Views,landmarks, and routes: how do desert ants negotiate an obstacle course?

The Australian desert ant Melophorus bagoti often follows stereotypical routes through a cluttered landscape containing both distant panoramic views and obstacles (plants) to navigate around. We created an artificial obstacle course for the ants between a feeder and their nest. Landmarks comprised natural objects in the landscape such as logs, branches, and tussocks. Many ants travelled stereotypical routes home through the obstacle course in training, threading repeatedly the same gaps in the landmarks. Manipulations altering the relations between the landmarks and the surrounding panorama, however, affected the routes in two major ways. Both interchanging the positions of landmarks (transpositions) and displacing the entire landmark set along with the starting position of the ants (translations) (1) reduced the stereotypicality of the route, and (2) increased turns and meanders during travel. The ants might have used the entire panorama in view-based travel, or the distal panorama might prime the identification and use of landmarks en route. Despite the large data set, both options (not mutually exclusive) remain viable.     

Accurate MS-based Rab10 Phosphorylation Stoichiometry Determination as Readout for LRRK2 Activity in Parkinson's Disease

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Highlights

• •MS-based clinical assay that accurately determines phospho Rab10 occupancy.
• •Stable isotope labeled phosphopeptide injected as a standard with endogenous tryptic phospho Rab peptide for accurate ratio determination.
• •Determination of pRab levels in neutrophils of Parkinson disease patients.
• •Relevance of pRab levels as marker of PD.

     

A Correspondence between Individual Differences in the Brain's Intrinsic Functional Architecture and the Content and Form of Self-Generated Thoughts

Although neural activity often reflects the processing of external inputs, intrinsic fluctuations in activity have been observed throughout the brain. These may relate to patterns of self-generated thought that can occur while not performing goal-driven tasks. To understand the relationship between self-generated mental activity and intrinsic neural fluctuations, we developed the New York Cognition Questionnaire (NYC-Q) to assess the content and form of an individual''s experiences during the acquisition of resting-state fMRI data. The data were collected as a part of the Nathan Kline Rockland Enhanced sample. We decomposed NYC-Q scores using exploratory factor analysis and found that self-reported thoughts clustered into distinct dimensions of content (future related, past related, positive, negative, and social) and form (words, images, and specificity). We used these components to perform an individual difference analysis exploring how differences in the types of self-generated thoughts relate to whole brain measures of intrinsic brain activity (fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations, regional homogeneity, and degree centrality). We found patterns of self-generated thoughts related to changes that were distributed across a wide range of cortical areas. For example, individuals who reported greater imagery exhibited greater low frequency fluctuations in a region of perigenual cingulate cortex, a region that is known to participate in the so-called default-mode network. We also found certain forms of thought were associated with other areas, such as primary visual cortex, the insula, and the cerebellum. For example, individuals who reported greater future thought exhibited less homogeneous neural fluctuations in a region of lateral occipital cortex, a result that is consistent with the claim that particular types of self-generated thought depend on processes that are decoupled from sensory processes. These data provide evidence that self-generated thought is a heterogeneous category of experience and that studying its content can be helpful in understanding brain dynamics.     

Fibromodulin Interacts with Collagen Cross-linking Sites and Activates Lysyl Oxidase

The hallmark of fibrotic disorders is a highly cross-linked and dense collagen matrix, a property driven by the oxidative action of lysyl oxidase. Other fibrosis-associated proteins also contribute to the final collagen matrix properties, one of which is fibromodulin. Its interactions with collagen affect collagen cross-linking, packing, and fibril diameter. We investigated the possibility that a specific relationship exists between fibromodulin and lysyl oxidase, potentially imparting a specific collagen matrix phenotype. We mapped the fibromodulin-collagen interaction sites using the collagen II and III Toolkit peptide libraries. Fibromodulin interacted with the peptides containing the known collagen cross-linking sites and the MMP-1 cleavage site in collagens I and II. Interestingly, the interaction sites are closely aligned within the quarter-staggered collagen fibril, suggesting a multivalent interaction between fibromodulin and several collagen helices. Furthermore, we detected an interaction between fibromodulin and lysyl oxidase (a major collagen cross-linking enzyme) and mapped the interaction site to 12 N-terminal amino acids on fibromodulin. This interaction also increases the activity of lysyl oxidase. Together, the data suggest a fibromodulin-modulated collagen cross-linking mechanism where fibromodulin binds to a specific part of the collagen domain and also forms a complex with lysyl oxidase, targeting the enzyme toward specific cross-linking sites.