The hippocampus is essential to the memory and learning. This picture shows its characteristic form. The interneurons are highlighted in green, "Ammon's horn" (CA3), as the hippocampus is also known, and the dentate gyrus (DG) are outlined in white. Source: Marlene Bartos

Inhibited neurons set the tempo for memory processes

The more we know about the billions of nerve cells in the brain, the less their interaction appears spontaneous and random. The harmony underlying the processing of memory contents has been revealed by Prof. Dr. Marlene Bartos' workgroup at the Institute of Physiology I. In a study written with a colleague from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and published in the Nature Communications journal, she highlights the role of inhibiting circuits in the creation of high-frequency brainwaves in the hippocampus. With its work, the team, which also comes partly from the BrainLinks-BrainTools Cluster of Excellence and the Bernstein Center Freiburg, shows how the brain processes information that is relevant to memory.

For the first time, researchers have found the presence of predator bacteria in the microbiota of cystic fibrosis patients. There are researchers from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid among the authors of this finding. The results, obtained by a team of researchers from Hospital Universitario Ramón y Cajal, Instituto Ramón y Cajal de Investigación Sanitaria  (IRYCIS) and School of Agricultural, Food and Biosystems Engineering (ETSIAAB) at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), have allowed them to design a computational model to eradicate the pathogens of cystic fibrosis lung by inoculating predator bacteria. The results have been published in mBio®, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

By dispersing the seeds of plants, fruit-eating animals contribute to the possibility of increased plant speciation and thus biodiversity. These are the findings of a new study led by Renske E. Onstein and W. Daniel Kissling, researchers at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED). The results were published on Monday, 23 October in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Tropical rain forests are the supermarkets for fleshy fruits: more than 70% of woody, tropical plant species have fleshy fruits and rely on fruit-eating animals such as chimpanzees, elephants or hornbills for their seed dispersal. By dispersing the seeds of plants over large distances, these animals contribute to the possibility of plant speciation. The international team of researchers from the Netherlands, UK, France, Sweden and Denmark investigated over 2000 palm species with fleshy fruits (such as the date palm) to understand how the ecology of species, their distribution, and the interaction with potential fruit-eating animals may have affected their past speciation. This was done by assembling large databases of phylogenetic, functional trait and species distribution data for these palms.

Un team di ricerca internazionale che coinvolge l’Ispaam-Cnr spiega in uno lavoro pubblicato su Nature Communications e finanziato da Airc perché le cellule tumorali resistono ai farmaci chemioterapici in alcune patologie oncologiche, aprendo prospettive per lo studio e la messa a punto di nuove cure che rendano le cellule malate più sensibili a chemio e radio

Uno studio pubblicato sulla rivista Nature Communications cui ha partecipato l’Istituto per il sistema produzione animale in ambiente mediterraneo del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche (Ispaam-Cnr) di Napoli getta nuova luce su alcuni meccanismi molecolari responsabili della resistenza delle cellule tumorali alla chemio e radioterapia.

“Applicando moderne tecniche di analisi genomica e proteomica abbiamo individuato un nuovo meccanismo funzionale della proteina Ape1, un enzima di riparazione del danno al Dna che contribuisce al processo di instabilità genetica associata a diversi tumori, come quelli che colpiscono seno, ovaie e il cervello (glioblastoma), scoprendo un nuovo ruolo nel processo di tumorigenesi”, spiega Andrea Scaloni, direttore dell’Ispaam-Cnr dove, grazie alle strumentazioni presenti, sono stati svolti gli studi di proteomica del lavoro. “Abbiamo capito che la proteina Ape1 è in grado di regolare il processamento dei microRna, piccole molecole dell’acido ribonucleico (Rna), contribuendo alla regolazione dell’espressione di geni coinvolti nei fenomeni di chemioresistenza. Inoltre abbiamo evidenziato come questa proteina, interagendo con molte altre, giochi un ruolo importante nello sviluppo del cancro”.