Cytoskeleton

According to the cell theory, the cell is the smallest form of life but there are many parts of a cell which allow the cell to do the job it is assigned correctly. An example of a cell would be the animal cell, which is a eukaryotic cell or a cell that contains a plasma membrane. Inside the membrane there are parts of the cell called the organelles. (Animal Cell Structure, 2005) Organelles inside the cell have specific jobs to perform for the cell, organelles include the ribosomes, vacuoles,…

“A Novel Application of Microfluidic Assay to Evaluate the Role of Calponin in Platelet Function and Clot Formation” Introduction: Platelets are a very important aspect of blood clotting. They are also essential in the evolution of clots in Coronary and Cerebral arteries, which cause heart attacks and strokes, respectively. Every year, 610,000 people die of heart disease in the United States; this is 1 in every 4 deaths. Cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the United…

The polarization of these neurons occurs in several different stages. The lamellipodia, spherical neurons, starts to get extension of cytoskeleton to send out projections. Immature neurites are formed which eventually leads to physical projection of arms/branches forming axon and dendrites. The axon terminal increases in surface area and leads to maturation of the neuron. Par-3 is important…

The role of oxysterols in human body and disease 1. Introduction Oxysterols are 27-carbon derivatives of cholesterol created by spontaneous or enzymatic oxidation (Figure 1, (Brown and Jessup, 2009)). The oxidation of cholesterol occurs either on the side chain or on the sterol core. Side chain oxidation generates, e.g., 24-hydroxycholesterol (24-HC), 25-hydroxycholesterol (25-HC) or 27-hydroxycholesterol (27-HC) while the core oxidation gives rise to ring oxysterols, mostly ring-B oxysterols,…

like neuronal differentiation and neurite growth (Li et al., 2003;Hsia et al., 2014). The cellular level of PTEN is largely regulated by its proteasomal degradation, which is governed by E3 ubiquitin ligases including CHIP (Ahmed et al., 2012). Cytoskeleton of large neurons and axons are majorly built by cytoskeletal proteins, neurofilaments. Evidence shows that CHIP has a direct involvement in proteasomal degradation of neurofilaments medium subunit of 95kDa, which are highly damaged and…

Important Vocabulary (highlighted in the handout): Stimulus, neurons, dendrites, neurotransmitters, axon, myelin, action potential, graded potential, transmembrane potential, neuroglia, cerebrum, spinal cord What is the central nervous system? It’s a system which consists of the nerves in the brain and spinal cord. This system only makes up about 3% of a human’s body weight but serves a vital function, gathering information about and reacting to its environment and any stimulus. Don’t Shoot the…

Our logic for choosing kinesin for developing CNS therapeutics is based upon our own research, which found that kinesins are transcriptionally upregulated during memory storage and that they are both necessary and sufficient to induce long-term memory storage (LTM) in the marine snail, Aplysia californica (Puthanveettil et al., 2008; Fig 1). Furthermore, other researchers have also discovered that an increase in specific kinesin function in the mouse forebrain improves working memory (Wong et al…

The human microbiome project The Human microbiome project was the first step into research about bacteria that is present in the human body, and the association with disease. The project was launched in 2007 and was set out to be a five year program. It was funded by the United States National Institute of Health (NIH) however it involved many specialist from many countries worldwide, the original funding was around $115 million. The main purpose of the project was to analyse “how changes in…

CELL SIGNALING AND CELL TRANSDUCTION INTRODUCTION: In this lecture, we will study about cell signaling and signal transduction. Each cell in a multicellular animal is bombarded with chemical signals that are made by other cells and this is how communication occurs at cells level by different signaling molecule. Signals that regulate cell metabolism, alter or maintain its differentiated state, determine whether it should divide, and dictate whether it will live or die. The word “signals” in…

What are the nonpolar parts of a phospholipid? c. Tail group 4. This is the only polar portion of a cholesterol molecule and it forms hydrogen bonds with the polar heads of phospholipids. d. –OH group 5. This type of membrane protein will extend throughout the entire membrane touching both the Intracellular fluid and the Extracellular fluid. e. Integral proteins f. Transmembrane proteins g. Integral proteins and Transmembrane proteins Ans: D…