Great strides have been made in recent years towards understanding the roles of natural killer (NK) cells in immunity to tumours and viruses. NK cells are cytotoxic innate lymphoid cells that produce inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. By lysing transformed or infected cells, they limit tumour growth and viral infections.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn essential step for understanding the transcriptional circuits that control development and physiology is the global identification and characterization of regulatory elements. Here, we present the first map of regulatory elements across the development and ageing of an animal, identifying 42,245 elements accessible in at least one stage. Based on nuclear transcription profiles, we define 15,714 protein-coding promoters and 19,231 putative enhancers, and find that both types of element can drive orientation-independent transcription.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMany NK cells express inhibitory receptors that bind self-MHC class I (MHC I) molecules and prevent killing of self-cells, while enabling killing of MHC I-deficient cells. But tolerance also occurs for NK cells that lack inhibitory receptors for self-MHC I, and for all NK cells in MHC I-deficient animals. In both cases, NK cells are unresponsive to MHC I-deficient cells and hyporesponsive when stimulated through activating receptors, suggesting that hyporesponsiveness is responsible for self-tolerance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Reproduction in animals requires development of distinct neurons in each sex. In C. elegans, most ventral cord neurons (VCNs) are present in both sexes, with the exception of six hermaphrodite-specific neurons (VCs) and nine pairs of male-specific neurons (CAs and CPs) that arise from analogous precursor cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis review examines the planning, development, and course of the first established colony for epilepsy in the United States-The Ohio Hospital for Epileptics. The events leading to the development of the colony, its early course, and the people who were instrumental in its establishment and maintenance are reviewed. At approximately the same time as the development of the Ohio Hospital for Epileptics, eugenics was gaining momentum in America, which affected epilepsy deeply.
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