PLoS Biology

Drosophila neurotrophins reveal a common mechanism for nervous system formation

Alicia Hidalgo — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:01:26 -0800

Neurotrophic interactions occur in Drosophila, but to date no neurotrophic factor had been found. Neurotrophins are the main vertebrate secreted signalling molecules that link nervous system structure and function: they regulate neuronal survival, targeting, synaptic plasticity, memory and cognition. Here we have identified a neurotrophic factor in flies, Drosophila Neurotrophin (DNT1), structurally related to all known neurotrophins and highly conserved in insects.

Neuroscience

L-DOPA Is an Endogenous Ligand for OA1

medtv — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:51:40 -0700

Albinism is a genetic defect characterized by a loss of pigmentation. The neurosensory retina, which is not pigmented, exhibits pathologic changes secondary to the loss of pigmentation in the retina pigment epithelium (RPE). How the loss of pigmentation in the RPE causes developmental defects in the adjacent neurosensory retina has not been determined, but offers a unique opportunity to investigate the interactions between these two important tissues. One of the genes that causes albinism encodes for an orphan GPCR (OA1) expressed only in pigmented cells, including the RPE.

PLoS Biology

Bacterial Inclusion Bodies Contain Amyloid-Like Structure

apryl — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:08:45 -0700

Protein aggregation is a process in which identical proteins self-associate into imperfectly ordered macroscopic entities. Such aggregates are generally classified as amorphous, lacking any long-range order, or highly ordered fibrils. Protein fibrils can be composed of native globular molecules, such as the hemoglobin molecules in sickle-cell fibrils, or can be reorganized β-sheet–rich aggregates, termed amyloid-like fibrils. Amyloid fibrils are associated with several pathological conditions in humans, including Alzheimer disease and diabetes type II.

tRNA on Ribosome

A Gene Wiki for Community Annotation of Gene Function

asu — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:03:14 -0700

This manuscript describes the creation of comprehensive gene wiki, seeded with data from public domain sources, which will enable and encourage community annotation of gene function.

PLoS Biology

Dynamic Remodeling of Individual Nucleosomes Across a Eukaryotic Genome in Response to Transcriptional Perturbation

akshayb — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 17:19:57 -0700

The eukaryotic genome is packaged as chromatin with nucleosomes comprising its basic structural unit, but the detailed structure of chromatin and its dynamic remodeling in terms of individual nucleosome positions has not been completely defined experimentally for any genome. We used ultra-high–throughput sequencing to map the remodeling of individual nucleosomes throughout the yeast genome before and after a physiological perturbation that causes genome-wide transcriptional changes.

PLoS Biology