Memory is essential to everyday life. As we age, deficits in memory become apparent. The toll of age-related cognitive impairment can be devastating to families and costly to society. The NMDA receptor is a molecule in the brain that is instrumental in the formation of memories. The receptor is particularly...
The NMDA receptor is an important component of spatial working and reference memory. The receptor is a heterotetramer composed of a family of related subunits. The GluN2B subunit of the NMDA receptor appears to be essential for some forms of memory and is particularly vulnerable to change with age in...
The GluN1 subunit of the NMDA receptor shows age-related changes in its
expression pattern, some of which correlate with spatial memory performance in mice.
Aged C57BL/6 mice show an age-related increase in mRNA expression of GluN1
subunit splice variants that lack the N terminal splice cassette, GluN1ₒₓₓ (GluN1-a). This
increase...
The protein palmitoylation cycle has been shown to be important for protein signaling and synaptic plasticity. Data from our lab showed a change in the palmitoylation status of certain proteins with age. A greater percentage of the NMDA receptor subunits GluN2A and GluN2B, along with Fyn and PSD95 proteins, were...
An autonomous, in-situ instrument was developed to detect dissolved copper in seawater, suitable for deployment on time scales from weeks to months. A commercially available in-situ nitrate analyzer (YSI 9600) was adapted to measure copper (II) in seawater by chemiluminescence. Modifications included construction of a photomultiplier (PMT) based detector and...
Xanthohumol [XN, (E)-6´-methoxy-3´-(3-methylbuten-2-yl)-2´,4´,4´´-trihydroxychalcone], the principal prenylated chalcone from hops, and its 2,3-dihydro- (DXN) and O6-desmethyl-2,3-dihydro- (DDXN) congeners, are of potential utility for the amelioration of metabolic syndrome; however, their complex bioactivity profiles cannot be properly studied and understood without access to appropriately produced synthetic materials.
In the first part of...
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative pathology currently affecting nearly 44 million individuals worldwide, yet there are not currently any effective treatments or preventions for AD despite the rapid development in our understanding of the disease over the last four decades. The medical and sanitary innovations of the last century...
Sugar phosphate cyclases (SPCs) are enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of many important natural products. SPCs form a unique cyclitol during the early steps in the biosynthesis of many natural products. These natural products include rifamycin, which is chemically modified to rifampicin and used clinically as an antituberculosis drug, and...
Xanthohumol, a prenylated flavonoid found in hops and beer, possesses a long-standing reputation to improve health. Xanthohumol’s cytotoxicity to a wide variety of cancer cell lines is well-established. Herein we provide further insight into the cytotoxicity of not only xanthohumol, but also its non-estrogenic derivatives, to a number of colonic...