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News Beck 10.2019
An interneuron (bright, with long appendages) from the hippocampus of the rat. The finely branched axon (top left cloud) surrounds the cell bodies of pyramidal cells and can inhibit these effectively.
© Leonie Pothmann/Uni Bonn

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Epilepsy: Function of "brake cells" disrupted

In some forms of epilepsy, the function of certain "brake cells" in the brain is presumed to be disrupted. This may be one of the reasons why the electrical malfunction is able to spread from the point of origin across large parts of the brain. A current study by the University of Bonn with members of the cluster of excellence ImmunoSensation2, in which researchers from Lisbon were also involved, points in this direction. The results are published in the renowned "Journal of Neuroscience".

Publication

Leonie Pothmann, Christian Klos, Oliver Braganza, Sarah Schmidt, Oihane Horno, Raoul-Martin Memmesheimer and Heinz Beck: Altered dynamics of canonical feed-back inhibition predicts increased burst transmission in chronic epilepsy; The Journal Of Neuroscience; https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2594-18.2019

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Larvae of the fruit fly Drosophila (foreground) - have a kind of stretch sensor in the esophagus (grey structure in the middle). It reports swallowing processes to the brain. If food is ingested, special neurons of the enteric nervous system (red) release serotonin.

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Swallowing triggers a feeling of elation

Researchers at the University of Bonn and the University of Cambridge have identified an important control circuit involved in the eating process. The study has revealed that fly larvae have special sensors, or receptors, in their esophagus that are triggered as soon as the animal swallows something. If the larva has swallowed food, they tell the brain to release serotonin. This messenger substance ensures that the larva continues to eat. The researchers assume that humans also have a very similar control circuit. The results were recently published in the journal “Current Biology.”
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Sophie Binder, Gregor Hagelüken, Niels Schneberger in the laboratory

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Gene scissors switch off with built-in timer

CRISPR gene scissors, as new tools of molecular biology, have their origin in an ancient bacterial immune system. But once a virus attack has been successfully overcome, the cell has to recover. Researchers from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn, in cooperation with researchers from the Institut Pasteur in France, have discovered a timer integrated into the gene scissors that enables the gene scissors to switch themselves off. The results of the study have been published in the renowned journal "Nucleic Acids Research".
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