use might boost life satisfaction and sense of purpose. Plus, what a Neanderthal’s Mona-Lisa smile tells us about ourselves and how the cauliflower got its whorls.
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Daily briefing: A millimetre of brain in spectacular detail Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-10
Google scientists have modelled a tiny fragment of the human brain at nanoscale resolution. Plus, a bold proposal to limit extreme wealth.
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SRSF1 interactome determined by proximity labeling reveals direct interaction with spliceosomal RNA helicase DDX23 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Danilo Segovia, Dexter W. Adams, Nickolas Hoffman, Polona Safaric Tepes, Tse-Luen Wee, Paolo Cifani, Leemor Joshua-Tor, Adrian R. Krainer
SRSF1 is the founding member of the SR protein family. It is required—interchangeably with other SR proteins—for pre-mRNA splicing in vitro, and it regulates various alternative splicing events. Dysregulation of SRSF1 expression contributes to cancer and other pathologies. Here, we characterized SRSF1’s interactome using proximity labeling and mass spectrometry. This approach yielded 190 proteins enriched
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Lipid-derived electrophiles inhibit the function of membrane channels during ferroptosis Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Antonius T. M. Van Kessel, Gonzalo Cosa
The therapeutic targeting of ferroptosis requires full understanding of the molecular mechanism of this regulated cell death pathway. While lipid-derived electrophiles (LDEs), including 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (4-HNE), are important biomarkers of ferroptosis, a functional role for these highly reactive species in ferroptotic cell death execution has not been established. Here, through mechanistic characterization
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Requirements for the biogenesis of [2Fe-2S] proteins in the human and yeast cytosol Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Joseph J. Braymer, Oliver Stehling, Martin Stümpfig, Ralf Rösser, Farah Spantgar, Catharina M. Blinn, Ulrich Mühlenhoff, Antonio J. Pierik, Roland Lill
The biogenesis of iron–sulfur (Fe/S) proteins entails the synthesis and trafficking of Fe/S clusters, followed by their insertion into target apoproteins. In eukaryotes, the multiple steps of biogenesis are accomplished by complex protein machineries in both mitochondria and cytosol. The underlying biochemical pathways have been elucidated over the past decades, yet the mechanisms of cytosolic [2Fe-2S]
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Dichotomous dynamics of magnetic monopole fluids Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Chun-Chih Hsu, Hiroto Takahashi, Fabian Jerzembeck, Jahnatta Dasini, Chaia Carroll, Ritika Dusad, Jonathan Ward, Catherine Dawson, Sudarshan Sharma, Graeme M. Luke, Stephen J. Blundell, Claudio Castelnovo, Jonathan N. Hallén, Roderich Moessner, J. C. Séamus Davis
A recent advance in the study of emergent magnetic monopoles was the discovery that monopole motion is restricted to dynamical fractal trajectories [J. N. Hallén et al. , Science 378 , 1218 (2022)], thus explaining the characteristics of magnetic monopole noise spectra [R. Dusad et al., Nature 571 , 234 (2019); A. M. Samarakoon et al. , Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 119 , e2117453119 (2022)]. Here
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Genome-wide CRISPR screens in spheroid culture reveal that the tumor suppressor LKB1 inhibits growth via the PIKFYVE lipid kinase Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 John R. Ferrarone, Jerin Thomas, Arun M. Unni, Yuxiang Zheng, Michal J. Nagiec, Eric E. Gardner, Oksana Mashadova, Kate Li, Nikos Koundouros, Antonino Montalbano, Meer Mustafa, Lewis C. Cantley, John Blenis, Neville E. Sanjana, Harold Varmus
The tumor suppressor LKB1 is a serine/threonine protein kinase that is frequently mutated in human lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). LKB1 regulates a complex signaling network that is known to control cell polarity and metabolism; however, the pathways that mediate the tumor-suppressive activity of LKB1 are incompletely defined. To identify mechanisms of LKB1-mediated growth suppression, we developed a spheroid-based
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A fungal protein organizes both glycogen and cell wall glucans Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Liza Loza, Tamara L. Doering
Glycogen is a glucose storage molecule composed of branched α-1,4-glucan chains, best known as an energy reserve that can be broken down to fuel central metabolism. Because fungal cells have a specialized need for glucose in building cell wall glucans, we investigated whether glycogen is used for this process. For these studies, we focused on the pathogenic yeast Cryptococcus neoformans , which causes
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Dark continuous noise from mutant G90D-rhodopsin predominantly underlies congenital stationary night blindness Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Zuying Chai, Yaqing Ye, Daniel Silverman, Kasey Rose, Alana Madura, Randall R. Reed, Jeannie Chen, King-Wai Yau
Congenital stationary night blindness (CSNB) is an inherited retinal disease that causes a profound loss of rod sensitivity without severe retinal degeneration. One well-studied rhodopsin point mutant, G90D-Rho, is thought to cause CSNB because of its constitutive activity in darkness causing rod desensitization. However, the nature of this constitutive activity and its precise molecular source have
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Bacterial lifestyle shapes pangenomes Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Anna E. Dewar, Chunhui Hao, Laurence J. Belcher, Melanie Ghoul, Stuart A. West
Pangenomes vary across bacteria. Some species have fluid pangenomes, with a high proportion of genes varying between individual genomes. Other species have less fluid pangenomes, with different genomes tending to contain the same genes. Two main hypotheses have been suggested to explain this variation: differences in species’ bacterial lifestyle and effective population size. However, previous studies
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Identification and characterization of a nonbiological small-molecular mimic of a Zika virus conformational neutralizing epitope Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Priscila M. S. Castanha, Patrick J. McEnaney, Yongseok Park, Anthea Bouwer, Elton J. F. Chaves, Roberto D. Lins, Nicholas G. Paciaroni, Paige Dickson, Graham Carlson, Marli T. Cordeiro, Tereza Magalhaes, Jodi Craigo, Ernesto T. A. Marques, Thomas Kodadek, Donald S. Burke
Antigenic similarities between Zika virus (ZIKV) and other flaviviruses pose challenges to the development of virus-specific diagnostic tools and effective vaccines. Starting with a DNA-encoded one-bead-one-compound combinatorial library of 508,032 synthetic, non-natural oligomers, we selected and characterized small molecules that mimic ZIKV epitopes. High-throughput fluorescence-activated cell sorter-based
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Microbes vary strategically in their metalation of mononuclear enzymes Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Sanjay Kumar Rohaun, Ramakrishnan Sethu, James A. Imlay
Studies have determined that nonredox enzymes that are cofactored with Fe(II) are the most oxidant-sensitive targets inside Escherichia coli . These enzymes use Fe(II) cofactors to bind and activate substrates. Because of their solvent exposure, the metal can be accessed and oxidized by reactive oxygen species, thereby inactivating the enzyme. Because these enzymes participate in key physiological
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ZEPPI: Proteome-scale sequence-based evaluation of protein–protein interaction models Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Haiqing Zhao, Donald Petrey, Diana Murray, Barry Honig
We introduce ZEPPI (Z-score Evaluation of Protein–Protein Interfaces), a framework to evaluate structural models of a complex based on sequence coevolution and conservation involving residues in protein–protein interfaces. The ZEPPI score is calculated by comparing metrics for an interface to those obtained from randomly chosen residues. Since contacting residues are defined by the structural model
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Tackling debt, biodiversity loss, and climate change Science (IF 56.9) Pub Date : 2024-05-10 Elizabeth C. Losos, Alexander Pfaff, Stuart L. Pimm
At the United Nations climate conference in late 2023, multilateral development banks and environmental institutions committed to raising the number, size, types, and effectiveness of funding mechanisms that support developing countries to address the interconnected crises of debt, climate, and biodiversity. A “Task Force on Sustainability-Linked Sovereign Financing for Nature and Climate” will convene
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Why my heart beats for Nigeria’s endangered bats Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-13
Iroro Tanshi works to better understand a number of threatened species.
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Decent work for all: why multinationals need a helping hand Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-13
Moses Ngoze explains why the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises in Africa are key to achieving global economic growth.
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World’s brightest X-rays: China first in Asia to build next-generation synchrotron Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-13
The US$665-million High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) outside Beijing puts China among only a handful of countries that have fourth-generation synchrotron light sources.
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Is the Internet bad for you? Huge study reveals surprise effect on well-being Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-12
A survey of more than 2.4 million people finds that being online can have a positive effect on welfare.
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Daily briefing: ‘The ugly side of science’ — how to report negative results Nature (IF 64.8) Pub Date : 2024-05-09
Data repositories, workshops and alternative journals allow scientists to destigmatize and discuss negative results. Plus, a major step toward ultra-precise ‘nuclear’ clocks and the first rocky exoplanet with a confirmed atmosphere.
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The physical and evolutionary energy landscapes of devolved protein sequences corresponding to pseudogenes Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Hana Jaafari, Carlos Bueno, Nicholas P. Schafer, Jonathan Martin, Faruck Morcos, Peter G. Wolynes
Protein evolution is guided by structural, functional, and dynamical constraints ensuring organismal viability. Pseudogenes are genomic sequences identified in many eukaryotes that lack translational activity due to sequence degradation and thus over time have undergone “devolution.” Previously pseudogenized genes sometimes regain their protein-coding function, suggesting they may still encode robust
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Seabirds reveal mercury distribution across the North Atlantic Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Céline Albert, Børge Moe, Hallvard Strøm, David Grémillet, Maud Brault-Favrou, Arnaud Tarroux, Sébastien Descamps, Vegard Sandøy Bråthen, Benjamin Merkel, Jens Åström, Françoise Amélineau, Frédéric Angelier, Tycho Anker-Nilssen, Olivier Chastel, Signe Christensen-Dalsgaard, Johannis Danielsen, Kyle Elliott, Kjell Einar Erikstad, Alexey Ezhov, Per Fauchald, Geir W. Gabrielsen, Maria Gavrilo, Sveinn
Mercury (Hg) is a heterogeneously distributed toxicant affecting wildlife and human health. Yet, the spatial distribution of Hg remains poorly documented, especially in food webs, even though this knowledge is essential to assess large-scale risk of toxicity for the biota and human populations. Here, we used seabirds to assess, at an unprecedented population and geographic magnitude and high resolution
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Premeiotic 24-nt phasiRNAs are present in the Zea genus and unique in biogenesis mechanism and molecular function Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Junpeng Zhan, Sébastien Bélanger, Scott Lewis, Chong Teng, Madison McGregor, Aleksandra Beric, Michael A. Schon, Michael D. Nodine, Blake C. Meyers
Reproductive phasiRNAs (phased, small interfering RNAs) are broadly present in angiosperms and play crucial roles in sustaining male fertility. While the premeiotic 21-nt (nucleotides) phasiRNAs and meiotic 24-nt phasiRNA pathways have been extensively studied in maize ( Zea mays ) and rice ( Oryza sativa ), a third putative category of reproductive phasiRNAs–named premeiotic 24-nt phasiRNAs–have recently
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Mimicking natural deterrent strategies in plants using adhesive spheres Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Ralph van Zwieten, Thijs V. Bierman, Peter G. L. Klinkhamer, T. Martijn Bezemer, Klaas Vrieling, Thomas E. Kodger
With a continuous increase in world population and food production, chemical pesticide use is growing accordingly, yet unsustainably. As chemical pesticides are harmful to the environment and developmental resistance in pests is increasing, a sustainable and effective pesticide alternative is needed. Inspired by nature, we mimic one defense strategy of plants, glandular trichomes, to shift away from
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Southern Ocean drives multidecadal atmospheric CO 2 rise during Heinrich Stadials Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Kathleen A. Wendt, Christoph Nehrbass-Ahles, Kyle Niezgoda, David Noone, Michael Kalk, Laurie Menviel, Julia Gottschalk, James W. B. Rae, Jochen Schmitt, Hubertus Fischer, Thomas F. Stocker, Juan Muglia, David Ferreira, Shaun A. Marcott, Edward Brook, Christo Buizert
The last glacial period was punctuated by cold intervals in the North Atlantic region that culminated in extensive iceberg discharge events. These cold intervals, known as Heinrich Stadials, are associated with abrupt climate shifts worldwide. Here, we present CO 2 measurements from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide ice core across Heinrich Stadials 2 to 5 at decadal-scale resolution. Our results
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Extreme elevational migration spurred cryptic speciation in giant hummingbirds Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Jessie L. Williamson, Ethan F. Gyllenhaal, Selina M. Bauernfeind, Emil Bautista, Matthew J. Baumann, Chauncey R. Gadek, Peter P. Marra, Natalia Ricote, Thomas Valqui, Francisco Bozinovic, Nadia D. Singh, Christopher C. Witt
The ecoevolutionary drivers of species niche expansion or contraction are critical for biodiversity but challenging to infer. Niche expansion may be promoted by local adaptation or constrained by physiological performance trade-offs. For birds, evolutionary shifts in migratory behavior permit the broadening of the climatic niche by expansion into varied, seasonal environments. Broader niches can be
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The GPAT4 / 6 / 8 clade functions in Arabidopsis root suberization nonredundantly with the GPAT5/7 clade required for suberin lamellae Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Kay Gully, Alice Berhin, Damien De Bellis, Cornelia Herrfurth, Ivo Feussner, Christiane Nawrath
Lipid polymers such as cutin and suberin strengthen the diffusion barrier properties of the cell wall in specific cell types and are essential for water relations, mineral nutrition, and stress protection in plants. Land plant–specific glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferases (GPATs) of different clades are central players in cutin and suberin monomer biosynthesis. Here, we show that the GPAT4 / 6 / 8
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The 6-kilodalton peptide 1 in plant viruses of the family Potyviridae is a viroporin Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Mengzhu Chai, Lei Li, Yong Li, Yingshuai Yang, Yuting Wang, Xue Jiang, Yameng Luan, Fangfang Li, Hongguang Cui, Aiming Wang, Wensheng Xiang, Xiaoyun Wu, Xiaofei Cheng
Potyviridae, the largest family of plant RNA viruses, includes many important pathogens that significantly reduce the yields of many crops worldwide. In this study, we report that the 6-kilodalton peptide 1 (6K1), one of the least characterized potyviral proteins, is an endoplasmic reticulum–localized protein. AI–assisted structure modeling and biochemical assays suggest that 6K1 forms pentamers with
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Exploring the activation mechanism of metabotropic glutamate receptor 2 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Xiaohong Zhu, Mengqi Luo, Ke An, Danfeng Shi, Tingjun Hou, Arieh Warshel, Chen Bai
Homomeric dimerization of metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGlus) is essential for the modulation of their functions and represents a promising avenue for the development of novel therapeutic approaches to address central nervous system diseases. Yet, the scarcity of detailed molecular and energetic data on mGlu2 impedes our in-depth comprehension of their activation process. Here, we employ computational
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Crop yields fail to rise in smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Philip Wollburg, Thomas Bentze, Yuchen Lu, Christopher Udry, Douglas Gollin
Drawing on a harmonized longitudinal dataset covering more than 55,000 smallholder farms in six African countries, we analyze changes in crop productivity from 2008 to 2019. Because smallholder farmers represent a significant fraction of the world’s poorest people, agricultural productivity in this context matters for poverty reduction and for the broader achievement of the UN Sustainable Development
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Inflation in 2022 did not affect congressional voting, but abortion did Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Diana C. Mutz, Edward D. Mansfield
This study examines voting in the 2022 United States congressional elections, contests that were widely expected to produce a sizable defeat for Democratic candidates for largely economic reasons. Based on a representative national probability sample of voters interviewed in both 2020 and 2022, individuals who changed their vote from one party's congressional candidate to another party’s candidate
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The effects of Facebook and Instagram on the 2020 election: A deactivation experiment Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Hunt Allcott, Matthew Gentzkow, Winter Mason, Arjun Wilkins, Pablo Barberá, Taylor Brown, Juan Carlos Cisneros, Adriana Crespo-Tenorio, Drew Dimmery, Deen Freelon, Sandra González-Bailón, Andrew M. Guess, Young Mie Kim, David Lazer, Neil Malhotra, Devra Moehler, Sameer Nair-Desai, Houda Nait El Barj, Brendan Nyhan, Ana Carolina Paixao de Queiroz, Jennifer Pan, Jaime Settle, Emily Thorson, Rebekah Tromble
We study the effect of Facebook and Instagram access on political beliefs, attitudes, and behavior by randomizing a subset of 19,857 Facebook users and 15,585 Instagram users to deactivate their accounts for 6 wk before the 2020 U.S. election. We report four key findings. First, both Facebook and Instagram deactivation reduced an index of political participation (driven mainly by reduced participation
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Reduced stress propagation leads to increased mechanical failure resistance in auxetic materials Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Suzanne M. Fielding
Materials with a negative Poisson ratio have the counterintuitive property of expanding laterally when they are stretched longitudinally. They are accordingly termed auxetic, from the Greek auxesis meaning to increase. Experimental studies have demonstrated auxetic materials to have superior material properties, compared with conventional ones. These include synclastic curvature, increased acoustic
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The modern human aryl hydrocarbon receptor is more active when ancestralized by genome editing Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Nelly Helmbrecht, Martin Lackner, Tomislav Maricic, Svante Pääbo
The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) is a transcription factor that has many functions in mammals. Its best known function is that it binds aromatic hydrocarbons and induces the expression of cytochrome P450 genes, which encode enzymes that metabolize aromatic hydrocarbons and other substrates. All present-day humans carry an amino acid substitution at position 381 in the AHR that occurred after the
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PM 2.5 exposure contributes to anxiety and depression-like behaviors via phenyl-containing compounds interfering with dopamine receptor Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Shaoyang Ji, Yuqiong Guo, Wei Yan, Fang Wei, Jinjian Ding, Wenjun Hong, Xiaoyun Wu, Tingting Ku, Huifeng Yue, Nan Sang
As a global problem, fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) really needs local fixes. Considering the increasing epidemiological relevance to anxiety and depression but inconsistent toxicological results, the most important question is to clarify whether and how PM 2.5 causally contributes to these mental disorders and which components are the most dangerous for crucial mitigation in a particular place
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Real-time emulation of future global warming reveals realistic impacts on the phenological response and quality deterioration in rice Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (IF 11.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Hironori Itoh, Hiroto Yamashita, Kaede C. Wada, Jun-ichi Yonemaru
Decreased production of crops due to climate change has been predicted scientifically. While climate-resilient crops are necessary to ensure food security and support sustainable agriculture, predicting crop growth under future global warming is challenging. Therefore, we aimed to assess the impact of realistic global warming conditions on rice cultivation. We developed a crop evaluation platform,