Oxyopomyrmex André, 1881 is a small genus of myrmicine ants found in arid grasslands of the Mediterranean region. Here we provide a new taxonomic revision of the genus. Twelve species are recognized, including five new to science: O. laevibus sp. nov. (Greece: Crete), O. magnus sp. nov. (Spain), O. negevensis sp. nov. (Israel) O. polybotesi sp. nov. (Greece: Nisyros, W Turkey) and O. pygmalioni...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by the progressive loss of substantia nigra dopaminergic neurons and the presence of cytoplasmic inclusions named Lewy bodies. Two missense mutations of the -synuclein ( -syn; A30P and A53T) have been described in several families with an autosomal dominant form of PD. -Syn also constitutes one of the main components of Lewy bodies in sporadic cases of ...

Most α-synuclein (α-syn) deposited in Lewy bodies, the pathological hallmark of Parkinson disease (PD), is phosphorylated at Ser-129. However, the physiological and pathological roles of this modification are unclear. Here we investigate the effects of Ser-129 phosphorylation on dopamine (DA) uptake in dopaminergic SH-SY5Y cells expressing α-syn. Subcellular fractionation of small interfering R...

A novel mutation in the α-Synuclein (α-Syn) gene "G51D" was recently identified in two familial cases exhibiting features of Parkinson's disease (PD) and multiple system atrophy (MSA). In this study, we explored the impact of this novel mutation on the aggregation, cellular and biophysical properties of α-Syn, in an attempt to unravel how this mutant contributes to PD/MSA. Our results show that...

SYN flooding attacks generate enormous packets by a large number of agents and can easily exhaust the computing and communication resources of a victim within a short period of time. In this paper, we propose a lightweight method for detecting SYN flooding attack by non-parametric cumulative sum algorithm. We experiment with real SYN flooding attack data set in order to evaluate our method. The...

Since the discovery and isolation of α-synuclein (α-syn) from human brains, it has been widely accepted that it exists as an intrinsically disordered monomeric protein. Two recent studies suggested that α-syn produced in Escherichia coli or isolated from mammalian cells and red blood cells exists predominantly as a tetramer that is rich in α-helical structure (Bartels, T., Choi, J. G., and Selk...

Neurodegenerative disorders (NDs) are characterized by abnormal accumulation/misfolding of specific proteins, primarily α-synuclein (α-syn), β-amyloid1-42 (Aβ1-42) and tau, in both brain and peripheral tissues. In addition to oligomers, the role of the interactions of α-syn with Aβ or tau has gradually emerged. Nevertheless, despite intensive research, NDs have no accepted peripheral markers fo...

UNLABELLED α-Synuclein (α-syn) missense and multiplication mutations have been suggested to cause neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's disease (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies. Before causing the progressive neuronal loss, α-syn mutations impair exocytosis, which may contribute to eventual neurodegeneration. To understand how α-syn mutations impair exocytosis, we developed a mous...

Accumulation of misfolded alpha-synuclein (α-syn) into Lewy bodies (LBs) and Lewy neurites (LNs) is a major hallmark of Parkinson's disease (PD) and dementia with LBs (DLB). Recent studies showed that synthetic preformed fibrils (pffs) recruit endogenous α-syn and induce LB/LN pathology in vitro and in vivo, thereby implicating propagation and cell-to-cell transmission of pathological α-syn as ...

Alpha-synuclein (alpha-syn) is an important component of neuronal and glial inclusions in brains of patients with several neurodegenerative disorders. Sporadic inclusion-body myositis (s-IBM) is the most common progressive muscle disease of older patients. Its muscle phenotype shows several similarities with Alzheimer disease brain. A distinct feature of s-IBM pathology is specific vacuolar deg...