Reviews
How brains work. Lessons from the fly.
Research on Drosophila unravels mechanisms of the human brainSusanne C. Hoyer, Martin Heisenberg, Biocenter Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany Learning and memory or sleep and aggression – the rapidly growing sophisticated tool box of Drosophila genetics promises to decipher these processes and traits of behaviour. At present, the fruit fly is the best possible model for linking changes on the molecular, cellular and network level in the brain with behaviour. Citation: (2008). How brains work. Lessons from the fly. Research on Drosophila unravels mechanisms of the human brain. B.I.F. FUTURA 23(2), 75-78 Copyright: © Susanne C. Hoyer, Martin Heisenberg. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allow the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author, copyright holder and source are credited.  Download PDF of the article (280 KB)Smart bacterial toxins. Autocatalytic cleavage of clostridial toxins – a target for novel therapeutic strategies?Stefan Tenzer 1, Jessica Reineke 21 Institute for Immunology, University of Mainz, Germany 2 Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica GmbH, Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany While antibiotics are one of the great success stories in medicine, they sometimes have severe side effects, such as diarrhoea and its often fatal form, pseudomembranous colitis. In the majority of cases, the bacterium Clostridium difficile, the most important nosocomial germ of developed countries, is responsible for these side effects. Tenzer and Reineke’s data suggest that inactivation of its toxins – instead of the bacteria – may constitute a new therapeutic strategy. Citation: (2008). Smart bacterial toxins. Autocatalytic cleavage of clostridial toxins – a target for novel therapeutic strategies. B.I.F. FUTURA 23(2), 79-82 Copyright: © Stefan Tenzer, Jessica Reineke. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allow the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author, copyright holder and source are credited. Download PDF of the article (170 KB)
Research Articles of B.I.F. Fellows (Results)In these final accounts, B.I.F. fellowship holders present a brief summary of the research results and publications of their PhD project. Determination of left-right asymmetry in the rabbit embryoKerstin Feistel Institute for Zoology, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany The mechanism of rhodopsin activationBernhard Knierim Institute of Medical Physics and Biophysics, Charité – University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany Metal ions affect the splice site of group II intron ribozymesDaniela Kruschel Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Regulatory T cell and helper T cell interactions with dendritic cellsMilka Sarris Division of Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK A synapse in the test-tube: reconstitution of Ca2+-triggered synaptic vesicle fusionAlexander Stein Department of Neurobiology, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany Structures of tumour suppressor p53, a specific p53–DNA complex and its regulator ASPP2Henning Tidow MRC Centre for Protein Engineering, Cambridge, UK Regulation of the VCIP135 deubiquitinating activity by the p97 chaperone complex Stefan Zeibig Institute of Biochemistry, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Download Research Articles (2,1 MB)Copyright: © These are open-access articles distributed under the terms
of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences
and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on
access to these contributions and allow the work to be used,
reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original
author, copyright holder and source are credited.
New Projects
The Board of Trustees of the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds meets 3 times annually to decide upon the allocation of PhD fellowships. On February 29 to March 1, 2008, they discussed 49 applications – preselected from the original 132 applications sent to the Foundation. Once again, the limited resources available meant that a considerable number of convincing applications had to be turned down. 16 projects and fellowship holders were selected, all of which were taken up.
Visualizing CREB activation in neuronal network plasticity
Arnab Chakrabarty
Department of Cellular and Systems Neurobiology, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany
Co-ordination of microtubule-based motors exerting force in opposite directions
Gero Fink
Research Group Molecular Transport in Cell Biology and Nanotechnology, Max Planck Institute of Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany
Structural investigation of AGO2 and its mRNA m7G cap-binding characteristics
Filipp Frank
Laboratory of Translational Regulation, Department of Biochemistry, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Advancing a new imaging modality: coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy
Christian Freudiger
Department of Physics and Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA, USA
RNA visualization and programmable biomolecule release in vivo with templated chemistry
Katarzyna Irena Górska
Laboratoire de Chimie Organique et Bioorganique, Institute de Sciences et d’Ingenierie Supramoleculaires (ISIS), Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France
Control of centriole duplication by PLK4
Gernot Guderian
Department of Cell Biology, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany
Architecture and assembly of eisosomes
Lena Karotki
Organelle Architecture and Dynamics, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany
Direct influence of interleukin 12 on cytotoxic CD8+ T cells
Selina Keppler
Department of Immunology, Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Freiburg, Freiburg (Breisgau), Germany
The neural mechanisms underlying Bayesian inference in perception
Hania Köver
Auditory Perception and Learning Laboratory, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Defining targeting principles of DNA methylation during cellular differentiation
Florian Lienert
Laboratory of Propagation and Dynamics of Epigenetic States, Department of Epigenetics, Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland
Investigation of a novel ubiquitination cascade involved in the DNA damage response
Stephanie Panier
Centre for Systems Biology, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada
Chemical imaging using femtosecond-stimulated Raman microscopy (FSRM)
Evelyn Plötz
Department of Biomolecular Optics, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU),
Munich, Germany
Molecular basis of multivesicular release at a cerebellar synapse
Stephanie Rudolph
Department of Neurobiology, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL, USA
Reconstruction of a lymphoid T zone in vitro
Stefanie Siegert
Department of Biochemistry, University of Lausanne, Epalinges, Switzerland
Cell polarity, mRNA localization and axis formation in Drosophila oogenesis
Tongtong Zhao
The Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK, Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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Electron microscopy image of a Drosophila head combined with a three-dimensional reconstruction of major brain structures: optic lobes (green), suboesophageal ganglion (yellow), antennal lobes (red), central complex (orange) and mushroom bodies (blue). For further details, see the article by S. C. Hoyer, M. Heisenberg.
Copyright: © Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds
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