Biology subjects

Monti, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Monti, M..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2018

Dissociating Language and Thought in Human Reasoning

What is the relationship between language and complex thought? In the context of deductive reasoning there are two main views. Under the first, which we label here the language-centric view, language is central to the syntax-like combinatorial operations of complex reasoning. Under the second, which we label here the language-independent view, these operations are dissociable from the mechanisms of natural language. We applied continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS), a form of noninvasive neuromodulation, to healthy adult participants to transiently inhibit a subregion of Brocas area (BA44) associated in prior work with parsing the syntactic relations of natural language. We similarly inhibited a subregion of dorsomedial frontal cortex (BA8) which has been associated with core features of logical reasoning. There was a significant interaction between task and stimulation site. Post hoc tests revealed that performance on a linguistic reasoning task, but not deductive reasoning task, was significantly impaired after inhibition of BA44, and performance on a deductive reasoning task, but not linguistic reasoning task, was decreased after inhibition of BA8 (however not significantly). Subsequent linear contrasts supported this pattern. These novel results suggest that deductive reasoning may be dissociable from linguistic processes in the adult human brain, consistent with the language-independent view.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Unbiased dynamic characterization of RNA-protein interactions by OOPS

Current methods for the identification of RNA-protein interactions require a quantity and quality of sample that hinders their application, especially for dynamic biological systems or when sample material is limiting. Here, we present a new approach to enrich RNA-Binding Proteins (RBPs): Orthogonal Organic Phase Separation (OOPS), which is compatible with downstream proteomics and RNA sequencing. OOPS enables recovery of RBPs and free protein, or protein-bound RNA and free RNA, from a single sample in an unbiased manner. By applying OOPS to human cell lines, we extract the majority of known RBPs, and importantly identify additional novel RBPs, including those from previously under-represented cellular compartments. The high yield and unbiased nature of OOPS facilitates its application in both dynamic and inaccessible systems. Thus, we have identified changes in RNA-protein interactions in mammalian cells following nocodazole cell-cycle arrest, and defined the first bacterial RNA-interactome. Overall, OOPS provides an easy-to-use and flexible technique that opens new opportunities to characterize RNA-protein interactions and explore their dynamic behaviour.

cell biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Theory of Circadian Metabolism

Many organisms repartition their proteome in a circadian fashion in response to the daily nutrient changes in their environment. A striking example is provided by cyanobacteria, which perform photosynthesis during the day to fix carbon. These organisms not only face the challenge of rewiring their proteome every 12 hours, but also the necessity of storing the fixed carbon in the form of glycogen to fuel processes during the night. In this manuscript, we extend the framework developed by Hwa and coworkers (Scott et al., Science 330, 1099 (2010)) for quantifying the relatinship between growth and proteome composition to circadian metabolism. We then apply this framework to investigate the circadian metabolism of the cyanobacterium Cyanothece, which not only fixes carbon during the day, but also nitrogen during the night, storing it in the polymer cyanophycin. Our analysis reveals that the need to store carbon and nitrogen tends to generate an extreme growth strategy, in which the cells predominantly grow during the day, as observed experimentally. This strategy maximizes the growth rate over 24 hours, and can be quantitatively understood by the bacterial growth laws. Our analysis also shows that the slow relaxation of the proteome, arising from the slow growth rate, puts a severe constraint on implementing this optimal strategy. Yet, the capacity to estimate the time of the day, enabled by the circadian clock, makes it possible to anticipate the daily changes in the environment and mount a response ahead of time. This significantly enhances the growth rate by counteracting the detrimental effects of the slow proteome relaxation.

systems biology↗