Suspended Tissue Open Microfluidic Patterning (STOMP).

Cell-laden hydrogel constructs suspended between pillars are powerful tools for modeling tissue structure and physiology, though current fabrication techniques often limit them to uniform compositions. In contrast, tissues are complex in nature with spatial arrangements of cell types and extracellular matrices. Thus, we present Suspended Tissue Open Microfluidic Patterning (STOMP), which utilizes a removable, open microfluidic patterning channel to pattern multiple spatial regions across a single suspended tissue.

SNARE chaperone Sly1 directly mediates close-range vesicle tethering.

The essential Golgi protein Sly1 is a member of the Sec1/mammalian Unc-18 (SM) family of SNARE chaperones. Sly1 was originally identified through remarkable gain-of-function alleles that bypass requirements for diverse vesicle tethering factors. Employing genetic analyses and chemically defined reconstitutions of ER-Golgi fusion, we discovered that a loop conserved among Sly1 family members is not only autoinhibitory but also acts as a positive effector.

Abnormalities in visual cognition and associated impaired interactions between visual and attentional networks in schizophrenia and brief psychotic disorder.

The extent and nature of cognitive impairment in brief psychotic disorder remains unclear, being rarely studied unlike schizophrenia. The present study hence sought to directly compare the visual cognitive dysfunction and its associated brain networks in brief psychotic disorder and schizophrenia. Data from picture completion (a complex visual task) and whole-brain functional connectome from resting-state fMRI were acquired from a sample of clinically stable patients with an established psychotic disorder (twenty with brief psychotic disorder, twenty with schizophrenia) and twenty-nine healthy controls.

Affective Circuitry Alterations in Patients with Trigeminal Neuralgia.

Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is a severe chronic neuropathic facial pain disorder. Affect-related behavioral and structural brain changes have been noted across chronic pain disorders, but have not been well-studied in TN. We examined the potential impact of TN (37 patients: 23 with right-sided TN, 14 with left-sided TN), compared to age- and sex-matched healthy controls, on three major white matter tracts responsible for carrying affect-related signals-i.