Cardiac arrest survival rates have improved with modern resuscitation techniques, but many survivors experience impairments associated with hypoxic-ischemic brain injury (HIBI). Currently, little is understood about chronic changes in striatal dopamine (DA) systems after HIBI. Given the common empiric clinical use of DA enhancing agents in neurorehabilitation, investigation evaluating dopaminergic alterations after cardiac arrest (CA) is necessary to optimize rehabilitation approaches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDeep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) has largely replaced ablative therapies for Parkinson's disease. Because of the similar efficacies of the two treatments, it has been proposed that DBS acts by creating an "informational lesion," whereby pathologic neuronal firing patterns are replaced by low-entropy, stimulus-entrained firing patterns. The informational lesion hypothesis, in its current form, states that DBS blocks the transmission of all information from the basal ganglia, including both pathologic firing patterns and normal, task-related modulations in activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman telomeres are composed of duplex TTAGGG repeats and a 3' single-stranded DNA tail. The telomeric DNA is protected and regulated by the shelterin proteins, including the protection of telomeres 1 (POT1) protein that binds telomeric single-stranded DNA. The single-stranded tail can fold into G-quadruplex (G4) DNA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWRN protein loss causes Werner syndrome (WS), which is characterized by premature aging as well as genomic and telomeric instability. WRN prevents telomere loss, but the telomeric protein complex must regulate WRN activities to prevent aberrant telomere processing. Telomere-binding TRF2 protein inhibits telomere t-loop deletion by blocking Holliday junction (HJ) resolvase cleavage activity, but whether TRF2 also modulates HJ displacement at t-loops is unknown.
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