Issue Cover (July 2018)

Front cover: Background: Gestational alcohol exposure causes a range of neuropsychological disorders by modulating neurodevelopmental genes and proteins. The extent of damage depends on the stage of the embryo, as well as dosage, duration, and frequency of exposure. Main results: Employing hESC‐derived neural cultures as an in vitro model we demonstrated that alcohol treatment perturbs MAPK/ERK signaling accompanied with deregulation of miR‐145 by targeting the neural specifier Sox‐2 causing compromised neuronal complexity which results in abnormal neurogenesis. Employing molecular endpoints in a humanized model we showed for the first time that acute alcohol exposure could lead to impaired brain development. Implication: These findings opens up an opportunity to further investigate the cell‐autonomous and non‐autonomous actions of alcohol on the central as well as peripheral nervous system. Image content: De novo generated neural progenitors stained for pan neuronal marker TUJ1 (green) by immunocytochemistry; nuclei was stained with DAPI (blue).Read the full article Transcriptional profiling of human neural precursors post alcohol exposure reveals impaired neurogenesis via dysregulation of ERK signaling and miR‐145 by L. K. Louis, R. Gopurappilly, H. Surendran, S. Dutta, R. Pal ( J. Neurochem . 2018, vol. 146 (1), pp. 47–62) on doi: 10.1111/jnc.14155