Researchers have found how brain cells control their movement to form the cerebral cortex

A study led by Academy Research Fellow Eleanor Coffey identifies new players that put the brakes on

2011-02-28

(Press-News.org) A study led by Academy Research Fellow Eleanor Coffey identifies new players that put the brakes on. They show in mice that lack the star player "JNK1", that newborn neurons spend less time in the multipolar stage, which is when the cells prepare for subsequent expedition, possibly choosing the route to be taken. Having hurried through this stage, they move off at high speed to reach their final destinations in the cortex days earlier and less precisely than in a normal mouse. The results of their study are published in the latest issue of Nature Neuroscience. Incorrect placement of neurons during brain development may leave us at risk of diseases and conditions ranging from epilepsy and mental retardation to schizophrenia and dyslexia. When our brains develop, they do so at an impressive rate with up to 250,000 new cells produced every minute. These newborn neurons do not remain in place but instead migrate long distances in wave after wave to settle in the layers that make up the largest part of our brain, the cerebral cortex. If a neuron moves too fast during this journey, it may not take the correct route or reach its destination. The way neurons control their speed of migration has not been clear. So how does JNK1 control movement of neurons in the developing cortex? Brain cells move as a consequence of positive and negative regulatory mechanisms. Coffey and her team identified a protein called SCG10 that cooperates with JNK1 to slow down the pace. We have known for years that SCG10 is abundant in the developing cortex and that it can bind to and control the brain cell skeleton or cytoskeleton. However no-one realised that its function is to regulate movement of neurons. Coffey's results indicate that JNK1 and SCG10 cooperate to make the cytoskeleton more rigid. When cytoskeleton is stiff and inflexible, neurons stay longer in the multipolar stage and move slower, possibly because they are less able to squeeze through the cell layers generated earlier in development. How precisely is the cooperation between JNK1 and SCG10 accomplished? JNK1 is an enzyme which can add phosphate onto SCG10. Once SCG10 is modified in this way, it stabilizes the cytoskeleton. ### Eleanor Coffey and her team, based at the Turku Centre for Biotechnology, joined forces with Michael Courtney at the A. I. Virtanen Institute in Kuopio and collaborators across Europe to carry out this study. More information Academy Research Fellow Eleanor Coffey, tel. +358 2 333 8605, eleanor.coffey@btk.fi http://www.btk.fi/research/research-groups/coffey-eleanor-kinase-function-in-brain/ Link to the article: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v14/n3/full/nn.2755.html Academy of Finland Communications
Communications specialist Leena Vähäkylä
tel. +358 9 7748 8327
Leena.Vahakyla@aka.fi

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Guidelines and reality

2011-02-28

Whether doctors have knowledge of guidelines or not appears to be unsuitable as an indicator of how guidelines are being put into practice in the clinical routine. Taking the case of treatment by primary care physicians of three target diseases – hypertension, heart failure, and chronic coronary heart disease – in the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108(5) 61-9) Ute Karbach and her coauthors investigate the relationship for physicians between knowing the guidelines and acting in compliance with them. Data on 437 physicians' ...

Planning and visualization lead to better food habits

2011-02-28

If you want to improve the way you eat, the best way to do so is to both make an action plan and visualize yourself carrying it out, according to McGill researchers. "Telling people to just change the way they eat doesn't work; we've known that for a while," says Bärbel Knäuper of McGill's Department of Psychology."But research has shown that if people make a concrete plan about what they are going to do, they are better at acting on their intentions. What we've done that's new is to add visualization techniques to the action plan." In a study recently published in ...

TCD scientists discover that self-eating cells safeguard against cancer

2011-02-28

Scientists at Trinity College Dublin have made an important discovery concerning how fledgling cancer cells self-destruct, which has the potential of impacting on future cancer therapies. The Trinity research group, led by Smurfit Professor of Medical Genetics, Professor Seamus Martin and funded by Science Foundation Ireland, has just published their findings in the internationally renowned journal, Molecular Cell. Professor Martin's team has discovered how a process called 'autophagy' – which literally means 'self-eating' – plays an important role in safeguarding against ...

Direct electronic readout of 'artificial atoms'

2011-02-28

Through his participation, the research team from Bochum, Duisburg-Essen, and Hamburg now has succeeded in an energy-state occupancy readout of those artificial atoms – using common interfaces to classic computers. This is a big step towards the application of such systems. They report about their findings in Nature Communications. One million instead of individual atoms In principle, the spin of electrons in individual atoms can be read-out, but the minuteness of the signals and the difficulty of localising individual atoms limit this technology to highly specialised ...

HIV makes protein that may help virus's resurgence

2011-02-28

New research enhances the current knowledge of how human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1), which causes AIDS, controls the cell cycle of cells that it infects. The new findings may shed light on how the virus reactivates after entering a dormant state, called latency. "As we better understand the biological events that revive HIV from latency, we hope to devise ways to eventually intervene in this process with better treatments for people with HIV infection," said study leader Terri H. Finkel, M.D., Ph.D., chief of Rheumatology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Finkel ...

Bamiyan Buddhas once glowed in red, white and blue

2011-02-28

This release is available in Spanish, French and German. The world watched in horror as Taliban fanatics ten years ago blew up the two gigantic Buddha statues that had since the 6th century looked out over the Bamiyan Valley in what is now Afghanistan. Located on the Silk Road, until the 10th century the 55 and 38 meter tall works of art formed the centerpiece of one of the world's largest Buddhist monastic complexes. Thousands of monks tended countless shrines in the niches and caves that pierced a kilometer-long cliff face. Since the suppression of the Taliban ...

New study finds molecular mechanisms that control Rb2/p130 gene expression in lung cancer

2011-02-28

Despite innumerable studies on lung cancer, many aspects of the disease have yet to be understood, including the role played by the retinoblastoma-related protein Rb2/p130 in the evolution of the disease. In a new study, researchers from the Sbarro Health Research Organization Center for Biotechnology Research (SHRO), a cancer, cardiovascular and diabetes research center located in the College of Science and Technology at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, and at the University of Siena in Siena, Italy examined mechanisms that control Rb2/p130 gene expression in ...

Hashimoto's thyroiditis can affect quality of life

2011-02-28

New Rochelle, NY, February 25, 2011—Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT), an inflammatory disorder of the thyroid, is the most common cause of hypothyroidism, but a study has suggested that even when thyroid function is normal, HT may increase symptoms and decrease quality of life, as described in an article in Thyroid, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com). Thyroid is the Official Journal of the American Thyroid Association (ATA). The article is available free online at www.liebertpub.com/thy Hashimoto's thyroiditis most commonly affects ...

Staring contests are automatic: People lock eyes to establish dominance

2011-02-28

Imagine that you're in a bar and you accidentally knock over your neighbor's beer. He turns around and stares at you, looking for confrontation. Do you buy him a new drink, or do you try to outstare him to make him back off? New research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that the dominance behavior exhibited by staring someone down can be reflexive. Our primate relatives certainly get into dominance battles; they mostly resolve the dominance hierarchy not through fighting, but through staring contests. ...

Scientists find a new way insulin-producing cells die

2011-02-28

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, U.S.A. (Feb. 25, 2011) — The death of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas is a core defect in diabetes. Scientists in Italy and Texas now have discovered a new way that these cells die — by toxic imbalance of a molecule secreted by other pancreatic cells. "Our study shows that neighboring cells called alpha cells can behave like adversaries for beta cells. This was an unexpected finding," said Franco Folli, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine/diabetes at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He is co-lead author on the ...

Researchers have found how brain cells control their movement to form the cerebral cortex

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: