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Avian influenza A H7N9 viruses that emerged in China in 2013 have reappeared each year, causing more than 1 600 severe human infections. As these viruses have evolved in nature, they have gained some and can gain additional virulence determinants that enhance their risk for humans, underlining the urgent need to control and eradicate H7N9 viruses in China.
In an elegant publication in Cell Research, Tan and colleagues showed that ablation of PRRT2 in cerebellar granule cells is sufficient to induce paroxysmal kinesigenic dyskinesia. PRRT2 turns out to downregulate the presynaptic SNARE complex in granule cell axons, which in turn controls the activity patterns of Purkinje cells, the sole output of the cerebellar cortex.
B cells undergo stringent selection in germinal centers (GCs) for expression of high-affinity antibodies, however, mechanisms of negative selection of low-affinity B cell clones remain elusive. A new study by Michel Nussenzweig's group published in Science leverages a new reporter system that marks pre-apoptotic GC B cells to dissect microanatomic regions of GCs and their role in affinity maturation.
Two articles in Cell Research focus on the structure-function relationships in the shelterin complex that binds to telomeres and is essential for their stability and functions. These studies concerning both mammalian and Schizosaccharomyces pombe proteins reveal unexpected structural conservation of a motif called TRFH (Telomeric Repeat Factors Homology) domain between several subunits in these complexes, providing a rationale for further dissection of the role of telomeres in chromosome stability, aging and cancer, and encouraging us to revisit the evolution of telomere proteins.
