PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

New signaling pathway could shed light on damage repair during brain injury

The study has uncovered a signaling pathway that causes neural cells to enter divisions after damage

New signaling pathway could shed light on damage repair during brain injury
2021-07-06
(Press-News.org) Most human cells are able to repair damage by dividing at wounds.

But mature nerve cells (neurons) in our brain are different. If they attempt division, they will likely die - and this is what happens during brain injury, or in conditions such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Now new research led by the University of Plymouth has uncovered a pathway that has shed new light on how these divisions may be triggered.

The research, published today in Cell Reports, has focused on intracellular structures called microtubules - which are found in most animal cells, and can be damaged by a build-up of a protein called Tau in the brain during AD.

The study was conducted in fruit flies, with comparison to postmortem brain samples of AD patients.

The paper shows that when the microtubules of neural cells in fruit flies are damaged, division is triggered via activating the small signalling kinases, Tak1 and Ik2. Strikingly, activation of these molecules can also be seen in AD brains.

Why is this important?

By understanding how the damaged microtubules behave, scientists have a valuable opportunity to potentially prevent neuronal death following brain injury, or upon neurodegeneration, such as in Alzheimer's Disease.

The research took place in fruit flies, but the team tested the applicability of their results by making fly neural cells express human Tau, and also examining post mortem human brain samples from AD patients.

Abnormal human Tau destroys microtubules in both flies' and Alzheimer's brains, and interestingly can trigger the same signalling cascade as discovered in fly neural cells after microtubule damage.

The reseachers also found that higher levels of Tau accumulation correlated to a greater frequency of neurons attempting to divide and neuronal death, but have not yet established a direct link or cause. What needs to happen next?

The work took place in the Plymouth Institute of Health and Care Research (PIHR) and was led by Dr Torsten Bossing.

He said of the current research and future plans: "While other scientists are exploring Tau and how it builds up, we're looking more at what happens to the cell after it has been damaged.

"The fact that the identified two signalling kinases are found alongside a build-up of Tau in post mortem brains of Alzheimer's Disease patients suggests that the mechanism identified using fruit flies may act similarly in humans. So we want to further our studies by using cultured human neurons next. Ultimately we want to prevent this abnormal cell division entry process from happening in the first place. It's an exciting piece of work, which we look forward to progressing."

INFORMATION:

The full paper, entitled Microtubule disruption upon CNS damage triggers mitotic entry via TNF signalling activation is available to view now in Cell Reports (doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109325).


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
New signaling pathway could shed light on damage repair during brain injury

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

The twinkle and the brain

2021-07-06
Can you remember the smell of flowers in your grandmother's garden or the tune your grandpa always used to whistle? Some childhood memories are seemingly engrained into your brain. In fact, there are critical periods in which the brain learns and saves profound cognitive routines and memories. The structure responsible for saving them is called the perineuronal net. This extracellular structure envelops certain neurons, thereby stabilizes existing connections - the synapses - between them and prevents new ones from forming. But what if we could remove the perineuronal net and restore the adaptability of a young brain? The neuroscientist Sandra Siegert and her research group at IST Austria now ...

Sharp size reduction in dinosaurs that changed diet to termites

Sharp size reduction in dinosaurs that changed diet to termites
2021-07-06
Dinosaurs were generally huge, but a new study of the unusual alvarezsaurs show that they reduced in size about 100 million years ago when they became specialised ant-eaters. The new work is led by Zichuan Qin, a PhD student at the University of Bristol and Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. He measured body sizes of dozens of specimens and showed that they ranged in size from 10-70 kg, the size of a large turkey to a small ostrich, for most of their existence and then plummeted rapidly to chicken-sized animals at the same time as they adopted a remarkable ...

New fossil sheds light on the evolution of how dinosaurs breathed

2021-07-06
An international team of scientists has used high-powered X-rays at the European Synchrotron, the ESRF, to show how an extinct South African 200-million-year-old dinosaur, Heterodontosaurus tucki, breathed. The study is published in eLife on 6 July 2021. In 2016, scientists from the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, came to the ESRF, the European Synchrotron in Grenoble, France, the brightest synchrotron light source, for an exceptional study: to scan the complete skeleton of a small, 200-million-year-old plant-eating dinosaur. The dinosaur specimen is the most complete fossil ever discovered of a species known as Heterodontosaurus tucki. The fossil was found in ...

Dignity support at end of life

Dignity support at end of life
2021-07-06
At the end of life, people may have to rely on others for help with showering, dressing and going to the toilet. This loss of privacy and independence can be confronting and difficult. Now Australian occupational therapy (OT) researchers have interviewed 18 people receiving palliative care about how they feel about losing independence with self-care, specifically their intimate hygiene, as function declines with disease progression. The study aims to raise awareness of how to provide better care for people at the end of life. Lead researcher Dr Deidre Morgan, a Flinders University occupational ...

New game-changing zeolite catalysts synthesized

New game-changing zeolite catalysts synthesized
2021-07-06
A research team at POSTECH has uncovered a promising new zeolite, anticipated to be a turning point for the oil refining and petrochemical industries. This research was recently published in the scientific journal Science on July 2, 2021. The team of researchers led by Suk Bong Hong, a professor in the Division of Environmental Science and Engineering at POSTECH, synthesized two thermally stable three-dimensional (3D) large-pore (12-ring)1 zeolites - PST-32 (POSTECH No. 32) and PST-2, the hypothetical SBS/SBT intergrowth structure2 - by using the "multiple inorganic cation" and the "charge density mismatch" synthetic strategies, respectively. The research team identified their structures by using both powder X-ray diffraction ...

Chemo upsets gut health in cancer patients

Chemo upsets gut health in cancer patients
2021-07-06
New research in BMC Cancer has shown myelosuppressive chemotherapy destabilises gut microbiome in patients with solid organ cancers. The study from SAHMRI and Flinders University assessed the gut health of men and women who underwent conventional chemotherapy on cancers, such as breast and lung cancer, without exposure to antibiotics. "We know that myelosuppressive chemotherapy reduces white blood cell count significantly during the first seven to 10 days of treatment, making the body more vulnerable to infection," says lead author Dr Lito Papanicolas, an infectious diseases expert and clinical microbiologist. "In this study we focused on how much the individual's microbiome changed over this period, when the ...

Engineered cells successfully treat cardiovascular and pulmonary disease

Engineered cells successfully treat cardiovascular and pulmonary disease
2021-07-06
Scientists at UC San Francisco have shown that gene-edited cellular therapeutics can be used to successfully treat cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, potentially paving the way for developing less expensive cellular therapies to treat diseases for which there are currently few viable options. The study, in mice, is the first in the emerging field of regenerative cell therapy to show that products from specially engineered induced pluripotent stem cells called "HIP" cells can successfully be employed to treat major diseases while evading the ...

University of Guam: Less than 10% of transplanted cycads survive long-term in foreign soil

University of Guam: Less than 10% of transplanted cycads survive long-term in foreign soil
2021-07-06
A 15-year reciprocal transplant study on Guam's native cycad tree, Cycas micronesica, by the Plant Physiology Laboratory at the University of Guam's Western Pacific Tropical Research Center has revealed that acute adaptation to local soil conditions occurs among the tree population and is important in the survival rate of transplanted cycads. The results show that 70% to 100% of cycads that were transplanted in local conditions survived versus less than 10% that were transplanted in foreign conditions. The article describing the study has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Diversity (doi: 10.3390/d13060237). Transplantation ...

Vertical greenery can act as a stress buffer, NTU Singapore study finds

Vertical greenery can act as a stress buffer, NTU Singapore study finds
2021-07-06
Vertical greenery 'planted' on the exterior of buildings may help to buffer people against stress, a Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) study has found. The benefits of nature on mental health and for wellbeing have long been recognised, and now a team of NTU Singapore psychologists has used Virtual Reality (VR) to examine whether vertical greenery has a stress buffering effect (ability to moderate the detrimental consequences of stress) in an urban environment. Using VR headsets, 111 participants were asked to walk down a virtual street for five minutes. Participants were randomly assigned to either a street that featured rows of planted greenery (e.g., on balconies, walls, and pillars of buildings), ...

Autistic children can benefit from attention training - new study

2021-07-06
Attention training in young people with autism can lead to significant improvements in academic performance, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Birmingham in the UK along with institutions in São Paolo, in Brazil, tested a computer programme designed to train basic attention skills among a group of autistic children aged between eight and 14 years old. They found participants achieved improvements in maths, reading, writing and overall attention both immediately after undergoing the training and at a three-month follow up assessment. Their results are published in Autism Research. Lead researcher, Dr Carmel Mevorach, in the University of Birmingham's Centre for Human Brain Health, and School of Psychology, says: "It's ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Viking colonizers of Iceland and nearby Faroe Islands had very different origins, study finds

One in 20 people in Canada skip doses, don’t fill prescriptions because of cost

Wildlife monitoring technologies used to intimidate and spy on women, study finds

Around 450,000 children disadvantaged by lack of school support for color blindness

Reality check: making indoor smartphone-based augmented reality work

Overthinking what you said? It’s your ‘lizard brain’ talking to newer, advanced parts of your brain

Black men — including transit workers — are targets for aggression on public transportation, study shows

Troubling spike in severe pregnancy-related complications for all ages in Illinois

Alcohol use identified by UTHealth Houston researchers as most common predictor of escalated cannabis vaping among youths in Texas

Need a landing pad for helicopter parenting? Frame tasks as learning

New MUSC Hollings Cancer Center research shows how Golgi stress affects T-cells' tumor-fighting ability

#16to365: New resources for year-round activism to end gender-based violence and strengthen bodily autonomy for all

Earliest fish-trapping facility in Central America discovered in Maya lowlands

São Paulo to host School on Disordered Systems

New insights into sleep uncover key mechanisms related to cognitive function

USC announces strategic collaboration with Autobahn Labs to accelerate drug discovery

Detroit health professionals urge the community to act and address the dangers of antimicrobial resistance

3D-printing advance mitigates three defects simultaneously for failure-free metal parts 

Ancient hot water on Mars points to habitable past: Curtin study

In Patagonia, more snow could protect glaciers from melt — but only if we curb greenhouse gas emissions soon

Simplicity is key to understanding and achieving goals

Caste differentiation in ants

Nutrition that aligns with guidelines during pregnancy may be associated with better infant growth outcomes, NIH study finds

New technology points to unexpected uses for snoRNA

Racial and ethnic variation in survival in early-onset colorectal cancer

Disparities by race and urbanicity in online health care facility reviews

Exploring factors affecting workers' acquisition of exercise habits using machine learning approaches

Nano-patterned copper oxide sensor for ultra-low hydrogen detection

Maintaining bridge safer; Digital sensing-based monitoring system

A novel approach for the composition design of high-entropy fluorite oxides with low thermal conductivity

[Press-News.org] New signaling pathway could shed light on damage repair during brain injury
The study has uncovered a signaling pathway that causes neural cells to enter divisions after damage