This week’s articles show how excitatory synapses are weakened during sleep and how the catalytic subunit of PKC-cs may mediate the choice between different modes of double-strand DNA break repair.
NEUROSCIENCE
Synapse remodeling during sleep
de Vivo et al. report that a few hours of sleep leads to a decrease in the size of synapses in the cortex of the brain (see also Acsády and Harris).
Diering et al. found that excitatory synapses are globally weakened during sleep (see also Acsády and Harris).
DNA REPAIR
Activating DNA repair
Sibanda et al. present a crystal structure that shows how components of the nonhomologous end-joining machinery modulate kinase activation in DNA repair.
