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The giant unicellular ciliate Stentor coeruleus can be cut into pieces and each piece will regenerate into a healthy, full-sized individual. The molecular mechanism for how Stentor regenerates is a complete mystery, however, the process of regeneration shows striking similarities to the process of cell division. On a morphological level, the process of creating a second mouth in division or a new oral apparatus in regeneration have the same steps and occur in the same order. On the transcriptional level, genes encoding elements of the cell division and cell cycle regulatory machinery, including Aurora kinases, are differentially expressed during regeneration. This suggests that there may be some common regulatory mechanisms involved in both regeneration and cell division. If the cell cycle machinery really does play a role in regeneration, then inhibition of proteins that regulate the timing of cell division may also affect the timing of regeneration in Stentor. Here we show that two well-characterized Aurora kinase A+B inhibitors that affect the timing of regeneration. ZM447439 slows down regeneration by at least one hour. PF03814735 completely suppresses regeneration until the drug is removed. Here we provide the first direct experimental evidence that Stentor may harness the cell division machinery to regulate the sequential process of regeneration.

Sleep is a behavior that exists broadly across animal phyla, from flies to humans, and is necessary for normal brain function. Recent studies in both vertebrates and invertebrates have suggested a role for glial cells in sleep regulatory processes. Changes in neural-glial interactions have been shown to be critical for synaptic plasticity and circuit function. Here, we wanted to test the hypothesis that changes in sleep pressure alters neural-glial interactions. In the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, sleep is known to be regulated by mushroom body (MB) circuits. We used the technique GFP Reconstitution Across Synaptic Partners (GRASP) to test whether changes in sleep pressure affect neural-glial interactions between MB neurons and astrocytes, a specialized glial cell type known to regulate sleep in flies and mammals. The MB-astrocyte GRASP signal was reduced after 24 h of sleep deprivation, whereas the signal returned to baseline levels following 72 h of recovery. Social enrichment, which increases sleep drive, similarly reduced the MB-astrocyte GRASP signal. We did not observe any changes in the MB-astrocyte GRASP signal over time-of-day, or following paraquat exposure or starvation. These data suggest that changes in sleep pressure are linked to dynamic changes in neural-glial interactions between astrocytes and neuronal sleep circuits, which are not caused by normal rest-activity cycles or stressors.

Dentate granule cells are born throughout life in the mammalian hippocampus. The integration of newborn neurons into the dentate circuit is activity-dependent, and structural data characterizing synapse formation suggested that the survival of adult-born granule cells is regulated by competition for synaptic partners. Here we tested this hypothesis by using a mouse model with genetically enhanced plasticity of mature granule cells through temporally controlled expression of a nuclear inhibitor of protein phosphatase ₁ (NIPP₁*). Using thymidine analogues and retrovirus-mediated cell labeling, we show that synaptic integration and subsequent survival of newborn neurons is decreased in NIPP₁*-expressing mice, suggesting that newborn neurons compete with preexisting granule cells for stable integration. The data presented here provides experimental evidence for a long-standing hypothesis and suggest cellular competition as a key mechanism regulating the integration and survival of newborn granule cells in the adult mammalian hippocampus.