glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (gdnf) plays important roles not only for the differentiation of neurons during normal development but also for the survival and recovery of many populations of mature neurons. the effect of traumatic brain injury (tbi) on the expression of gdnf is currently unknown. to determine if there is alteration in gdnf after tbi we examined the effect of contr...

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1. Department of Experimental Biology, Faculty of Medicine of Porto, University of Porto, Portugal; IBMCInstituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Universidade do Porto, Portugal., 2. Molecular Neurobiology Unit, University of Bristol, CSSB, Dorothy Hodgkin Building, Bristol, UK, 3. Department of Urology, Hospital de S. João, Porto, Portugal; IBMCInstituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Unive...

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Axonal target-derived BMP and neurotrophin signaling are both known to regulate neuronal gene expression, differentiation, and axon growth. In this issue of Neuron, Ji and Jaffrey (2012) discovered that BMP-signaling endosomes depend on BDNF-induced axonal synthesis of SMADs to retrogradely regulate transcription in developing trigeminal neurons, providing a mechanism of integrating the two tar...

During development, newly born neurons migrate away from their initial birth sites to their final positions in the mature brain. The neurotrophin BDNF has been shown to regulate the migration of granule cells in the cerebellum. The cellular mechanisms that mediate this chemotactic response have not been resolved. In this issue of Neuron, Zhou et al. show that vesicle trafficking is critical for...

Low glucose condition induces neuronal cell-death via intracellular mechanisms including mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) signaling pathways. It has been shown that low glucose medium decreases neuronal survival in cerebellar granule neurons (CGNs). In this study, we have examined the activation of JNK, p38kinase and ERK1/2 pathways in low glucose medium in CGNs. The CGNs were prepared ...