Sonic hedgehog signaling in astrocytes.

Astrocytes are complex cells that perform a broad array of essential functions in the healthy and injured nervous system. The recognition that these cells are integral components of various processes, including synapse formation, modulation of synaptic activity, and response to injury, underscores the need to identify the molecular signaling programs orchestrating these diverse functional properties. Emerging studies have identified the Sonic hedgehog (Shh) signaling pathway as an essential regulator of the molecular identity and functional properties of astrocytes. Well established as a powerful regulator of diverse neurodevelopmental processes in the embryonic nervous system, its functional significance in astrocytes is only beginning to be revealed. Notably, Shh signaling is active only in discrete subpopulations of astrocytes distributed throughout the brain, a feature that has potential to yield novel insights into functional specialization of astrocytes. Here, we discuss Shh signaling and emerging data that point to essential roles for this pleiotropic signaling pathway in regulating various functional properties of astrocytes in the healthy and injured brain.

An open toolkit for tracking open science partnership implementation and impact.

Serious concerns about the way research is organized collectively are increasingly being raised. They include the escalating costs of research and lower research productivity, low public trust in researchers to report the truth, lack of diversity, poor community engagement, ethical concerns over research practices, and irreproducibility. Open science (OS) collaborations comprise of a set of practices including open access publication, open data sharing and the absence of restrictive intellectual property rights with which institutions, firms, governments and communities are experimenting in order to overcome these concerns. We gathered two groups of international representatives from a large variety of stakeholders to construct a toolkit to guide and facilitate data collection about OS and non-OS collaborations. Ultimately, the toolkit will be used to assess and study the impact of OS collaborations on research and innovation. The toolkit contains the following four elements: 1) an annual report form of quantitative data to be completed by OS partnership administrators; 2) a series of semi-structured interview guides of stakeholders; 3) a survey form of participants in OS collaborations; and 4) a set of other quantitative measures best collected by other organizations, such as research foundations and governmental or intergovernmental agencies. We opened our toolkit to community comment and input. We present the resulting toolkit for use by government and philanthropic grantors, institutions, researchers and community organizations with the aim of measuring the implementation and impact of OS partnership across these organizations. We invite these and other stakeholders to not only measure, but to share the resulting data so that social scientists and policy makers can analyse the data across projects.

Sonic hedgehog signaling in astrocytes mediates cell type-specific synaptic organization.

Astrocytes have emerged as integral partners with neurons in regulating synapse formation and function, but the mechanisms that mediate these interactions are not well understood. Here, we show that Sonic hedgehog (Shh) signaling in mature astrocytes is required for establishing structural organization and remodeling of cortical synapses in a cell type-specific manner. In the postnatal cortex, Shh signaling is active in a subpopulation of mature astrocytes localized primarily in deep cortical layers. Selective disruption of Shh signaling in astrocytes produces a dramatic increase in synapse number specifically on layer V apical dendrites that emerges during adolescence and persists into adulthood. Dynamic turnover of dendritic spines is impaired in mutant mice and is accompanied by an increase in neuronal excitability and a reduction of the glial-specific, inward-rectifying K+ channel Kir4.1. These data identify a critical role for Shh signaling in astrocyte-mediated modulation of neuronal activity required for sculpting synapses.

Fruit carbohydrate metabolism in an introgression line of tomato with increased fruit soluble solids.

A tomato line (IL9-2-5) of the cultivated species, Lycopersicon esculentum, carrying a 9 cM introgression from the wild species, Lycopersicon pennelli, produces fruit with high soluble solids content (Brix), an important determinant of fruit quality for processing. Two quantitative trait loci (QTLs) relating to fruit soluble solids content have been identified within the introgressed segment. One of these QTLs (PW-9-2-5) is silent under the growth conditions used in this study, while a second (Brix-9-2-5) has been shown to encode a fruit apoplastic invertase (Lin5) with altered kinetic properties. In this study, we have undertaken a detailed biochemical analysis of the introgression line to attempt to gain an understanding of the metabolic changes associated with increased fruit soluble solids. Increased Brix in ripe fruit was shown to be the result of increased sucrose and glucose, with a more minor contribution from aspartate and alanine. The introgression leads to a pronounced increase in apoplastic invertase activity in the columella tissue that extends throughout fruit development. Furthermore, columella tissue from IL9-2-5 fruit has a greater capacity to take up exogenously supplied sucrose, an observation that is consistent with the kinetic properties of the introgressed Lin5 allele. Apart from the increase in mature fruit sugar and increases in some amino acids, metabolite profiling revealed few other metabolic perturbations in fruit from IL9-2-5. The only other major change was a dramatic increase in starch accumulation at earlier stages of fruit metabolism. This occurred without any increase in the activity of the enzymes of sucrose metabolism or starch synthesis and may therefore be driven by increased availability of sucrose. We conclude that the major factor that leads to increased fruit sugar in IL9-2-5 is an increase in the capacity to take up sucrose unloaded from the phloem.

The effect of exogenous sugars on the control of flux by adenosine 5'-diphosphoglucose pyrophosphorylase in potato tuber discs.

The aim of this work was to investigate the effect of exogenous sugars on the extent to which starch synthesis in potato ( Solanum tuberosum L.) is controlled by adenosine 5'-diphosphoglucose pyrophosphorylase (EC 2.7.7.27; AGPase). Tuber discs were incubated in the presence of a range of concentrations of glucose and sucrose, and metabolic fluxes measured following the supply of [U-14C]glucose and measurement of the specific radioactivity of the hexose phosphate pool. In the presence of glucose there was a marked increase in the flux through glucose-phosphorylating hexokinase, and at high concentrations of external glucose this led to a stimulation of the rate of starch and sucrose synthesis relative to those measured in the presence of sucrose. In the presence of glucose the ratio of the rate of starch synthesis to the rate of glycolysis was higher than in the presence of sucrose. Similar effects of glucose were observed at two stages of tuber development. We conclude that the presence of glucose perturbs the carbohydrate metabolism of tuber discs so that starch synthesis is favoured. In order to determine the extent to which AGPase controls flux, we measured fluxes in wild-type plants and transgenic plants with reduced AGPase activity as a result of the expression of a cDNA encoding the B subunit in the antisense orientation. In the presence of sucrose a reduction in AGPase activity had a greater impact on the rate of starch synthesis than in the presence of glucose. The flux control coefficient of AGPase over starch synthesis was higher in the presence of sucrose (0.7-0.9) than in the presence of glucose (0.4-0.6). Conversely, the impact of reduced AGPase activity on the rate of sucrose synthesis was lower in the presence of sucrose than glucose. In the presence of 200 mM sucrose the flux control coefficient of AGPase over the rate of sucrose synthesis was not significantly different from zero. This demonstrates that the nature of the sugar supplied to potato tuber discs can have a major influence on the distribution of control within metabolism. These data were also used to investigate the relationship between demand for ATP and the rate of hexose phosphate entry into glycolysis. A very strong correlation between ATP demand and glycolytic flux was demonstrated.

The control of source to sink carbon flux during tuber development in potato.

We have used top-down metabolic control analysis to investigate the control of carbon flux through potato (Solanum tuberosum) plants during tuberisation. The metabolism of the potato plant was divided into two blocks of reactions (the source and sink blocks) that communicate through the leaf apoplastic sucrose pool. Flux was measured as the transfer of 14 C from CO2 to the tuber. Flux and apoplastic sucrose concentration were varied either by changing the light intensity or using transgenic manipulations that specifically affect the source or sink blocks, and elasticity coefficients were measured. We have provided evidence in support of our assumption that apoplastic sucrose is the only communicating metabolite between the source and sink blocks. The elasticity coefficients were used to calculate the flux control coefficients of the source and sink blocks, which were 0.8 and 0.2, respectively. This work suggests that the best strategy for the manipulation of tuber yield in potato will involve increases in photosynthetic capacity, rather than sink metabolism.