News — Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (DPAG)

Blood bank storage can reduce ability of transfusions to treat anaemia

13 September 2021

New research from the Swietach Group in collaboration with NHS Blood and Transplant has demonstrated that the process of storing blood in blood banks can negatively impact the function of red blood cells and consequently may reduce the effectiveness of blood transfusions, a treatment commonly used to combat anaemia.

Decorative comparison of rest cells and simulated cells

Overlapping second messengers increase dynamic control of physiological responses

3 September 2021

New research from the Parekh and Zaccolo groups reveals that a prototypical anchoring protein, known to be responsible for regulating several important physiological processes, also orchestrates the formation of two important universal second messengers.

Feeling tired? Here’s how the brain’s ‘hourglass’ controls your need for sleep – new research

24 August 2021

New article on The Conversation website written by Dr Lukas Krone, Associate Professor Vladyslav Vyazovskiy and Professor Zoltán Molnár.

Visceral fat supports various fundamental functions, such as reproduction. However, when it is too abundant, it produces unhealthy levels of proteins and hormones that negatively affect neighbouring tissues and organs. In this study authors reveal the first known neuro-immune process by which brain signals instruct immune function in visceral fat stores.

Scientists Decipher How NeuroImmune Interactions Burn Deep Fat

20 August 2021

A pioneering collaborative mouse study from an international team of researchers including DPAG's Associate Professor Ana Domingos published in Nature offers new therapeutic avenues for reducing visceral fat stores, which have been associated with cardiovascular disease and multiple types of cancer.

Continued ethical animal research needed to advance treatment of brain disease, researchers argue

5 August 2021

More research is needed to improve the treatment of brain diseases such as depression, Alzheimer’s or ADHD. A widely held view within the scientific community is that this cannot be done without ethically conducted animal research. A team of seventy international neuroscientists, including DPAG’s Associate Professor Vladyslav Vyazovskiy, have now published a warning that animal research is under pressure, which endangers the further development of treatments.

The cerebral cortex is shown at the top of the brain with the anterior hypothalamus and junction of forebrain and brainstem positioned below at the lower part of the brain.

Cortex may regulate the need for sleep

2 August 2021

Why we sleep, and the processes behind sleep, are amongst the most interesting questions in modern neuroscience. Researchers at the University of Oxford, including DPAG's Molnár and Vyazovskiy group scientists, have now uncovered a new target for sleep investigations within the mammalian brain – the cerebral cortex. The paper, first authored by Dr Lukas Krone, was published today in Nature Neuroscience.

Reducing fat in the diabetic heart could improve recovery from heart attack

29 July 2021

New research from the Heather Group has shown that in type 2 diabetes an overload of lipids reduces the heart’s ability to generate energy during a heart attack, decreasing chances of recovery.

Dopamine neurons innervate the mouse brain when the mouse sees stimuli on a screen

The brain’s one-sided teaching signals

16 July 2021

A new study by the Lak group reveals a novel facet of dopamine signalling during visual decision making.

Effect of TFP on brain metabolic markers after stroke. Representative images of FTIR spectroscopic imaging at 24 h post-stroke in non-treated stroke and sham animals, and animals treated with TFP at 30 minute pre- stroke or 1 h post-stroke.

The future of stroke treatment

5 July 2021

A team of international collaborators including DPAG's Dr Mootaz Salman has been researching a promising new therapeutic for the treatment of strokes and other brain injuries.

Adipose tissue-resident macrophages control lipid storage through production of platelet-derived growth
factor (PDGFcc), which induces lipid retention in white adipose tissue adipocytes in a paracrine manner,
although the precise mechanism is unclear. Recruited macrophages are responsible for the inammation
that characterizes obese adipose tissue. Treatment with PDGFcc antibodies restores homeostasis, and
reduces lipid storage and body weight, redirecting excess lipids mostly to thermogenesis.

New review reveals proof of concept for an anti-obesity immunotherapy

2 July 2021

The Domingos lab has published a new opinion piece in Science investigating the implications of a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center study that lays the foundations for a potential new anti-obesity treatment in the form of targeting adipose tissue-resident macrophages.

New pathway established for multisensory cortical communication

28 June 2021

Integration of information across the senses is critical for perception. This activity is thought to arise primarily from connections made in the brain's sensory cortical areas. A new paper from the King Group uncovers evidence for the first time on the little understood role of subcortical circuits in shaping the multisensory properties of primary cortical neurons.

Iron deficiency anaemia in early pregnancy increases risk of heart defects, suggests new research

8 June 2021

In animal models, iron deficient mothers have a greatly increased risk of having offspring with congenital heart disease (CHD). The risk of CHD can be greatly reduced if the mother is given iron supplements very early in pregnancy. Additionally, embryos from a mouse model of Down Syndrome were particularly vulnerable to the effects of maternal iron deficiency, leading to a higher risk of developing severe heart defects.

Upper panel: Rest
Lower panel: stimulated

Images from left:
Orai1-GFP
STIM1-YFP
DAPI (nuclear stain)
NFAT-cherry
All merged

New target to develop immunosuppressants

18 May 2021

A new study from the Parekh Group has resolved a long-standing question in our understanding of intracellular Ca2+ signalling, namely how a specific type of Ca2+ channel is uniquely able to signal to the nucleus to regulate gene expression. By unravelling this mechanism, researchers have identified a new approach for developing immunosuppressant drugs.

Three organs - the gut, the spleen and the kidney - process and send iron back into the body

How the kidney contributes to healthy iron levels and disease

17 May 2021

A new study from the Lakhal-Littleton Group has addressed a long-standing gap in our understanding of systemic iron homeostasis. It provides the first formal demonstration that the hormone hepcidin controls iron reabsorption in the kidney, in a manner that impacts the body’s iron levels, under normal physiological conditions. It also demonstrates for the first time how this mechanism becomes critically important in the development of iron disorders.

New research to radically alter our understanding of synaptic development

14 April 2021

A new study from the Molnár group on the role of regulated synaptic vesicular release in specialised synapse formation has made it to the cover of Cerebral Cortex.

Being "in the zone": how waking activity controls sleep need

7 April 2021

A new study from the Vyazovskiy group suggests that how and where we spend our time while awake impacts how much we need to sleep - it does not only depend on how long we are awake.

A healthy aorta when compared with an aortic aneursm is significantly narrower and less swollen in appearance.

New target identified to develop treatment for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm

30 March 2021

A new study from the Smart group has shed light on a key regulatory step in the initiation and progression of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm by revealing the protective role of a previously little known small protein.

Betina Ip's daughters pictured laughing and holding a copy of Book of the Brain in the park.

Researcher publishes children's book of the brain

4 March 2021

Betina Ip, a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow based in NDCN, formerly a postdoctoral research scientist in DPAG, has written a book for children: The Usborne Book of the Brain and How it Works.

The brains of a male and female fly merged together shows an intertwined network of neurons in roughly the same position, demonstrating that neural activity in each brain is similar yet subtly different.

Same genome, different worlds: How a similar brain causes sexually dimorphic behaviours

27 January 2021

A new paper from the Goodwin group based in DPAG's Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour has shown how males and females are programmed differently in terms of sex.

Seminal fluid in the male accessory gland is full of elliptical lipid-containing microcarriers

New form of gift wrap drives male reproductive success

26 January 2021

The transfer of complex mixtures of signals and nutrients between individuals is a key step in several biologically important events in our lives, such as breastfeeding and sexual intercourse. However, we know relatively little about the ways in which the molecular gifts involved are packaged to ensure their successful delivery to the recipient.

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