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By Eleni Chrysostomou, PhD Candidate, NUIG Why do we need to know how the Nervous System develops and regenerates? The structure and function of the nervous system remains one of the most fascinating and yet challenging aspects in biology. The way in which neural progenitors (NPs) are specified and spatially arranged, and how they proliferate, differentiate and migrate to form a functional nervous system is controlled by patterning mechanisms which are not fully understood. When it comes to neuronal regeneration, the picture is even more blurry. Unravelling how these patterning mechanisms are controlled and regulated to form a neuronal …

By Sinead Kinsella PhD The Ubiquitin Proteasome System (UPS) The Ubiquitin Proteasome System (UPS) is a regulatory machinery for protein turnover in the cell (Pickart, 2001), and strict regulation of the balance between protein synthesis and degradation is essential for cellular homeostasis (Gaczynska et al., 2001). The UPS is composed of the ubiquitination system, which governs the labelling of proteins for degradation, and the proteasome, which carries out protein degradation (Jansen et al., 2014). Ubiquitin degradation is a highly regulated process with specific targeting of the protein with ubiquitin molecules prior to degradation by the …