Conventional Electron Microscopy, Cryogenic Electron Microscopy, and Cryogenic Electron Tomography of Viruses.

Electron microscopy (EM) techniques have been crucial for understanding the structure of biological specimens such as cells, tissues and macromolecular assemblies. Viruses and related viral assemblies are ideal targets for structural studies that help to define essential biological functions. Whereas conventional EM methods use chemical fixation, dehydration, and staining of the specimens, cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) preserves the native hydrated state.

Contextual cuing survives an interruption from an endogenous cue for attention.

Three experiments explored how the repetition of a visual search display guides search during contextual cuing under conditions in which the search process is interrupted by an instructional (endogenous) cue for attention. In Experiment 1, participants readily learned about repeated configurations of visual search, before being presented with an endogenous cue for attention towards the target on every trial. Participants used this cue to improve search times, but the repeated contexts continued to guide attention.

The role of selection history in the learned predictiveness effect.

Previous research has shown that cues that are good predictors of relevant outcomes receive more attention than nonpredictive cues. This attentional bias is thought to stem from the different predictive value of cues. However, because successful performance requires more attention to predictive cues, the bias may be a lingering effect of previous attention to cues (i.

Intolerance of uncertainty does not significantly predict decisions about delayed, probabilistic rewards: A failure to replicate Luhmann, C. C., Ishida, K., & Hajcak, G. (2011).

Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) is thought to lead to maladaptive behaviours and dysfunctional decision making, both in the clinical and healthy population. The seminal study reported by Luhmann and collaborators in 2011 showed that IU was negatively associated with choosing a delayed, but more certain and valuable, reward over choosing an immediate, but less certain and valuable, reward. These findings have been widely disseminated across the field of personality and individual differences because of their relevance to understand the role of IU in maladaptive behaviours in anxiety-related disorders.

The recruitment of TRiC chaperonin in rotavirus viroplasms correlates with virus replication.

Unlabelled: Rotavirus (RV) replication takes place in the viroplasms, cytosolic inclusions that allow the synthesis of virus genome segments and their encapsidation in the core shell, followed by the addition of the second layer of the virion. The viroplasms are composed of several viral proteins, including NSP5, which serves as the main building block. Microtubules, lipid droplets, and miRNA-7 are among the host components recruited in viroplasms.

Recombinantly expressed virus-like particles (VLPs) of canine circovirus for development of an indirect ELISA.

Canine circovirus (CanineCV) is an emerging pathogen in domestic dogs, detected in multiple countries in association with varying clinical and pathological presentations including diarrhoea, vasculitis, granulomatous inflammation, and respiratory signs. Understanding the pathology of CanineCV is confounded by the fact that it has been detected in asymptomatic dogs as well as in diseased dogs concurrently infected with known pathogens. Recombinantly expressed self-assembling Virus-like particles (VLPs) lack viral genomic material but imitate the capsid surface conformations of wild type virion, allowing arrays of biological applications including subunit vaccine development and immunodiagnostics.

Neurophysiological evidence of motor preparation in inner speech and the effect of content predictability.

Self-generated overt actions are preceded by a slow negativity as measured by electroencephalogram, which has been associated with motor preparation. Recent studies have shown that this neural activity is modulated by the predictability of action outcomes. It is unclear whether inner speech is also preceded by a motor-related negativity and influenced by the same factor.

Essential Oil or Thymol in Combination with Fluconazole Produces Damage to Cells and Reverses the Azole-Resistant Phenotype of a Strain.

is one of the most pathogenic species within the genus. Increased antifungal resistance has been reported, which is in part due to the organism's ability to form biofilms. In natural products derived from plants, such as essential oils (EOs) or their major components, there is significant potential to develop new antifungals or to both enhance the efficacy and reduce the toxicity of conventional antifungals.

MicroRNA signature from extracellular vesicles of HCV/HIV co-infected individuals differs from HCV mono-infected.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) coinfection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has a detrimental impact on disease progression. Increasing evidence points to extracellular vesicles (EVs) as important players of the host-viral cross-talk. The microRNAs (miRNAs), as essential components of EVs cargo, are key regulators of normal cellular processes and also promote viral replication, viral pathogenesis, and disease progression.

Model-free decision making resists improved instructions and is enhanced by stimulus-response associations.

Human behaviour may be thought of as supported by two different computational-learning mechanisms, model-free and model-based respectively. In model-free strategies, stimulus-response associations are strengthened when actions are followed by a reward and weakened otherwise. In model-based learning, previous to selecting an action, the current values of the different possible actions are computed based on a detailed model of the environment.

Rotavirus Particle Disassembly and Assembly In Vivo and In Vitro.

Rotaviruses (RVs) are non-enveloped multilayered dsRNA viruses that are major etiologic agents of diarrheal disease in humans and in the young in a large number of animal species. The viral particle is composed of three different protein layers that enclose the segmented dsRNA genome and the transcriptional complexes. Each layer defines a unique subparticle that is associated with a different phase of the replication cycle.

Equilibrium Dynamics of a Biomolecular Complex Analyzed at Single-amino Acid Resolution by Cryo-electron Microscopy.

The biological function of macromolecular complexes depends not only on large-scale transitions between conformations, but also on small-scale conformational fluctuations at equilibrium. Information on the equilibrium dynamics of biomolecular complexes could, in principle, be obtained from local resolution (LR) data in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) maps. However, this possibility had not been validated by comparing, for a same biomolecular complex, LR data with quantitative information on equilibrium dynamics obtained by an established solution technique.

Platelet aggregation inhibitors from Bothrops alternatus snake venom.

Snake venoms are a complex mixture of proteins and peptides that can activate/inhibit platelet aggregation. Bothrops alternatus venom include three main families: metalloproteinases (SVMPs), serinoproteinases (SVSPs) and phospholipases A (PLAs), among other minor components. In this work, we used inhibitor cocktails (containing Na-EDTA, PMSF and/or pBPB) to investigate the effect of these three families and of baltergin (a PIII SVMP) on platelet aggregation by a turbidmetric method using a microplate reader.

Learning to suppress a distractor may not be unconscious.

The additional singleton task has become a popular paradigm to explore visual statistical learning and selective attention. In this task, participants are instructed to find a different-shaped target among a series of distractors as fast as possible. In some trials, the search display includes a singleton distractor with a different color, making search more difficult.

The role of working memory in probabilistic cuing of visual search.

In a typical probabilistic cuing experiment, participants are asked to find a visual target among a series of distractors. Although participants are not informed about this, the target appears more frequently in one region of the display, resulting in faster search times for targets located in this region. This bias is thought to depend on a habit-like attentional control mechanism, unconstrained by the availability of working memory (WM) resources.

Identification and Characterization of Epithelial Cell-Derived Dense Bodies Produced upon Cytomegalovirus Infection.

Dense bodies (DB) are complex, noninfectious particles produced during CMVinfection containing envelope and tegument proteins that may be ideal candidates as vaccines. Although DB were previously described in fibroblasts, no evidence of DB formation has been shown after propagating CMV in epithelial cells. In the present study, both fibroblast MRC-5 and epithelial ARPE-19 cells were used to study DB production during CMV infection.

An fMRI meta-analysis of the role of the striatum in everyday-life vs laboratory-developed habits.

The dorsolateral striatum plays a critical role in the acquisition and expression of stimulus-response habits that are learned in experimental laboratories. Here, we use meta-analytic procedures to contrast the neural circuits activated by laboratory-acquired habits with those activated by stimulus-response behaviours acquired in everyday-life. We confirmed that newly learned habits rely more on the anterior putamen with activation extending into caudate and nucleus accumbens.

Cryo-EM structures show the mechanistic basis of pan-peptidase inhibition by human α-macroglobulin.

Human α2-macroglobulin (hα2M) is a multidomain protein with a plethora of essential functions, including transport of signaling molecules and endopeptidase inhibition in innate immunity. Here, we dissected the molecular mechanism of the inhibitory function of the ∼720-kDa hα2M tetramer through eight cryo–electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structures of complexes from human plasma. In the native complex, the hα2M subunits are organized in two flexible modules in expanded conformation, which enclose a highly porous cavity in which the proteolytic activity of circulating plasma proteins is tested.

Is probabilistic cuing of visual search an inflexible attentional habit? A meta-analytic review.

In studies on probabilistic cuing of visual search, participants search for a target among several distractors and report some feature of the target. In a biased stage the target appears more frequently in one specific area of the search display. Eventually, participants become faster at finding the target in that rich region compared to the sparse region.

A Small Non-Coding RNA Modulates Expression of Pilus-1 Type in .

is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, and about 30% of the pneumococcal clinical isolates show type I pili-like structures. These long proteinaceous polymers extending from the bacterial surface are encoded by pilus islet 1 and play major roles in adhesion and host colonization. Pili expression is bistable and is controlled by the transcriptional activator RlrA.

Intolerance of uncertainty and decisions about delayed, probabilistic rewards: A replication and extension of Luhmann, C. C., Ishida, K., & Hajcak, G. (2011).

Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) is thought to lead to maladaptive behaviours and dysfunctional decision making, both in the clinical and healthy population. The seminal study reported by Luhmann and collaborators in 2011 [1] showed that IU was negatively associated with choosing a delayed, but more probable and valuable, reward over choosing an immediate, but less probable and valuable, reward. These findings have been widely disseminated across the field of personality and individual differences because of their relevance for the understanding of the role of IU in the development and maintenance of anxiety-related disorders.

Contextual cuing of visual search does not guide attention automatically in the presence of top-down goals.

Visual search is faster when it occurs within repeated displays, a phenomenon known as contextual cuing (CC). CC has been explained as the result of an automatic orientation of attention toward a target item driven by learned distractor-target associations. In 3 experiments we tested the specific hypothesis that CC is an automatic process of attentional guidance.