107,056 results match your criteria: "Department of Neurobiology; University of Massachusetts Medical School ; Worcester[Affiliation]"

Purifying membrane proteins has been the limiting step for studying their structure and function. The challenges of the process include the low expression levels in heterologous systems and the requirement for their biochemical stabilization in solution. The human voltage-gated proton channel (hH1) is a good example of that: the published protocols to express and purify hH1 produce low protein quantities at high costs, which is an issue for systematically characterizing its structure and function.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder affecting millions worldwide, leading to cognitive and functional decline. Early detection and intervention are crucial for enhancing the quality of life of patients and their families. Remote Monitoring Technologies (RMTs) offer a promising solution for early detection by tracking changes in behavioral and cognitive functions, such as memory, language, and problem-solving skills.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Personality disorders (PDs) are psychiatric conditions characterized by enduring patterns of cognition, emotion, and behaviour that deviate significantly from cultural norms, causing distress or impairment. The aetiology of PDs is complex, involving both genetic and environmental factors. Genetic studies estimate the heritability of PDs at 30% to 60%, implicating genes involved in neurotransmitter regulation, such as those for serotonin transporters and dopamine receptors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: We aimed to investigate the association of sociodemographic, clinical and functional characteristics with the volume of transitions and specific trajectories across living and care settings.

Methods: Using data from the Swedish National Study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen study, we identified transitions across home (with or without social care), nursing homes, hospitals and postacute care facilities among 3021 adults aged 60+. Poisson and multistate models were used to investigate the association between sociodemographic, clinical and functional characteristics and both the overall volume and hazard ratios (HRs) of specific transitions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aims: To study differences in cardiovascular prevention and hypertension management in primary care in men and women, with comparisons between public and privately operated primary health care (PHC).

Methods: We used register data from Region Stockholm on collected prescribed medication and registered diagnoses, to identify patients aged 30 years and above with hypertension. Age-adjusted logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios (ORs) with 99% confidence intervals (99% CIs) using public PHC centers as referents.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recently, exposure to sounds with ultrasound (US) components has been shown to modulate brain activity. However, the effects of US on emotional states remain poorly understood. We previously demonstrated that the olfactory bulbectomized (OBX) rat depression model is suitable for examining the effects of audible sounds on emotionality.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Previous studies have shown that astrocyte activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), accompanied by upregulation of the astrocyte marker S100 calcium binding protein B (S100B), contributes to comorbid anxiety in chronic inflammatory pain (CIP), but the exact downstream mechanism is still being explored. The receptor for advanced glycation end-products (RAGE) plays an important role in chronic pain and psychosis by recognizing ligands, including S100B. Therefore, we speculate that RAGE may be involved in astrocyte regulation of the comorbidity between CIP and anxiety by recognizing S100B.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Establishing functionally segregated dopaminergic circuits.

Trends Neurosci

January 2025

Department of Neurology, F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Electronic address:

Despite accounting for only ~0.001% of all neurons in the human brain, midbrain dopaminergic neurons control numerous behaviors and are associated with many neuropsychiatric disorders that affect our physical and mental health. Dopaminergic neurons form various anatomically and functionally segregated pathways.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Protein abundance levels, sensitive to both physiological changes and external interventions, are useful for assessing the Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk and treatment efficacy. However, identifying proteomic prognostic markers for AD is challenging by their high dimensionality and inherent correlations.

Methods: Our study analyzed 1128 plasma proteins, measured by the SOMAscan platform, from 858 participants 55 years and older (mean age 63 years, 52.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Microstructural white matter injury contributes to cognitive decline: Besides amyloid and tau.

J Prev Alzheimers Dis

February 2025

Department of Neurology and National Center for Neurological Disorders, Huashan Hospital, State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology and MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai, PR China. Electronic address:

Background: Cognitive decline and the progression to Alzheimer's disease (AD) are traditionally associated with amyloid-beta (Aβ) and tau pathologies. This study aims to evaluate the relationships between microstructural white matter injury, cognitive decline and AD core biomarkers.

Methods: We conducted a longitudinal study of 566 participants using peak width of skeletonized mean diffusivity (PSMD) to quantify microstructural white matter injury.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Brain connectivity, neural networks, and resilience in aging and neurodegeneration.

Am J Pathol

January 2025

Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition; Department of Pathology; Department of Bioengineering; McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Electronic address:

The importance of complex systems has become increasingly evident in recent years. The nervous system is one such example with neural networks sitting at the intersection of complex networks and biology. A particularly exciting feature is the resilience of complex systems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Enzymatic hydrolysis approach is commonly employed for preparation of active peptides, while the limited purity and yield of produced peptides hinder further development of action mechanisms. This study presents the biotechnological approach for the efficient production of recombinant angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory peptide LYPVK and investigates its potential antihypertensive action mechanism. DNA encoding sequence of recombinant peptide was designed to form in tandem, which was expressed in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Potential therapeutic effect of dimethyl fumarate on Treg/Th17 cell imbalance in biliary atresia.

Clin Immunol

January 2025

Department of Pediatric Surgery, Children's Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Birth Defect, and Key Laboratory of Neonatal Disease, Ministry of Health, Shanghai 201102, China. Electronic address:

The imbalance between Tregs and proinflammatory Th17 cells in children with biliary atresia (BA) causes immune damage to cholangiocytes. Dimethyl fumarate (DMF), an immunomodulatory drug, regulates the Treg/Th17 balance in diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS). This study explores DMF's effect on Treg/Th17 balance in BA and its potential mechanism.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Variation in venom yield, protein concentration and regeneration toxicity in the scorpion Buthus lienhardi.

Toxicon

January 2025

Laboratory of Pharmacology, Neurobiology, Anthropology and Environment, Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Semlalia, University Cadi Ayyad, BP 2390-40080 Marrakech, Morocco.

Scorpion venom research aims to develop treatments for dangerous species and identify candidates for new drugs. The extraction of high-quality venom, which is essential, requires mastery of the extraction and maintenance of scorpions. It is in this perspective that we have undertaken this present work which aims to contribute to scientifically mastering venom yields and the factors that influence them in scorpions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis caused by FUS mutations: advances with broad implications.

Lancet Neurol

February 2025

Department of Neurosciences, and Leuven Brain Institute, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; Laboratory of Neurobiology, Center for Brain & Disease Research, VIB, Leuven, Belgium. Electronic address:

Autosomal dominant mutations in the gene encoding the DNA and RNA binding protein FUS are a cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and about 0·3-0·9% of patients with ALS are FUS mutation carriers. FUS-mutation-associated ALS (FUS-ALS) is characterised by early onset and rapid progression, compared with other forms of ALS. However, different pathogenic mutations in FUS can result in markedly different age at symptom onset and rate of disease progression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A forward genetic screen identifies potassium channel essentiality in SHH medulloblastoma maintenance.

Dev Cell

January 2025

Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada; Arthur and Sonia Labatt Brain Tumour Research Centre, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada; Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 1A8, Canada. Electronic address:

Distinguishing tumor maintenance genes from initiation, progression, and passenger genes is critical for developing effective therapies. We employed a functional genomic approach using the Lazy Piggy transposon to identify tumor maintenance genes in vivo and applied this to sonic hedgehog (SHH) medulloblastoma (MB). Combining Lazy Piggy screening in mice and transcriptomic profiling of human MB, we identified the voltage-gated potassium channel KCNB2 as a candidate maintenance driver.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Nurses' experiences of cross-cultural care encounters in Swedish pediatric hospital care: A qualitative study.

J Pediatr Nurs

January 2025

Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Division of Nursing, Karolinska Institutet, Alfred Nobels Allé 23, 23 300, SE 141 83 Huddinge, Sweden.

Purpose: Nurses are expected to provide appropriate care for children from diverse cultural backgrounds to achieve the aims of current legislation on good care and to ensure equal terms for the entire population. This study aim was to describe nurses' experiences of cross-cultural care encounters when interacting with children and families with a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse background in Swedish pediatric hospital care.

Design And Methods: A descriptive qualitative study was conducted.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Two event-related brain potential (ERP) components, the frontocentral feedback-related negativity (FRN) and the posterior P300, are key in feedback processing. The FRN typically exhibits greater amplitude in response to negative and unexpected outcomes, whereas the P300 is generally more pronounced for positive outcomes. In an influential ERP study, Hajcak et al.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Alternating bilateral sensory stimulation (ABS) is a clinical physical therapy technique effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, its utilization in treating conditions beyond PTSD remains limited. Here, we present a protocol to reduce ethanol-induced conditioned place preference (CPP) using 4 Hz ABS.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Setting standards for brain collection procedures in metabolomic studies.

J Cereb Blood Flow Metab

January 2025

Department of Neurology and Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee, USA.

Current metabolomics technologies can measure hundreds of chemical entities in tissue extracts with good reliability. However, long-recognized requirements to halt enzyme activities during the initial moments of sample preparation are usually overlooked, allowing marked postmortem shifts in levels of labile metabolites representing diverse pathways. In brain many such changes occur in a matter of seconds.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The inheritance of the short allele, encoding the serotonin transporter (SERT) in humans, increases susceptibility to neuropsychiatric and metabolic disorders, with aging and female sex further exacerbating these conditions. Both central and peripheral mechanisms of the compromised serotonin (5-HT) system play crucial roles in this context. Previous studies on SERT-deficient (Sert) mice, which model human SERT deficiency, have demonstrated emotional and metabolic disturbances, exacerbated by exposure to a high-fat Western diet (WD).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study explores the potential for the synthesis of peptide nanosystems comprising spinorphin molecules (with rhodamine moiety: Rh-S, Rh-S5, and Rh-S6) conjugated with nanoparticles (AuNPs), specifically peptide Rh-S@AuNPs, peptide Rh-S5@AuNPs, and peptide Rh-S6@AuNPs, alongside a comparative analysis of the biological activities of free and conjugated peptides. The examination of the microstructural characteristics of the obtained peptide systems and their physicochemical properties constitutes a key focus of this study. Zeta (ζ) potential, Fourier transformation infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, circular dichroism (CD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and UV-Vis spectrophotometry were employed to elucidate the structure-activity correlations of the peptide@nano AuNP systems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Somatic DNA Variants in Epilepsy Surgery Brain Samples from Patients with Lesional Epilepsy.

Int J Mol Sci

January 2025

Department of Neuropediatrics, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, 13353 Berlin, Germany.

Epilepsy affects 50 million people worldwide and is drug-resistant in approximately one-third of cases. Even when a structural lesion is identified as the epileptogenic focus, understanding the underlying genetic causes is crucial to guide both counseling and treatment decisions. Both somatic and germline DNA variants may contribute to the lesion itself and/or influence the severity of symptoms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Collagen I is the most abundant type of intramuscular collagen. Lysyl oxidase promotes collagen cross-link formation, which helps stabilize the extracellular matrix. Furthermore, matrix metalloproteinases, responsible for collagen degradation, maintain typical muscle structure and function through remodeling.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF