Bivalency buffer makes pluripotency connections

Chromatin Connections to Pluripotency and Cellular Reprogramming

The pluripotent state of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) provides a unique perspective on regulatory programs that govern self-renewal and differentiation and somatic cell reprogramming. Here, we review the highly connected protein and transcriptional networks that maintain pluripotency and how they are intertwined with factors that affect chromatin structure and function. The complex interrelation...

The Bivalency Effect in Task-switching the Bivalency Effect in Task-switching by John

Bivalency as a principle for proteasome inhibition.

The proteasome, a multicatalytic protease, is known to degrade unfolded polypeptides with low specificity in substrate selection and cleavage pattern. This lack of well-defined substrate specificities makes the design of peptide-based highly selective inhibitors extremely difficult. However, the x-ray structure of the proteasome from Saccharomyces cerevisiae reveals a unique topography of the s...

An orienting response is not enough: Bivalency not infrequency causes the bivalency effect

When switching tasks, occasionally responding to bivalent stimuli (i.e., stimuli with relevant features for two different tasks) slows performance on subsequent univalent stimuli, even when they do not share relevant features with bivalent stimuli. This performance slowing is labelled the bivalency effect. Here, we investigated whether the bivalency effect results from an orienting response to ...

Human-Specific Cortical Synaptic Connections and Their Plasticity: Is That What Makes Us Human?

One outstanding difference between Homo sapiens and other mammals is the ability to perform highly complex cognitive tasks and behaviors, such as language, abstract thinking, and cultural diversity. How is this accomplished? According to one prominent theory, cognitive complexity is proportional to the repetition of specific computational modules over a large surface expansion of the cerebral c...