Publications by authors named "Lauren Connolly"
In recent years mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have received a great deal of interest for the treatment of major diseases, but clinical translation and market authorization have been slow. This has been due in part to a lack of standardization in cell manufacturing protocols, as well as a lack of biologically meaningful cell characterization tools and release assays. Cell production strategies to date have involved complex manual processing in an open environment which is costly, inefficient and poses risks of contamination.
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- - Drosophila sechellia, a fruit fly native to the Seychelles, has adapted to eat the toxic fruit of Morinda citrifolia by developing resistance to its harmful compounds, octanoic and hexanoic acids.
- - Research is focused on how D. sechellia has evolved resistance specifically to hexanoic acid, as previous studies have primarily tackled octanoic acid resistance.
- - By exposing D. sechellia and related species to hexanoic acid and analyzing their gene expression, the study found that while generalist flies activated many detoxification genes, D. sechellia downregulated immune-related genes, revealing unique adaptations to its specialized diet.
Despite the essential role of the corticospinal tract (CST) in controlling voluntary movements, successful regeneration of large numbers of injured CST axons beyond a spinal cord lesion has never been achieved. We found that PTEN/mTOR are critical for controlling the regenerative capacity of mouse corticospinal neurons. After development, the regrowth potential of CST axons was lost and this was accompanied by a downregulation of mTOR activity in corticospinal neurons.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAxon regeneration failure accounts for permanent functional deficits following CNS injury in adult mammals. However, the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. In analyzing axon regeneration in different mutant mouse lines, we discovered that deletion of suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 (SOCS3) in adult retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) promotes robust regeneration of injured optic nerve axons.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe failure of axons to regenerate is a major obstacle for functional recovery after central nervous system (CNS) injury. Removing extracellular inhibitory molecules results in limited axon regeneration in vivo. To test for the role of intrinsic impediments to axon regrowth, we analyzed cell growth control genes using a virus-assisted in vivo conditional knockout approach.
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