Articles

Music, memory and emotion

Because emotions enhance memory processes and music evokes strong emotions, music could be involved in forming memories, either about pieces of music or about episodes and information associated with particula...

Authors: Lutz Jäncke

Drug-therapy networks and the prediction of novel drug targets

A recent study in BMC Pharmacology presents a network of drugs and the therapies in which they are used. Network approaches open new ways of predicting novel drug targets and overcoming the cellular robustness th...

Authors: Zoltan Spiro, Istvan A Kovacs and Peter Csermely

Genomics technology for assessing soil pollution

Transcription and metabolite analysis is a powerful way to reveal physiological shifts in response to environmental pollution. Recent studies on earthworms, including one in BMC Biology, show that the type of pol...

Authors: Nico M van Straalen and Dick Roelofs

Stage debut for the elusive Drosophila insulin-like growth factor binding protein

Insulin-like growth factor (IGF) binding proteins provide a layer of complexity to the insulin/IGF signaling system in mammals, but only now, in a recent study in Journal of Biology, has one such protein been fun...

Authors: Nazif Alic and Linda Partridge

Making the jump: new insights into the mechanism of trans-translation

The transfer-messenger ribonucleoprotein (tmRNP), which is composed of RNA and a small protein, small protein B (SmpB), recycles ribosomes that are stalled on broken mRNAs lacking stop codons and tags the part...

Authors: Jacek Wower, Iwona K Wower and Christian Zwieb

Zoological detective stories: the case of the facetotectan crustacean life cycle

The reconstruction of complete animal life cycles is sometimes a considerable problem, even though the knowledge of the full life cycle may have far-reaching evolutionary implications. A new study published in BM...

Authors: Gerhard Scholtz

Spatially patterned gradients of synaptic connectivity are established early in the developing retina

Retinal neurons receive input from other cells via synapses and the position of these synapses on the neurons reflects the retinal regions from which information is received. A new study in Neural Development est...

Authors: Susana Cohen-Cory

Process rather than pattern: finding pine needles in the coevolutionary haystack

The geographic mosaic theory is fast becoming a unifying framework for coevolutionary studies. A recent experimental study of interactions between pines and mycorrhizal fungi in BMC Biology is the first to rigoro...

Authors: David R Nash

Colugos: obscure mammals glide into the evolutionary limelight

Substantial molecular evidence indicates that tree-shrews, colugos and primates cluster together on the mammalian phylogenetic tree. Previously, a sister-group relationship between colugos and primates seemed ...

Authors: Robert D Martin

Systemic 5-fluorouracil treatment causes a syndrome of delayed myelin destruction in the central nervous system

Cancer treatment with a variety of chemotherapeutic agents often is associated with delayed adverse neurological consequences. Despite their clinical importance, almost nothing is known about the basis for suc...

Authors: Ruolan Han, Yin M Yang, Joerg Dietrich, Anne Luebke, Margot Mayer-Pröschel and Mark Noble

How chemotherapy damages the central nervous system

Chemotherapy adversely affects cognitive function both acutely and chronically, but little is known about the underlying mechanisms. A new study shows that short-term chemotherapy causes not only acute injury ...

Authors: Christina A Meyers

Imp-L2, a putative homolog of vertebrate IGF-binding protein 7, counteracts insulin signaling in Drosophila and is essential for starvation resistance

Insulin and insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) signal through a highly conserved pathway and control growth and metabolism in both vertebrates and invertebrates. In mammals, insulin-like growth factor binding ...

Authors: Basil Honegger, Milos Galic, Katja Köhler, Franz Wittwer, Walter Brogiolo, Ernst Hafen and Hugo Stocker

Small changes, big results: evolution of morphological discontinuity in mammals

Comparative morphological and developmental studies, including a recent comparative study of tooth development among the Afrotherian mammals, are indicating the types of genetic mechanisms responsible for the ...

Authors: Rodney L Honeycutt

A Caenorhabditis elegans genetic-interaction map wiggles into view

Systematic mapping of genetic-interaction networks will provide an essential foundation for understanding complex genetic disorders, mechanisms of genetic buffering and principles of robustness and evolvabilit...

Authors: Kristin C Gunsalus

Functions of O-fucosyltransferase in Notch trafficking and signaling: towards the end of a controversy?

The precise role of the O-fucosyltransferase Ofut1 in Notch-receptor trafficking has remained controversial. A recent study sheds new light on the non-catalytic activity of Ofut1 and provides further evidence tha...

Authors: Nicolas Vodovar and François Schweisguth

Reasons for breast cancer heterogeneity

Breast cancers differ in many ways, such as in their cell of origin, the molecular alterations causing them and the susceptibility and defenses of the patient, and this makes it difficult to give the most appr...

Authors: François Bertucci and Daniel Birnbaum

Great exaptations

Long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) are among the most successful parasitic genetic sequences in higher organisms. Recent work has discovered many instances of LINE incorporation into exons, reminding u...

Authors: Kathleen H Burns and Jef D Boeke

Semaphorins deployed to repel cell migrants at spinal cord borders

In the spinal cord, developing motor neurons extend their axons into the periphery while their cell bodies remain within the motor columns in the spinal cord. Two recent papers show that this partitioning invo...

Authors: Sophie Chauvet and Geneviève Rougon

Electrical protein detection in cell lysates using high-density peptide-aptamer microarrays

The dissection of biological pathways and of the molecular basis of disease requires devices to analyze simultaneously a staggering number of protein isoforms in a given cell under given conditions. Such devic...

Authors: David Evans, Steven Johnson, Sophie Laurenson, A Giles Davies, Paul Ko Ferrigno and Christoph Wälti

The eleven-year switch of peptide aptamers

Peptide aptamers are combinatorial recognition proteins that were introduced more than ten years ago. They have since found many applications in fundamental and therapeutic research, including their recent use...

Authors: Pierre Colas

Metabolic reconfiguration is a regulated response to oxidative stress

A new study reveals that, in response to oxidative stress, organisms can redirect their metabolic flux from glycolysis to the pentose phosphate pathway, the pathway that provides the reducing power for the mai...

Authors: Chris M Grant

Dynamic rerouting of the carbohydrate flux is key to counteracting oxidative stress

Eukaryotic cells have evolved various response mechanisms to counteract the deleterious consequences of oxidative stress. Among these processes, metabolic alterations seem to play an important role.

Authors: Markus Ralser, Mirjam M Wamelink, Axel Kowald, Birgit Gerisch, Gino Heeren, Eduard A Struys, Edda Klipp, Cornelis Jakobs, Michael Breitenbach, Hans Lehrach and Sylvia Krobitsch

Cryptic biodiversity in a changing world

DNA studies are revealing the extent of hidden, or cryptic, biodiversity. Two new studies challenge paradigms about cryptic biodiversity and highlight the importance of adding a historical and biogeographic di...

Authors: Luciano B Beheregaray and Adalgisa Caccone

Landscape genetics goes to sea

A recent study revealing geographical and environmental barriers to gene flow in the harbour porpoise shows the great potential of 'landscape genetics' when applied to marine organisms.

Authors: Michael Møller Hansen and Jakob Hemmer-Hansen

A global analysis of genetic interactions in Caenorhabditis elegans

Understanding gene function and genetic relationships is fundamental to our efforts to better understand biological systems. Previous studies systematically describing genetic interactions on a global scale ha...

Authors: Alexandra B Byrne, Matthew T Weirauch, Victoria Wong, Martina Koeva, Scott J Dixon, Joshua M Stuart and Peter J Roy

Journal of Biology celebrates its fifth anniversary

Authors:

Growth control of the eukaryote cell: a systems biology study in yeast

Cell growth underlies many key cellular and developmental processes, yet a limited number of studies have been carried out on cell-growth regulation. Comprehensive studies at the transcriptional, proteomic and...

Authors: Juan I Castrillo, Leo A Zeef, David C Hoyle, Nianshu Zhang, Andrew Hayes, David CJ Gardner, Michael J Cornell, June Petty, Luke Hakes, Leanne Wardleworth, Bharat Rash, Marie Brown, Warwick B Dunn, David Broadhurst, Kerry O'Donoghue, Svenja S Hester…

Multilevel regulation of growth rate in yeast revealed using systems biology

The effect of changing growth rates on the transcriptome, proteome and metabolome has been systematically studied. Measurements made under varying nutrient conditions, corresponding to biochemical pathways tha...

Authors: Arvind Ramanathan and Stuart L Schreiber

Dosage compensation is less effective in birds than in mammals

In animals with heteromorphic sex chromosomes, dosage compensation of sex-chromosome genes is thought to be critical for species survival. Diverse molecular mechanisms have evolved to effectively balance the e...

Authors: Yuichiro Itoh, Esther Melamed, Xia Yang, Kathy Kampf, Susanna Wang, Nadir Yehya, Atila Van Nas, Kirstin Replogle, Mark R Band, David F Clayton, Eric E Schadt, Aldons J Lusis and Arthur P Arnold

Does gene dosage really matter?

Mechanisms to compensate for dosage differences of genes on sex chromosomes are widespread in animals and have been thought to be critical for viability. However, in birds, compensation is inefficient, implyin...

Authors: Jennifer A Marshall Graves and Christine M Disteche

CNS progenitor cells and oligodendrocytes are targets of chemotherapeutic agents in vitro and in vivo

Chemotherapy in cancer patients can be associated with serious short- and long-term adverse neurological effects, such as leukoencephalopathy and cognitive impairment, even when therapy is delivered systemical...

Authors: Joerg Dietrich, Ruolan Han, Yin Yang, Margot Mayer-Pröschel and Mark Noble

The long term effects of chemotherapy on the central nervous system

Cranial radiotherapy is known to have adverse effects on intelligence. A new study shows that chemotherapy is also toxic to the central nervous system, especially to neural progenitor cells and oligodendrocyte...

Authors: Patricia K Duffner

High-resolution quantitative imaging of mammalian and bacterial cells using stable isotope mass spectrometry

Secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) is an important tool for investigating isotopic composition in the chemical and materials sciences, but its use in biology has been limited by technical considerations. M...

Authors: Claude Lechene, Francois Hillion, Greg McMahon, Douglas Benson, Alan M Kleinfeld, J Patrick Kampf, Daniel Distel, Yvette Luyten, Joseph Bonventre, Dirk Hentschel, Kwon Moo Park, Susumu Ito, Martin Schwartz, Gilles Benichou and Georges Slodzian

Biological imaging using secondary ions

Biological materials are morphologically and chemically complex. A quantitative imaging tool is now available that can produce chemical, and even metabolic, information from morphological features as small as ...

Authors: Peter Williams

Imaging with isotopes: high resolution and quantitation

Authors: Jonathan B Weitzman

A quantitative analysis of the mechanism that controls body size in Manduca sexta

Body size is controlled by mechanisms that terminate growth when the individual reaches a species-specific size. In insects, it is a pulse of ecdysone at the end of larval life that causes the larva to stop fe...

Authors: HF Nijhout, G Davidowitz and DA Roff

The proximate determinants of insect size

One of the least understood aspects of animal development – the determination of body size – is currently the subject of intense scrutiny. A new study employs a modeling approach to expose the factors that mat...

Authors: Joseph Parker and Laura A Johnston

Distinct functions for ERKs?

The Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK signaling pathway is one of the best understood signal routes in cells. Recent studies add complexity to this cascade by indicating that the two ERK kinases, ERK1 (p44^ERK1) and ERK2 (p42^ERK2),...

Authors: Alison C Lloyd

Dimerization in protein kinase signaling

The closely related mitogen-activated protein kinases ERK1 and ERK2 have now been shown to have opposing roles in Ras-mediated cell proliferation. I propose that dimerization of these highly related protein ki...

Authors: Steven Pelech

ERK1 and ERK2 mitogen-activated protein kinases affect Ras-dependent cell signaling differentially

The mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases p44^ERK1 and p42^ERK2 are crucial components of the regulatory machinery underlying normal and malignant cell proliferation. A currently accepted model maintains that ERK...

Authors: Chiara Vantaggiato, Ivan Formentini, Attilio Bondanza, Chiara Bonini, Luigi Naldini and Riccardo Brambilla

Comprehensive curation and analysis of global interaction networks in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The study of complex biological networks and prediction of gene function has been enabled by high-throughput (HTP) methods for detection of genetic and protein interactions. Sparse coverage in HTP datasets may...

Authors: Teresa Reguly, Ashton Breitkreutz, Lorrie Boucher, Bobby-Joe Breitkreutz, Gary C Hon, Chad L Myers, Ainslie Parsons, Helena Friesen, Rose Oughtred, Amy Tong, Chris Stark, Yuen Ho, David Botstein, Brenda Andrews, Charles Boone, Olga G Troyanskya…

The interaction map of yeast: terra incognita?

A systematic curation of the literature on Saccharomyces cerevisiae has yielded a comprehensive collection of experimentally observed interactions. This new resource augments current views of the topological stru...

Authors: Joe Mellor and Charles DeLisi

The short coiled-coil domain-containing protein UNC-69 cooperates with UNC-76 to regulate axonal outgrowth and normal presynaptic organization in Caenorhabditis elegans

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has been used extensively to identify the genetic requirements for proper nervous system development and function. Key to this process is the direction of vesicles to the growi...

Authors: Cheng-Wen Su, Suzanne Tharin, Yishi Jin, Bruce Wightman, Mona Spector, David Meili, Nancy Tsung, Christa Rhiner, Dimitris Bourikas, Esther Stoeckli, Gian Garriga, H Robert Horvitz and Michael O Hengartner

Regulators of kinesin involved in polarized trafficking and axon outgrowth

Proteins such as UNC-76 that associate with kinesin motors are important in directing neurite extension. A small Caenorhabditis elegans coiled-coil protein, UNC-69, has now been shown to interact with UNC-76 and ...

Authors: Shuo Luo and Michael L Nonet

Building bridges with astrocytes for spinal cord repair

Simultaneous suppression of glial scarring and a general enhancement of axonal outgrowth has now been accomplished in an adult rat model of spinal cord transection. Transplantation of a novel astrocyte cell ty...

Authors: Robert H Miller

Astrocytes derived from glial-restricted precursors promote spinal cord repair

Transplantation of embryonic stem or neural progenitor cells is an attractive strategy for repair of the injured central nervous system. Transplantation of these cells alone to acute spinal cord injuries has n...

Authors: Jeannette E Davies, Carol Huang, Christoph Proschel, Mark Noble, Margot Mayer-Proschel and Stephen JA Davies

Suppression of adaptive immunity to heterologous antigens during Plasmodium infection through hemozoin-induced failure of dendritic cell function

Dendritic cells (DCs) are central to the initiation and regulation of the adaptive immune response during infection. Modulation of DC function may therefore allow evasion of the immune system by pathogens. Sig...

Authors: Owain R Millington, Caterina Di Lorenzo, R Stephen Phillips, Paul Garside and James M Brewer

Malaria pigment paralyzes dendritic cells

The capacity of malarial infection to suppress the patient's immune responses both to the parasite and to other antigens has long puzzled researchers. A prime suspect, the parasite-produced pigment hemozoin, h...

Authors: Britta C Urban and Stephen Todryk

A balancing act between the X chromosome and the autosomes

Dosage compensation equalizes gene dosage between males and females, but its role in balancing expression between the X chromosome and the autosomes may be far more important. Now, DNA microarrays have shown e...

Authors: Mimi K Cheng and Christine M Disteche

Getting the right dose of sex (chromosomes)

Gene-expression analysis provides evidence for dosage compensation of the X chromosome in flies, mice and worms.

Authors: Jonathan B Weitzman