Background: Echinococcosis is a zoonotic parasitic disease caused by the larval stage of Echinococcus granulosus. Several native and recombinant antigens, derived from different stages of E. granulosus life cycle, have been used for vaccine trials. In vitro reared adult worms are good candidates for vaccination as they do not produce fertile egg/s and do not have any risk of contamination for r...

The auditory inner hair cell (IHC) ribbon synapse operates with an exceptional temporal precision and maintains a high level of neurotransmitter release. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying IHC synaptic exocytosis are largely unknown. We studied otoferlin, a predicted C2-domain transmembrane protein, which is defective in a recessive form of human deafness. We show that otoferlin expre...

Ribbon synapses of sensory neurons are able to sustain high rates of exocytosis in response to maintained depolarization, but it is not known how this is achieved. Using the capacitance technique, we have found that Ca(2+) regulates the supply of releasable vesicles at the ribbon synapse of depolarizing bipolar cells from the retina of goldfish. Ca(2+) had two actions that could be differentiat...

In the vertebrate retina, neuronal circuitry required for visual perception is organized within specific laminae. Photoreceptors convey external visual information to bipolar and horizontal cells at triad ribbon synapses established within the outer plexiform layer (OPL), initiating retinal visual processing. However, the molecular mechanisms that organize these three classes of neuronal proces...

We report the discovery of an entirely new three-dimensional (3D) swimming pattern observed in human and horse sperms. This motion is in the form of 'chiral ribbons', where the planar swing of the sperm head occurs on an osculating plane creating in some cases a helical ribbon and in some others a twisted ribbon. The latter, i.e., the twisted ribbon trajectory, also defines a minimal surface, e...

The photoreceptor ribbon synapse is a highly specialized glutamatergic synapse designed for the continuous flow of synaptic vesicles to the neurotransmitter release site. The molecular mechanisms underlying ribbon synapse formation are poorly understood. We have investigated the role of the presynaptic cytomatrix protein Bassoon, a major component of the photoreceptor ribbon, in a mouse retina ...

The Reshetikhin-Turaev invariant, Turaev’s TQFT, and many related constructions rely on the encoding of certain tangles (n-string links, or ribbon n-handles) as n-forms on the coend of a ribbon category. We introduce the monoidal category of Hopf diagrams, and describe a universal encoding of ribbon string links as Hopf diagrams. This universal encoding is an injective monoidal functor and admi...

PURPOSE Synaptic ribbons are organelles found at presynaptic active zones of sensory neurons that generate sustained graded electrical signals in response to stimuli, including retinal photoreceptor cells and bipolar neurons. RIBEYE is the major and specific protein constituent of ribbons; however, over the past decade an increasing number of other proteins have been identified at ribbon active...

Wormlike micelles are flexible polymerlike chains formed by the self-assembly of amphiphilic molecules either in water ("normal" worms) or in oil ("reverse" worms). Normal and reverse worms have both been studied extensively and have generally been found to exhibit analogous rheological properties (e.g., Maxwell fluidlike behavior). Here, we report a hitherto unexplored difference between these...