The Molecular Biology of Neurofibromatosis Type 1 Meena Upadhyaya Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is a common autosomal dominantly inherited, tumour predisposition syndrome affecting 1/3,000-4,000 individuals worldwide. This inherited disorder results from the mutational inactivation of the NF1 gene on human chromos... Publication Date: 02/01/2014
Clinical and Molecular Aspects of Motor Neuron Disease Johnathan Cooper-Knock, Pamela Shaw, Thomas Jenkins In this book, motor neuron disease (MND) shall refer to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common neurodegenerative disorder affecting both the upper and lower motor neurons. With the discovery of C9ORF72 expansions in approximately 10% of... Publication Date: 09/01/2013
Molecular Genetics of Stroke Yoshiji Yamada Stroke is an important clinical problem because of its large contribution to mortality. The main causal and treatable risk factors for stroke include hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, and smoking. In addition to these risk factors, recen... Publication Date: 03/01/2012
Clinical and Genetic Aspects of Sudden Cardiac Death in the Practice of Sports Medicine Lynne Millar, Nabeel Sheikh, Sanjay Sharma Sudden cardiac death is the leading cause of non-traumatic mortality in young (<35 years old) athletes, with recent data suggesting the incidence to be higher than what was previously estimated. The vast majority of deaths are caused by silent heredi... Publication Date: 06/01/2012
The Molecular Biology of Chronic Heart Failure Dhavendra Kumar The clinical syndrome of chronic heart failure (CHF) is the hallmark of progressive cardiac decompensation, one of the most common chronic medical conditions that affect around 2% of the adult population worldwide irrespective of ethnic and geographi... Publication Date: 02/01/2013
Wnt/β-Catenin Signaling in Vertebrate Posterior Neural Development Yaniv M. Elkouby, Dale Frank Wnt/β-Catenin signaling pathway is a key regulator of cell fate specification, differentiation, and growth in multiple systems throughout the animal kingdom. In vertebrate posterior neural development, Wnt/β-Catenin signaling controls this comp... Publication Date: 01/01/2010
Transcriptional Control of Neural Crest Development Brian Nelms, Patricia Labosky The neural crest is a remarkable embryonic population of cells found only in vertebrates and has the potential to give rise to many different cell types contributing throughout the body. These derivatives range from the mesenchymal bone and cartilage... Publication Date: 01/01/2010
Maternal Control of Development in Vertebrates Florence Marlow Eggs of all animals contain mRNAs and proteins that are supplied to or deposited in the egg as it develops during oogenesis. These maternal gene products regulate all aspects of oocyte development, and an embryo fully relies on these maternal gene pr... Publication Date: 01/01/2010
Induction and Segregation of the Vertebrate Cranial Placodes Byung-Yong Park, Jean-Pierre Saint-Jeannet During evolution the vertebrate head has acquired a number of unique features including specialized paired sense organs and cranial sensory ganglia. These evolutionary novelties arise from discrete thickenings of the head ectoderm known as cranial pl... Publication Date: 01/01/2010
FGF Signalling in Vertebrate Development Mary Elizabeth Pownall, Harry Isaacs The fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) represent one of the relatively few families of extracellular signalling peptides that have been shown in recent decades to be key regulators of metazoan development. FGFs are required for multiple processes in bo... Publication Date: 01/01/2010
Ca2+-dependent Signal Transduction James D. Johnson, Michael J. Bround, Tobias Albrecht In biology, signal transduction is the transmission of information into and within the cell. Signal transduction events within a cell are often initiated from an extracellular cue. Current knowledge suggests that there are far fewer intracellular sec... Publication Date: 11/01/2014
Vesicular Transport in the Secretory and Endocytic Pathways Anne Muesch The concept of vesicular traffic as a means of protein transport in and out of cells and between membrane compartments has been established since the 1960s. Its basic principles are beautifully simple, yet the details of protein transport are complex... Publication Date: 11/01/2014
Intermediate Filaments Normand Marceau, Anne Loranger, Stephane Gilbert Intermediate filaments (IFs), in concert with microfilaments (MFs) and microtubules (MTs), form the cytoskeleton, and each of these fibrillar networks exhibits rather unique structural and functional characteristics. Intermediate filaments were disco... Publication Date: 06/01/2014
Protein Translation Eric Jan Protein synthesis is a fundamental aspect of gene expression across kingdoms. The regulation of translation is important for many biological processes including cell fate determination, development, and growth and is especially crucial to maintain ce... Publication Date: 06/01/2014
The Actin Cytoskeleton and the Regulation of Cell Migration Jonathan M. Lee The mammalian cytoskeleton is an internal framework of actin, tubulin, and intermediate filament proteins. Proteins of these three classes assemble non-covalently into filamentous polymers that support the structural integrity of the relatively fragi... Publication Date: 06/01/2013
Apoptosis Ning Yang, Ing Swie Goping Multi-cellular organisms eliminate individual cells through a self-destruct process known as apoptosis. Apoptosis is critical for proper development and maintenance of tissue homeostasis. The importance of this process is highlighted by the fact that... Publication Date: 04/01/2013
Phagocytosis Urja Naik, Rene E. Harrison Phagocytosis is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism that serves as the first line of host defense in multicellular organisms. The traditional definition of phagocytosis involves the engulfment and degradation of large solid particles (>0.5 μm), ... Publication Date: 04/01/2013
Epithelial Polarity Gerard Apodaca, Luciana Gallo Epithelial cells exhibit an apical-basolateral axis of polarity that is generated during embryogenesis, is maintained throughout adult life in the face of constant cell regeneration, and is perturbed in several epithelial-associated diseases. We exam... Publication Date: 03/01/2013
Membrane Nanodomains John R. Silvius Many membranes in eukaryotic cells are inhomogeneous structures in which various membrane components are nonrandomly distributed, forming diverse types of 'domains.' Some membrane domains have long been well known, because they are sufficiently large... Publication Date: 02/01/2013
Linking the World's Information When Sir Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the foundations of the World Wide Web at CERN in 1989, his manager called it “vague, but exciting...