Rebeccah J Katzenberger, Stanislava Chtarbanova ... David A Wassarman
Use of a newly developed experimental model in fruit flies reveals that death following traumatic brain injury is largely due to a mechanism by which brain damage triggers disruption of the intestinal barrier, leading to elevated levels of glucose in the circulatory system with deleterious consequences.
Experiments in C. elegans reveal how synaptotagmin and Rab3, the 'yin and yang' of synapses, control whether transmitter vesicles remain docked at the presynaptic membrane or release their contents into the synapse.
Jonas-Frederic Sauer, Michael Strüber, Marlene Bartos
Truncated Disrupted-in-schizophrenia 1 (Disc 1) ablates signaling of parvalbumin-expressing interneurons in the prefrontal cortex and underlies depression-related behaviour in mice.
A cell-surface receptor called Gpr52 is able to lower the levels of the disease-causing protein mutant huntingtin and suppress its toxicity when knocked-down, making this receptor a promising drug target in Huntington's disease.
Arpiar Saunders, Adam J Granger, Bernardo L Sabatini
Neurons of the cholinergic system, which release the excitatory neurotransmitter acetycholine throughout the cortex, also release the inhibitory transmitter GABA, with potential implications for cognitive function.
Stephanie J Papp, Anne-Laure Huber ... Katja A Lamia
The circadian clock proteins, cryptochrome 1 (Cry1) and 2 (Cry2), evolved from bacterial light-activated DNA repair enzymes to detect DNA damage and coordinate the gene expression response.
Variations in the frequency of theta brain waves enable a single network of brain regions to generate appropriate responses to stimuli with different kinds of emotional value.
Hermann C Altmeppen, Johannes Prox ... Markus Glatzel
A lack of ADAM10-mediated shedding increases prion protein levels at the plasma membrane and promotes the generation of pathological prion proteins, which accelerates prion disease in mice.
After shaking hands with a stranger, human volunteers often subliminally bring their hand to their nose and sniff it, possibly to collect important olfactory information.
