Laboratory of Molecular Biology

About: Laboratory of Molecular Biology is a facility organization based out in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Gene & RNA. The organization has 19395 authors who have published 24236 publications receiving 2101480 citations.

The Connectome of a Decision-Making Neural Network

Abstract: In order to understand the nervous system, it is necessary to know the synaptic connections between the neurons, yet to date, only the wiring diagram of the adult hermaphrodite of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has been determined. Here, we present the wiring diagram of the posterior nervous system of the C. elegans adult male, reconstructed from serial electron micrograph sections. This region of the male nervous system contains the sexually dimorphic circuits for mating. The synaptic connections, both chemical and gap junctional, form a neural network with four striking features: multiple, parallel, short synaptic pathways directly connecting sensory neurons to end organs; recurrent and reciprocal connectivity among sensory neurons; modular substructure; and interneurons acting in feedforward loops. These features help to explain how the network robustly and rapidly selects and executes the steps of a behavioral program on the basis of the inputs from multiple sensory neurons.

Chromatography of 32P-labelled oligonucleotides on thin layers of DEAE-cellulose.

Abstract: A two-dimensional fractionation procedure has been developed for separating radioactively-labelled oligonucleotides of up to 50 residues long, using uniformly 32P-labelled 5S RNA of Escherichia coli as a model compound. The method uses ionophoresis on cellulose acetate at pH 3.5 in the first dimension; and ascending chromatography with a concentrated mixture of oligonucleotides on thin layers of mixed DEAE-cellulose and cellulose in the second dimension.