A brain enzyme plays an important role in waking up neural stem cells
Researchers studying an enzyme in fruit fly larvae have found that it plays an important role in waking up brain stem cells from their dormant quiescent state, enabling them to proliferate and generate new neurons. Published in the journal EMBO Reports, the study by Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, could help clarify how some neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and microcephaly occur.
Quiescent neural stem cells in the fruit fly larval brainPr-set7 is an enzyme involved in maintaining genome stability, DNA repair and cell cycle regulation, as well as turning various genes on or off. This protein, which goes by a few different names, has remained largely unchanged as species have evolved. Professor Wang Hongyan, a professor and deputy director at Duke-NUS Neuroscience and Behavioural Disorders Programme, and her colleagues set out to understand the protein s function during brain development.
Credit: UCR School of Medicine.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. Astrocytes star-shaped cells in the brain that are actively involved in brain function may play an important role in stuttering, a study led by a University of California, Riverside, expert on stuttering has found. Our study suggests that treatment with the medication risperidone leads to increased activity of the striatum in persons who stutter, said Dr. Gerald A. Maguire, professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the UCR School of Medicine, who led the study. The mechanism of risperidone s action in stuttering, in part, appears to involve increased metabolism or activity of astrocytes in the striatum.
HIN
A new study has identified early risk factors that predicted heightened anxiety in young adults during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The findings from the study, supported by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, could help predict who is at greatest risk of developing anxiety during stressful life events in early adulthood and inform prevention and intervention efforts.
The investigators examined data from 291 participants who had been followed from toddlerhood to young adulthood as part of a larger study on temperament and socioemotional development. The researchers found that participants who continued to show a temperament characteristic called behavioral inhibition in childhood were more likely to experience worry dysregulation in adolescence (age 15), which in turn predicted elevated anxiety during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic when the participants were in young adulth