Ongoing synaptic function and rapid, bidirectional plasticity are both controlled by regulatory mechanisms within dendritic spines. Spine actin dynamics maintain synapse structure and function, and cytoskeletal rearrangements in these structures trigger structural and functional plasticity. Therefore, proteins that interact with actin filaments are attractive candidates to regulate synaptic act...

General anesthetics produce a reversible coma-like state through modulation of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission. Recent evidence suggests that anesthetic exposure can also lead to sustained cognitive dysfunction. However, the subcellular effects of anesthetics on the structure of established synapses are not known. We investigated effects of the widely used volatile anesthetic is...

blocking antibodies are valuable tools for inhibiting the specific receptor- ligand interactions. the interaction of co-stimulatory molecules on the antigen presenting cells with their ligands on t cells is an essential step for t cell activation. in the present study, the effect of blocking antibody against cd40 on its t cell stimulatory potential is investigated. the dcs (dendritic cells) wer...

dendritic cells (dcs) are a heterogeneous family of professional apcs involved in priming adaptive immune responses. donor dcs (direct pathway of allorecognition) and recipient dcs presenting processed donor major histocompatibility complex (mhc) as peptides (indirect pathway of allorecognition) participate actively in graft rejection by stimulating recipient t cell responses following organ tr...

dendritic cells (dcs) induce pathogen-specific t cell responses. we comprehensively studied the effects of addition of maturation stimulus, fibroblasts (fibroblast conditioned medium), pha activated t cells (t cell conditioned medium), and mixture of fibroblast & pha activated t cells (fcm-tccm) conditioned media on maturation of dcs. monocytes were cultured with gm-csf and il-4 for five da...

We adapt a mouse global ischemia model to permit rapid induction of ischemia and reperfusion in conjunction with two-photon imaging to monitor the initial ionic, structural, and functional implications of brief interruptions of blood flow (6-8 min) in vivo. After only 2-3 min of global ischemia, a wide spread loss of mouse somatosensory cortex apical dendritic structure is initiated during the ...

Neurons are specialized computational compartments that integrate and regulate the propagation of information. The principle language used by neurons to communicate with each other is the action potential. Numerous biophysical and structural properties of neurons have evolved to modulate action potential integration and propagation. Cellular morphology is crucial to our understanding of informa...

the innate immune system utilizes pattern recognition receptors (prrs) to recognize microbes. pathogens contain various molecules with diverse effects on immune response. in this study, we evaluated the effect of dna and protein components derived from two intracellular microorganisms including listeria monocytogenes (l.monocytogenes) and toxoplasma gondii (t. gondii) on dendritic cells (dcs) a...

background: bacterial dna has immunostimulatory effects on different types of immune cells such as dendritic cells (dcs). application of dcs as a cellular adjuvant represents a promising approach in the immunotherapy of infectious disease and cancers. objectives: to investigate the effect of tumor antigen pulsed dcs in the presence of cpg-1826 in treatment of a murine model of cancer. methods: ...

background: fusion of dendritic cells (dcs) with melanoma cells could reinforce the antigenicity of tumors as a strategy for the treatment of malignant melanoma. however, the insufficient quantity of dcs and the low fusion efficiency limits the development of such approach. objective: to define the dosage of the stimulating factors as well as the induction condition for the optimal dcs preparat...