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Molecular Logics in Human Neuroscience

A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Neurobiology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2023) | Viewed by 1536

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
1. Past Chairperson, Science Advisory Board, Cures Within Reach, Chicago, IL 60602, USA
2. Faculty, Frontier Development Lab and Affiliate, Network for Life Detection (NfoLD) and Member, GeneLab Multi-Omics and Systems Biology Analysis Working Group, SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
3. Member, Councils for Biometrics and Nanotechnology and Initiatives for Brain, Life Sciences, and Quantum, Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, NY 10016-5997, USA
Interests: neurotechnology; nanotechnology and microtechnology; aneural plasticity; biomolecular logics and memory systems; synaptic plasticity and metaplasticity; perception; cognition; communication; learning and memory; intercellular and intracellular signalling; cellular response regulation; cellular energetics; multi-analyte systems; neurobiology; neuropsychiatric diseases, injury, and recovery; pathogens and parasites; therapeutics discovery, design, and repurposing; multi-omics data; multi-modal imaging; neurobehavioral animal models; translational medicine; theragnostic medicine; digital medicine; precision medicine; earth and space medicine; earth and space biology; origins of life; naked replicating agents and protocells; molecular and cellular evolution; social intelligence; animal intelligence; microbial intelligence; cellular decision making; problem solving; artificial intelligence; electronic or artificial life; comparative intelligence; society and culture

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to submit your manuscripts to the Special Issue “Molecular Logics in Human Neuroscience” to be published online in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. With advances in molecular biology and engineering, macromolecules such as enzymes, nucleotides, and sensor/binding proteins, being elemental components of (inter- and intra)cellular networks, now capture wider attention for their pivotal computational influence over natural cell logics and their utility in biomedical technology, as in drugs, cell therapies, multi-analyte biomarkers and probes, and nanomachines. Earliest hypothesized and demonstrated uses of single organic molecules as classical logic operators ushered in several decades of work on prototype molecule-based computational circuits and nanomachines. Synthetic biologists and nanotechnologists still struggle to design and fabricate next-generation miniature biomaterial gadgets capable of replacing unreliable, less powerful, and physically limited conventional semiconductor devices. However, continued progress in programmable biological units has brought reconfigurable toggle switches, oscillators, logic gates, sensors, filters, logic circuits, and memory devices to the proof-of-concept, technology-transfer, and commercialization stages of development. As fundamental logical primitives, logic gates play an essential role in building complex computational systems established from molecular complexes, short sequential bioreactions, and coupled bionetworks. The list of molecules that execute gating operations and logic circuits currently include riboswitches, promoter and repressor genes, metal–ion chelators, oligonucleotides, DNA and RNA strands, photochromes, protein kinases, and other substrates capable of classical, quantum, and hybrid classical–quantum computations. Successes in exploiting molecular Boolean and quantum gates linked to cellular response regulation pathways enable the assembly of (semi)autonomous sensor, command, and control platforms for nanorobotics. Such multilevel platforms are beginning to figure prominently in theragnostic and regenerative medicine and small-payload delivery, among other uses.

The Special Issue “Molecular Logics in Human Neuroscience” focuses on trends in natural and artificial or man-made biomolecular logics systems and their role in the development, operation, disease and injury, as well as diagnosis and treatment of the human central and peripheral nervous systems. Submissions involving original basic, translational, and clinical science on molecular logics or critical reviews on historical, contemporary, and future innovations on the topic are particularly welcome, as are manuscripts that relate to the study, advancement, and use of molecular logics in computational models valid for human neuroscientific understanding and application on or off Earth.

Dr. Kevin B. Clark
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • biomolecular gates and multi-analyte systems
  • cell programming and neurodevelopment
  • cell signaling and sensing
  • cellular response regulation and energetics
  • earth and space biomedicine
  • molecular probes and biomarkers
  • neural and intercellular networks
  • neuropsychiatric diseases, injury, and recovery
  • neurotropic infectious diseases
  • perception and cognition
  • synaptic plasticity and metaplasticity
  • translational, regenerative, and precision medicine
  • theragnostics discovery, design, and repurposing

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

13 pages, 1593 KiB  
Article
Uncovering the Genetic and Molecular Features of Huntington’s Disease in Northern Colombia
by Mostapha Ahmad, Margarita R. Ríos-Anillo, Johan E. Acosta-López, Martha L. Cervantes-Henríquez, Martha Martínez-Banfi, Wilmar Pineda-Alhucema, Pedro Puentes-Rozo, Cristian Sánchez-Barros, Andrés Pinzón, Hardip R. Patel, Jorge I. Vélez, José Luis Villarreal-Camacho, David A. Pineda, Mauricio Arcos-Burgos and Manuel Sánchez-Rojas
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2023, 24(22), 16154; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms242216154 - 10 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1211
Abstract
Huntington’s disease (HD) is a genetic disorder caused by a CAG trinucleotide expansion in the huntingtin (HTT) gene. Juan de Acosta, Atlántico, a city located on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, is home to the world’s second-largest HD pedigree. Here, we [...] Read more.
Huntington’s disease (HD) is a genetic disorder caused by a CAG trinucleotide expansion in the huntingtin (HTT) gene. Juan de Acosta, Atlántico, a city located on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, is home to the world’s second-largest HD pedigree. Here, we include 291 descendants of this pedigree with at least one family member with HD. Blood samples were collected, and genomic DNA was extracted. We quantified the HTT CAG expansion using an amplicon sequencing protocol. The genetic heterogeneity was measured as the ratio of the mosaicism allele’s read peak and the slippage ratio of the allele’s read peak from our sequence data. The statistical and bioinformatic analyses were performed with a significance threshold of p < 0.05. We found that the average HTT CAG repeat length in all participants was 21.91 (SD = 8.92). Of the 291 participants, 33 (11.3%, 18 females) had a positive molecular diagnosis for HD. Most affected individuals were adults, and the most common primary and secondary alleles were 17/7 (CAG/CCG) and 17/10 (CAG/CCG), respectively. The mosaicism increased with age in the participants with HD, while the slippage analyses revealed differences by the HD allele type only for the secondary allele. The slippage tended to increase with the HTT CAG repeat length in the participants with HD, but the increase was not statistically significant. This study analyzed the genetic and molecular features of 291 participants, including 33 with HD. We found that the mosaicism increased with age in the participants with HD, particularly for the secondary allele. The most common haplotype was 17/7_17/10. The slippage for the secondary allele varied by the HD allele type, but there was no significant difference in the slippage by sex. Our findings offer valuable insights into HD and could have implications for future research and clinical management. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Molecular Logics in Human Neuroscience)
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