Biological Sciences

TARGETING G3BP AGGREGATION TO PREVENT NEURODEGENERATION

Dr. Sahoo's G3BP1-derived peptide rescues multiple in vitro modelled neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimers, Parkinson, and ALS.

Drosophila tweety facilitates autophagy to regulate mitochondrial homeostasis and bioenergetics in Glia. 

Authors: Andy Leung (Postdoc), Christina Mansour (Undergraduate), Anwar Nakhla (Undergraduate)

"Oligodendrocyte progenitor development from the postnatal rat subventricular zone is regulated by the p75 neurotrophin receptor"

This paper from the thesis work of Subhashini Joshi, who graduated in 2022, demonstrates that the absence of the p75 neurotrophin receptor from developing oligodendrocyte progenitors leads to their premature exit from the cell cycle and accelerated differentiation, causing abnormalities in early myelination.

"Cortical brain injury causes retrograde degeneration of afferent basal forebrain cholinergic neurons via p75NTR"

This paper from the thesis work of Srestha Dasgupta, who graduated in 2023,  demonstrates that traumatic brain injury not only causes the loss of neurons at the injury site, but also elicits the retrograde degeneration of specific neurons that project their axons to the injury site from a distal location.

This study provides novel insights into the balancing act between Rho and Rac GTPases downstream of specific signaling amino acid motifs in the cytoplasmic domain of the Plexin-A4 receptor to mediate Sema3A-dependent dendritic elaboration in mammalian cortical neuron development.