Scientific Reports Biology Table of Contents e-alert: January 2014

If you are unable to see the message below, click here to view.

02 January 2014      • Visit Scientific Reports • Submit your manuscript to Scientific Reports     Welcome to your Table of Contents e-alert for Scientific Reports               Biological Sciences               Adenovirus vectors lacking virus-associated RNA expression enhance shRNA activity to suppress hepatitis C virus replication ▶     Zheng Pei, Guoli Shi, Saki Kondo et al.     First-generation adenovirus vectors (FG AdVs) expressing short-hairpin RNA (shRNA) effectively downregulate the expressions of target genes. However, this vector, in fact, …             ALK is a MYCN target gene and regulates cell migration and invasion in neuroblastoma ▶     Md. Kamrul Hasan, Asmaa Nafady, Atsushi Takatori et al.     Human anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) has been identified as an oncogene that is mutated or amplified in NBLs. To obtain a better understanding of the molecular events associated …             pH dependent transfer of nano-pores into membrane of cancer cells to induce apoptosis ▶     Dayanjali Wijesinghe, Mohan C. M. Arachchige, Andrew Lu et al.     Proper balance of ions in intracellular and extracellular space is the key for normal cell functioning. Changes in the conductance of membranes for ions will lead to cell death. …             Annexin V-TRAIL fusion protein is a more sensitive and potent apoptotic inducer for cancer therapy ▶     Fan Qiu, Minjin Hu, Bo Tang et al.     The tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is a promising cancer therapeutic agent, which kills cancer cells selectively, while leaving normal cells …             Computational Assay of H7N9 Influenza Neuraminidase Reveals R292K Mutation Reduces Drug Binding Affinity ▶     Christopher J. Woods, Maturos Malaisree, Ben Long et al.     The emergence of a novel H7N9 avian influenza that infects humans is a serious cause for concern. Of the genome sequences of H7N9 neuraminidase available, one contains a …             Unveiling the gating mechanism of ECF Transporter RibU ▶     Jianing Song, Changge Ji, John Z. H. Zhang     Energy-coupling factor (ECF) transporters are responsible for uptake of micronutrients in prokaryotes. The recently reported crystal structure of an ECF transporter Rib provided a …             Designing nanotopographical density of extracellular matrix for controlled morphology and function of human mesenchymal stem cells ▶     Jangho Kim, Hong Nam Kim, Ki-Taek Lim et al.     Inspired by ultrastructural analysis of ex vivo human tissues as well as the physiological importance of structural density, we fabricated nanogrooves with 1:1, 1:3, and 1:5 …             Pre-erythrocytic antibody profiles induced by controlled human malaria infections in healthy volunteers under chloroquine prophylaxis ▶     Philip L. Felgner, Meta Roestenberg, Li Liang et al.     Complete sterile protection to Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) infection mediated by pre-erythrocytic immunity can be experimentally induced under chloroquine prophylaxis, through …             Male courtship vibrations delay predatory behaviour in female spiders ▶     Anne E. Wignall, Marie E. Herberstein     During courtship, individuals transfer information about identity, mating status and quality. However, male web-building spiders face a significant problem: how to begin courting …             Microbial life in the Lake Medee, the largest deep-sea salt-saturated formation ▶     Michail M. Yakimov, Violetta La Cono, Vladlen Z. Slepak et al.     Deep-sea hypersaline anoxic lakes (DHALs) of the Eastern Mediterranean represent some of the most hostile environments on our planet. We investigated microbial life in the …             Metagenomic analysis reveals significant changes of microbial compositions and protective functions during drinking water treatment ▶     Yuanqing Chao, Liping Ma, Ying Yang et al.     The metagenomic approach was applied to characterize variations of microbial structure and functions in raw (RW) and treated water (TW) in a drinking water treatment plant (DWTP) …             Stem cells catalyze cartilage formation by neonatal articular chondrocytes in 3D biomimetic hydrogels ▶     Janice H. Lai, Glen Kajiyama, Robert Lane Smith et al.     Cartilage loss is a leading cause of disability among adults and effective therapy remains elusive. Neonatal chondrocytes (NChons) are an attractive allogeneic cell source for …             Surface topography regulates wnt signaling through control of primary cilia structure in mesenchymal stem cells ▶     R. J. McMurray, A. K. T. Wann, C. L. Thompson et al.     The primary cilium regulates cellular signalling including influencing wnt sensitivity by sequestering β-catenin within the ciliary compartment. Topographic regulation of …             KefB inhibits phagosomal acidification but its role is unrelated to M. tuberculosis survival in host ▶     Garima Khare, P. Vineel Reddy, Pragya Sidhwani et al.     kefB is annotated as a potassium/proton antiporter in M. tuberculosis. There have been divergent reports on the involvement of KefB in phagosomal maturation in M. bovis BCG and no …             Dysregulation of glucocorticoid receptor co-factors FKBP5, BAG1 and PTGES3 in prefrontal cortex in psychotic illness ▶     Duncan Sinclair, Stu G. Fillman, Maree J. Webster et al.     Molecular abnormalities within the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) stress signaling pathway may confer, or reflect, susceptibility to stress in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, …             Identifying potential cancer driver genes by genomic data integration ▶     Yong Chen, Jingjing Hao, Wei Jiang et al.     Cancer is a genomic disease associated with a plethora of gene mutations resulting in a loss of control over vital cellular functions. Among these mutated genes, driver genes are …             Electromagnetic limits to radiofrequency (RF) neuronal telemetry ▶     R. E. Diaz, T. Sebastian     The viability of a radiofrequency (RF) telemetry channel for reporting individual neuron activity wirelessly from an embedded antenna to an external receiver is determined. …             Active and secreted IgA-coated bacterial fractions from the human gut reveal an under-represented microbiota core ▶     Giuseppe D'Auria, Francesc Peris-Bondia, Mária Džunková et al.     Host-associated microbiota varies in distribution depending on the body area inhabited. Gut microbes are known to interact with the human immune system, maintaining gut …             A small molecule chemical chaperone optimizes its unfolded state contraction and denaturant like properties ▶     Sunny Sharma, Suparna Sarkar, Simanta Sarani Paul et al.     Protein aggregation is believed to occur through the formation of misfolded conformations. It is expected that, in order to minimize aggregation, an effective small molecule …             DNA Barcode Authentication of Saw Palmetto Herbal Dietary Supplements ▶     Damon P. Little, Marc L. Jeanson     Herbal dietary supplements made from saw palmetto (Serenoa repens; Arecaceae) fruit are commonly consumed to ameliorate benign prostate hyperplasia. A novel DNA mini–barcode assay …             Phylogenetic and molecular characterization of chicken anemia virus in southern China from 2011 to 2012 ▶     Xinheng Zhang, Yuanjia Liu, Boliang Wu et al.     Chicken anemia virus (CAV) is an important pathogen that causes severe immunosuppression in young chickens. We have characterized 13 CAVs isolated from different commercial farms …             Labeling Thiols on Proteins, Living Cells, and Tissues with Enhanced Emission Induced by FRET ▶     Yue Yuan, Xijun Wang, Bin Mei et al.     Using N-(2-Aminoethyl)maleimide-cysteine(StBu) (Mal-Cys) as a medium, protein thiols were converted into N-terminal cysteines. After a biocompatible condensation reaction between …             Helium Ion Microscopy (HIM) for the imaging of biological samples at sub-nanometer resolution ▶     Matthew S. Joens, Chuong Huynh, James M. Kasuboski et al.     Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) has long been the standard in imaging the sub-micrometer surface ultrastructure of both hard and soft materials. In the case of biological …             Identification of novel modifiers of Aβ toxicity by transcriptomic analysis in the fruitfly ▶     G. Favrin, D. M. Bean, E. Bilsland et al.     The strongest risk factor for developing Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is age. Here, we study the relationship between ageing and AD using a systems biology approach that employs a …             Mechanosensing of DNA bending in a single specific protein-DNA complex ▶     Shimin Le, Hu Chen, Peiwen Cong et al.     Many crucial biological processes are regulated by mechanical stimuli. Here, we report new findings that pico-Newton forces can drastically affect the stability of the …             Structural basis of a nucleosome containing histone H2A.B/H2A.Bbd that transiently associates with reorganized chromatin ▶     Yasuhiro Arimura, Hiroshi Kimura, Takashi Oda et al.     Human histone H2A.B (formerly H2A.Bbd), a non-allelic H2A variant, exchanges rapidly as compared to canonical H2A, and preferentially associates with actively transcribed genes. …             Integrated enzyme reactor and high resolving chromatography in “sub-chip” dimensions for sensitive protein mass spectrometry ▶     Hanne Kolsrud Hustoft, Ole Kristian Brandtzaeg, Magnus Rogeberg et al.     Reliable, sensitive and automatable analytical methodology is of great value in e.g. cancer diagnostics. In this context, an on-line system for enzymatic cleavage of proteins, …             One-Pot Microbial Method to Synthesize Dual-Doped Graphene and Its Use as High-Performance Electrocatalyst ▶     Peipei Guo, Fei Xiao, Qian Liu et al.     A novel strategy to synthesize nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S)-doped graphene (G) is developed through sulfate-reducing bacteria treating graphene oxide (GO). The N, S-doped G …             Tactile stimulation can suppress visual perception ▶     Masakazu Ide, Souta Hidaka     An input (e.g., airplane takeoff sound) to a sensory modality can suppress the percept of another input (e.g., talking voices of neighbors) of the same modality. This perceptual …             Targeted-capture massively-parallel sequencing enables robust detection of clinically informative mutations from formalin-fixed tumours ▶     Stephen Q. Wong, Jason Li, Renato Salemi et al.     Massively parallel sequencing offers the ability to interrogate a tumour biopsy for multiple mutational changes. For clinical samples, methodologies must enable maximal extraction …             Rational Optimization of Conformational Effects Induced By Hydrocarbon Staples in Peptides and their Binding Interfaces ▶     Dilraj Lama, Soo T. Quah, Chandra S. Verma et al.     eIF4E is frequently over-expressed in different cancers and causes increased translation of oncogenic proteins via deregulated cap-dependent translation. Inhibitors of the …             Roles for Tbx3 in regulation of two-cell state and telomere elongation in mouse ES cells ▶     Jiameng Dan, Minshu Li, Jiao Yang et al.     Mouse embryonic stem (ES) cell cultures exhibit heterogeneity and recently are discovered to sporadically enter the 2-cell (2C)-embryo state, critical for ES potency. Zscan4 could …             Discovery of 505-million-year old chitin in the basal demosponge Vauxia gracilenta ▶     H. Ehrlich, J. Keith Rigby, J. P. Botting et al.     Sponges are probably the earliest branching animals, and their fossil record dates back to the Precambrian. Identifying their skeletal structure and composition is thus a crucial …             Spatio-temporal dynamics of automatic processing of phonological information in visual words ▶     Xiao-Dong Wang, Yin-Yuan Wu, A.-Ping Liu et al.     Sensory-specific cortices appear to be sensitive to information from another modality. Here we investigate whether the human brain automatically extracts the phonological …             Shifts in coral-assemblage composition do not ensure persistence of reef functionality ▶     Lorenzo Alvarez-Filip, Juan P. Carricart-Ganivet, Guillermo Horta-Puga et al.     Coral communities are changing rapidly worldwide through loss of coral cover and shifts in species composition. Although many reef-building corals are likely to decline, some …             Physical Exercise Habits Correlate with Gray Matter Volume of the Hippocampus in Healthy Adult Humans ▶     William D. S. Killgore, Elizabeth A. Olson, Mareen Weber     Physical activity facilitates neurogenesis of dentate cells in the rodent hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory formation and spatial representation. Recent findings in …             Infrared laser pulse triggers increased singlet oxygen production in tumour cells ▶     S. G. Sokolovski, S. A. Zolotovskaya, A. Goltsov et al.     Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a technique developed to treat the ever-increasing global incidence of cancer. This technique utilises singlet oxygen (1O2) generation via a laser …             Different bacterial communities in ectomycorrhizae and surrounding soil ▶     Unni Vik, Ramiro Logares, Rakel Blaalid et al.     Several eukaryotic symbioses have shown to host a rich diversity of prokaryotes that interact with their hosts. Here, we study bacterial communities associated with …             Synthetic cell division system: Controlling equal vs. unequal divisions by design ▶     Yoichi Sato, Kazuma Yasuhara, Jun-ichi Kikuchi et al.     Cell division is one of the most fundamental and evolutionarily conserved biological processes. Here, we report a synthetic system where we can control by design equal vs. unequal …             Expression of the rodent-specific alternative splice variant of tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase in murine tissues and cells ▶     Miki Miyanokoshi, Tomoaki Tanaka, Miho Tamai et al.     Tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase (TrpRS) catalyzes the aminoacylation of tRNATrp. mRNA of a rodent-specific alternative splice variant of TrpRS (SV-TrpRS), which results in the …             Matrix identity and tractional forces influence indirect cardiac reprogramming ▶     Yen P. Kong, Bita Carrion, Rahul K. Singh et al.     Heart regeneration through in vivo cardiac reprogramming has been demonstrated as a possible regenerative strategy. While it has been reported that cardiac reprogramming in vivo …             HS-173, a Novel PI3K Inhibitor, Attenuates the Activation of Hepatic Stellate Cells in Liver Fibrosis ▶     Mi Kwon Son, Ye-Lim Ryu, Kyung Hee Jung et al.     Hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) are the primary source of matrix components in liver disease such as fibrosis. Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling in HSCs has been shown …             Evaluation of VEGF-C and Tumor Markers in Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid for Lung Cancer Diagnosis ▶     Chao Cao, Zhong-Bo Chen, Shi-Fang Sun et al.     A total of 87 patients were enrolled and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) samples were obtained from all subjects. A significant difference was found in BALF VEGF-C level …             Rapid formation of multicellular spheroids in double-emulsion droplets with controllable microenvironment ▶     Hon Fai Chan, Ying Zhang, Yi-Ping Ho et al.     An attractive option for tissue engineering is to use of multicellular spheroids as microtissues, particularly with stem cell spheroids. Conventional approaches of fabricating …             Randomly broken fragment PCR with 5′ end-directed adaptor for genome walking ▶     Wentao Xu, Ying Shang, Pengyu Zhu et al.     Many genome walking methods based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are available, including those with and without restriction enzyme modification. Nevertheless, these methods …             Maternal high-fat diet induces hyperproliferation and alters Pten/Akt signaling in prostates of offspring ▶     Emily C. Benesh, Peter A. Humphrey, Qiang Wang et al.     Developing recommendations for prostate cancer prevention requires identification of modifiable risk factors. Maternal exposure to high-fat diet (HFD) initiates a broad array of …             Transcriptional signaling pathways inversely regulated in Alzheimer's disease and glioblastoma multiform ▶     Timothy Liu, Ding Ren, Xiaoping Zhu et al.     Convincing epidemiological data suggest an inverse association between cancer and neurodegeneration, including Alzheimer's disease (AD). Since both AD and cancer are characterized …             Global Screening of CK2 Kinase Substrates by an Integrated Phosphoproteomics Workflow ▶     Yangyang Bian, Mingliang Ye, Chunli Wang et al.     Due to its constitutive activity and ubiquitous distribution, CK2 is the most pleiotropic kinase among the individual members of the protein kinase superfamily. Identification of …             Collective behaviours: from biochemical kinetics to electronic circuits ▶     Elena Agliari, Adriano Barra, Raffaella Burioni et al.     In this work we aim to highlight a close analogy between cooperative behaviors in chemical kinetics and cybernetics; this is realized by using a common language for their …             Plasma amino acids imbalance in cirrhotic patients disturbs the tricarboxylic acid cycle of dendritic cell ▶     Eiji Kakazu, Yasuteru Kondo, Takayuki Kogure et al.     An imbalance of plasma amino acids (AA) is observed cirrhotic patients. Here we report that the imbalance suppresses the maturation of dendritic cells (DCs) by reducing the …             Sensing the dynamics of oxidative stress using enhanced absorption in protein-loaded random media ▶     Guillaume Suárez, Christian Santschi, Vera I. Slaveykova et al.     Reactive oxygen species play a key role in cell signalling and oxidative stress mechanisms, therefore, sensing their production by living organisms is of fundamental interest. …             IL-17A is produced by breast cancer TILs and promotes chemoresistance and proliferation through ERK1/2 ▶     Stéphanie Cochaud, Jérôme Giustiniani, Clémence Thomas et al.     The proinflammatory cytokine Interleukin 17A (hereafter named IL–17A) or IL-17A producing cells are elevated in breast tumors environment and correlate with poor prognosis. …             The cross-modal double flash illusion depends on featural similarity between cross-modal inducers ▶     Warrick Roseboom, Takahiro Kawabe, Shin'ya Nishida     Despite extensive evidence of the possible interactions between multisensory signals, it remains unclear at what level of sensory processing these interactions take place. When …             Conserved-residue mutations in Wzy affect O-antigen polymerization and Wzz-mediated chain-length regulation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 ▶     Salim T. Islam, Steven M. Huszczynski, Timothy Nugent et al.     O antigen (O-Ag) in many bacteria is synthesized via the Wzx/Wzy-dependent pathway in which Wzy polymerizes lipid-linked O-Ag subunits to modal lengths regulated by Wzz. …             Transcriptional control of DNA replication licensing by Myc ▶     Taras Valovka, Manuela Schönfeld, Philipp Raffeiner et al.     The c-myc protooncogene encodes the Myc transcription factor, a global regulator of fundamental cellular processes. Deregulation of c-myc leads to tumorigenesis, and c-myc is an …             Elevated cerebrospinal fluid and blood concentrations of oxytocin following its intranasal administration in humans ▶     Nadine Striepens, Keith M. Kendrick, Vanessa Hanking et al.     There has been an unprecedented interest in the modulatory effects of intranasal oxytocin on human social cognition and behaviour, however as yet no study has actually …             Injectable 3-D Fabrication of Medical Electronics at the Target Biological Tissues ▶     Chao Jin, Jie Zhang, Xiaokang Li et al.     Conventional transplantable biomedical devices generally request sophisticated surgery which however often causes big trauma and serious pain to the patients. Here, we show an …             CORRIGENDUM: Biodegradation-inspired bioproduction of methylacetoin and 2-methyl-2,3-butanediol ▶     Xinglin Jiang, Haibo Zhang, Jianming Yang et al.                 Network Analysis Reveals Functional Cross-links between Disease and Inflammation Genes ▶     Yunpeng Zhang, Huihui Fan, Juan Xu et al.     Connections between inflammation and diseases are suggested important in understanding the genetic mechanisms of diseases. However, studies on the functional cross-links between …             Floral advertisement scent in a changing plant-pollinators market ▶     Iolanda Filella, Clara Primante, Joan Llusià et al.     Plant-pollinator systems may be considered as biological markets in which pollinators choose between different flowers that advertise their nectar/pollen rewards. Although …             P-gp expression in brown trout erythrocytes: evidence of a detoxification mechanism in fish erythrocytes ▶     Emeline Valton, Christian Amblard, Ivan Wawrzyniak et al.     Blood is a site of physiological transport for a great variety of molecules, including xenobiotics. Blood cells in aquatic vertebrates, such as fish, are directly exposed to …             Guiding the osteogenic fate of mouse and human mesenchymal stem cells through feedback system control ▶     Yoshitomo Honda, Xianting Ding, Federico Mussano et al.     Stem cell-based disease modeling presents unique opportunities for mechanistic elucidation and therapeutic targeting. The stable induction of fate-specific differentiation is an …             Stimulated Leaf Dark Respiration in Tomato in an Elevated Carbon Dioxide Atmosphere ▶     Xin Li, Guanqun Zhang, Bo Sun et al.     It is widely accepted that leaf dark respiration is a determining factor for the growth and maintenance of plant tissues and the carbon cycle. However, the underlying effect and …             Ultrahigh relaxivity and safe probes of manganese oxide nanoparticles for in vivo imaging ▶     J. Xiao, X. M. Tian, C. Yang et al.     Mn-based nanoparticles (NPs) have emerged as new class of probes for magnetic resonance imaging due to the impressive contrast ability. However, the reported Mn-based NPs possess …             Quantitative metabolic imaging using endogenous fluorescence to detect stem cell differentiation ▶     Kyle P. Quinn, Gautham V. Sridharan, Rebecca S. Hayden et al.     The non-invasive high-resolution spatial mapping of cell metabolism within tissues could provide substantial advancements in assessing the efficacy of stem cell therapy and …             A non-surgical approach for male germ cell mediated gene transmission through transgenesis ▶     Abul Usmani, Nirmalya Ganguli, Hironmoy Sarkar et al.     Microinjection of foreign DNA in male pronucleus by in-vitro embryo manipulation is difficult but remains the method of choice for generating transgenic animals. Other procedures, …             Active Anti-erosion Protection Strategy in Tamarisk (Tamarix aphylla) ▶     Zhiwu Han, Wei Yin, Junqiu Zhang et al.     Plants have numerous active protection strategies for adapting to complex and severe environments. These strategies provide endless inspiration for extending the service life of …             Targeting microRNA-23a to inhibit glioma cell invasion via HOXD10 ▶     Xing Hu, Dan Chen, Yanhui Cui et al.     Glioma is the most frequent primary brain tumor. Recently, the upregulation of microRNA (miR)-23a was found to be associated with glioma, but the molecular mechanism by which …             Cross-talk between E. coli strains and a human colorectal adenocarcinoma-derived cell line ▶     Xuan He, Darya O. Mishchuk, Jigna Shah et al.     Although there is great interest in the specific mechanisms of how gut microbiota modulate the biological processes of the human host, the extent of host-microbe interactions and …             The relevance and applicability of oocyst prevalence as a read-out for mosquito feeding assays ▶     Will J. R. Stone, Maarten Eldering, Geert-Jan van Gemert et al.     Mosquito feeding assays are important in evaluations of malaria transmission-reducing interventions. The proportion of mosquitoes with midgut oocysts is commonly used as an …             A proposal for a novel impact factor as an alternative to the JCR impact factor ▶     Zu-Guo Yang, Chun-Ting Zhang     One disadvantage of the JCR impact factor, the most commonly used assessment tool for ranking and evaluating scientific journals, is its inability in distinguishing among …             Enhanced efficiency of P-element mediated transgenesis in Drosophila: Microinjection of DNA complexed with nanomaterial ▶     Madhavi Sonane, Ritu Goyal, Debapratim K. Chowdhuri et al.     The efficiency of genetic transformation technology to generate stable transgenics depends upon the successful delivery of plasmid DNA in embryonic cells. The available gene …             Combining next-generation sequencing and online databases for microsatellite development in non-model organisms ▶     Ciro Rico, Eric Normandeau, Anne-Marie Dion-Côté et al.     Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is revolutionising marker development and the rapidly increasing amount of transcriptomes published across a wide variety of taxa is providing …             Vocal caricatures reveal signatures of speaker identity ▶     Sabrina López, Pablo Riera, María Florencia Assaneo et al.     What are the features that impersonators select to elicit a speaker's identity? We built a voice database of public figures (targets) and imitations produced by professional …             Computational optimisation of targeted DNA sequencing for cancer detection ▶     Pierre Martinez, Nicholas McGranahan, Nicolai Juul Birkbak et al.     Despite recent progress thanks to next-generation sequencing technologies, personalised cancer medicine is still hampered by intra-tumour heterogeneity and drug resistance. As …             Induction of Female-to-Male Sex Change in Adult Zebrafish by Aromatase Inhibitor Treatment ▶     Kanae Takatsu, Kaori Miyaoku, Shimi Rani Roy et al.     This study investigated whether undifferentiated germ and/or somatic stem cells remain in the differentiated ovary of a species that does not undergo sex changes under natural …             SNP genotyping allows an in-depth characterisation of the genome of sugarcane and other complex autopolyploids ▶     Antonio A. F. Garcia, Marcelo Mollinari, Thiago G. Marconi et al.     Many plant species of great economic value (e.g., potato, wheat, cotton, and sugarcane) are polyploids. Despite the essential roles of autopolyploid plants in human activities, …             P-fimbriae in the presence of anti-PapA antibodies: new insight of antibodies action against pathogens ▶     Narges Mortezaei, Bhupender Singh, Esther Bullitt et al.     Uropathogenic strains of Escherichia coli establish urinary tract infections by attaching to host epithelial cells using adhesive organelles called fimbriae. Fimbriae are …             ER stress upregulated PGE2/IFNγ-induced IL-6 expression and down-regulated iNOS expression in glial cells ▶     Toru Hosoi, Miya Honda, Tatsuya Oba et al.     The disruption of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) function can lead to neurodegenerative disorders, in which inflammation has also been implicated. We investigated the possible …             Common Pharmacophore of Structurally Distinct Small-Molecule Inhibitors of Intracellular Retrograde Trafficking of Ribosome Inactivating Proteins ▶     Shichao Yu, Jewn Giew Park, Jennifer Nielsen Kahn et al.     We reported previously (±)-2-(5-methylthiophen-2-yl)-3-phenyl-2,3-dihydroquinazolin-4(1H)-one [(±)-Retro-2cycl] as the chemical structure of Retro-2 that showed mouse protection …             Diosgenin-induced cognitive enhancement in normal mice is mediated by 1,25D3-MARRS ▶     Chihiro Tohda, Young-A Lee, Yukiori Goto et al.     We previously reported that diosgenin, a plant-derived steroidal sapogenin, improved memory and reduced axonal degeneration in an Alzheimer's disease mouse model. Diosgenin …             New paradigm for tumor theranostic methodology using bacteria-based microrobot ▶     Sung Jun Park, Seung-Hwan Park, Sunghoon Cho et al.     We propose a bacteria-based microrobot (bacteriobot) based on a new fusion paradigm for theranostic activities against solid tumors. We develop a bacteriobot using the strong …             Looking above the prairie: localized and upward acute vision in a native grassland bird ▶     Luke P. Tyrrell, Bret A. Moore, Christopher Loftis et al.     Visual systems of open habitat vertebrates are predicted to have a band of acute vision across the retina (visual streak) and wide visual coverage to gather information along the …             The protective role of Bax Inhibitor-1 against chronic mild stress through the inhibition of monoamine oxidase A ▶     Hwa-Young Lee, Geum-Hwa Lee, Anu Marahatta et al.     The anti-apoptotic protein Bax inhibitor-1 (BI-1) is a regulator of apoptosis linked to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. It has been hypothesized that BI-1 protects against …             Highly stereoselective biosynthesis of (R)-α-hydroxy carboxylic acids through rationally re-designed mutation of d-lactate dehydrogenase ▶     Zhaojuan Zheng, Binbin Sheng, Chao Gao et al.     An NAD-dependent d-lactate dehydrogenase (d-nLDH) of Lactobacillus bulgaricus ATCC 11842 was rationally re-designed for asymmetric reduction of a homologous series of α-keto …                     • Careers & Jobs           naturejobs.com Science jobs of the week       Postdoc     University of Alabma, Birmingham            Postdoctoral Research Assistant     Queen Mary University of London            Research Assistant     University of Oxford            PhD Position     University of Geneva            Research Associate     King's College London            Postdoctoral Research Assistant     University of Dundee            Postdoctoral Scholar     University of Chicago            Research Assistant     Yale University School of Medicine            Postdoctoral Researcher     Harvard University            Doctoral Student     Aalto University          No matter what your career stage, student, postdoc or senior scientist, you will find articles on naturejobs.com to help guide you in your science career. Keep up-to-date with the latest sector trends, vote in our reader poll and sign-up to receive the monthly Naturejobs newsletter.           • Scientific Reportsevents Directory featured events           natureevents directory featured events         (B2) Keystone Symposia: Molecular Cell Biology of Macrophages in Human Diseases     9-14 February 2014 New Mexico, USA         Natureevents Directory is the premier resource for scientists looking for the latest scientific conferences, courses, meetings and symposia. Featured across Nature Publishing Group journals and centrally at natureevents.com it is an essential reference guide to scientific events worldwide.                 Your email address is in the Scientific Reports: Biology mailing list. You have been sent this Table of Contents Alert because you have opted in to receive it. You can change or discontinue your e-mail alerts at any time, by modifying your preferences on your nature.com account at: www.nature.com/nams/svc/myaccount (You will need to log in to be recognised as a nature.com registrant). For further technical assistance, please contact our registration department For other enquiries, please contact our customer feedback department Nature Publishing Group | 75 Varick Street, 9th floor | New York | NY 10013-1917 | USA Nature Publishing Group's offices: Principal offices: London - New York - Tokyo Worldwide offices: Basingstoke - Boston - Buenos Aires - Delhi - Hong Kong - Madrid - Melbourne - Munich - Paris - San Francisco - Seoul - Washington DC Macmillan Publishers Limited is a company incorporated in England and Wales under company number 785998 and whose registered office is located at Brunel Road, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved.