Sleep is one of the most fundamental, yet least understood, facets of animal physiology—its universality reflected in the saying, ''life is one long process of getting tired.'' This issue's Neurobiology Select describes the latest progress toward understanding sleep, including its role in maintaining synaptic homeostasis, its role in long-term memory formation, and the causes and consequences o...

The fundamental function of the nervous system is to accurately process and respond to external stimuli. This issue's Neurobiology Select highlights recent findings exploring how neurons and their networks within the nervous system may be modulated to ensure accurate signal detection, transmission, and response. In larvae of the frog Xenopus laevis, light regulates a neural circuit in the ventr...

Neurodegenerative diseases cause profound suffering, and patients are often faced with few therapeutic options. Elucidating new therapeutic avenues requires a better understanding of the aberrant molecular mechanisms that result in death of select neuronal populations. Recent studies use classic cell and molecular biology assays and the latest sequencing technologies to investigate the molecula...

This issue’s Biomedicine Select highlights new insights into the role of mitochondria in disease. Several new studies implicate abnormal mitochondria in the destruction of neurons of the substantia nigra, the cause of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Meanwhile, an elegant computational approach has enabled identification of candidate genes for several mitochondrial diseases including the mitochondrial...

The Irish potato famine, as well as countless other potato crop failures, was caused by the fungus-like oomycete pathogen Phyophthora infestans. This species has proven to be resilient because of its ability to rapidly evolve genetic weaponry to overcome host resistance. Haas et al. (2009) now report the complete genome sequence of P. infestans. The genome reveals an extensive and complex expan...

Bacteria are one of the most diverse groups of organisms on our planet and are exquisitely adapted for survival in diverse environments ranging from the human digestive tract to deep-sea hydrothermal vents. As bacteria have evolved to optimally inhabit and exploit their host environments, so too have their hosts changed in response to the presence of these prokaryote interlopers. This issue’s M...

The generation of diverse types of nerve cells and the establishment and sculpting of synaptic connections between neurons form the basis for building a functional nervous system. This Neurobiology Select highlights recent findings that yield new insights into the differentiation of progenitor cells into neurons, the development of dendrites, and neuronal connectivity. Neural stem cells give ri...

In our Select pages, we highlight exciting themes that have emerged from our review of the recent literature on a particular topic. In this issue, we present Neurobiology Select in which we discuss a cluster of recent papers that increases our understanding of complex human neurological disorders such as schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome, and developmental dyslexia. Some of the genes implicate...

The role of adipose tissue, or fat, in the development and treatment of metabolic disease is the subject of this issue's Select. A cluster of new studies in mice suggest that dysregulation of lymphocytes and other inflammatory cells in adipose tissue contributes to obesity and metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes. Elucidation of how the inflamma-tory response affects different types of ad...

Transporter proteins bind ions and small molecules and transfer them across lipid membranes. Recent studies on transporters, discussed in this issue's Biochemistry Select, provide insight into the family of proteins targeted by tricyclic antidepressants. Other work sheds light on glucose absorption in the gut, host-pathogen interactions , and a mechanism used by an important food crop to adapt ...