Although the available models, whether at the cellular, tissue, or animal level, do not exactly represent the biology of human brain tumors, animal models can offer significant insights into these tumors, providing a better understanding of biological mechanisms underlying tumor generation, growth, angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis.
Providing widely used techniques in genetic model systems and many complementing animal models, Brain Development: Methods and Protocols focuses its expert contributions on two key technical aspects of developmental neurobiology: detection of gene expression and functional characterization of developmental control genes.
With the sequencing of the human genome complete, the field of proteomics, still in its early stages, has become an important and informative field of biomedical research.
Aiming toward improvement in the safety, efficiency, and specificity of viral vectors for neurobiological research and clinical applications, Viral Vector Approaches in Neurobiology and Brain Diseases covers key aspects related to the use of viral vectors in neuroscience, with a major emphasis on basic mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, learning, and memory, as well as molecular neuropharmacology and experimental animal models of brain disorders.
In Gene Therapy Protocols, Volumes 1 & 2, internationally recognized investigators describe cutting-edge laboratory techniques for the study of Production and In Vivo Applications of Gene Transfer Vectors (Volume 1) and Design and Characterization of Gene Transfer Vectors (Volume 2).
One of the major challenges currently facing the scientific community is to understand the function of the multitude of protein-coding genes that were revealed when the human genome was fully sequenced.
In recent years, the need to develop acceptable alternatives to conventional animal testing for neurotoxicity and developmental neurotoxicity has been increasingly recognized, and much effort is being directed toward the development of alternative models, utilizing mostly mammalian cells in culture but also non-mammalian model systems.
Zebrafish (Danio rerio) play an integral role in biomedical research, enabling researchers to examine physiological mechanisms and pathways relevant to human pathogenesis and its therapy.
This book, split into two volumes, presents a broad coverage of the principles and recent developments of sample preparation and fractionation tools in Expression Proteomics in general and for two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) in particular.
In miRNA Maturation: Methods and Protocols, expert researchers in the field detail many of the methods which are now commonly used to study miRNA maturation.
In the last decade, several different optical imaging techniques, either based on various voltage or calcium dyes, or more recently on modified fluorescent or bioluminescent proteins (genetically encoded) that are sensitive to calcium, have been developed to study neuronal activity, and especially groups of neurons, with the goal of mapping and deciphering the neural code underlying major neurophysiological functions.
The current demand for the development of techniques for controlled genetic manipulations is driven by the anatomical and physiological complexity of the brain and by the need for experimental models that can address this complexity through selective manipulation of defined components of the system: specific neuronal populations or selected synapses.
In past decades, the area of bioinformatics has proved to be both dynamic and vital, producing a wide spectrum of novel approaches and assuming an increasingly important role in modern bio-technological development.
Playing an important role in the treatment of neurological disorders, the delivery of drugs to central nervous system (CNS), both administered directly and administered systematically for targeted action, encounters a major challenge in the form of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which limits the access of drugs to the brain substance.
Recent advances in genetics over the last quarter of a century, especially in molecular techniques, have dramatically reduced the cost of determining genetic markers and hence opened up a field of research that is increasingly helping to detect, prevent and/or cure many diseases that afflict humans.
Systems Biology aims at deciphering the genotype-phenotype relationships at the levels of genes, transcripts (RNAs), peptides, proteins, metabolites, and environmental factors participating in complex cellular networks in order to reveal the mechanisms and principles governing the behavior of complex biological systems.
In Chloroplast Biotechnology: Methods and Protocols, expert researchers in the field detail many of the methods which are now commonly used in chloroplast molecular biology.
The rapidly developing methods of systems biology can help investigators in various areas of modern biomedical research to make inference and predictions from their data that intuition alone would not discern.
Mass Spectrometry Data Analysis in Proteomics is an in-depth guide to the theory and practice of analyzing raw mass spectrometry (MS) data in proteomics.
Following the completion of the mouse and human genome sequences, a major challengeisthefunctionalcharacterizationofeverymammaliangeneandthedeciph- ing of their molecular interaction network.
Super-Resolution Microscopy Techniques in the Neurosciences serves as a comprehensive description of current super-resolution techniques, including the physical principles that allowed for their development, some of the most recent neurobiological applications and selected information for the practical use of these technologies.
Structural genomics is a newly emerging field that has arisen following the successful footsteps of the major sequencing efforts generally bundled under the heading "e;genomics"e;.
Rapid advances in computer science, biology, chemistry, and other disciplines are enabling powerful new computational tools and models for toxicology and pharmacology.
In the last few years, technologies that allow for monitoring and manipulating neuronal networks at a single cell resolution have been rapidly expanding.
Not only is the quantity of life science data expanding, but new types of biological data continue to be introduced as a result of technological development and a growing understanding of biological systems.
In the early years of microarray technology, efforts were directed mainly at profiling expressed genes, while recently the microarray platform has been adapted into diverse applications directed toward the investigation of the physical genome.
Understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the development of specific neural circuits is not just an intellectual curiosity but also central to our ability to develop therapeutic approaches to repair damaged pathways in the future.
As the presence of genetically modified animal models in research laboratories has multiplied, the role of genetic factors in the pathogenesis of brain disorders has become particularly important.
A DNA barcode in its simplest definition is one or more short gene sequences taken from a standardized portion of the genome that is used to identify species through reference to DNA sequence libraries or databases.
Once a tedious, highly skilled operation, reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has become a routine and invaluable technique used in most laboratories.
Since the early days, the field of neuropeptide biology has dramatically widened, and today the ultimate frontiers in neuropeptide research lie in the development of pharmacologically active compounds that are capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier to exert their biological role(s) in vivo and in the construction of genetic vectors to be employed in gene therapy.
