Ideas worth spreading? When, how, and for whom information load hurts online talks' popularity.

What makes cultural products such as edutainment (i.e., online talks) successful versus not? Asked differently, which characteristics make certain addresses more (vs.

Conjugation of peptides to short-acyl-chain ceramides for delivery across mucosal cell barriers.

Robust transport of therapeutic peptides and other medicinal molecules across tight epithelial barriers would overcome the major obstacle to oral delivery. We have already demonstrated that peptides conjugated to gangliosides (GM1 and GM3) having non-native short N-acyl groups hijack the endogenous process of intracellular lipid sorting resulting in transcytosis and delivery across epithelial barriers in vitro and in vivo. Here, we report synthetic methodologies to covalently conjugate peptides directly to short-acyl-chain C-ceramides.

Metabolic studies of synaptamide in an immortalized dopaminergic cell line.

Introduction: Synaptamide, the N-acylethanolamine of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), is structurally similar to the endocannabinoid N-arachidonoylethanolamine, anandamide. It is an endogenous ligand at the orphan G-protein coupled receptor 110 (GPR110; ADGRF1), and induces neuritogenesis and synaptogenesis in hippocampal and cortical neurons, as well as neuronal differentiation in neural stem cells.

Purpose: Our goal was to characterize the metabolic fate (synthesis and metabolism) of synaptamide in a dopaminergic cell line using immortalized fetal mesencephalic cells (N27 cells).

Stereochemical Structure Activity Relationship Studies (S-SAR) of Tetrahydrolipstatin.

Tetrahydrolipstatin (THL), its enantiomer, and an additional six diastereomers were evaluated as inhibitors of the hydrolysis of -nitrophenyl butyrate by porcine pancreatic lipase. ICs were found for all eight stereoisomers ranging from a low of 4.0 nM for THL to a high of 930 nM for the diastereomer with the inverted stereocenters at the 2,3,2'-positions.

N-Docosahexaenoylethanolamine (synaptamide): Carbon-14 radiolabeling and metabolic studies.

N-Docosahexaenoylethanolamine (synaptamide) is structurally similar to the endocannabinoid N-arachidonoylethanolamine (anandamide), but incorporates the omega-3 22:6 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in place of the omega-6 20:4 fatty acid arachidonic acid (AA). Some brain membrane lipid effects may be mediated via synaptamide. In competition experiments with mouse brain homogenate in vitro, we found that synaptamide was an order-of-magnitude poorer inhibitor of radioactive anandamide hydrolysis than was anandamide itself.