Homer-1a is a 30 kDa protein that forms part of a family of conserved Homer-related proteins that interact with the C-termini of the metabotropic glutamate receptors mGluR1alpha and mGluR5a. Analysis of HEK-293 cells by PCR showed that they contained mRNA coding for members of the Homer family with the predominant form being Homer-1b, which is consistent with the immunochemical analysis of thes...

Drosophila enabled/vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (Ena/VASP) homology 1 (EVH1) domain proteins regulate signal transduction at the neuronal and immunologic synapse. Despite shared cell biologic machinery at these synapses, the regulation of client proteins that transmit synaptic activity to the nucleus is likely to be different. Homer-3, a member of the EVH1 family, is expressed in the t...

Drug addiction and reward learning both involve mechanisms in which reinforcing neuromodulators participate in changing synaptic strength. For example, dopamine receptor activation modulates corticostriatal plasticity through a mechanism involving the induction of the immediate early gene Homer 1a, the phosphorylation of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5)'s Homer ligand, and the enhance...

We present HOMER, an analysis and visualization tool for ontology alignment. HOMER features a radial-graph display GUI, a complete execution trace that allows the user to override and navigate to any match decisions during at runtime and a comparison mode that displays multiple alignments in parallel. HOMER contains a builtin plugin for the ILIADS ontology alignment algorithm, but other algorit...

Store-operated channels are major calcium influx pathways in nonexitable cells. Homer scaffold proteins are well known for their role in regulating calcium signaling. Here we report on a detailed single-channel level characterization of native store-operated channels regulated by Homer scaffold proteins in A431 carcinoma cells. By applying the single-channel patch-clamp technique, we found that...

Homer protein was identified based on its rapid induction in rat hippocampal granule cell neurons following excitatory synaptic activity. Although the presence of the Homer gene in the peripheral tissues has been observed in previous reports, the physiological function of the Homer protein in these tissues has not been noted. In this experiment, a Homer-2a cDNA fragment was successfully amplifi...

The honest polynomial-time Turing (hp-T) reducibility, < :p, was first introduced by Homer (e.g. [6)). It has been known that the structural properties of the hp-T degrees of the recursive sets and those of the A; sets are closely related to the P =?NP problem. Homer [6,7] and Homer and Long [S] proved assuming P=NP that there is a As set which is <p minimal, and then Ambos-Spies [2] improved t...

Normal aging is associated with impairments in cognition, especially learning and memory. However, major individual differences are known to exist. Using the classical Morris Water Maze (MWM) task, we discriminated a population of 24-months old Long Evans aged rats in two groups--memory-impaired (AI) and memory-unimpaired (AU) in comparison with 6-months old adult animals. AI rats presented def...

Glaucoma is a multifactorial progressive ocular pathology, clinically presenting with damage to the retina and optic nerve, ultimately leading to blindness. Retinal ganglion cell loss in glaucoma ultimately results in vision loss. Vesl/Homer proteins are scaffolding proteins that are critical for maintaining synaptic integrity by clustering, organizing and functionally regulating synaptic prote...

In rat sympathetic neurons from the superior cervical ganglia (SCG) expressing metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) 1 or 5, overexpression of scaffolding Homer proteins, which bind to a Homer ligand in their C-termini, cause receptor clustering and uncoupling from ion channel modulation. In the absence of recombinant Homer protein overexpression, uncoupling of mGluRs from voltage dependent...