Today the Neumann lab has had three separate manuscripts published by the Micropublication: biology journal!!

This is a wonderful new format of journal which publishes small snippets of data. We have published three articles related to our recent PNAS paper (Abay et al. 2017). This data was required for the review process, but was not included in the final published article. We have used the Micropublication format to have this data, which would never have been published elsewhere, now publicly available. 

In our PNAS paper, we found that the level of regenerative axonal fusion is increased with advancing age. Here, we investigated whether daf-2, a gene with a central role in mediating lifespan, was responsible for this modulation of axonal fusion. Our data demonstrates that daf-2 is not specifically involved in modulating the level of axonal fusion over age, but instead is required for axonal regeneration in general at specific ages.

See our publications page here for links to the articles.
See here for more information on the Micropublication: biology journal.

The first paper from the Neumann lab has now been published by PNAS!!
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Post from 22/08/17
​The first publication from the Neumann lab has been accepted in PNAS!

This research was focused on regeneration of the nervous system, and on a highly efficient mechanism of repair known as axonal fusion.  Axonal fusion allows regrowing axons to reconnect and fuse with their own separated fragments - in effect simply bridging the gap across the site of damage.

We found that axonal fusion restores full function to damaged neurons, allowing C. elegans to completely regain lost function within 48 hours.  In addition, we found that injury results in changes to the axonal membrane, leading to the exposure of lipid ‘save-me’ signals.  These 'save-me' signals mediate the level of axonal fusion, and are essential for the process to occur. 

This research has implications for nervous system repair following injury to either the peripheral (limbs) or central nervous system (eg spinal cord injury).

In addition to be the first publication from our lab, this is the first publication for Zehra, Michelle and Sebastien!!

This is a wonderful achievement by the lab and well worth celebrating!

More info can be found on our publications page.

Our review on Mitofusin-2 has now been published in Biological Reviews!!  It was published on the journals 'early view' section on Oct 25th.

Post from 22/09/2017:
Our review article has been accepted by Biological Reviews!!

Titled "Structure, Function, and Regulation of Mitofusin-2 in Health and Disease", this is a comprehensive review of our current knowledge of the mitochondrial fusion protein Mitofusin-2. We wrote this in collaboration with Michael Lazarou.

This caps off an incredible couple of weeks for the Neumann lab, with this adding to publications accepted in PNAS and Cell Reports late last month.

Congratulations Simran, the lead author on our review!

Update August 25th.
Our paper has now been officially accepted in Cell Reports!!

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Brent has co-authored a paper that has been accepted in principle for publication in Cell Reports!

Our results define how the lin-14 heterochronic gene (one responsible for controlling the timing of developmental processes) controls axonal degeneration in C. elegans.  We found that interactions between an axon and it's surrounding environment is critical for preserving axonal structure throughout life.  Interestingly, the function of the LIN-14 transcription factor is only required very early during development in order to preserve the function of the axon over the lifetime of the worms.
 
This research provides fundamental insights into the cellular mechanisms needed to keep neuronal architecture, and therefore neuronal function, intact.  Furthermore, this has implications for neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, motor neurone, and Charcot-Marie-Tooth diseases, in which axonal degeneration is a common hallmark.

More information can be found on our publications page.