SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid induces hyperinflammation and vascular leakage through the Toll-like receptor signaling axis in macrophages.

Tens of thousands of severe COVID-19 cases are hospitalized weekly in the U.S., often driven by an imbalance between antiviral responses and inflammatory signaling, leading to uncontrolled cytokine secretion.

Old World alphaviruses use distinct mechanisms to infect brain microvascular endothelial cells for neuroinvasion.

Several alphaviruses bypass the blood-brain barrier (BBB), causing debilitating or fatal encephalitis. Sindbis virus (SINV) has been extensively studied to understand alphavirus neuropathogenesis; yet the molecular details of neuroinvasion at the BBB remain poorly understood. We investigated alphavirus-BBB interactions by pairing a physiologically relevant, human pluripotent stem cell derived model of brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMECs) with SINV strains of opposite neuroinvasiveness.

Expression, purification and application of a recombinant, membrane permeating version of the light chain of botulinum toxin B.

Botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) are valuable tools to unveil molecular mechanisms of exocytosis in neuronal and non-neuronal cells due to their peptidase activity on exocytic isoforms of SNARE proteins. They are produced by Clostridia as single-chain polypeptides that are proteolytically cleaved into light, catalytic domains covalently linked via disulfide bonds to heavy, targeting domains. This format of two subunits linked by disulfide bonds is required for the full neurotoxicity of BoNTs.

Repression by the H-NS/YmoA histone-like protein complex enables IscR dependent regulation of the Yersinia T3SS.

The type III secretion system (T3SS) is an appendage used by many bacterial pathogens, such as pathogenic Yersinia, to subvert host defenses. However, because the T3SS is energetically costly and immunogenic, it must be tightly regulated in response to environmental cues to enable survival in the host. Here we show that expression of the Yersinia Ysc T3SS master regulator, LcrF, is orchestrated by the opposing activities of the repressive H-NS/YmoA histone-like protein complex and induction by the iron and oxygen-regulated IscR transcription factor.

Motivated exploratory behaviour in the rat: the role of hippocampus and the histaminergic neurotransmission.

Exploration is one of most basic adaptive behavioural responses, giving the animal an important evolutionary advantage to survive in a changing environment. Inspection of novel environments might be come with motivated exploratory behaviour. In spite that this type of exploration in the rat is known for many years, little attention has been given to the intrinsic mechanisms or the brain structures that are involved in.