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Mutations in cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) cause cystic fibrosis, a lethal genetic disease occurring in people of northern European descent. Decades of study have been directed toward a molecular understanding of this...

The patterns and incidences of developmental abnormalities and anomalies through Pleistocene human evolution may provide insights into issues of survival, stress, consanguinity, and mortuary behavior among these foraging populations. A synthesis of...

Social media can deeply influence reality perception, affecting millions of people’s voting behavior. Hence, maneuvering opinion dynamics by disseminating forged content over online ecosystems is an effective pathway for social hacking. We propose a...

How mutation and selection co-determine the course of cancer evolution remains an open, fundamental question. We construct a mutation-selection phase diagram, using tumor mutation load (ML) and selection strength (dN/dS) as key variables, and assess...

The Chinese government has taken efforts to tackle the nation’s severe ambient fine particle (PM2.5) pollution. Our results suggest that reduced household solid-fuel consumption was the leading contributor to the rapid decrease in the integrated...

Phylogenetic evidence suggests that a factor in the emergence of the ancestral eukaryotic cell may have been selection pressure resulting from invasion and proliferation of retroelements. Here we experimentally determine the effects of a...

Early traumatic experiences interact with redox regulation and oxidative stress. Blood glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activity, involved in reducing peroxides, may reflect the oxidation status of the organism, thus allowing for the stratification of...

We report radiocarbon (14C) measurements of carbonaceous aerosol originating from fires on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. These data provide information about what types of ecosystems burned and are critical for linking the human health effects...

Endogenous retrovirus (ERV) sequences make up a large fraction of our genome, yet little is understood about their function and biological relevance. Deep-sequencing data contain valuable information on a genome-wide scale. Yet, due to their highly...

Biomass burning influences the climate system through direct emissions of aerosols, greenhouse gases, and chemically reactive gases. There is uncertainty and controversy regarding variations in past biomass burning, making it difficult to establish...

Human herpesviruses are known to interact with non-protein encoding RNAs like microRNAs and long noncoding RNAs. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are recently discovered noncoding RNAs that are long-lived and resistant to exonucleases, and that bind to...

In the early 1900s, German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch developed a way to synthesize ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and methane-derived hydrogen. The method became a vital step in manufacturing not only fertilizers but also explosives....

All known naturally occurring red fluorescent proteins (RFPs), a class that is desirable for biological imaging, are tetrameric, limiting their usefulness as molecular fusion tags in in vivo model systems. Here we explore protein variant libraries...

Shortly after its appearance on the drug market, it was found out that thalidomide was highly teratogenic. Although thalidomide passed the safety check in pregnant mice, it was not safe among humans due to different actions of thalidomide among...