Pre-clinical medicine: basic sciences

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).

In DNA Cloning and Assembly Methods, expert researchers in the field detail many of the methods which are now commonly used for DNA cloning and make cloning procedures faster, more reliable and also suitable for high-throughput handling.

"e;Next generation"e; sequencing techniques allow for more detailed analysis of exons and introns in multiple genes at the same time.

Due to their importance to cell biology, DNA topology-altering enzymes, collectively DNA topoisomerases and gyrases, have been studied thoroughly from a biochemical perspective, yet the expansion of research at the molecular and cellular levels continues to show a great deal of promise.

Transposable elements are used as genetic tools for dissecting the function of a specific gene and elaborating on mechanisms leading to genetic change and diversity, and the evolutionary impact of mobile DNA on the biology and evolution of organism.

Chromatin is of central importance to gene regulation in eukaryotes.

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.

Hearing is a sensory modality critical to both language and cognitive development.

The genomes of humans, as well as many other species, are interspersed with hundreds of thousands of tandem repeats of DNA sequences.

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.

Over the past few years, DNA methylation technologies and our knowledge of DNA methylation patterns have been advancing at a breathtaking pace.

Since the first edition, published in 2001, genomics research has taken great strides.

Gene correction is a technology that gives us the tools for both repairing and mutating DNA, for discovering gene functions and for engineering new genetic variants.

This volume of Methods in Molecular Biology focuses on techniques to determine the function of a gene.

Exciting work in the past decade has revealed commonalities and differences among individual cell fusion events.

Over the last decade Life Science has undergone an accelerated evolution, culminating in the -omics era characterized by the development of a multitude of high throughput methods that are becoming more routinely applied in biochemistry labs.

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.

Recent work has revealed that stabilizing G-quadruplexes in telomeric DNA inhibits telomerase activity, providing impetus for the development of G-quartet-interacting drugs, while G-quartet-containing oligonucleotides have been recognized as a potent class of aptamers effective against STAT3 and other transcription factors implicated in oncogenesis, proving these guanine-quartets to be a vital and rich area for future study.

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.

DNA has been known to be the cellular target for many cytotoxic anticancer agents for several decades.

Following the completion of the mouse and human genome sequences, a major challengeisthefunctionalcharacterizationofeverymammaliangeneandthedeciph- ing of their molecular interaction network.

In miRNomics: MicroRNA Biology and Computational Analysis, expert researchers in the field present an overview of the current state of the art and aim to put the respective areas of research into a larger perspective.

Over the course of the last hundred years, the field of endocrinology has received ever-increasing attention.

The study of functional glycomics requires the continuous development of rapid and sensitive methods for the identification of glycan structures and integration to structure-function relationships.

Adenovirus Methods and Protocols, Second Edition, now in two volumes, is an essential resource for adenovirus (Ad) researchers beginning in the field, and an inspirational starting point for researchers looking to branch into new areas of Ad study.

Classical methods for microbial strain engineering, used to improve the production of bioproducts, have serious drawbacks and have been found to be unsuitable for complex strain development applications.

Recent advances in organic chemistry, fluorescent microscopy, and materials science have created an entirely new range of techniques and probes for imaging DNA damage in molecular and cellular biology.

Hepatocytes account for approximately 80% of the liver mass and play a significant role in various aspects of liver physiopathology, exhibiting unrivaled complexity and diversity of functions.

As functional genomics has become one of the major focuses in molecular biology, the need for more sophisticated tools to assist in the identification of the functionality of undefined genes and the correlation of DNA variants with a particular phenotype has increased greatly.

The recent expansion in diversity of RNA and DNA editing types has stimulated the development of many unique genetic, molecular, biochemical, and computational approaches to biological issues.

In Therapeutic Applications of Ribozymes and Riboswitches: Methods and Protocols, expert researchers in the field provide a complete overview of protocols used in the development of RNA molecule as drugs and drug target.

As researchers continue to make enormous progress in mapping disease genes, exciting, novel, and complex analyses have emerged.

Genomic imprinting, the process by which the non-equivalence of the paternal and maternal genomes is established, has been fascinating us for over three decades and has provided many emerging scientists with the chance to hit their stride in a frontier posing many unexpected questions and even more surprising answers.

In both vertebrates and invertebrates, Hedgehog signaling regulates the development of the tissues and structures of the body.

Since the publication of the first edition, the techniques and experimental approaches employed in the study of adipose tissue have undergone radical expansion and revision.

RNA abundance analysis is one of the most important approaches for gene expression studies in the field of molecular biology.

Viruses and RNAi share an intricate relationship at many levels.

While many cytokines are known for their inflammatory action, there is a growing interest in the tissue-protective effects of some cytokines.

The earliest descriptions of human chromosomes initiated the genomics revolution that is now upon us.

In the last few years, technologies that allow for monitoring and manipulating neuronal networks at a single cell resolution have been rapidly expanding.

Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE): Digital Gene Expression Profiling facilitates the introduction of SAGE into the laboratory, and provides a framework for interpreting and comparing data derived from SAGE experiments.

In recent years, single nucleotide polymorphisms have received increased and special attention in a rapidly developing field of personalized medicine and drug treatment.

The de novo fabrication of custom DNA molecules is a transformative technology that significantly affects the biotechnology industry.

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.

Arthritis Research: Methods and Protocols is a compendium of data pertinent to the methods and protocols that have contributed to recent advances in molecular medicine in general, but to the molecular basis of rheumatic disease in particular.

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.

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.