Showing papers in "Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology in 2006"

TL;DR: It is speculated that odor representations and their postsynaptic processing are tuned to and shaped by the sniffing behavior of the animal and serve to temporally sharpen these dynamics and to modulate spatial patterns of glomerular activity.

TL;DR: This review focuses on the role of glutamate receptors, including both ionotropic (AMPA, NMDA and kainate) and metabotropic (mGlu1-8) receptors in persistent pain states with particular emphasis on their expression patterns in nociceptive pathways and their potential as targets for pharmacological intervention strategies.

TL;DR: It appears that the sperm initiates InsP(3) generation via the introduction of a sperm factor into the egg after gamete membrane fusion, and a sperm-specific form of phospholipase C is identified, referred to as PLCzeta(zeta).

TL;DR: What is currently known about Wnt signaling in cnidarians is examined, and what this group of "simple" animals may reveal about the evolution of WNT signaling and polarity is discussed.

TL;DR: The activity, sub-cellular distribution and expression levels of RGS proteins are dynamically regulated, providing a layer of complexity that has yet to be fully elucidated.

TL;DR: The capsaicin receptor TRPV1 is an emerging target for the treatment of pain with a unique expression profile in peripheral nociceptors and the ability to show polymodal activation, an important integrator of responses to inflammatory mediators.

TL;DR: Focussing on neuromuscular junctions and photoreceptor synapses, an overview of mechanisms underlying the development of synaptic structure in Drosophila is provided.

TL;DR: The mammalian egg appears to transduce the duration, amplitude, and temporal presentation of the increase in the intracellular calcium concentration upon fertilization, which has important short-term effects on the initiation and completion of early events of egg activation.

TL;DR: Fertilization includes a series of cellular interactions culminating with the fusion of gamete membranes, creating a zygote, and gene deletion in mice showed that fusion can happen in their absence.

TL;DR: The anatomy and development of the giant fibre system of Drosophila is reviewed and its utility for studying many aspects of nervous system biology ranging from neural development and synaptic plasticity to the aetiology of neural disorder is highlighted.

TL;DR: Historical and recent evidence suggesting that (FGFR) signaling plays a vital and universal role in multiple aspects of lens development is reviewed.

TL;DR: Insects and vertebrates separately evolved remarkably similar mechanisms to process olfactory information, which appear to improve signal-to-noise characteristics, define odor categories, achieve precise odor identification, extract invariant features, and begin the process of sparsening the neural representations of odors for efficient discrimination, memorization, and recognition.

TL;DR: The current understanding of the roles of sodium channels in pain and nociceptive information processing is described, with a particular emphasis on neuropathic pain and drugs useful for the treatment of neuropathicPain that act through mechanisms involving block of Sodium channels.

TL;DR: A brief overview of the properties of thermo-TRPs is provided, signalling pathways involved in their regulation are summarized, and they are summarized in terms of intracellular residues by protein kinases and insertion of new channels into the cell membrane.

TL;DR: Monitoring of Ca( 2+) signals and mitochondrial activity during fertilisation in living zygotes of diverse species should confirm the universality of the role for sperm-triggered Ca(2+) waves in the activation of mitochondrial activity at fertilisation.

TL;DR: Detailed anatomical and physiological data on the mitral cell-granule cell circuit are reviewed and a quantitative estimate of how this connectivity varies as a function of distance between mitral cells is provided.

TL;DR: In the Drosophila ventral nerve cord, segmentally repeated sets of approximately 80 motoneurons are generated during embryogenesis, showing that patterns of connectivity in the periphery are mirrored by patterns of dendritic arborisation centrally thereby providing a neuronal correlate of connectivity to the anatomy of the motor system inThe periphery.

TL;DR: The molecular mechanisms regulating PCP, including the hypothesized roles for Wnt ligands in this process, and its roles in vertebrate organogenesis are discussed.

TL;DR: This review will highlight the similarities between mechanisms that establish patterns of polarity between Drosophila and vertebrates and discuss recent advances with regard to Wnt/PCP signaling in vertebrates.

TL;DR: In the current review, the authors document the pharmacological, biochemical and molecular information that has led to the identification of the α2δ1 auxilliary subunit of voltage gated calcium channels as the target for this drug's actions.

TL;DR: The functional links between TRPM-mediated ion conductance, chemotaxis, apoptosis, and innate immunity are reviewed.

TL;DR: Evidence of glial contributions to embryonic, visual, olfactory and wing development and non-developmental functions of insect glia including blood-brain-barrier formation, homeostatic functions and potential contributions to synaptic function are outlined.

TL;DR: In most sensory systems, the sensory cortex is the place where sensation approaches perception, and in olfaction, olfactory cortex serves as an important sensory gate, modulating information throughput based on recent experience and behavioral state.

TL;DR: Recent studies that identified genes involved in the immediate cytoprotective function played by gland cells after amputation; the early dedifferentiation of digestive cells into blastema-like cells during head regeneration, and the early late proliferation of neuronal progenitors required for head patterning are highlighted.

TL;DR: Evidence that sponge stem cells have essential roles in cellular specialization, embryogenesis and Bauplan formation is reviewed and data indicate that sponge archaeocytes not only represent germ cells but also totipotent stem cells.

TL;DR: The fruitfly brain learns about the olfactory world by reading the activity of about 50 distinct channels of incoming information, each with their own distinctive odour response profile governed by a specific receptor molecule.

TL;DR: The evidence for the molecular basis for the evolutionary origin of these two different stem cell systems, which are found in many invertebrates and probably evolved as components of asexual reproduction, is reviewed.

TL;DR: New studies support an emerging model that suggests RGS proteins utilize both direct and indirect mechanisms to form stable functional pairs with preferred GPCRs to selectively modulate the signaling functions of those receptors and linked G proteins.

TL;DR: This review compares the axis specification processes used in two evolutionarily distant embryos, the sea urchin and Xenopus, and investigates differences between these phyla that explain how a same pathway can mediate establishment of two such apparently distinct axes.

TL;DR: This review provides an overview of the current understanding of signaling mechanisms involved in lens induction, which are presented in context of the major stages of lens induction (competence, bias, inhibition and specification).