Novel brainstem organotypic cultures that generate rhythmic respiratory motor activity reveal the neural networks that control breathing and a new pathway in the hypercapnic response.
The direction-selective circuit in the retina adjusts the contributions of excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms under different stimulus conditions to generate context-dependent neural representations of visual features.
Stefania Monterisi, Johanna Michl ... Pawel Swietach
Imaging studies of connexin-coupled networks of colorectal cancer cells reveal that cells carrying a genetic defect in an essential metabolic pathway can be rescued by diffusive exchange with neighboring wild-type cells via gap junctions, particularly Cx26, thereby evading negative selection.
Michael Troup, Melvyn HW Yap ... Bruno van Swinderen
Optogenetic activation reveals a larger role for the fly brain 'sleep switch' neurons in controlling both waking and sleeping behavioral responsiveness, partly via a parallel channel involving innexin6 electrical synapses.
Astrocytic ER calcium release and gap junction communication exhibit circadian modulation driven by HERPUD1, highlighting the importance of astrocytic circadian rhythms in brain function.
Luis Alarcon-Martinez, Sinem Yilmaz-Ozcan ... Turgay Dalkara
Pericytes surrounding capillaries in the retina contain α-smooth muscle actin, demonstrating that pericytes have the necessary molecular machinery to change capillary diameter during neurovascular coupling.
As the first fully genetically encoded method, PARIS allows cell-specific, long-term, repeated measurements of gap junctional coupling with high spatiotemporal resolution, facilitating its study in both health and disease.
Ex vivo, in vitro, and computational modeling studies indicate a persistence of myofibroblast senescence in the infarct border zone with age which can disrupt conduction and promote arrhythmias via senescent myofibroblast-cardiomyocyte coupling.
Apoptotic cells release molecules to recruit macrophages, but do not cause inflammation because they also secrete AMP that functions as a ‘calm down’ signal.
