The role of reactive oxygen species in the regulation of the blood-brain barrier.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) regulates the exchange of metabolites and cells between the blood and brain, and maintains central nervous system homeostasis. Various factors affect BBB barrier functions, including reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS can act as stressors, damaging biological molecules, but they also serve as secondary messengers in intracellular signaling cascades during redox signaling.

Dendrite tapering actuates a self-organizing signaling circuit for stochastic filopodia initiation in neurons.

How signaling units spontaneously arise from a noisy cellular background is not well understood. Here, we show that stochastic membrane deformations can nucleate exploratory dendritic filopodia, dynamic actin-rich structures used by neurons to sample its surroundings for compatible transcellular contacts. A theoretical analysis demonstrates that corecruitment of positive and negative curvature-sensitive proteins to deformed membranes minimizes the free energy of the system, allowing the formation of long-lived curved membrane sections from stochastic membrane fluctuations.

The Decade of Super-Resolution Microscopy of the Presynapse.

The presynaptic compartment of the chemical synapse is a small, yet extremely complex structure. Considering its size, most methods of optical microscopy are not able to resolve its nanoarchitecture and dynamics. Thus, its ultrastructure could only be studied by electron microscopy.

Switching of cardiac troponin I between nuclear and cytoplasmic localization during muscle differentiation.

The nuclear accumulation of proteins may depend on the presence of short targeting sequences, which are known as nuclear localization signals (NLSs). Here, we found that NLSs are predicted in some cytosolic proteins and examined the hypothesis that these NLSs may be functional under certain conditions. As a model, human cardiac troponin I (hcTnI) was used.

The spatial molecular pattern of integrin recognition sites and their immobilization to colloidal nanobeads determine α2β1 integrin-dependent platelet activation.

Collagen, a strong platelet activator, is recognized by integrin α2β1 and GPVI. It induces aggregation, if added to suspended platelets, or platelet adhesion if immobilized to a surface. The recombinant non-prolylhydroxylated mini-collagen FC3 triple helix containing one α2β1 integrin binding site is a tool to specifically study how α2β1 integrin activates platelet.