Published in Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS
Cystic fibrosis (CF), a lethal monogenic disease, is caused by pathogenic variants of the CFTR chloride channel. The majority of CF mutations affect protein folding and stability leading overall to diminished apical anion conductance of epithelial cells. The recently published cryo-EM structures of full-length human and zebrafish CFTR provide a goo...
Published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
Deep brain stimulation is used to alleviate symptoms of neurological and psychiatric disorders including Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and obsessive–compulsive-disorder. Electrically stimulating limbic structures has been of great interest, and in particular, the region of the fornix. We conducted a systematic search for studies that reported clin...
Published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
Lipocalins are a family of secreted adipokines which play important roles in various biological processes. Lipocalin-2 (LCN-2) has been shown to be involved in acute and chronic inflammation. This particular protein is critical in the pathogenesis of several diseases including cancer, diabetes, obesity, and multiple sclerosis. Herein, we discuss th...
Published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
Prolonged life expectancies contribute to the increasing prevalence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) that is already the leading cause of severe vision loss among the elderly in developed countries. In dry AMD, the disease culminates into vast retinal atrophy, whereas the wet form is characterized by retinal edema and sudden vision loss du...
Published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
The study of epigenetics has explained some of the ‘missing heritability’ of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The epigenome also provides a substantial contribution to the organisation of the functional retina. There is emerging evidence of specific epigenetic mechanisms associated with AMD. This ‘AMD epigenome’ may offer the chance to devel...
Published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
Understanding the mechanisms that underlie age-related macular degeneration (AMD) has led to the identification of key molecules. Hypoxia-inducible transcription factors (HIFs) have been associated with choroidal neovascularization and the progression of AMD into the neovascular clinical phenotype (nAMD). HIFs regulate the expression of multiple gr...
Published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
Pathogenic microorganisms entail enormous problems for humans, livestock, and crop plants. A better understanding of the different infection strategies of the pathogens enables us to derive optimal treatments to mitigate infectious diseases or develop vaccinations preventing the occurrence of infections altogether. In this review, we highlight the ...
Published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
Optimizing drug therapies for any disease requires a solid understanding of pharmacokinetics (the drug concentration at a given time point in different body compartments) and pharmacodynamics (the effect a drug has at a given concentration). Mathematical models are frequently used to infer drug concentrations over time based on infrequent sampling ...
Published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
Heterogeneity is universally observed in all natural systems and across multiple scales. Understanding population heterogeneity is an intriguing and attractive topic of research in different disciplines, including microbiology and immunology. Microbes and mammalian immune cells present obviously rather different system-specific biological features....
Published in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
An intrinsically disordered neuronal protein α-synuclein (αSyn) is known to cause mitochondrial dysfunction, contributing to loss of dopaminergic neurons in Parkinson’s disease. Through yet poorly defined mechanisms, αSyn crosses mitochondrial outer membrane and targets respiratory complexes leading to bioenergetics defects. Here, using neuronally ...
