Targeting Topics

Congratulations to the research team at Harry S. Truman Memorial Veterans Hospital and Department of Neurology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, for their publication in Journal of Neurochemistry.  Their interesting project examined the sleep-promoting effect of alcohol and which neurons in the brain are involved in the process. Lesions of the basal forebrain cholinergic neurons […]

Yu YQ, Barry DM, Hao Y, Liu XT, Chen ZF. (2017) Molecular and Neural Basis of Contagious Itch Behavior in Mice. Science 355(6329):1072-76. PMID: 28280205 Observing others scratch themselves can make you want to do so.  This contagious itching has been observed in monkeys and humans, but what about rodents?  Yu et al. found that

Martínez-Gardeazabal J, González de San Román E, Moreno-Rodríguez M, Llorente-Ovejero A, Manuel I, Rodríguez-Puertas R. (2017) Lipid Mapping of the Rat Brain for Models of Disease. Biochim Biophys Acta  PMID:28235468 The major components of plasma membranes are lipids. These molecules have a wide range of functions including cellular structure, metabolism and signaling molecules.  Regarding this

Somasundaram et al. C-terminal phosphorylation regulates the kinetics of a subset of melanopsin-mediated behaviors in mice. PNAS (2017), pii: 201611893. PMID: 28223508 Chronotype (morningness-eveningness) in mammals likely has multiple causes. Phase angle of entrainment is defined as the relationship between the timing of the biological clock and the timing of an external time cue, and if the primary

Lecrux et al. Impact of altered cholinergic tones on the neurovascular coupling response to whisker stimulation. Journal of Neuroscience (2017), 1784-16. PMID: 28069927 Brain imaging techniques that use vascular signals to map changes in neuronal activity rely on the coupling between electrophysiology and hemodynamics, a phenomenon referred to “neurovascular coupling” (NVC). It is unknown whether

Jiao et al. Differentiation defect in neural crest-derived smooth muscle cells in patients with aortopathy associated with bicuspid aortic valves. EBioMedicine (2016) 10:282-90. PMID: 27394642 Individuals with bicuspid aortic valves (BAV) are at a higher risk of developing thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAA) than patients with trileaflet aortic valves (TAV). Aneurysms associated with BAV most commonly

Humana Press has released its newest offer to the Neuroscience community, Molecular Neurosurgery With Targeted Toxins, with Ronald G. Wiley and Douglas A. Lappi as editors. This book contains articles by “the best and the brightest” who have used targeted toxins for probing difficult in vivo systems biology issues. To order — please contact ATS

Advanced Targeting Systems’ technology – Molecular Surgery – is a modification of one of the most widely used techniques in the neurosciences: lesioning of a region by surgical means and observation of the effect. Saporin has no way of entering a cell on its own, except by bulk-phase endocytosis. To be effective, Saporin is bound