Issue Cover (February 2020)

Front cover:Mature neurons in the healthy central nervous system are considered to be permanently post ‐mitotic cells. In several neurodegenerative diseases, however, ectopic neuronal cell cycle events are found associated with regions of neuronal death. In the paper by Zhu et al., the authors use abnormal neuronal cell cycle activity as a screen to test natural compounds derived from marine bacter ia for their potential in preventing it and thus acting as neuroprotective agents.Image content: This image shows cerebellar Purkinje cells in one ‐month old mouse model of ataxia‐telangiectasia, a neurodegenerative disease. Note that many of the Purkinje cells, the cells at risk for death in the human disease, are abnormally expressing the cell cycle related protein PCNA (red immunostaining), suggesting they have initiated an abnormal cel l cycle event, just as they do in the human disease. Neurons in the granule cell layer are also positive, as are oligodendrocytes in the white matter, suggesting that these cell types too are at risk for death. The neuronal marker MAP2 (green) shows the neuronal cell bodies. Cell nuclei are stained with the nuclear marker, DAPI.Read the full preface ‘Marine bacterial extracts as a new rich source of drugs against Alzheimer's disease’ by B. Zhu, Z. Li, P ‐Y. Qian, K. Herrup (J. Neurochem. 2020, vol. 152 (4), pp. 493–508) on doi:10.1111/jnc.14847
Source: Journal of Neurochemistry - Category: Neuroscience Tags: Issue Cover Source Type: research