Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell immunotherapy is a revolutionary pillar in cancer treatment. Clinical experience has shown remarkable successes in the treatment of certain hematological malignancies but only limited efficacy against B cell chr...
In the mammalian cochlea, specialized ribbon-type synapses between sensory inner hair cells (IHCs) and postsynaptic spiral ganglion neurons ensure the temporal precision and indefatigability of synaptic sound encoding. These high-through-put synapses...
Genome sequencing has identified a large number of putative autism spectrum disorder (ASD) risk genes, revealing possible disrupted biological pathways; however, the genetic and environmental underpinnings of ASD remain mostly unanswered. The present...
This work aimed at assessing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathogenesis through the investigation of the astrocytic role to transduce the load of amyloid-beta (Aβ) into neuronal death. The backbone of this review is focused on the deepening of...
The neuromuscular junction has been extensively employed in order to identify crucial determinants of synaptogenesis. At the vertebrate neuromuscular synapse, extracellular matrix and signaling proteins play stimulatory and inhibitory roles on the as...
Cell-to-cell spread of HIV-1 between CD4+ T cells takes place at multimolecular structures called virological synapses. A defining feature of the virological synapse is polarization of viral assembly and budding at sites of T cell-T cell contact. Rec...
Synaptic transmission is essential for controlling motor functions and maintaining brain functions such as walking, breathing, cognition, learning, and memory. Neurotransmitter release is regulated by presynaptic molecules assembled in active zones o...
The neuromuscular synapse is a relatively large synapse with hundreds of active zones in presynaptic motor nerve terminals and more than ten million acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) in the postsynaptic membrane. The enrichment of proteins in presynapt...
Engineering of neuronal network geometry by micropatterning technology is a key future technology for creating artificial brains on a chip. However, engineering of network geometry at the single-cell-level with functional morphology (axon/dendrite) a...
Neurons release neurotransmitters at a specialized region of the presynaptic membrane, the active zone (AZ), where a complex meshwork of proteins organizes the release apparatus. The formation of this proteinaceous cytomatrix at the AZ (CAZ) depends...
One major challenge in cellular neuroscience is to elucidate how the accurate alignment of presynaptic release sites with postsynaptic densely clustered ligand-gated ion channels at chemical synapses is achieved upon synapse assembly. The clustering...
The primary cilium has gone from being a vestigial organelle to a crucial signaling hub of growing interest given the association between a group of human disorders, collectively known as ciliopathies, and defects in its structure or function. In rec...
Viruses from several families use direct cell-to-cell infection to disseminate between cells. Retroviruses are a relatively recent addition to this list, and appear to spread cell-to-cell by induction of multimolecular complexes termed virological sy...
Commentary on Pais-Correia, A.M.; Sachse, M.; Guadagnini, S.; Robbiati, V.; Lasserre, R.; Gessain, A.; Gout, O.; Alcover, A.; Thoulouze, M.I. Biofilm-like extracellular viral assemblies mediate HTLV-1 cell-to-cell transmission at virological synapses...
Synapses, abundant in the brain, are structures needed for life. Our Introduction, based on the forms of such structures published few decades ago, helped in developing recent concepts of health and diseases. Growing axons govern their growth by cell...
Synaptic ribbons are the eponymous specializations of continuously active ribbon synapses. They are primarily composed of the RIBEYE protein that consists of a unique amino-terminal A-domain and carboxy-terminal B-domain that is largely identical to...
Neuromuscular junction assembly and plasticity during embryonic, postnatal, and adult life are tightly regulated by the continuous cross-talk among motor nerve endings, muscle fibers, and glial cells. Altered communications among these components is...
T cell-redirecting strategies have emerged as effective cancer immunotherapy approaches. Bispecific antibodies (bsAbs) are designed to specifically recruit T cells to the tumor microenvironment and induce the assembly of the immunological synapse (IS...
Synapses serve as the interface for the transmission of information between neurons in the central nervous system. The structural and functional characteristics of synapses are highly dynamic, exhibiting extensive plasticity that is shaped by neural...
In farmed flatfish, such as common sole, color disturbances are common. Dyschromia is a general term that includes the color defects on the blind and ocular sides of the fish. The purpose was to examine the difference in gene expression between norma...
Peroxisome Biogenesis Disorders (PBD) and Zellweger syndrome spectrum disorders (ZSD) are rare genetic multisystem disorders that include hearing impairment and are associated with defects in peroxisome assembly, function, or both. Mutations in 13 pe...
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a lethal clonal hematopoietic malignancy. Several reports have shown that serum metabolite alterations have been implicated in AML, but the causal relationship and underlying biological mechanisms remain unclear. We pe...
Although acetylcholine is the major neurotransmitter operating at the skeletal neuromuscular junction of many invertebrates and of vertebrates, glutamate participates in modulating cholinergic transmission and plastic changes in the last. Presynaptic...
The synaptonemal complex (SC) is a meiosis-specific multiprotein complex that forms between homologous chromosomes during prophase of meiosis I. Upon assembly, the SC mediates the synapses of the homologous chromosomes, leading to the formation of bi...
HIV-1 infection is enhanced by cell–cell adhesions between infected and uninfected T cells called virological synapses (VS). VS are initiated by the interactions of cell-surface HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein (Env) and CD4 on target cells and act...
Recent years have witnessed a surge in the research of memristors as fundamental building blocks for neuromorphic computing, owing to their exceptional ability to emulate the plastic behavior of biological synapses in a high-density, low-power hardwa...
For many decades after their discovery, astrocytes, the abundant glial cells of the brain, were believed to work as a glue, supporting the structure and metabolic functions of neurons. A revolution that started over 30 years ago revealed many additio...
Charge polarization at the membrane interface is a fundamental process in biology. Despite the lower concentration compared to the abundant monovalent ions, the relative abundance of divalent cations (Ca2+, Mg2+, Zn2+, Fe2+, Cu2+) in particular space...
The AMPA glutamate receptor (AMPAR) is the major type of synaptic excitatory ionotropic receptor in the brain. AMPARs have four different subunits, GluA1–4 (each encoded by different genes, Gria1, Gria2, Gria3 and Gria4), that can form distinct...
During HIV-1 transmission through T cell virological synapses, the recruitment of the envelope (Env) glycoprotein to the site of cell–cell contact is important for adhesion and for packaging onto nascent virus particles which assemble at the site. Li...
During brain development, neurons need to form the correct connections with one another in order to give rise to a functional neuronal circuitry. Mistakes during this process, leading to the formation of improper neuronal connectivity, can result in...
Taste dysfunction, or dysgeusia, is a frequent symptom associated with infections and systemic diseases, yet its cellular and molecular basis remains poorly understood. The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to study dysgeusia as a “natu...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified T cells brought a paradigm shift in the treatment of chemotherapy-resistant lymphomas. Conversely, clinical experience with CAR T cells targeting solid tumors has been disheartening, indicating the necessity o...
The runs of homozygosity (ROHs), the inbreeding coefficient, and the effective population size (Ne) in Pelibuey sheep were analyzed in 24 Pelibuey ewes from two lambs at parturition and 24 ewes that gave birth to a single lamb using the Ilumina Ovine...
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) transmission takes place primarily through cell-cell contacts known as virological synapses. Formation of these transient adhesions between infected and uninfected cells can lead to transmission of viral pa...
NOVA1 and NOVA2, the two members of the NOVA family of alternative splicing factors, bind YCAY clusters of pre-mRNAs and assemble spliceosomes to induce the maintenance/removal of introns and exons, thus governing the development of mRNAs. Members of...
The TaqIA polymorphism is a marker of both the Ankyrin Repeat and Kinase Domain containing I gene (ANKK1) encoding a RIP-kinase, and the DRD2 gene for the dopamine receptor D2. Despite a large number of studies of TaqIA in addictions and other psychi...
Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most common chronic neurodegenerative disorders. Despite several in vivo and clinical studies, the cause of the disease is poorly understood. Currently, amyloid β (Aβ) peptide and its tendency to asse...
In cholinergic synapses, the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) is rapidly hydrolyzed by esterases to choline and acetic acid (AH). It is believed that this reaction serves the purpose of deactivating ACh once it has exerted its effect on a recepto...
The HIV-1 envelope (Env) is an essential determinant of viral infectivity, tropism and spread between T cells. Lentiviral Env contain an unusually long 150 amino acid cytoplasmic tail (EnvCT), but the function of the EnvCT and many conserved domains...
Rapid industrialization has introduced a range of chemicals into the environment, posing significant risks to fetal and child brain development. Using the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD), we constructed chemical exposome frameworks for seve...
Cyclase-associated proteins (CAPs) are evolutionary-conserved actin-binding proteins with crucial functions in regulating actin dynamics, the spatiotemporally controlled assembly and disassembly of actin filaments (F-actin). Mammals possess two famil...
Autoimmune diseases arise from the failure of self-tolerance. The recognition of self-antigen peptide–MHC (pMHC) complexes by the T-cell receptor (TCR) is the fundamental event triggering autoimmune pathogenesis. While traditional immunosuppres...
A myelination is essential for neural function in the vertebrate central nervous system, yet the molecular details of how the oligodendrocyte differentiation program has evolved remain poorly understood. Here, we performed a cross-species single-cell...
Actin remodeling accompanies myoblast proliferation, lineage commitment, elongation, fusion, and myofibril assembly, but these changes do not constitute a single linear pathway. This review separates three experimentally distinguishable scales of act...
Synaptic plasticity is the key to synaptic health, and aberrant synaptic plasticity, which in turn impairs the functioning of large-scale brain networks, has been associated with neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. The best known and most st...
Sugarcane is an important crop across the globe, and the rapid multiplication of excellent cultivars is an important object of the sugarcane industry. As one of the plant growth regulators, paclobutrazol (PBZ) has been frequently used in the tissue c...
Human cerebral organoids (COs) are well-recognized in vitro models for recapitulating human fetal brain development. However, spontaneous unguided differentiation of COs leads to severe regional heterogeneity, limiting standardized research and high-...
The A
Down syndrome (DS) is the most common form of inherited intellectual disability caused by trisomy of chromosome 21, presenting with intellectual impairment, craniofacial abnormalities, cardiac defects, and gastrointestinal disorders. The Ts65Dn mouse...
of 2