There are only scattered data available on molecular aspects of vesicle trafficking in protozoa, notably in ciliates. In this context, proteins of paramount interest are the so-called SNARE proteins (soluble NSF attachment protein receptor; NSF=N-ethylmaleimide ~ensitive factor). They are positioned on opposite membranes; together with some other proteins they serve docking, e.g., of a yesic le...

Kinetochores direct attachment of chromosomes to microtubules of the mitotic spindle during cell division. Three recent studies in Cell, including one in this issue, reveal important new roles for two kinetochore protein complexes-Ndc80 and INCENP-Survivin-in establishing the correct attachment of chromosomes to spindle microtubules (Cheeseman et al., 2006, DeLuca et al., 2006 and Sandall et al...

Molecular chaperones are cellular machines that facilitate protein folding. The crystal structures of HtpG, the Escherichia coli homolog of hsp90, reported in this issue (Shiau et al., 2006) together with the recently published structures of an hsp90-cochaperone complex (Ali et al., 2006) and an hsp90-client protein complex (Vaughan et al., 2006), reveal exciting insights into the hsp90 reactio...

Cervical dystonia is the most common form of focal dystonia (Dashtipour et al., 2007). It is characterized by involuntary movement of the neck resulting in abnormal neck posture (Brin & Benabou, 1999; Dent, 2002). Cervicalgia and headache sometimes occur in patients suffering from the disease (Albanese, 2005; Brashear, 2004, Schim, 2006). A critical long-term sequelae of this kind of movement d...

1. By D.C. Blackburn & D.B. Wake (for full contact details, see the list after References). The title of this contribution should be cited as “Class Amphibia Gray, 182. In: Zhang, Z.-Q. (Ed.) Animal biodiversity: An outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness”. 2. The Amphibian Species of the World website (Frost, 2011), a continuation of Frost (1985), has guided our...

Phylogenetic comparative biology has progressed considerably in recent years (e.g., Butler and King 2004; Rabosky 2006; Bokma 2008; Alfaro et al. 2009; Stadler 2011; Slater et al. 2012). One of the most important developments has been the application of likelihood-based methods to fit alternative models for trait evolution in a phylogenetic treewith branch lengths proportional to time (e.g., Bu...

The target of rapamycin (TOR, also called the mechanistic or mammalian target of rapamycin, mTOR) is an atypical protein kinase that is highly conserved in eukaryotes (Sarbassov et al. 2005; Wullschleger et al. 2006; Jacinto & Lorberg 2008). It modulates cell growth, metabolism, and cell survival in response to diverse extracellular and intracellular signals, such as growth factors, energy leve...

Gamma-band (25-90Hz) oscillations occur in many parts of the brain. We are seeking to understand the underlying neural mechanisms that generate gamma oscillations in the cerebral cortex by studying gamma activity in the Local Field Potential (LFP) in V1 cortex. The LFP is a measure of the average membrane potential of neurons in the neighborhood of the recording electrode and is commonly interp...