Neurons form the basic anatomical and functional structure of the nervous system, and defects in neuronal differentiation or formation of neurites are associated with various psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. Dynamic changes in the cytoskeleton are essential for this process, which is, inter alia, controlled by the dedicator of cytokinesis 4 ( DOCK4 ) through the activation of RAC1 . Here, we clinically describe 7...

Neonicotinoid pesticides, originally developed to target the insect nervous system, have been reported to interact with human receptors and to activate rodent neurons. Therefore, we evaluated in how far these compounds may trigger signaling in human neurons, and thus, affect the human adult or developing nervous system. We used SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells as established model of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) signali...

Microscale thermophoresis (MST), and the closely related Temperature Related Intensity Change (TRIC), are synonyms for a recently developed measurement technique in the field of biophysics to quantify biomolecular interactions, using the (capillary-based) NanoTemper Monolith and (multiwell plate-based) Dianthus instruments. Although this technique has been extensively used within the scientific community due to its low sample...

Aim To infer the most plausible explanations for the presence of 14 species of the Neotropical cucurbit genus Sicyos on the Hawaiian Islands, two on the Galápagos Islands, two in Australia, and one in New Zealand. Location Neotropics, the Hawaiian and Galápagos archipelagos, Australia and New Zealand. Methods We tested long‐problematic generic boundaries in the tribe Sicyoeae and reconstructed the history of Sicyos using plast...

The year 2010 marks the 175th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s visit to the Galapagos Islands. A recent paper by J. C. Briggs, ‘Darwin’s biogeography’ ( Journal of Biogeography , 2009, 36 , 1011–1017), summarizes Darwin’s contributions to the field of biogeography, stressing the importance of his natural history specimens. Here, we illustrate how a plant collected by Darwin during his visit to Floreana and not collected since c...