Versatile Dual Reporter to Identify Ribosome Pausing Motifs Alleviated by Translation Elongation Factor P.

Protein synthesis is influenced by the chemical and structural properties of the amino acids incorporated into the polypeptide chain. Motifs containing consecutive prolines can slow the translation speed and cause ribosome stalling. Translation elongation factor P (EF-P) facilitates peptide bond formation in these motifs, thereby alleviating stalled ribosomes and restoring the regular translational speed.

Decrypting the functional design of unmodified translation elongation factor P.

Bacteria overcome ribosome stalling by employing translation elongation factor P (EF-P), which requires post-translational modification (PTM) for its full activity. However, EF-Ps of the PGKGP subfamily are unmodified. The mechanism behind the ability to avoid PTM while retaining active EF-P requires further examination.

Elimination of negative feedback in TLR signalling allows rapid and hypersensitive detection of microbial contaminants.

The exquisite specificity of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) to sense microbial molecular signatures is used as a powerful tool to pinpoint microbial contaminants. Various cellular systems, from native human blood cells to transfected cell lines exploit TLRs as pyrogen detectors in biological preparations. However, slow cellular responses and limited sensitivity have hampered the replacement of animal-based tests such as the rabbit pyrogen test or lipopolysaccharide detection by Limulus amoebocyte lysate.

Maggot Instructor: Semi-Automated Analysis of Learning and Memory in Larvae.

For several decades, has been widely used as a suitable model organism to study the fundamental processes of associative olfactory learning and memory. More recently, this condition also became true for the larva, which has become a focus for learning and memory studies based on a number of technical advances in the field of anatomical, molecular, and neuronal analyses. The ongoing efforts should be mentioned to reconstruct the complete connectome of the larval brain featuring a total of about 10,000 neurons and the development of neurogenic tools that allow individual manipulation of each neuron.