The hidden fitness of the male zebra finch courtship song.

Vocal learning in songbirds is thought to have evolved through sexual selection, with female preference driving males to develop large and varied song repertoires. However, many songbird species learn only a single song in their lifetime. How sexual selection drives the evolution of single-song repertoires is not known.

Altered steady state and activity-dependent de novo protein expression in fragile X syndrome.

Whether fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) target mRNAs and neuronal activity contributing to elevated basal neuronal protein synthesis in fragile X syndrome (FXS) is unclear. Our proteomic experiments reveal that the de novo translational profile in FXS model mice is altered at steady state and in response to metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) stimulation, but the proteins expressed differ under these conditions. Several altered proteins, including Hexokinase 1 and Ras, also are expressed in the blood of FXS model mice and pharmacological treatments previously reported to ameliorate phenotypes modify their abundance in blood.

BONLAC: A combinatorial proteomic technique to measure stimulus-induced translational profiles in brain slices.

Stimulus-triggered protein synthesis is critical for brain health and function. However, due to technical hurdles, de novo neuronal translation is predominantly studied in cultured cells, whereas electrophysiological and circuit analyses often are performed in brain slices. The different properties of these two experimental systems create an information gap about stimulus-induced alterations in the expression of new proteins in mature circuits.