Design and Characterization of a Human Monoclonal Antibody that Modulates Mutant Connexin 26 Hemichannels Implicated in Deafness and Skin Disorders.

Mutations leading to changes in properties, regulation, or expression of connexin-made channels have been implicated in 28 distinct human hereditary diseases. Eight of these result from variants of connexin 26 (Cx26), a protein critically involved in cell-cell signaling in the inner ear and skin. Lack of non-toxic drugs with defined mechanisms of action poses a serious obstacle to therapeutic interventions for diseases caused by mutant connexins.

Act on Numbers: Numerical Magnitude Influences Selection and Kinematics of Finger Movement.

In the past decade hand kinematics has been reliably adopted for investigating cognitive processes and disentangling debated topics. One of the most controversial issues in numerical cognition literature regards the origin - cultural vs. genetically driven - of the mental number line (MNL), oriented from left (small numbers) to right (large numbers).

Genetically-Driven Enhancement of Dopaminergic Transmission Affects Moral Acceptability in Females but Not in Males: A Pilot Study.

Moral behavior has been a key topic of debate for philosophy and psychology for a long time. In recent years, thanks to the development of novel methodologies in cognitive sciences, the question of how we make moral choices has expanded to the study of neurobiological correlates that subtend the mental processes involved in moral behavior. For instance, brain imaging studies have shown that distinct patterns of brain neural activity, associated with emotional response and cognitive processes, are involved in moral judgment.

A Rapid and Efficient Method to Obtain Photosynthetic Cell Suspension Cultures of .

Photosynthetic cell suspension cultures are a useful experimental system to analyze a variety of physiological processes, bypassing the structural complexity of the plant organism . Nevertheless, cell cultures containing functional chloroplasts are quite difficult to obtain, and this process is usually laborious and time-consuming. In this work a novel and rapid method to set up photosynthetic cell suspension cultures from the model plant was developed.

Income Inequality and Adolescent Gambling Severity: Findings from a Large-Scale Italian Representative Survey.

Studies have shown that problems related to adult gambling have a geographical and social gradient. For instance, adults experiencing gambling-related harms live in areas of greater deprivation; are unemployed, and have lower income. However, little is known about the impact of socioeconomic inequalities on adolescent problem gambling.

Behavioral and Cortical Effects during Attention Driven Brain-Computer Interface Operations in Spatial Neglect: A Feasibility Case Study.

During the last years, several studies have suggested that Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) can play a critical role in the field of motor rehabilitation. In this case report, we aim to investigate the feasibility of a covert visuospatial attention (CVSA) driven BCI in three patients with left spatial neglect (SN). We hypothesize that such a BCI is able to detect attention task-specific brain patterns in SN patients and can induce significant changes in their abnormal cortical activity (α-power modulation, feature recruitment, and connectivity).

Computational Methods for Characterizing Cancer Mutational Heterogeneity.

Advances in DNA sequencing technologies have allowed the characterization of somatic mutations in a large number of cancer genomes at an unprecedented level of detail, revealing the extreme genetic heterogeneity of cancer at two different levels: inter-tumor, with different patients of the same cancer type presenting different collections of somatic mutations, and intra-tumor, with different clones coexisting within the same tumor. Both inter-tumor and intra-tumor heterogeneity have crucial implications for clinical practices. Here, we review computational methods that use somatic alterations measured through next-generation DNA sequencing technologies for characterizing tumor heterogeneity and its association with clinical variables.

Toll-Like Receptor 4 Modulates Small Intestine Neuromuscular Function through Nitrergic and Purinergic Pathways.

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) play a pivotal role in the homeostatic microflora-host crosstalk. TLR4-mediated modulation of both motility and enteric neuronal survival has been reported mainly for colon with limited information on the role of TLR4 in tuning structural and functional integrity of enteric nervous system (ENS) and in controlling small bowel motility. Male TLR4 knockout (TLR4, 9 ± 1 weeks old) and sex- and age-matched wild-type (WT) C57BL/6J mice were used for the experiments.

Teaching Improvisation through Processes. Applications in Music Education and Implications for General Education.

Improvisation is an articulated multidimensional activity based on an extemporaneous creative performance. Practicing improvisation, participants expand sophisticated skills such as sensory and perceptual encoding, memory storage and recall, motor control, and performance monitoring. Improvisation abilities have been developed following several methodologies mainly with a product-oriented perspective.

Cryptochrome Is a Regulator of Synaptic Plasticity in the Visual System of .

CRYPTOCHROME (CRY) is a blue light sensitive protein with a key role in circadian photoreception. A main feature of CRY is that light promotes an interaction with the circadian protein TIMELESS (TIM) resulting in their ubiquitination and degradation, a mechanism that contributes to the synchronization of the circadian clock to the environment. Moreover, CRY participates in non-circadian functions such as magnetoreception, modulation of neuronal firing, phototransduction and regulation of synaptic plasticity.

Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing: Assessment of Differential Expression Analysis Methods.

The sequencing of the transcriptomes of single-cells, or single-cell RNA-sequencing, has now become the dominant technology for the identification of novel cell types and for the study of stochastic gene expression. In recent years, various tools for analyzing single-cell RNA-sequencing data have been proposed, many of them with the purpose of performing differentially expression analysis. In this work, we compare four different tools for single-cell RNA-sequencing differential expression, together with two popular methods originally developed for the analysis of bulk RNA-sequencing data, but largely applied to single-cell data.

A Brief History of IL-1 and IL-1 Ra in Rheumatology.

The history of what, in 1979, was called interleukin-1 (IL-1), orchestrator of leukocyte inter-communication, began many years before then, initially by the observation of fever induction via the endogenous pyrogen (EP) (1974) and then in rheumatology on the role in tissue destruction in rheumatoid diseases via the induction of collagenase and PGE in human synovial cells by a mononuclear cell factor (MCF) (1977). Since then, the family has exploded to presently 11 members as well as many membrane-bound and soluble receptor forms. The discovery of a natural Interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) in human biological fluids has highlighted the importance of IL-1 and IL-1Ra in human diseases.

New Tools to Study Astrocyte Ca Signal Dynamics in Brain Networks .

Sensory information processing is a fundamental operation in the brain that is based on dynamic interactions between different neuronal populations. Astrocytes, a type of glial cells, have been proposed to represent active elements of brain microcircuits that, through dynamic interactions with neurons, provide a modulatory control of neuronal network activity. Specifically, astrocytes in different brain regions have been described to respond to neuronal signals with intracellular Ca elevations that represent a key step in the functional recruitment of astrocytes to specific brain circuits.

Microgravity-Induced Transcriptome Adaptation in Mouse Paraspinal Muscle Highlights Insulin Resistance-Linked Genes.

Microgravity as well as chronic muscle disuse are two causes of low back pain originated at least in part from paraspinal muscle deconditioning. At present no study investigated the complexity of the molecular changes in human or mouse paraspinal muscles exposed to microgravity. The aim of this study was to evaluate adaptation to microgravity at both morphological and global gene expression level.

Differences in Verbal and Visuospatial Forward and Backward Order Recall: A Review of the Literature.

How sequential, verbal and visuospatial stimuli are encoded and stored in memory is not clear in cognitive psychology. Studies with order recall tasks, such as the digit, and Corsi span, indicate that order of presentation is a crucial element for verbal memory, but not for visuospatial memory. This seems to be due to the different effects of forward and backward recall in verbal and visuospatial tasks.

Empirical Scenarios of Fake Data Analysis: The Sample Generation by Replacement (SGR) Approach.

Many self-report measures of attitudes, beliefs, personality, and pathology include items whose responses can be easily manipulated or distorted, as an example in order to give a positive impression to others, to obtain financial compensation, to avoid being charged with a crime, to get a job, or else. This fact confronts both researchers and practitioners with the crucial problem of biases yielded by the usage of standard statistical models. The current paper presents three empirical applications to the issue of faking of a recent probabilistic perturbation procedure called Sample Generation by Replacement (SGR; Lombardi and Pastore, 2012).

The Role of Architectural and Learning Constraints in Neural Network Models: A Case Study on Visual Space Coding.

The recent "deep learning revolution" in artificial neural networks had strong impact and widespread deployment for engineering applications, but the use of deep learning for neurocomputational modeling has been so far limited. In this article we argue that unsupervised deep learning represents an important step forward for improving neurocomputational models of perception and cognition, because it emphasizes the role of generative learning as opposed to discriminative (supervised) learning. As a case study, we present a series of simulations investigating the emergence of neural coding of visual space for sensorimotor transformations.

The Desire of Parenthood: Intuitive Co-parental Behaviors and Quality of Couple Relationship among Italian and Belgian Same-Sex and Opposite-Sex Couples.

Studies that focused on family issues have allowed a great understanding of the aspects related to its subsystems, such as parenting desire and its expectations, couples' satisfaction and quality of child's outcomes. All these aspects are greatly interconnected and contribute to the creation of specific family dynamics, such as the quality of family interactions. The present study focuses on intuitive co-parental behaviors and the quality of couple relationship observed during the decision process (intention and desire) to be (or become) parents.

Will I Regret It? Anticipated Negative Emotions Modulate Choices in Moral Dilemmas.

We tested if post-decisional emotions of regret, guilt, shame, anger, and disgust can account for individuals' choices in moral dilemmas depicting the choice of letting some people die (non-utilitarian option) or sacrificing one person to save them (utilitarian option). We collected participants' choices and post-decisional emotional ratings for each option using Footbridge-type dilemmas, in which the sacrifice of one person is the means to save more people, and Trolley-type dilemmas, in which the sacrifice is only a side effect. Moreover, we computed the EEG Readiness Potential to test if the neural activity related to the last phase of decision-making was related to the emotional conflict.

Tendon Extracellular Matrix Alterations in Ullrich Congenital Muscular Dystrophy.

Collagen VI (COLVI) is a non-fibrillar collagen expressed in skeletal muscle and most connective tissues. Mutations in COLVI genes cause two major clinical forms, Bethlem myopathy and Ullrich congenital muscular dystrophy (UCMD). In addition to congenital muscle weakness, patients affected by COLVI myopathies show axial and proximal joint contractures and distal joint hypermobility, which suggest the involvement of the tendon function.

VESPUCCI: Exploring Patterns of Gene Expression in Grapevine.

Large-scale transcriptional studies aim to decipher the dynamic cellular responses to a stimulus, like different environmental conditions. In the era of high-throughput omics biology, the most used technologies for these purposes are microarray and RNA-Seq, whose data are usually required to be deposited in public repositories upon publication. Such repositories have the enormous potential to provide a comprehensive view of how different experimental conditions lead to expression changes, by comparing gene expression across all possible measured conditions.

Impact of Bep or Carboplatin Chemotherapy on Testicular Function and Sperm Nucleus of Subjects with Testicular Germ Cell Tumor.

Young males have testicular germ cells tumors (TGCT) as the most common malignancy and its incidence is increasing in several countries. Besides unilateral orchiectomy (UO), the treatment of TGCT may include surveillance, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy (CT), basing on tumor histology and stage of disease. It is well known that both radio and CT may have negative effects on testicular function, affecting spermatogenesis, and sex hormones.