Antibiotics and dietary habits can affect the gut microbial community, thus influencing disease susceptibility. Although the effect of microbiota on the postnatal environment has been well documented, much less is known regarding the impact of gut microbiota at the embryonic stage. Here we show that maternal microbiota shapes the metabolic system of offspring in mice. During pregnancy, short-chain fatty acids produced by the maternal microbiota dictate the differentiation of neural, intestinal, and...
The outer Solar System object (486958) Arrokoth (provisional designation 2014 MU69) has been largely undisturbed since its formation. We studied its surface composition using data collected by the New Horizons spacecraft. Methanol ice is present along with organic material, which may have formed through irradiation of simple molecules. Water ice was not detected. This composition indicates hydrogenation of carbon monoxide–rich ice and/or energetic processing of methane condensed on water ice grains...
The Cold Classical Kuiper Belt, a class of small bodies in undisturbed orbits beyond Neptune, is composed of primitive objects preserving information about Solar System formation. In January 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft flew past one of these objects, the 36-kilometer-long contact binary (486958) Arrokoth (provisional designation 2014 MU69). Images from the flyby show that Arrokoth has no detectable rings, and no satellites (larger than 180 meters in diameter) within a radius of 8000 kilometers....
Does brain asymmetry for speech and music emerge from acoustical cues or from domain-specific neural networks? We selectively filtered temporal or spectral modulations in sung speech stimuli for which verbal and melodic content was crossed and balanced. Perception of speech decreased only with degradation of temporal information, whereas perception of melodies decreased only with spectral degradation. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data showed that the neural decoding of speech and melodies...
Secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA) represents the immune system’s first line of defense against mucosal pathogens. IgAs are transported across the epithelium, as dimers and higher-order polymers, by the polymeric immunoglobulin receptor (pIgR). Upon reaching the luminal side, sIgAs mediate host protection and pathogen neutralization. In recent years, an increasing amount of attention has been given to IgA as a novel therapeutic antibody. However, despite extensive studies, sIgA structures have remained...
For centuries, flow visualization has been the art of making fluid motion visible in physical and biological systems. Although such flow patterns can be, in principle, described by the Navier-Stokes equations, extracting the velocity and pressure fields directly from the images is challenging. We addressed this problem by developing hidden fluid mechanics (HFM), a physics-informed deep-learning framework capable of encoding the Navier-Stokes equations into the neural networks while being agnostic...
The development of classical and quantum information–processing technology calls for on-chip integrated sources of structured light. Although integrated vortex microlasers have been previously demonstrated, they remain static and possess relatively high lasing thresholds, making them unsuitable for high-speed optical communication and computing. We introduce perovskite-based vortex microlasers and demonstrate their application to ultrafast all-optical switching at room temperature. By exploiting...
Ecological differentiation is correlated with taxonomic diversity in many clades, and ecological divergence is often assumed to be a cause and/or consequence of high speciation rate. However, an analysis of 30,074 genera of living marine animals and 19,992 genera of fossil marine animals indicates that greater ecological differentiation in the modern oceans is actually associated with lower rates of origination over evolutionary time. Ecologically differentiated clades became taxonomically diverse...
The process by which plant cells expand and gain shape has presented a challenge for researchers. Current models propose that these processes are driven by turgor pressure acting on the cell wall. Using nanoimaging, we show that the cell wall contains pectin nanofilaments that possess an intrinsic expansion capacity. Additionally, we use growth models containing such structures to show that a complex plant cell shape can derive from chemically induced local and polarized expansion of the pectin nanofilaments...
Immunoglobulin M (IgM) plays a pivotal role in both humoral and mucosal immunity. Its assembly and transport depend on the joining chain (J-chain) and the polymeric immunoglobulin receptor (pIgR), but the underlying molecular mechanisms of these processes are unclear. We report a cryo–electron microscopy structure of the Fc region of human IgM in complex with the J-chain and pIgR ectodomain. The IgM-Fc pentamer is formed asymmetrically, resembling a hexagon with a missing triangle. The tailpieces...
Organic halides are important building blocks in synthesis, but their use in (photo)redox chemistry is limited by their low reduction potentials. Halogen-atom transfer remains the most reliable approach to exploit these substrates in radical processes despite its requirement for hazardous reagents and initiators such as tributyltin hydride. In this study, we demonstrate that α-aminoalkyl radicals, easily accessible from simple amines, promote the homolytic activation of carbon-halogen bonds with...
Fast-charging batteries typically use electrodes capable of accommodating lithium continuously by means of solid-solution transformation because they have few kinetic barriers apart from ionic diffusion. One exception is lithium titanate (Li4Ti5O12), an anode exhibiting extraordinary rate capability apparently inconsistent with its two-phase reaction and slow Li diffusion in both phases. Through real-time tracking of Li+ migration using operando electron energy-loss spectroscopy, we reveal that facile...
The actin fold is found in cytoskeletal polymers, chaperones, and various metabolic enzymes. Many actin-fold proteins, such as the carbohydrate kinases, do not polymerize. We found that Glk1, a Saccharomyces cerevisiae glucokinase, forms two-stranded filaments with ultrastructure that is distinct from that of cytoskeletal polymers. In cells, Glk1 polymerized upon sugar addition and depolymerized upon sugar withdrawal. Polymerization inhibits enzymatic activity; the Glk1 monomer-polymer equilibrium...
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