Biology subjects

Garai, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Garai, A..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Discrete and sequential critical periods organise the development of task-specific sensorimotor circuits in mice

Somatosensory circuits in early life must maintain stable, task-selective pathways while behavioural repertoires undergo rapid change. How such circuits construct these behaviours under evolving functional demands has remained unclear. Here we show that sensorimotor behaviours are shaped through sequential, experience-dependent critical periods rather than a single global window of plasticity. Using transient perturbations of somatosensory input across postnatal development in mice, we identify three discrete life stages that exert lasting effects on adult behaviour. Perturbation during postnatal days 8-12 selectively increases adult sensitivity to dynamic touch. The same manipulation during days 13-17 produces persistent deficits in motor coordination. Perturbation during days 18-22 instead results in lifelong impairments in skilled locomotion. These findings reveal that somatosensory circuits undergo multiple phases of refinement, each aligned with the changing functional needs of the developing organism. This framework of sequential, task-specific critical periods offers a new model for building lifelong sensorimotor function. Significance StatementDeveloping sensory systems must construct precise neural circuits to support dynamic behaviours that change with postnatal experience. We show that somatosensory circuits achieve this through sequential, task-specific critical periods, rather than a single fixed window of plasticity. This dynamic framework demonstrates how experience can guide the stepwise construction of sensorimotor behaviours, offering a new perspective on critical periods across complex, multimodal systems.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Supramolecular cylinders target bulge structures in the 5-prime UTR of the RNA genome of SARS-CoV-2 and inhibit viral replication

The untranslated regions (UTRs) of viral genomes contain a variety of conserved yet dynamic structures crucial for viral replication, providing drug targets for the development of broad spectrum anti-virals. We combine in vitro RNA analysis with Molecular Dynamics simulations to build the first 3D models of the structure and dynamics of key regions of the 5 UTR of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. Furthermore, we determine the binding of metallo-supramolecular helicates (cylinders) to this RNA structure. These nano-size agents are uniquely able to thread through RNA junctions and we identify their binding to a 3-base bulge and the central cross 4-way junction located in the stem loop 5. Finally, we show these RNA-binding cylinders suppress SARS-CoV-2 replication, highlighting their potential as novel antiviral agents.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2016

An Optimized Approach for Annotation of Large Eukaryotic Genomic Sequences using Genetic Algorithm

Detection of important functional and/or structural elements and identifying their positions in a large eukaryotic genome is an active research area. Gene is an important functional and structural unit of DNA. The computation of gene prediction is essential for detailed genome annotation. In this paper, we propose a new gene prediction technique based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) for determining the optimal positions of exons of a gene in a chromosome or genome. The correct identification of the coding and non-coding regions are difficult and computationally demanding. The proposed genetic-based method, named Gene Prediction with Genetic Algorithm (GPGA), reduces this problem by searching only one exon at a time instead of all exons along with its introns. The advantage of this representation is that it can break the entire gene-finding problem into a number of smaller subspaces and thereby reducing the computational complexity. We tested the performance of the GPGA with some benchmark datasets and compared the results with the well-known and relevant techniques. The comparison shows the better or comparable performance of the proposed method (GPGA). We also used GPGA for annotating the human chromosome 21 (HS21) using cross species comparison with the mouse orthologs.

bioinformatics↗