Leung Lab Blog

Development

1. Balaskas N, Ribeiro A, Panovska J, Dessaud E, Sasai N, Page KM, Briscoe J, Ribes V. Gene regulatory logic for reading the sonic hedgehog signaling gradient in the vertebrate neural tube. Cell. 2012 Jan 20;148(1-2):273-84. PubMed PMID: 22265416; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3267043.
2. Lassar A. Finding MyoD with a little help from my friends. Nat Cell Biol. 2012 Feb 2;14(2):116. doi: 10.1038/ncb2421. PubMed PMID: 22298038.
• An interesting personal account of the discovery of MyoD.

Retinal Regeneration

1. Qin Z, Kidd AR 3rd, Thomas JL, Poss KD, Hyde DR, Raymond PA, Thummel R. FGF signaling regulates rod photoreceptor cell maintenance and regeneration in zebrafish. Exp Eye Res. 2011 Nov;93(5):726-34. Epub 2011 Sep 17. PubMed PMID: 21945172; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3243491.
2. Hochmann S, Kaslin J, Hans S, Weber A, Machate A, Geffarth M, Funk RH, Brand M. Fgf Signaling is Required for Photoreceptor Maintenance in the Adult Zebrafish Retina. PLoS One. 2012;7(1):e30365. Epub 2012 Jan 26. PubMed PMID: 22291943; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3266925.

Genetics

1. Visscher PM, Brown MA, McCarthy MI, Yang J. Five Years of GWAS Discovery. Am J Hum Genet. 2012 Jan 13;90(1):7-24. PubMed PMID: 22243964.

Genomics

1. Baker M. Structural variation: the genome’s hidden architecture. Nat Methods. 2012 Jan 30;9(2):133-7. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.1858. PubMed PMID: 22290183.
2. Xiong Q, Ancona N, Hauser ER, Mukherjee S, Furey TS. Integrating genetic and gene expression evidence into genome-wide association analysis of gene sets. Genome Res. 2012 Feb;22(2):386-97. Epub 2011 Sep 22. PubMed PMID: 21940837.

Imaging

1. Cox S, Rosten E, Monypenny J, Jovanovic-Talisman T, Burnette DT, Lippincott-Schwartz J, Jones GE, Heintzmann R. Bayesian localization microscopy reveals nanoscale podosome dynamics. Nat Methods. 2011 Dec 4;9(2):195-200. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.1812. PubMed PMID: 22138825.
• Commentary: Lidke KA. Super resolution for common probes and common microscopes. Nat Methods. 2012 Jan 30;9(2):139-41. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.1863. PubMed PMID: 22290184.
• This looks like an interesting article that talks about how to use common fluorescent setup for super-resolution imaging.
2. Xu K, Babcock HP, Zhuang X. Dual-objective STORM reveals three-dimensional filament organization in the actin cytoskeleton. Nat Methods. 2012 Jan 8;9(2):185-8. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.1841. PubMed PMID: 22231642.

Gene Regulatory Network

1. Damle SS, Davidson EH. Synthetic in vivo validation of gene network circuitry. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Jan 11. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 22238426.
2. Weaver J. New signaling chemicals spur worms to seek company. PLoS Biol. 2012 Jan;10(1):e1001240. Epub 2012 Jan 10. PubMed PMID: 22253575; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3254651.
3. Gross L. Built-in Timer Delays Differentiation. PLoS Biol. 2012 Jan;10(1):e1001254. Epub 2012 Jan 31. PubMed PMID: 22303284.
4. van Dijk AD, van Mourik S, van Ham RC. Mutational robustness of gene regulatory networks. PLoS One. 2012;7(1):e30591. Epub 2012 Jan 25. PubMed PMID: 22295094; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3266278.

Ageing

1. Heidinger BJ, Blount JD, Boner W, Griffiths K, Metcalfe NB, Monaghan P. Telomere length in early life predicts lifespan. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Jan 9. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 22232671.

Brg1

1. Curtis CD, Griffin CT. The chromatin-remodeling enzymes BRG1 and CHD4 antagonistically regulate vascular Wnt signaling. Mol Cell Biol. 2012 Jan 30. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 22290435.

Funding

1. Macilwain C. Funding in 2012: “great recession” starts to bite. Cell. 2012 Jan 20;148(1-2):14-6. PubMed PMID: 22265395.

There are so many different kinds of neurons in the brain and they control all sorts of mechanisms. In C.elegans, several dopamine(a neurotransmitter) -secreting neurons are differentiated from different lineage, but they are all producing dopamine. This has raised an interesting question: are the genes controlling the dopamine synthesis regulated differently or the same way in different dopamine-secreting neurons?

A recent study by Nuria Flames & Oliver Hobert from Columbia University has revealed the latter is true. They made extensive promoter constructs of all the genes involved in dopamine production (which is a good example for those of us who are going to do similar promoter analyses). Their results showed all five genes were regulated by the same regulatory element, presumably by the same transcription factor(s). Therefore, these dopamine synthesis genes are regulated the same way in different dopaminergic neurons. More importantly, they have also found that this regulatory mechanism is conserved in mice!

This is the terminal differentiation we have just discussed. The study has demonstrated that this differentiation circuit is modular and has been incorporated in different types of dopaminergic neurons to carry out the same final function. In other words, the final output function of the gene network is the same while the upstream specification architecture can be quite different.

Reference

Flames N, Hobert O. Gene regulatory logic of dopamine neuron differentiation. Nature. 2009 Apr 16;458(7240):885-9. [PubMed][Nature][Commentary in Nature]