Integrated Calendar

TBA

The analysis of spatial cells in the hippocampus and the medial entorhinal cortex has been a remarkable success story. Extracellular recordings have revealed astonishing functional abstractness in how single neurons encode concepts such as a place, direction, borders and grids. Though we know a great deal about these functional phenotypes of neuronal activation, information about their underlying microcircuits is sorely lacking. In this talk I will explore the structural underpinnings of this functional specificity in the superficial layers of the medial entorhinal cortex and what the components and architecture of the microcircuits involved in this reveal across evolution and development.

Proteasomes are large intracellular complexes degrading proteins. The major complex is the 26S particle that is formed by association of the 20S catalytic particle with one or two 19S regulatory complex (RC). We show that high levels of 26S proteasome diagnoses cancer cells and Ras transformed cell lines. The increase in the 26S level is uncoupled from rate of cells proliferation. Remarkably shRNA designed to reduce the 19S RC levels proved eἀective in killing the tumor but not the normal cells. The more the tumor cell lines are aggressive the better are killed. We propose to target the 19S RC as a therapeutic strategy of the aggressive tumors.