Publications by authors named "J Luft"
DNA base damage is a major source of oncogenic mutations. Such damage can produce strand-phased mutation patterns and multiallelic variation through the process of lesion segregation. Here we exploited these properties to reveal how strand-asymmetric processes, such as replication and transcription, shape DNA damage and repair.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTriple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive tumor entity in which immune checkpoint (IC) molecules are primarily synthesized in the tumor environment. Here, we report that procoagulant platelets bear large amounts of such immunomodulatory factors and that the presence of these cellular blood components in TNBC relates to protumorigenic immune-cell activity and impaired survival. Mechanistically, tumor-released nucleic acids attract platelets to the aberrant tumor microvasculature, where they undergo procoagulant activation, thus delivering specific stimulatory and inhibitory IC molecules.
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- Behavioral flexibility helps animals change their actions based on different situations, while resilience helps them handle stress better.
- Living in a plain lab is boring for animals, but being in a fun and natural environment gives them more ways to behave and cope with stress.
- The study tested how these different living conditions affected rats' ability to remember things and adapt to challenges through various tasks, like navigating mazes and responding to fear.
Article Synopsis
- Memories are stored in specific cells called engram cells, which are essential for recalling memories and can undergo processes like reconsolidation (updating the original memory) or extinction (forming a new memory to suppress the original one).
- This study explores how memory recall and extinction work by targeting active neurons in the brain, specifically in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and infralimbic (IL) cortex, to see if new memory traces are formed or if original memories are modified.
- Findings suggest that while the BLA engram is crucial for memory processes, the IL cortex is key for extinction, indicating that the extinction process relies on creating a new memory rather than just altering the original memory trace.
Hepatitis A virus (HAV) infects humans and nonhuman primates, typically causing an acute self-limited illness. Three HAV genotypes have been described so far for humans, and three genotypes have been described for nonhuman primates. We observed transiently elevated liver enzymes in Mauritius-origin laboratory-housed macaques in Germany and were not able to demonstrate an etiology including HAV by serology and polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
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