In the development of Parkinson’s disease, it may not be a good idea to turn the amp to 11. High-volume noise exposure produced motor deficits in a mouse model of early-stage Parkinson’s disease, and established a link between the auditory processing and movement areas of the brain, according to a study published November 4^th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Pei Zhang from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and colleagues.

New research has updated our understanding of how sugars, known as glycans, help immune cells move into skin in the inflammatory disease, psoriasis

Researchers identified that immune cells, which have their own cell surface glycocalyx, shed this layer to help them move from the blood and into tissues in inflammatory skin disease, changing the previous understanding that it was only the blood vessel wall that altered its glycocalyx layer to aid this process.

Designing drugs to alter the movement of immune cells between the blood and tissues is a potential way to treat both infections and inflammatory diseases. Therefore, this research may alter the approach taken to develop drugs targeting the movement of immune cells into tissues.    

 

The rates of bloodstream infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria will increase substantially across Europe in the next five years, driven largely by aging populations, according to a new paper published November 4^th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Gwenan Knight of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, and colleagues.

A neural computation first discovered in insects has been shown to explain how humans combine sight and sound – even when illusions trick us into “hearing” what we do not see. Now, researcher Dr Cesare Parise from the University of Liverpool, UK, has created a biologically grounded model based on this computation, which can take in real-life audiovisual information instead of more abstract parameters used in previous models.

Temperature is a key physiological factor that determines the speed of immune reactions. While this may seem obvious, it has remained largely unexplored at the single-cell level—until now. Stefan Wieser from the Institute of Zoology at the University of Innsbruck and his colleagues report in Developmental Cell that the motor protein Myosin II regulates the temperature sensitivity of immune cells and drives the acceleration of immune responses at elevated body temperature.

New research from Virginia Tech shows that controlling pond water levels and removing invasive hybrids may be key to protecting the endangered California tiger salamander.