Partial activation of SIK3 delays the onset of wakefulness and alleviates hypersomnia due to the lack of protein kinase A-phosphorylation site.

Study Objectives: Sleep/wakefulness is regulated by intracellular signaling pathways composed of protein kinases such as salt-inducible kinase 3 (Sik3). Sik3-deficiency in neurons decreases NREM sleep time and electroencephalogram (EEG) delta power during NREM sleep, while Sik3Slp mice lacking a protein kinase A (PKA)-phosphorylation site, S551, show hypersomnia phenotype. In this study, we examined how a phosphomimetic mutation of the 221st threonine residue (T221E), which provides a partial (weak) constitutive activity of the kinase, affects sleep/wakefulness and circadian behavior.

Spatiotemporal evolution of heterogeneous structures in agarose gels revealed by particle tracking.

Upon decreasing the temperature, agarose solution exhibited gelation and phase separation, forming a cloudy gel consisting of agarose-rich and agarose-poor phases. Both phenomena contribute to the formation of a heterogeneous gel structure, but the primary influence of both processes on this heterogeneity remains unclear. In this study, we defined the specific gelation and phase separation temperatures of an agarose solution and examined the resulting gel structures with and without phase separation.

Near-identical macromolecules spontaneously partition into concentric circles.

Although separation is entropically unfavourable, it is often essential for our life. The separation of very similar macromolecules such as deoxyribonucleic acids (DNAs) and their single nucleotide variants is difficult but holds great advantage for the progress of life science. Here we report that a particular liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) at a solid-liquid interface led to the partitioning of DNAs with nearly identical structures.

DSE-Based Hardware Trojan Attack for Neural Network Accelerators on FPGAs.

Over the past few years, the emergence and development of design space exploration (DSE) have shortened the deployment cycle of deep neural networks (DNNs). As a result, with these open-sourced DSE, we can automatically compute the optimal configuration and generate the corresponding accelerator intellectual properties (IPs) from the pretrained neural network models and hardware constraints. However, to date, the security of DSE has received little attention.

Pharmacological inhibition of histamine N-methyltransferase extends wakefulness and suppresses cataplexy in a mouse model of narcolepsy.

Histamine, a neurotransmitter, plays a predominant role in maintaining wakefulness. Further, our previous studies showed that histamine N-methyltransferase (HNMT), a histamine-metabolising enzyme, is important for regulating brain histamine concentration. However, the effects of pharmacological HNMT inhibition on mouse behaviour, including the sleep-wake cycle and cataplexy, in a mouse model of narcolepsy have not yet been investigated.