Similar Neural Activity during Fear and Disgust in the Rat Basolateral Amygdala

Much research has focused on how the amygdala processes individual affects, yet little is known about how multiple types of positive and negative affects are encoded relative to one another at the single-cell level. In particular, it is unclear whether different negative affects, such as fear and disgust, are encoded more similarly than negative and positive affects, such as fear and pleasure. Here we test the hypothesis that the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala (BLA), a region known to be important for learned fear and other affects, encodes affective valence by comparing neuronal activity in the BLA during a conditioned fear stimulus (fear CS) with activity during intraoral delivery of an aversive fluid that induces a disgust response and a rewarding fluid that induces a hedonic response. Consistent with the hypothesis, neuronal activity during the fear CS and aversive fluid infusion, but not during the fear CS and rewarding fluid infusion, was more similar than expected by chance. We also found that the greater similarity in activity during the fear- and disgust-eliciting stimuli was specific to a subpopulation of cells and a limited window of time. Our results suggest that a subpopulation of BLA neurons encodes affective valence during learned fear, and furthermore, within this subpopulation, different negative affects are encoded more similarly than negative and positive affects in a time-specific manner

Novel facultative Methylocella strains are active methane consumers at terrestrial natural gas seeps

Natural gas seeps contribute to global climate change by releasing substantial amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane and other climate-active gases including ethane and propane to the atmosphere. However, methanotrophs, bacteria capable of utilising methane as the sole source of carbon and energy, play a significant role in reducing the emissions of methane from many environments. Methylocella-like facultative methanotrophs are a unique group of bacteria that grow on other components of natural gas (i.e. ethane and propane) in addition to methane but a little is known about the distribution and activity of Methylocella in the environment. The purposes of this study were to identify bacteria involved in cycling methane emitted from natural gas seeps and, most importantly, to investigate if Methylocella-like facultative methanotrophs were active utilisers of natural gas at seep sites

PPM1D gene amplification and overexpression in breast cancer: a qRT-PCR and chromogenic in situ hybridization study

PPM1D (protein phosphatase magnesium-dependent 1δ) maps to the 17q23.2 amplicon and is amplified in ∼8% of breast cancers. The PPM1D gene encodes a serine threonine phosphatase, which is involved in the regulation of several tumour suppressor pathways, including the p53 pathway. Along with others, we have recently shown that PPM1D is one of the drivers of the 17q23.2 amplicon and a promising therapeutic target. Here we investigate whether PPM1D is overexpressed when amplified in breast cancers and the correlations between PPM1D overexpression and amplification with clinicopathological features and survival of breast cancer patients from a cohort of 245 patients with invasive breast cancer treated with therapeutic surgery followed by adjuvant anthracycline-based chemotherapy. mRNA was extracted from representative sections of tumours containing >50% of tumour cells and subjected to TaqMan quantitative real-time PCR using primers for PPM1D and for two housekeeping genes. PPM1D overexpression was defined as the top quartile of expression levels. Chromogenic in situ hybridization with in-house-generated probes for PPM1D was performed. Amplification was defined as >50% of cancer cells with >5 signals per nucleus/large gene clusters. PPM1D overexpression and amplification were found in 25 and 6% of breast cancers, respectively. All cases harbouring PPM1D amplification displayed PPM1D overexpression. PPM1D overexpression was inversely correlated with expression of TOP2A, EGFR and cytokeratins 5/6 and 17. PPM1D amplification was significantly associated with HER2 overexpression, and HER2, TOP2A and CCND1 amplification. No association between PPM1D gene amplification and PPM1D mRNA overexpression with survival was observed. In conclusion, PPM1D is consistently overexpressed when amplified; however, PPM1D overexpression is more pervasive than gene amplification. PPM1D overexpression and amplification are associated with tumours displaying luminal or HER2 phenotypes. Co-amplification of PPM1D and HER2/TOP2A and CCND1 are not random events and may suggest the presence of a 'firestorm' genetic profile

The function and synthesis of ribosomes

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe