The somatosensory system in the brain has been widely used for investigating the mechanisms underlying neural circuit formation and developmental neural plasticity. In the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) of rodents, there are discrete cytoarchitectonic units called barrels. Reverse genetic analyses using knockout mice have revealed molecules that control spatial pattern formation of barrels i...

The barrel field of the somatosensory cortex constitutes a well documented example of anatomofunctional compartmentalization and activity-dependent interaction between neurons and astrocytes. In astrocytes, intercellular communication through gap junction channels composed by connexin 43 and 30 underlies a network organization. Immunohistochemical and electrophysiological experiments were under...

Wooden barrels are used in the ageing or maturation of many alcoholic beverages, namely brandies and wines. However, the high costs related to ageing in wooden barrels have led to a search for alternative technologies. In this study we examined the application of wood fragments to the beverage in order to promote an accelerated ageing. We evaluated the sensory and chemical modifications in bran...

During postnatal development, sensory experiences play critical roles in the refinement of cortical connections. However, both the process of postnatal experience-dependent maturation of neocortical inhibitory networks and its underlying mechanisms remain elusive. Here, we examined the differential properties of intracortical inhibitory networks of layer IV in "sensory-spared" and "sensory-depr...

Gene duplication and fusion events that multiply and link functional protein domains are crucial mechanisms of enzyme evolution. The analysis of amino acid sequences and three-dimensional structures suggested that the ( )8-barrel, which is the most frequent fold among enzymes, has evolved by the duplication, fusion, and mixing of ( )4-half-barrel domains. Here, we mimicked this evolutionary str...

The b-barrel membrane protein is found in the outer membranes of bacteria, mitochondria and chloroplasts. Approximately 2–3% of the genes in Gram-negative bacterial genomes encode b-barrels. Whereas there are fewer than 20 known three-dimensional b-barrel structures, genomic databases currently contain thousands of b-barrels belonging to dozens of families. New research is revealing the variety...

HHrep is a web server for the de novo identification of repeats in protein sequences, which is based on the pairwise comparison of profile hidden Markov models (HMMs). Its main strength is its sensitivity, allowing it to detect highly divergent repeat units in protein sequences whose repeats could as yet only be detected from their structures. Examples include sequences with beta-propellor fold...

As a parameter important ballistic, the research about polygonal and grooved barrels’ behavior has not been widely carried out. The pressures, velocities, stresses, deformations, strains generated by firing of 9 mm × 19 ammunition in weapons with barrels are analyzed numerically experimentally, compared those pistols barrels. Finite Element Method equal boundary loading conditions was used both...