Direct gating and mechanical integrity of Drosophila auditory transducers require TRPN1

The elusive transduction channels for hearing are directly gated mechanically by the pull of gating springs. We found that the transient receptor potential (TRP) channel TRPN1 (NOMPC) is essential for this direct gating of Drosophila auditory transduction channels and that the channel-spring complex was disrupted if TRPN1 was lost. Our results identify TRPN1 as a mechanical constituent of the fly's auditory transduction complex that may act as the channel and/or gating spring

Applying low-molecular weight supramolecular gelators in an environmental setting – self-assembled gels as smart materials for pollutant removal

This review explores supramolecular gels as materials for environmental remediation. These soft materials are formed by self-assembling low-molecular-weight building blocks, which can be programmed with molecular-scale information by simple organic synthesis. The resulting gels often have nanoscale ‘solid-like’ networks which are sample-spanning within a ‘liquid-like’ solvent phase. There is intimate contact between the solvent and the gel nanostructure, which has a very high effective surface area as a result of its dimensions. As such, these materials have the ability to bring a solid-like phase into contact with liquids in an environmental setting. Such materials can therefore remediate unwanted pollutants from the environment including: immobilisation of oil spills, removal of dyes, extraction of heavy metals or toxic anions, and the detection or removal of chemical weapons. Controlling the interactions between the gel nanofibres and pollutants can lead to selective uptake and extraction. Furthermore, if suitably designed, such materials can be recyclable and environmentally benign, while the responsive and tunable nature of the self-assembled network offers significant advantages over other materials solutions to problems caused by pollution in an environmental setting

Why it is hard to generate orientation and ocular dominance with linear correlation based learning models

Piepenbrock C, Ritter H, Obermayer K. Why it is hard to generate orientation and ocular dominance with linear correlation based learning models. In: Touretzky DS, ed. 7. Advances in neural information processing systems. Advances in neural information processing systems : .. proceedings of the .. conference. Vol 7. San Mateo: Kaufmann; 1995

hemingway is required for sperm flagella assembly and ciliary motility in Drosophila

International audienc

Tumour class prediction and discovery by microarray-based DNA methylation analysis

Aberrant DNA methylation of CpG sites is among the earliest and most frequent alterations in cancer. Several studies suggest that aberrant methylation occurs in a tumour type-specific manner. However, large-scale analysis of candidate genes has so far been hampered by the lack of high throughput assays for methylation detection. We have developed the first microarray-based technique which allows genome-wide assessment of selected CpG dinucleotides as well as quantification of methylation at each site. Several hundred CpG sites were screened in 76 samples from four different human tumour types and corresponding healthy controls. Discriminative CpG dinucleotides were identified for different tissue type distinctions and used to predict the tumour class of as yet unknown samples with high accuracy using machine learning techniques. Some CpG dinucleotides correlate with progression to malignancy, whereas others are methylated in a tissue-specific manner independent of malignancy. Our results demonstrate that genome-wide analysis of methylation patterns combined with supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques constitute a powerful novel tool to classify human cancers