The solubility of human costal cartilage during exhaustive digestion with proteases (van der Korst, Sokoloff, and Miller, 1968) or 5 M guanidine-HCI (Miller, van der Korst, and Sokoloff, 1969) decreases with ageing. These observations stimulated us to investigate the quantitative effect of glycosaminoglycan and protein-degrading enzymes on costal cartilage in regard to age. The first enzyme stu...

Herein we report the syntheses of two porous hyper-crosslinked polymers (HCPs) via thiol-yne reaction with rigid tetrahedral and pseudo-octahedral core structures. Sorption measurements with nitrogen gas at 77 K revealed BET-surface areas up to 650 m²/g. Those networks also showed a high thermal stability as well as insolubility in common organic solvents.

The role of plasma-membrane microdomains in the organization of signaling proteins has been a controversial topic in T cell signaling. In this issue of Cell, use of single-molecule fluorescence suggests that protein-protein interactions, not detergent insolubility, regulate the assembly of signaling complexes in the plasma membrane.

Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 2 (SCA2) is caused by expansion of a polyglutamine encoding triplet repeat in the human ATXN2 gene beyond (CAG)(31). This is thought to mediate toxic gain-of-function by protein aggregation and to affect RNA processing, resulting in degenerative processes affecting preferentially cerebellar neurons. As a faithful animal model, we generated a knock-in mouse replacing ...

Many late-onset proteotoxic diseases are accompanied by a disruption in homeostasis of metals (metallostasis) including iron, copper and zinc. Although aging is the most prominent risk factor for these disorders, the impact of aging on metallostasis and its role in proteotoxic disease remain poorly understood. Moreover, it is not clear whether a loss of metallostasis influences normal aging. We...