Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences

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Time has come for offshore wind power in the US [Opinion]

Tue, 09/29/2015 - 11:06
Offshore wind turbines have been successfully deployed in Europe since 1991, providing thousands of megawatts of clean energy for multiple nations. Ten years ago, it seemed that the United States would follow suit: The US Energy Policy Act of 2005 directed the Department of the Interior (DOI) to establish an...
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Talin determines focal adhesion nanoarchitecture [Cell Biology]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
Insight into how molecular machines perform their biological functions depends on knowledge of the spatial organization of the components, their connectivity, geometry, and organizational hierarchy. However, these parameters are difficult to determine in multicomponent assemblies such as integrin-based focal adhesions (FAs). We have previously applied 3D superresolution fluorescence microscopy to...
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CDK5 phosphorylates and activates GIV-GEF [Cell Biology]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
Signals propagated by receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) can drive cell migration and proliferation, two cellular processes that do not occur simultaneously—a phenomenon called “migration–proliferation dichotomy.” We previously showed that epidermal growth factor (EGF) signaling is skewed to favor migration over proliferation via noncanonical transactivation of Gαi proteins by the guanine...
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miR-196 regulates vertebral number and identity [Developmental Biology]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
The Hox genes play a central role in patterning the embryonic anterior-to-posterior axis. An important function of Hox activity in vertebrates is the specification of different vertebral morphologies, with an additional role in axis elongation emerging. The miR-196 family of microRNAs (miRNAs) are predicted to extensively target Hox 3′ UTRs,...
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LINE-1 in Barrett's esophagus and cancer [Genetics]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
Barrett’s esophagus (BE) is a common disease in which the lining of the esophagus transitions from stratified squamous epithelium to metaplastic columnar epithelium that predisposes individuals to developing esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC). We hypothesized that BE provides a unique environment for increased long-interspersed element 1 (LINE-1 or L1) retrotransposition. To this...
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Metabolomics for precision medicine [Genetics]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
Precision medicine, taking account of human individuality in genes, environment, and lifestyle for early disease diagnosis and individualized therapy, has shown great promise to transform medical care. Nontargeted metabolomics, with the ability to detect broad classes of biochemicals, can provide a comprehensive functional phenotype integrating clinical phenotypes with genetic and...
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RNA interference between unrelated viruses [Microbiology]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
Viruses often coinfect single host organisms in nature. Depending on the combination of viruses in such coinfections, the interplay between them may be synergistic, apparently neutral with no effect on each other, or antagonistic. RNA silencing is responsible for many cases of interference or cross-protection between viruses, but such antagonistic...
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Structural changes in T4 virions during infection [Microbiology]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
The first stages of productive bacteriophage infections of bacterial host cells require efficient adsorption to the cell surface followed by ejection of phage DNA into the host cytoplasm. To achieve this goal, a phage virion must undergo significant structural remodeling. For phage T4, the most obvious change is the contraction...
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Foxa genes regulate dopamine levels and feeding [Neuroscience]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
Midbrain dopaminergic (mDA) neurons are implicated in cognitive functions, neuropsychiatric disorders, and pathological conditions; hence understanding genes regulating their homeostasis has medical relevance. Transcription factors FOXA1 and FOXA2 (FOXA1/2) are key determinants of mDA neuronal identity during development, but their roles in adult mDA neurons are unknown. We used a...
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Neurogenetic profiles of human memory components [Neuroscience]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
Episodic memory performance is the result of distinct mental processes, such as learning, memory maintenance, and emotional modulation of memory strength. Such processes can be effectively dissociated using computational models. Here we performed gene set enrichment analyses of model parameters estimated from the episodic memory performance of 1,765 healthy young...
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Propagation of {alpha}-synuclein prions [Neuroscience]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
Increasingly, evidence argues that many neurodegenerative diseases, including progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), are caused by prions, which are alternatively folded proteins undergoing self-propagation. In earlier studies, PSP prions were detected by infecting human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells expressing a tau fragment [TauRD(LM)] fused to yellow fluorescent protein (YFP). Here, we...
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Hybrid mimics provide stability of F1 hybrids [Plant Biology]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
F1 hybrids can outperform their parents in yield and vegetative biomass, features of hybrid vigor that form the basis of the hybrid seed industry. The yield advantage of the F1 is lost in the F2 and subsequent generations. In Arabidopsis, from F2 plants that have a F1-like phenotype, we have...
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Correction for Godec et al., Inducible RNAi in vivo reveals that the transcription factor BATF is required to initiate but not maintain CD8+ T-cell effector differentiation [Correction]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
IMMUNOLOGY AND INFLAMMATION Correction for “Inducible RNAi in vivo reveals that the transcription factor BATF is required to initiate but not maintain CD8+ T-cell effector differentiation,” by Jernej Godec, Glenn S. Cowley, R. Anthony Barnitz, David E. Root, Arlene H. Sharpe, and W. Nicholas Haining, which appeared in issue 2,...
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Correction for Woolgar et al., Fluid intelligence loss linked to restricted regions of damage within frontal and parietal cortex [Correction]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
NEUROSCIENCE Correction for “Fluid intelligence loss linked to restricted regions of damage within frontal and parietal cortex,” by Alexandra Woolgar, Alice Parr, Rhodri Cusack, Russell Thompson, Ian Nimmo-Smith, Teresa Torralva, Maria Roca, Nagui Antoun, Facundo Manes, and John Duncan, which appeared in issue 33, August 17, 2010, of Proc Natl...
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Correction for Ng et al., Selectivity for the configural cues that identify the gender, ethnicity, and identity of faces in human cortex [Correction]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
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...
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Correction to Supporting Information for Merski et al., Homologous ligands accommodated by discrete conformations of a buried cavity [SI Correction]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
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...
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In This Issue [This Week in PNAS]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
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...
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Ideal glass transition in randomly pinned liquids [Physical Sciences]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
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...
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Reply to Chakrabarty et al. [Physical Sciences]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
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...
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Eukaryotes really are special [Biological Sciences]

Tue, 09/01/2015 - 13:38
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...
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