Dalí makes it into Nature Chemical Biology

Wow, just wow. Nature Chemical Biology has done it. Yes they have published the most bizarre and surreal image ever to be unleashed on a journal front cover.

Dream caused by neuronal decay

Salvador Dalí could never have imagined that one day his work would feature in such a prominent place for an artist of his stature. He could not have thought this in his wildest dreams, and he did have some pretty wild dreams. The image takes inspiration from 3 of his famous paintings, the first being "Dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate a second before awakening". Well, there are no pomegranates here but we do have a tiger leaping out of the sky and clamping its jaw around a neuron. Pretty cool and not quite as confusing as the pomegranate, fish, tiger, tiger, gun sequence from the original painting. The melting clock in the foreground is of course from Dalí's "The persistence of memory", its presence here probably a sad reflection that Huntington's disease can affect many people early in their lives. And finally the trees in the background come from "The three sphinxes of bikini". They are meant to symbolise the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb in the original painting and so here gives another hint to the deadly nature of the disease. Not really much fun here after all.

I like that Nature Chem Bio does give you a little peak into what the authors were smoking when they made the image. The tiger apparently is meant to show the "difference in proteostasis mechanisms" which determines the "longevity of a neuron". Hence why our tiger is trying to eat that giant neuron.

No tigers were harmed during the making of this cover

The Paper: Proteostasis of polyglutamine varies among neurons and predicts neurodegeneration
Found at: Nature Chemical Biology, 2013, 9, 586-592

The paper is a study on the huntingtin toxin, a protein that causes Huntington's disease. The level of glutamine residues in the toxin can vary and it is this variation that leads to the protein misfolding and causing the disease. The larger polyglutamine regions were important as they also reduced the lifetime of the toxin. It was found that different neurons cleared the huntingtin toxin at different rates, with cortical neurons acting quicker than striatal neurons and thus living longer. They concluded that the biological pathways and in particular the Nrf2 pathway, responsible for protein degradation would be good targets for therapeutics for treating misfolded protein diseases. So maybe some good news in the end.

The Octacoss!

The Octacoss is upon us! Run for your lives... A recent cover from OBC introduces the latest terror to be unearthed from the depths of the seven scientific seas.

Watch out the Octacoss is about

This new monster is staring with unblinking eyes, piercing the soul of any unsuspecting readers. But you'd soon forgive him any harm done, as he is rather cute.

The little pink guy is wrapping his far-reaching tentacles around a number of useful objects found lying on the bed of any well stocked laboratory sea. Coral dendrimers; often showing fascinating fractal patterns which may increase the tentacle's reach. Starfish labels; not the usual prey of our 8-legged friends and so instead used undoubtedly as a tool (perhaps a ninja throwing star). Anchor linkers; holding the beast in place and catching any passersby hook, line and sinker.

Boldly displayed on his chest, the creature is showing off a rather geeky tattoo. A chemical schematic of a silsesquioxane with the 8 branches shooting off down his 8 tentacles. The artists have given a wonderfully fun, if not overly dramatic representation of their cubic structure. However, we should now be considering whether a journal cover is the right place to show such ridiculous images. As other academics are likely to be the only people viewing it, will it interest them? There are not many chances for this kind of expression in a field that is often overly serious about itself and so in my opinion, yes, why not have a bit of fun. It's big, it's bold, it's a little bit silly, but it definitely draws you in and it sent me looking up what these silsesquithingys are all about.

Putting the Octa in Octacoss

The Paper: Bioconjugation on cube-octameric silsesquioxanes
Found at: Org. Biomol. Chem., 2013, 11, 2224-2236

The article is a review of recent advances in the modification of these highly symmetric structures. COSS are cube-octameric silsesquioxanes, therefore OCTACOSS are octa cube-octameric silsesquioxanes. The authors seem to have developed an all too common case of RAS syndrome.

It is the biochemical elements in this review that make it stand out (as well as the delightful octopus). COSS are not particularly new structures having first been synthesised in 1955. But the functionalisation and recent biological applications are importantly highlighted.

The high stability and low toxicity of the core structures is discussed in the article. Particular attention is then paid by the authors to the bioconjugation and self-assembly of glycoclusters for studying lectin binding and the use of dendrimer constructs for drug delivery. The review finishes with an analysis of the "most advanced application" of COSS scaffolds as molecular probes. A decent review overall, covering a wide range of uses for a not so monstrous creation.