Some people consider the brain to be equivalent to a living computer and in that sense it’s too bad that computers don’t have the equal of neural stem cells to help them fix themselves.
Is the internet one big neural network-like web?
There was a quake in the stem cell internet as CIRM’s main website was down for a long time.
For those of us working on grant proposals, there was an alternative CIRM website that was up and working. It seems the regular CIRM email was also not working but the agency had a workaround with changing the addresses to end in cirm.us.
Fortunately, now the CIRM website and emails are back up!
On to the weekly reads. It’s rare for a week to go by without too many interesting papers popping up to read entirely in one week. This week had a lot of good stuff.
Neural stem cells
- Regulation of developmental hierarchy in Drosophila neural stem cell tumors by COMPASS and Polycomb complexes, Science Advances.
- Key Protein Identified for Brain Stem Cell Longevity, Neuroscience News. “INSR, a protein essential for insulin activity, plays a critical role in stem cell longevity.”
- Single metal-organic framework–embedded nanopit arrays: A new way to control neural stem cell differentiation, Science Advances.
More recommended reads
- FTO mediates LINE1 m6A demethylation and chromatin regulation in mESCs and mouse development, Science.
- Sox2 levels regulate the chromatin occupancy of WNT mediators in epiblast progenitors responsible for vertebrate body formation, Nat. Cell Bio.
- CRISPR-Cas9 editing of the arginine–vasopressin V1a receptor produces paradoxical changes in social behavior in Syrian hamsters, PNAS. CRISPR gene-editing approaches to human brain disorders have promise but face steep challenges. This new paper illustrates how such editing can sometimes lead to unexpected, negative consequences.
- Vast heterogeneity in cytoplasmic diffusion rates revealed by nanorheology and Doppelgänger simulations, bioRxiv preprint. I’ve always been more focused on what’s going on in the nucleus so I wonder about such heterogeneity in the constituents of the nucleus too.
- Preventing erosion of X-chromosome inactivation in human embryonic stem cells, Nat Comm.
- Vertex’s First Patient Is Now Insulin-Free! Big News in the Race for a Type 1 Diabetes Cure, Diabetes Daily. While this is still just N=1, the lengthy period of follow-up and the patient being able to stop insulin are encouraging.
- The disordered N-terminal domain of DNMT3A recognizes H2AK119ub and is required for postnatal development, Nat. Genetics. Peggy Goodell’s lab just keeps churning out wonderful papers.
- Sleep deprivation induces corneal epithelial progenitor cell over-expansion through disruption of redox homeostasis in the tear film, Stem Cell Reports.
- Biomaterials to enhance stem cell transplantation, Cell Stem Cell.