Differentiated Human Midbrain-Derived Neural Progenitor Cells Express Excitatory Strychnine-Sensitive Glycine Receptors Containing α2β Subunits

BACKGROUND: Human fetal midbrain-derived neural progenitor cells (NPCs) may deliver a tissue source for drug screening and regenerative cell therapy to treat Parkinson's disease. While glutamate and GABA(A) receptors play an important role in neurogenesis, the involvement of glycine receptors during human neurogenesis and dopaminergic differentiation as well as their molecular and functional characteristics in NPCs are largely unknown. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we investigated NPCs in respect to their glycine receptor function and subunit expression using electrophysiology, calcium imaging, immunocytochemistry, and quantitative real-time PCR. Whole-cell recordings demonstrate the ability of NPCs to express functional strychnine-sensitive glycine receptors after differentiation for 3 weeks in vitro. Pharmacological and molecular analyses indicate a predominance of glycine receptor heteromers containing α2β subunits. Intracellular calcium measurements of differentiated NPCs suggest that glycine evokes depolarisations mediated by strychnine-sensitive glycine receptors and not by D-serine-sensitive excitatory glycine receptors. Culturing NPCs with additional glycine, the glycine-receptor antagonist strychnine, or the Na(+)-K(+)-Cl(-) co-transporter 1 (NKCC1)-inhibitor bumetanide did not significantly influence cell proliferation and differentiation in vitro. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These data indicate that NPCs derived from human fetal midbrain tissue acquire essential glycine receptor properties during neuronal maturation. However, glycine receptors seem to have a limited functional impact on neurogenesis and dopaminergic differentiation of NPCs in vitro

The Pathway Coexpression Network: Revealing pathway relationships.

A goal of genomics is to understand the relationships between biological processes. Pathways contribute to functional interplay within biological processes through complex but poorly understood interactions. However, limited functional references for global pathway relationships exist. Pathways from databases such as KEGG and Reactome provide discrete annotations of biological processes. Their relationships are currently either inferred from gene set enrichment within specific experiments, or by simple overlap, linking pathway annotations that have genes in common. Here, we provide a unifying interpretation of functional interaction between pathways by systematically quantifying coexpression between 1,330 canonical pathways from the Molecular Signatures Database (MSigDB) to establish the Pathway Coexpression Network (PCxN). We estimated the correlation between canonical pathways valid in a broad context using a curated collection of 3,207 microarrays from 72 normal human tissues. PCxN accounts for shared genes between annotations to estimate significant correlations between pathways with related functions rather than with similar annotations. We demonstrate that PCxN provides novel insight into mechanisms of complex diseases using an Alzheimer's Disease (AD) case study. PCxN retrieved pathways significantly correlated with an expert curated AD gene list. These pathways have known associations with AD and were significantly enriched for genes independently associated with AD. As a further step, we show how PCxN complements the results of gene set enrichment methods by revealing relationships between enriched pathways, and by identifying additional highly correlated pathways. PCxN revealed that correlated pathways from an AD expression profiling study include functional clusters involved in cell adhesion and oxidative stress. PCxN provides expanded connections to pathways from the extracellular matrix. PCxN provides a powerful new framework for interrogation of global pathway relationships. Comprehensive exploration of PCxN can be performed at http://pcxn.org/

Many roads to symmetry breaking: Molecular mechanisms and theoretical models of yeast cell polarity

Mathematical modeling has been instrumental in identifying common principles of cell polarity across diverse systems. These principles include positive feedback loops that are required to destabilize a spatially uniform state of the cell. The conserved small G-protein Cdc42 is a master regulator of eukaryotic cellular polarization. Here we discuss recent developments in studies of Cdc42 polarization in budding and fission yeasts and demonstrate that models describing symmetry-breaking polarization can be classified into six minimal classes based on the structure of positive feedback loops that activate and localize Cdc42. Owing to their generic system-independent nature, these model classes are also likely to be relevant for the G-protein–based symmetry-breaking systems of higher eukaryotes. We review experimental evidence pro et contra different theoretically plausible models and conclude that several parallel and non–mutually exclusive mechanisms are likely involved in cellular polarization of yeasts. This potential redundancy needs to be taken into consideration when interpreting the results of recent cell-rewiring studies

Unfolding energetics of G-alpha-actin: A discrete intermediate can be re-folded to the native state by CCT

Nascent actin requires interactions with the highly conserved and essential eukaryotic chaperonin-containing TCP-1 (CCT) for its correct folding to the native state in vivo. Biochemical and structural analysis of the interaction between actin and CCT has been studied extensively but the underlying energetics and kinetics of the CCT-dependent actin folding process are not understood. We investigated the unfolding and folding pathways of actin, using stopped flow fluorescence and biochemical techniques. By using very low concentrations of actin, taking account of temperature and ATP concentration dependences we were able to determine accurately the activation energy of unfolding to a stable intermediate, I-3. Use of the fluorescent calcium chelator Quin-2 and consideration of the ATP concentration dependence on the unfolding rate has allowed the intrinsic kinetics to be linked to the accepted reaction scheme for actin denaturation. A free energy of -28.7(+/- 0.2) kJ mol(-1) was determined for the loss of ATP from Ca-free G-actin, in good agreement with previous studies. Understanding the K-eq value for this step then allowed the temperature dependence of the unfolding reaction of co-factor-free actin to be evaluated, yielding an activation energy for the unfolding of G-actin of 81.3(+/- 3.3) kJ mol(-1). By chemical coupling of the extrinsic probe, Alexa Fluor 488 to cysteine 374 of native alpha-actin, we were able to follow the binding and folding of I-3 by CCT, observing for the first time, in vitro re-folding of EDTA-denatured G-actin. The high value of the activation energy between native actin and a non-native folding intermediate (W is characteristic of a partially folded, molten globule state expected to contain partial secondary structure. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved