This month in BioMed Roundup:

• Edelson et al. showed that social manipulation could alter firmly held memory representations in the brain.
• Göritz et al. reported that the mechanism of healing central nervous system injuries relies on pericytes, an unsuspected class of non-nervous system cells.
• Gesquiere et al. found that alpha males have higher stress levels than beta males in wild baboon society.
• Das et al. reported that ablation of a gene controlling fat breakdown can protect mice from cancer-associated uncontrolled loss of fat and muscle.

Jump to:

• Cell/Developmental Biology
• Neuroscience/Psychology
• Microbiology/Virology
• Biochemistry
• Molecular Biology
• Genetics
• Medicine

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CELL/DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY

A Key Enzyme in the Biogenesis of Lysosomes Is a Protease That Regulates Cholesterol Metabolism (1 July 2011)
K. Marschner et al.
Defects in a sterol regulatory pathway also cause defects in lysosome assembly leading to mucolipidosis and disease.
See related Perspective

Long Unfolded Linkers Facilitate Membrane Protein Import Through the Nuclear Pore Complex (1 July 2011)
A. C. Meinema et al.
Natively unfolded linkers facilitate nuclear membrane protein import.
See related Perspective

Isolation of Single Human Hematopoietic Stem Cells Capable of Long-Term Multilineage Engraftment (8 July 2011)
F. Notta et al.
Proteins are identified that underlie the early commitment steps of human hematopoietic stem cell differentiation.

Coupled, Circumferential Motions of the Cell Wall Synthesis Machinery and MreB Filaments in B. subtilis (8 July 2011)
E. C. Garner et al.
Processive Movement of MreB-Associated Cell Wall Biosynthetic Complexes in Bacteria (8 July 2011)
J. Domínguez-Escobar et al.
Bacteria elongation involves moving synthetic complexes around the cell wall.

Phosphorylation of the Autophagy Receptor Optineurin Restricts Salmonella Growth (8 July 2011)
P. Wild et al.
Phosphorylation of an autophagy receptor restricts pathogenic cytosolic bacterial growth.

Chirality in Planar Cell Shape Contributes to Left-Right Asymmetric Epithelial Morphogenesis (15 July 2011)
K. Taniguchi et al.
Left-right asymmetry in cell shape is converted to a directional twist of the gut epithelial tube.
Control of Mitotic Spindle Angle by the RAS-Regulated ERK1/2 Pathway Determines Lung Tube Shape (15 July 2011)
N. Tang et al.
During lung development, airway shape is determined by a signaling pathway that regulates the orientation of cell division.
See related Perspective

Electrical Spiking in Escherichia coli Probed with a Fluorescent Voltage-Indicating Protein (15 July 2011)
J. M. Kralj et al.
An optical bioprobe reveals action potential-like electrical spikes in individual bacteria.

Self-Recognition in Social Amoebae Is Mediated by Allelic Pairs of Tiger Genes (22 July 2011)
S. Hirose et al.
Polymorphic receptors prevent cheaters by avoiding altruistic cell death in Dictyostelium.

Organization of Intracellular Reactions with Rationally Designed RNA Assemblies (22 July 2011)
C. J. Delebecque et al.
Multidimensional RNA structures can act as scaffolds for the spatial organization of bacterial metabolism.
See related Perspective


NEUROSCIENCE/PSYCHOLOGY

Oxytocin Selectively Gates Fear Responses Through Distinct Outputs from the Central Amygdala (1 July 2011)
D. Viviani et al.
Specific neuronal populations in the amygdala control different behavioral and physiological components of the fear response.

Following the Crowd: Brain Substrates of Long-Term Memory Conformity (1 July 2011)
M. Edelson et al.
Firmly held memory representations in the brain can be altered by social influence.
See related Perspective

A Pericyte Origin of Spinal Cord Scar Tissue (8 July 2011)
C. Göritz et al.
Scars formed in response to damage to the central nervous system show unexpected complexity.

Linking Context with Reward: A Functional Circuit from Hippocampal CA3 to Ventral Tegmental Area (15 July 2011)
A. H. Luo et al.
A hippocampus-to-ventral tegmental area pathway regulates dopamine neurons and is necessary for reinstatement of context-induced cocaine-seeking.

Life at the Top: Rank and Stress in Wild Male Baboons (15 July 2011)
L. R. Gesquiere et al.
Alpha males have higher stress levels than beta males in wild baboon society.
See related Perspective

Identity: Key to Children’s Understanding of Belief (22 July 2011)
J. Perner et al.
"Theory of mind" is a domain-general cognitive capacity.

Impaired Respiratory and Body Temperature Control Upon Acute Serotonergic Neuron Inhibition (29 July 2011)
R. S. Ray et al.
Inducible neuron inhibition reveals essential roles for serotonergic neurons in respiratory and body temperature homeostasis.


MICROBIOLOGY/VIROLOGY

No Evidence of Murine-Like Gammaretroviruses in CFS Patients Previously Identified as XMRV-Infected (1 July 2011)
K. Knox et al.
Chronic fatigue syndrome patients reported previously to be XMRV-infected show no signs of the virus in an independent evaluation.

Recombinant Origin of the Retrovirus XMRV (1 July 2011)
T. Paprotka et al.
Analysis of the origin of XMRV suggests that links between the virus and human disease are due to laboratory contamination.

Predicting a Human Gut Microbiota’s Response to Diet in Gnotobiotic Mice (1 July 2011)
J. J. Faith et al.
Model microbial communities in mouse guts respond quickly and predictably to dietary shifts.

De-AMPylation of the Small GTPase Rab1 by the Pathogen Legionella pneumophila (22 July 2011)
M. R. Neunuebel et al.
A bacterial pathogen reverses the modification of a host cell protein involved in membrane trafficking.

Isolation of Succinivibrionaceae Implicated in Low Methane Emissions from Tammar Wallabies (29 July 2011)
P. B. Pope et al.
Metagenome sequence predicted the culture conditions required for successful isolation of a marsupial gut bacterium.



BIOCHEMISTRY

Cilia-Like Beating of Active Microtubule Bundles (22 July 2011)
T. Sanchez et al.
In-vitro-assembled microtubule bundles exhibit oscillatory beating patterns and organize into metachronal waves.

Structural Basis of Type II Topoisomerase Inhibition by the Anticancer Drug Etoposide (22 July 2011)
C.-C. Wu et al.
Inhibition of an enzyme that alters DNA topology with an anticancer agent should facilitate development of better cancer drugs.

Host Cell Invasion by Apicomplexan Parasites: Insights from the Co-Structure of AMA1 with a RON2 Peptide (22 July 2011)
M. L. Tonkin et al.
The structure of a eukaryotic pathogen adhesin bound to its receptor provides a basis for design of therapeutics.
See related Perspective

Initiation Complex Structure and Promoter Proofreading (29 July 2011)
X. Liu et al.
RNA polymerase II transcription complexes reveal the basis of abortive initiation and its role in promoter control.


MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Mechanism of RAD51-Dependent DNA Interstrand Cross-Link Repair (1 July 2011)
D. T. Long et al.
An in vitro system reveals the steps involved in repairing covalent links between DNA strands of the double helix.

RNA Mimics of Green Fluorescent Protein (29 July 2011)
J. S. Paige et al.
Selection for RNAs that bind and activate derivatives of the green fluorescent protein fluorophore yields a wide range of useful spectral properties.


GENETICS

Precise Manipulation of Chromosomes in Vivo Enables Genome-Wide Codon Replacement (15 July 2011)
F. J. Isaacs et al.
Template-mediated, genome construction and assembly created a strain with 80 precise codon changes.


MEDICINE

Adipose Triglyceride Lipase Contributes to Cancer-Associated Cachexia (8 July 2011)
S. K. Das et al.
Ablation of a gene controlling fat breakdown can protect mice from cancer-associated uncontrolled loss of fat and muscle.
See related Perspective

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