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Category: neuroscience – Page 15

Rare blue proteins from cold-adapted microbes could serve as prototypes for molecular on-off switches

Imagine the magnificent glaciers of Greenland, the eternal snow of the Tibetan high mountains, and the permanently ice-cold groundwater in Finland. As cold and beautiful as these are, for the structural biologist Kirill Kovalev, they are more importantly home to unusual molecules that could control brain cells’ activity.

Kovalev, EIPOD Postdoctoral Fellow at EMBL Hamburg’s Schneider Group and EMBL-EBI’s Bateman Group, is a physicist passionate about solving biological problems. He is particularly hooked by rhodopsins, a group of colorful proteins that enable aquatic microorganisms to harness sunlight for energy.

“In my work, I search for unusual rhodopsins and try to understand what they do,” said Kovalev. “Such molecules could have undiscovered functions that we could benefit from.”

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy rare among individuals with isolated brain injuries

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is more common in people who experience extensive repetitive head impacts, and infrequent among individuals with isolated brain injuries or less extensive impacts, researchers from the Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai have found.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology, adds to knowledge of CTE, which has received extensive media attention amidst limited research in representative samples.

CTE is characterized by a neurodegenerative pathology involving abnormal accumulations of tau protein in the brain associated with head trauma, primarily identified in deceased people who sustained extensive exposure to repetitive head impacts while playing contact sports—especially American-style football. CTE has been reported more rarely in individuals who sustained repetitive head impacts through head-banging, military service, or intimate partner violence.

Saturday Citations: Yet another solution for universal expansion; computing with brain organoids

This week, researchers reported the discovery of four Late Bronze Age stone megastructures likely used for trapping herds of wild animals. Physicists have proven that a central law of thermodynamics does not apply to atomic-scale objects that are linked via quantum correlation. And two Australian Ph.D. students coded a software solution for the James Webb Space Telescope’s Aperture Masking Interferometer, which has been producing blurry images.

Additionally, researchers are networking tiny human brain organoids into a computing substrate; have proposed that environmental lead exposure may have influenced early human brain evolution; and physicists have provided a to explain accelerating universal expansion without :

Algorithm maps genetic connection between Alzheimer’s and specific neurons

The number of people living with dementia worldwide was estimated at 57 million in 2021 with nearly 10 million new cases recorded each year. In the U.S., dementia impacts more than 6 million lives, and the number of new cases is expected to double over the next few decades, according to a 2025 study. Despite advancements in the field, a full understanding of disease-causing mechanisms is still lacking.

To address this gap, Rice University researchers and collaborators at Boston University have developed a that can help identify which specific types of cells in the body are genetically linked to complex human traits and diseases, including in forms of dementia such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Known as “Single-cell Expression Integration System for Mapping genetically implicated Cell types,” or seismic, the tool helped the team hone in on genetic vulnerabilities in memory-making brain cells that link them to Alzheimer’s ⎯ the first to establish an association based on a genetic link between the disease and these specific neurons. The algorithm outperforms existing tools for identifying that are potentially relevant in complex diseases and is applicable in disease contexts beyond dementia.

When we dream, does our brain wake up?

An international consortium of researchers has created the largest-ever database compiling records of brain activity during sleep and dream reports. One of the first analyses of the database confirmed that dreams do not occur only during REM sleep, but also during deeper and calmer NREM stages. In these cases, brain activity resembles wakefulness more than deep sleep, as if the brain were “partially awake.”

One third of a healthy adult’s life is spent sleeping, and a significant portion of that time is spent dreaming. Throughout the night, during any sleep stage, subjective conscious experiences, what we call dreams, can repeatedly occur.

Interest in dreams dates back thousands of years, from ancient Egypt to ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Greece, and spans many cultures and traditions.

Parkinson’s Discovery Suggests We May Have an FDA-Approved Treatment Already

Researchers have discovered how a surface protein on brain cells, called Aplp1, can play a role in spreading material responsible for Parkinson’s disease from cell to cell in the brain.

Promisingly, an FDA-approved cancer drug that targets another protein – Lag3 – which interacts with Aplp1 – was found to block this process in mice. This suggests a potential treatment for Parkinson’s may already exist.

In a paper published last year, an international team of scientists detailed how the two proteins work together to help toxic clumps of alpha-synuclein protein get into brain cells.

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