Effects of Alzheimer's Disease
A Healthy Brain The healthy brain is made up of millions of interconnecting nerve cells, called neurons. Neurons constantly communicate with each other by sending signals through tentacle-like connections called axons and dendrites. How Alzheimer's Disease Affects the Brain The brain of a patient with Alzheimer's disease is much different. The orderly, organized arrangement of nerve cells found in a healthy brain become entangled, full of senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. The plaques and tangles interfere with the normal activity between neurons in the area of the brain responsible for intellectual thought. Symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease Alzheimer's disease affects people in different ways. The disease is slowly progressive from onset. Memory loss, confusion, disorientation, and poor judgment are a few of the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.
Migraine Pathophysiology
Migraines are believed to be a neurovascular disorder.The phenomenon known as cortical spreading depression, which is associated with the aura of migraine, has been theorized as a possible cause of migraines. In cortical spreading depression, neurological activity is initially activated, then depressed over an area of the cerebral cortex. This situation has been suggested to result in the release of inflammatory mediators leading to irritation of cranial nerve roots, most particularly the trigeminal nerve, which conveys the sensory information for the face and much of the head. This theory is, however, speculative, without any supporting evidence, and there are indeed cogent arguments against it. First, only about one third of migraineurs experience an aura, and those who do not experience aura do not have cortical spreading depression.[citation needed] Second, many migraineurs have a prodrome (see above), which occurs up to three days before the aura.
Eukaryotic transcription
Eukaryotic transcription is more complex than prokaryotic transcription. For instance, in eukaryotes the genetic material (DNA), and therefore transcription, is primarily localized to the nucleus, where it is separated from the cytoplasm (in which translation occurs) by the nuclear membrane. DNA is also present in mitochondria in the cytoplasm and mitochondria utilize a specialized RNA polymerase for transcription. This allows for the temporal regulation of gene expression through the sequestration of the RNA in the nucleus, and allows for selective transport of RNAs to the cytoplasm, where the ribosomes reside.
The basal eukaryotic transcription complex includes the RNA polymerase and additional proteins that are necessary for correct initiation and elongation.
Subscribe in a readerAmong eukaryotes that regulate the transcription of individual genes, the core promoter of protein-encoding gene contains binding sites for the basal transcription complex and RNA polymerase II, and is normally within about 50 bases upstream of the transcription initiation site. Further transcriptional regulation is provided by upstream control elements (UCEs), usually present within about 200 bases upstream of the initiation site. The core promoter for Pol II sometimes contains a TATA box, the highly conserved DNA recognition sequence for the TATA box binding protein, TBP, whose binding initiates transcription complex assembly at the promoter.
Some genes also have enhancer elements that can be thousands of bases upstream or downstream of the transcription initiation site. Combinations of these upstream control elements and enhancers regulate and amplify the formation of the basal transcription complex.
Transcription process Eukaryotes have three nuclear RNA polymerases, each with distinct roles and properties: | Name | Location | RNA transcribed |
| RNA Polymerase I (Pol I, Pol A) | nucleolus | Larger ribosomal RNA (rRNA) (28S, 18S, 5.8S) |
| RNA Polymerase II (Pol II, Pol B) | nucleus | messenger RNA (mRNA) and most small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs) |
| RNA Polymerase III (Pol III, Pol C) | nucleus (and possibly the nucleolus-nucleoplasm interface) | transfer RNA (tRNA) and other small RNAs (including the small 5S rRNA) |
Primary (initial) mRNA transcripts are synthesized as larger precursor RNAs that are processed by splicing out introns (non-coding sequences) and ligating exons (non-contiguous coding sequences) into the mature mRNA. Primary transcripts for some genes can be large. The primary transcripts of the neurexin genes, for instance, are as large as 1.7 megabases (1,700,000 bases), while the mature (processed) neurexin mRNAs are under 10 kilobases (10,000 bases), with as many as 24 exons and thousands of possible alternative splice variants that produce proteins with different activities. Alternative splicing is now incorporated in as much as 60% of human genetic coding, drastically increasing the potential variety of actual proteins produced.
Trans-splicing Observed in range of different eukaryotes (including most conspicuously the worm C. elegans and a group of parasitic protists called kinetoplastids), trans-splicing occurs whereby an exon from one RNA molecule is spliced onto the 5' end of a completely separate molecule post-transcriptionally. While relatively unimportant to many eukaryotes, the role of this process in the biology of some organisms is ubiquitous. In kinetoplastids, for example, every single nuclear-encoded message must be trans-spliced before translation of the message can occur.
