Activin, a member of the TGF-b superfamily, controls a variety of physiological events from the cell cycle to reproductive health. Activin activates the Smad signaling pathway through ActRII/B and ALK4 receptors. The regulation of activin signaling is carried out in part by the inhibitor protein follistatin. The mechanistic details of...
A comprehensive understanding of how image processing occurs in the primary visual cortex (V1) requires learning what aspects of neuronal responses are driven by strong feed-forward input from the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), and what aspects arise due to the densely recurrent network operating within the cortex itself. From an...
HspB2 was discovered as a chaperone of muscular dystrophy protein kinase (DMPK) and originally named, DMPK binding protein (MKBP) and presently called HspB2. Functionally, MKBP binds to DMPK and stabilizes its kinase activity, thereby accelerating the progression of muscular dystrophy. Although other binding partners of HspB2 have been found, the...
The growth cone is a highly specialized motile structure with a distinctive and dynamically variable morphology. Current understanding of actin-based protrusive motility has been formulated in terms of the dendritic nucleation/array treadmilling model for lamellipodial protrusion and the convergent-elongation model for filopodial protrusion, that were based upon results obtained primarily...
Many ion channels are localized in specific subcellular domain of the neurons, and the proper localization is critical for the function of ion channels. Hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels (h channels) are asymmetrically distributed in the CA1 pyramidal neurons, enriched in the distal apical dendrites. H current, generated by h...
Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) is associated with malignancies of lymphoid and epithelial origin. While the precise role of EBV in oncogenesis remains elusive, latent membrane protein 2A (LMP2A) is detected in all EBV-associated malignancies, implicating LMP2A in their pathogenesis. Interestingly, LMP2A is expressed in EBV-associated malignancies such as Burkitt's Lymphoma,...
PilD is an enzyme that processes prepilins that are part of the type II protein secretion apparatus and the type IV piliation machinery. Using a <em>Legionella pneumophila pilDlacZ</em> fusion strain to measure transcription, we observed a 20% increase in beta-galactosidase levels at 30°C vs. 37°C. At 25°C and 17°C vs....
Synapses in the central nervous system vary widely in how they transmit and store information. The properties of short-term and long-term plasticity, in particular, seem to be specific for each class of synapse studied. The types of plasticity expressed at a particular synapse determine how it processes, transmits and possibly...
A pyramidal neuron receives thousands of inputs spread throughout its dendritic tree, which it must integrate into a decision about whether or not to fire action-potential output. Since action potentials are the primary means by which these neurons communicate with their network partners, understanding this input-output relationship is critical for...
Herpes simplex virus (HSV) infection of host cells requires virus attachment to the cell surface and subsequent membrane fusion between the virus envelope and host cell membrane to deliver the nucleocapsid containing the viral genome into the host cell. A proposed mechanism for HSV glycoprotein-induced membrane fusion is gD binding...