Cell recognition, signal induction, and symmetrical gene activation at the dorsal-ventral boundary of the developing Drosophila wing

Appendage formation in insects and vertebrates depends upon signals from both the anterior-posterior and dorsal-ventral (DV) axes. In Drosophila, wing formation is organized symmetrically around the DV boundary of the growing wing imaginal disc and requires interactions between dorsal and ventral cells. Compartmentalization of the wing disc, dorsal cell behavior, and the expression of two dorsally expressed putative signaling molecules, fringe (fng) and Serrate (Ser), are regulated by the apterous selector gene. Here, we demonstrate that fng and Ser have distinct roles in a novel cell recognition and signal induction process. fng serves as a boundary-determining molecule such that Ser is induced wherever cells expressing fng and cells not expressing fng are juxtaposed. Ser in turn triggers the expression of genes involved in wing growth and patterning on both sides of the DV boundary.     

Scrapie infection of transgenic mice leads to network and intrinsic dysfunction of cortical and hippocampal neurones

The human prion encephalopathy Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease often is manifest as rapidly progressing dementia with myoclonus and synchronous, periodic discharges. To investigate the electrophysiology of prion disease we used intra- and extra-cellular recordings from brain slices from Tg(SHaPrP+/+) 81 mice, which express Syrian hamster prion protein and which are susceptible to hamster-passaged scrapie isolates. Forty days after intracerebral inoculation with scrapie isolate Sc237, we recorded prolonged, epileptiform discharges in cortex and hippocampus. Neurological signs were subtle and histopathology was minimal. Central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction progressed; by 57 days the mice were ataxic, had spongiform histopathology and they died in <63 days. During the terminal phase, intrinsic neuronal properties changed dramatically and action potentials broadened from <4 to 20-100 ms in 30% of cortical cells. We conclude that brain dysfunction in experimental scrapie precedes clinical signs and spongiform histopathology, and is preserved in slices maintained in vitro, making it accessible to electrophysiological analysis.     

Pronoun resolution without pronouns: some consequences of memory-based text processing

A memory-based processing approach to discourse comprehension emphasizes the rapid deployment of information in memory to facilitate understanding of the text that is currently being read. S. B. Greene, R. J. Gerrig, G. McKoon, and R. Ratcliff (1994) demonstrated that when a text described the reunion of 2 characters who had previously discussed a 3rd character, the accessibility of the 3rd character increased, and the use of an unheralded pronoun (R. J. Gerrig, 1986) to refer to that character was felicitous. In experiments in this article, the authors demonstrate that concepts related to the unheralded pronoun also increase in accessibility and that those concepts form associations in memory with concepts present in the discourse at the time the pronoun is used. The authors also show that the increase in accessibility for the referent of the pronoun, as well as the appropriate long-term memory associations, occurs even in the absence of the pronoun.