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International audience; Addiction is a chronic brain disorder that progressively invades all aspects of personal life. Accordingly, addiction to opiates severely impairs interpersonal relationships, and the resulting social isolation strongly contributes to the severity and chronicity of the disease. Uncovering new therapeutic strategies that address this aspect of addiction is therefore of great clinical relevance. We recently established a mouse model of heroin addiction in which, following chronic heroin exposure, 'abstinent' mice progressively develop a strong and long-lasting social avoidance phenotype. Here, we explored and compared the efficacy of two pharmacological interventions in this mouse model. Because clinical studies indicate some efficacy of antidepressants on emotional dysfunction associated with addiction, we first used a chronic 4-week treatment with the serotonergic antidepressant fluoxetine, as a reference. In addition, considering prodepressant effects recently associated with kappa opioid receptor signaling, we also investigated the kappa opioid receptor antagonist norbinaltorphimine (norBNI). Finally, we assessed whether fluoxetine and norBNI could reverse abstinence-induced social avoidance after it has established. Altogether, our results show that two interspaced norBNI administrations are sufficient both to prevent and to reverse social impairment in heroin abstinent animals. Therefore, kappa opioid receptor antagonism may represent a useful approach to alleviate social dysfunction in addicted individuals. more...

© 2017 The Authors In bacteria, ribosomal hibernation shuts down translation as a response to stress, through reversible binding of stress-induced proteins to ribosomes. This process typically involves the formation of 100S ribosome dimers. Here, we present the structures of hibernating ribosomes from human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus containing a long variant of the hibernation-promoting factor (SaHPF) that we solved using cryo-electron microscopy. Our reconstructions reveal that the N-terminal domain (NTD) of SaHPF binds to the 30S subunit as observed for shorter variants of HPF in other species. The C-terminal domain (CTD) of SaHPF protrudes out of each ribosome in order to mediate dimerization. Using NMR, we characterized the interactions at the CTD-dimer interface. Secondary interactions are provided by helix 26 of the 16S ribosomal RNA. We also show that ribosomes in the 100S particle adopt both rotated and unrotated conformations. Overall, our work illustrates a specific mode of ribosome dimerization by long HPF, a finding that may help improve the selectivity of antimicrobials. more...

Addiction is a chronic brain disorder that progressively invades all aspects of personal life. Accordingly, addiction to opiates severely impairs interpersonal relationships, and the resulting social isolation strongly contributes to the severity and chronicity of the disease. Uncovering new therapeutic strategies that address this aspect of addiction is therefore of great clinical relevance. We recently established a mouse model of heroin addiction in which, following chronic heroin exposure, 'abstinent' mice progressively develop a strong and long-lasting social avoidance phenotype. Here, we explored and compared the efficacy of two pharmacological interventions in this mouse model. Because clinical studies indicate some efficacy of antidepressants on emotional dysfunction associated with addiction, we first used a chronic 4-week treatment with the serotonergic antidepressant fluoxetine, as a reference. In addition, considering prodepressant effects recently associated with kappa opioid receptor signaling, we also investigated the kappa opioid receptor antagonist norbinaltorphimine (norBNI). Finally, we assessed whether fluoxetine and norBNI could reverse abstinence-induced social avoidance after it has established. Altogether, our results show that two interspaced norBNI administrations are sufficient both to prevent and to reverse social impairment in heroin abstinent animals. Therefore, kappa opioid receptor antagonism may represent a useful approach to alleviate social dysfunction in addicted individuals. more...

The cell surface antigen CD59 is an inhibitor of complement-mediated lysis and a member of the Ly6 superfamily (Ly6SF) of cysteine-rich cell-surface molecules whose sequences are related to those of snake venom neurotoxins. The three-dimensional solution structure of a recombinant form of the extracellular region of the molecule (residues 1-70 of the mature protein; sCD59) has been solved by 2D NMR methods. sCD59 is a relatively flat, disk-shaped molecule consisting of a two-standed beta-sheet finger loosely packed against a protein core formed by a three-stranded beta-sheet and a short helix. Structure calculations allowed an unambiguous assignment of the disulfide-bonded cysteine pairs as 3-26, 6-13, 19-39, 45-63, and 64-69. The topology of sCD59 is similar to that of the snake venom neurotoxins and consistent with an evolutionary relationship existing between the Ly6SF and the neurotoxins. more...