HFSP Career Development Award holder Jeroen Van Zon and colleagues
Tuesday 21st July 2015
It is an open question how, during embryonic development, spatial patterns of gene expression are induced with high precision. By counting single mRNA molecules during vulva induction in the nematode worm <em>Caenorhabditis elegans</em>, we established that the induced cells dynamically control the level of gene expression by increasing their sensitivity to the external inductive signal.
HFSP Young Investigator Grant holder Giovanni Pezzulo and colleagues
Monday 20th July 2015
Recent evidence challenges the traditional serial (decide-then-act) view of decision making, showing that decision and action processes can run in parallel. Here, we present a formal model in which decisions and actions are considered and optimized jointly, and apply it to various dynamical choice tasks. A prominent aspect of this model is an analysis of how action processes influence decision processes and not only vice-versa as often proposed.
HFSP Long-Term Fellow Simon Chen and HFSP Young Investigator Grant holder Takaki Komiyama
Tuesday 14th July 2015
Imagine when you are learning to play a long string of notes on a piano or to make a golf swing at a driving range, what is changing in your brain that allows you to learn those movements? The motor cortex in the brain has been shown to play an active role in the learning of new motor skills, and here we describe a specific type of inhibitory neuron in the motor cortex that is responsible for gating the changes required for the learning of new skilled movements.
HFSP Career Development Award holder Shay Ben-Aroya and colleagues
Friday 26th June 2015
Our study used the baker yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model system to reveal for the first time how the dysfunctional proteasome, which is associated with age-related pathologies and all the major chronic neurodegenerative disorders, is controlled by the protein quality control machinery.
HFSP Long-Term Fellow Stephan Preibisch and colleagues
Monday 22nd June 2015
The ability to track fast moving particles in 3D is limited in classic light microscopy as image stacks are acquired as a series of two-dimensional planes. Here, we reconstruct data from multifocal-microscopy that instantaneously captures entire 3D image stacks of live cells and show that β-actin mRNAs freely access the entire nucleus.
HFSP Cross-Disciplinary Fellow Ruben Portugues and colleagues
Thursday 18th June 2015
Animals use sensory evidence to decide what to do and when to do it. In fact, when presented with certain stimuli, it may take up to several seconds for an animal to react, even though action potentials, which govern the flow of information in the brain, last only a few milliseconds. Why?
HFSP Long-Term Fellow Andreas Mayer and colleagues
Tuesday 2nd June 2015
How genomes are transcribed by RNA polymerases in living cells is poorly defined. Here, we developed a genomic approach that visualizes RNA polymerase II transcription at single-nucleotide resolution in human cells. This approach reveals new general features of gene transcription and defines the transcriptional landscape of human cells.
HFSP Career Development Award holder Florence Besse and colleagues
Friday 29th May 2015
How the transport of various molecules to neuronal processes (dendrites and axons) is regulated in vivo, in response to developmental signals, is currently largely unknown. Here, we describe a novel protocol enabling live-imaging of fluorescently-labeled molecules transported along axons in maturing Drosophila brains. This protocol can be combined with sophisticated genetic tools or drug treatments, and will be useful to researchers wishing to dynamically study the cellular mechanisms underlying...
HFSP Long-Term Fellow Nicola Aceto and colleagues
Tuesday 26th May 2015
Recently, breakthrough technological advances have made it possible, for the first time, to isolate and characterize extraordinarily rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from the blood of patients with cancer. Using both patient samples and mouse models, coupled with microfluidics technology and single cell resolution RNA sequencing, we found that CTC-clusters, held together by strong cell-cell junctions, represent metastatic precursors in the circulation of patients with cancer. Furthermore...
HFSP Career Development Award holder Marcelo Nollmann and colleagues
Friday 22nd May 2015
Rho is a ring-ATPase responsible for the general modulation of gene expression in Escherichia coli. We investigate the mechanism by which Rho translocates single-stranded RNA at the single-molecule level.