Nobuyoshi Fujisawa

The Wnt/Planar Cell Polarity Pathway Component Vangl2 Induces Synapse Formation through Direct Control of N-Cadherin

Although regulators of the Wnt/planar cell polarity (PCP) pathway are widely expressed in vertebrate nervous systems, their roles at synapses are unknown. Here, we show that Vangl2 is a postsynaptic factor crucial for synaptogenesis and that it coprecipitates with N-cadherin and PSD-95 from synapse-rich brain extracts. Vangl2 directly binds N-cadherin and enhances its internalization in a Rab5-dependent manner. This physical and functional interaction is suppressed by β-catenin, which binds the same intracellular region of N-cadherin as Vangl2. In hippocampal neurons expressing reduced Vangl2 levels, dendritic spine formation as well as synaptic marker clustering is significantly impaired. Furthermore, Prickle2, another postsynaptic PCP component, inhibits the N-cadherin-Vangl2 interaction and is required for normal spine formation. These results demonstrate direct control of classic cadherin by PCP factors; this control may play a central role in the precise formation and maturation of cell-cell adhesions at the synapse.

Composition of double-articulated symbols for categorizing objects in macaque monkeys

International mouse phenotyping consortium (IMPC) was organized by research institutes that possess high throughput and systematic phenotyping platforms including Australian Phenomics Network (Australia), German mouse clinic (Germany), Institute Clinique de la Souris (France), MRC Hawell (UK), National institutes of health (USA), Toronto Centre for Phenomics (Canada) and Japan mouse clinic (JMC, RIKEN BRC). International knockout mouse consortium (IKMC) is an international consortium for mutating all protein-coding genes in the mouse using a combination of gene trapping and gene targeting in C57BL/6 mouse embryonic stem cells. In order to develop encyclopedia of mammalian-gene function, huge numbers of mutant mice generated in IKMC are needed to be comprehensively phenotyped in IMPC. The pipelines and procedures of the phenotyping will be unified in IMPC. However, the differences of equipments for the tests, difference environment of mouse husbandry, and other unexpected factors may complicate the comparison of data collected in different institutes. Additionally, difference of parameters measured in same tests also will complicate us to compare data stored in the same database. In order to validate these problems, we performed direct comparison of behavioral data collected in IMPC-phenotyping centers. In this study, we referred the data of open-filed test published in the database of EUROPHENOME (http://www.europhenome.org/) and reanalyzed the baseline data collected in JMC. The reanalyzed data was converted to the format of EUROPHENOME. As a result of comparison, the data collected in these phenotyping centers including JMC showed large variation. In order to improve the variation of data among these phenotyping centers, we should integrate the data with ontological annotations.

Symbolization of object categories by macaque monkeys

ing and temporal band pass filtering (0.009–0.08Hz), RSFC patterns for each seed region (the left precentral gyrus, left lateral parietal cortex and right amygdala) were obtained by calculating correlation coefficients between signal time courses extracted from each seed region and those from all other brain voxels. Average RSFC patterns were also calculated across the control subjects.[Results and conclusions] The ACC subject showed significant interhemispheric RSFC with all seed regions. The patterns of RSFC of the ACC subject were similar to corresponding averaged RSFC patterns of the controls. It has been shown that direct connections between the bilateral motor, and between the bilateral parietal cortices are mediated by the corpus callosum, whereas those between amygdalas are mediated by the anterior commissure (Schmahmann and Pandya, 2006). The present study revealed that the ACC subject, nonetheless, showed significant interhemispheric RSFC in the precentral gyrus and the lateral parietal cortex as well as in the amygdala. This suggests that some compensatory mechanisms during the neuronal maturation period could develop interhemispheric RSFC in the ACC.