Human Brain Project Partnering Projects Meeting: Status Quo and Outlook.

As the European Flagship Human Brain Project (HBP) ends in September 2023, a meeting dedicated to the Partnering Projects (PPs), a collective of independent research groups that partnered with the HBP, was held on September 4-7, 2022. The purpose of this meeting was to allow these groups to present their results, reflect on their collaboration with the HBP and discuss future interactions with the European Research Infrastructure (RI) EBRAINS that has emerged from the HBP. In this report, we share the tour-de-force that the Partnering Projects that were present in the meeting have made in furthering knowledge concerning various aspects of Brain Research with the HBP.

Novelty-induced memory boosts in humans: The when and how.

Novel information potentially signals danger or reward and behavioral and psychophysiological studies have suggested that the brain prioritizes its processing. Some effects of novelty even go beyond the stimulus itself. Studies in animals have robustly shown that exposure to novel stimulation can promote memory for information presented before or after this exposure.

[Forensic examination of air gun dart wounds].

The objective was to study the mechanism of formation of experimental wounds of the human body dummy by 12 different types of common air gun darts. The impact of dart tips design features on macro- and microscopic morphological patterns of wounds was established; the description of further laboratory diagnostics of the wounds was provided.

Internalisation and Biological Activity of Nucleic Acids Delivering Cell-Penetrating Peptide Nanoparticles Is Controlled by the Biomolecular Corona.

Nucleic acid molecules can be transferred into cells to alter gene expression and, thus, alleviate certain pathological conditions. Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) are vectors that can be used for transfecting nucleic acids as well as many other compounds. CPPs associate nucleic acids non-covalently, forming stable nanoparticles and providing efficient transfection of cells in vitro.

Arginine-Rich Cell-Penetrating Peptides Require Nucleolin and Cholesterol-Poor Subdomains for Translocation across Membranes.

Proficient transport vectors called cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) internalize into eukaryotic cells mostly via endocytic pathways and facilitate the uptake of various cargo molecules attached to them. However, some CPPs are able to induce disturbances in the plasma membrane and translocate through it seemingly in an energy-independent manner. For understanding this phenomenon, giant plasma membrane vesicles (GPMVs) derived from the cells are a beneficial model system, since GPMVs have a complex membrane composition comparable to the cells yet lack cellular energy-dependent mechanisms.