Towards neuronal organoids: a method for long-term culturing of high-density hippocampal neurons.

One of the goals in neuroscience is to obtain tractable laboratory cultures that closely recapitulate in vivo systems while still providing ease of use in the lab. Because neurons can exist in the body over a lifetime, long-term culture systems are necessary so as to closely mimic the physiological conditions under laboratory culture conditions. Ideally, such a neuronal organoid culture would contain multiple cell types, be highly differentiated, and have a high density of interconnected cells.

Reevaluation of the evolutionary events within recA/RAD51 phylogeny.

Background: The recA/RAD51 gene family encodes a diverse set of recombinase proteins that affect homologous recombination, DNA-repair, and genome stability. The recA gene family is expressed across all three domains of life - Eubacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes - and even in some viruses. To date, efforts to resolve the deep evolutionary origins of this ancient protein family have been hindered by the high sequence divergence between paralogous groups (i.