NEUROSCIENCE Correction for “Selectivity for the configural cues that identify the gender, ethnicity, and identity of faces in human cortex,” by Minna Ng, Vivian M. Ciaramitaro, Stuart Anstis, Geoffrey M. Boynton, and Ione Fine, which appeared in issue 51, December 19, 2006, of Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (103:19552–19557; first...

BIOPHYSICS AND COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY Correction to Supporting Information for “Homologous ligands accommodated by discrete conformations of a buried cavity,” by Matthew Merski, Marcus Fischer, Trent E. Balius, Oliv Eidam, and Brian K. Shoichet, which appeared in issue 16, April 21, 2015, of Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (112:5039–5044; first published...

Microbiomes and risk of preterm birth Microbiomes might indicate risk of preterm birth. Image courtesy of iStockphoto/Eraxion. Preterm birth, which occurs before 37 weeks of gestation, afflicts 11% of pregnant women worldwide and has been inconclusively tied to the relative abundances of microbes in and on the human body. In...

The paper by Ozawa et al. (1) presents numerical results for the configurational entropy density, sc, of a model glass-forming liquid in the presence of random pinning. The location of a “phase boundary” in the pin density (c) − temperature (T) plane, which separates an “ideal glass” phase from the...

In their letter, Chakrabarty et al. (1) point out that their data on the relaxation dynamics are inconsistent with the thermodynamic data presented in our paper (2). They argue that from their results and the predictions of the random first-order transition theory (3) one must conclude that our configurational entropy...

Booth and Doolittle (1) criticize three supposed flaws in our argument (2) that the energetic advantage of mitochondria enabled the prokaryote to eukaryote transition. Their critique, not our paper, is flawed. A reply is in order. First, Booth and Doolittle (1) claim that our paper (2) argued that the energetic...

In their letter, Lane and Martin (1) take us to task for our treatment (2) of their earlier paper (3). In that paper (3), there is much about genes, albeit mostly about the cost of their expression, not their replication. The focus is on how many additional genes mitochondria allow...

Proteins catalyze crucial reactions via unstable, high-energy chemical intermediates. In the absence of physiological substrates, activated redox cofactors become ticking time bombs, capable of producing oxidative damage to the protein. In PNAS, Gray and Winkler (1) propose that chains of tryptophan (Trp) and tyrosine (Tyr) residues may serve as escape...

Although Pacific salmon never swim within 2,000 km of the equatorial Pacific Ocean, this does not mean they are beyond the reach of El Niño and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Pacific salmon habitats are subject to robust long-distance climate linkages; tropical ENSO indicators are well correlated with the dominant pattern...

The world of 120 million years ago was one of dynamic biological processes. During that time the flowering plants emerged as the dominant global floristic element, a transformative event that ultimately altered the character of the entire planet. Understandably, the rapid rise of angiosperms has intrigued paleoecologists and evolutionary biologists,...

“He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War, circa 500 BC (1) Microbes are remarkably social. They live in complex, interdependent communities where they share and exchange a variety of beneficial compounds ranging from cell−cell signals to iron-scavenging...

The trillions of bacteria that make up the human microbiome are believed to encode functions that are important to human health; however, little is known about the specific effectors that commensal bacteria use to interact with the human host. Functional metagenomics provides a systematic means of surveying commensal DNA for...

Despite a wealth of information provided by neuroimaging research, the neural basis of familiar face recognition in humans remains largely unknown. Here, we isolated the discriminative neural responses to unfamiliar and familiar faces by slowly increasing visual information (i.e., high-spatial frequencies) to progressively reveal faces of unfamiliar or personally familiar...

Although mechanistically linked to disease, cellular molecules damaged by endogenous processes have not emerged as significant biomarkers of inflammation and disease risk, due in part to poor understanding of their pharmacokinetic fate from tissue to excretion. Here, we use systematic metabolite profiling to define the fate of a common DNA...

Protein SUMOylation has emerged as an important regulatory event, particularly in nuclear processes such as transcriptional control and DNA repair. In this context, small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) often provides a binding platform for the recruitment of proteins via their SUMO-interacting motifs (SIMs). Recent discoveries point to an important role for...

The US research enterprise is under significant strain due to stagnant funding, an expanding workforce, and complex regulations that increase costs and slow the pace of research. In response, a number of groups have analyzed the problems and offered recommendations for resolving these issues. However, many of these recommendations lacked...

Emerging strains of influenza represent a significant public health threat with potential pandemic consequences. Of particular concern are the recently emerged H7N9 strains which cause pneumonia with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Estimates are that nearly 80% of hospitalized patients with H7N9 have received intensive care unit support. VIS410, a human...

Materials in nature are characterized by structural order over multiple length scales have evolved for maximum performance and multifunctionality, and are often produced by self-assembly processes. A striking example of this design principle is structural coloration, where interference, diffraction, and absorption effects result in vivid colors. Mimicking this emergence of...

Aerobic glycolysis in yeast and cancer cells produces pyruvate beyond oxidative needs, a paradox noted by Warburg almost a century ago. To address this question, we reanalyzed extensive measurements from 13C magnetic resonance spectroscopy of yeast glycolysis and the coupled pathways of futile cycling and glycogen and trehalose synthesis (which...

Poxviruses reproduce in the host cytoplasm and encode most or all of the enzymes and factors needed for expression and synthesis of their double-stranded DNA genomes. Nevertheless, the mode of poxvirus DNA replication and the nature and location of the replication origins remain unknown. A current but unsubstantiated model posits...