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This paper reports the ability to isolate human donor biopsies and use transcription factors to derive induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells from fetal, neonatal, and adult human primary cells, including dermal fibroblasts isolated from a skin biopsy of a healthy adult volunteer. The human iPS cells resembled embryonic stem cells in their morphology and gene expression. These data establish a method to isolate iPS cells from patients, suggesting that it may be possible to use this procedure to isolate patient-specific cells in culture.
Even after a motor skill is overlearned, some variation remains every time it is performed. Such variation enables trial-and-error learning for adult bengalese finch song. Birds rapidly learned to make adaptive shifts in their vocalizations in response to auditory perturbations delivered to a subset of natural variations in their songs, consistent with the idea that motor variability is a form of exploration that can support continuous learning and optimization of performance.
At the onset of mitosis, the nuclear envelope is diassembled, and is reformed at the end of the process. A mechanistic explanation for the reformation of the nuclear envelope is provided, finding that the chaperone p97 (an AAA ATPase) binds to an ubiquitylated form of Aurora B, an inhibitor of nuclear envelope formation, on chromatin. This results in extraction of Aurora B from chromatin, allowing chromosome decondensation and nuclear envelope formation.
A crystal structure of the plasmid partition protein ParR bound to centromeric DNA is described. ParR binds the centromeric DNA repeats as a dimer-of-dimers, which assemble in a super-helical array to form a large segrosome with a solenoid-shaped structure.