In daily life, I’m a Ph.D. student studying the development of the central nervous system. A few months ago, the first paper was released with my name on it (as a second author), and just yesterday, I received notification of publication of my first paper as a first author.

• Yu YC, Bultje RS, Wang X & Shi SH. Specific synapses develop preferentially among sister excitatory neurons in the neocortex. Nature 458 (7237), pp. 501-4 (2009) [ abstract at Nature ];
• Bultje RS, Castaneda-Castellanos DR, Jan LY, Jan YN, Kriegstein AR & Shi SH. Mammalian Par3 Regulates Progenitor Cell Asymmetric Division via Notch Signaling in the Developing Neocortex. Neuron 63 (2), pp. 189-202 (2009) [ explanation, abstract at Neuron ].

Needless to say, I’m very excited and hope for more novel findings in the future. In short, my publication describes the identification of a mechanism by which radial glial cells, the “stem cells” that give rise to excitatory neurons in the cerebral cortex (the brain region that handles most higher-level functions in mouse and man), divide “asymmetrically”. In this process, stem cells divide to give rise to two different kind of daughter cells: one is another radial glial cells, which will undergo the same process again. The other daughter cell will be a neuron or a transit-amplifying cell (a committed neuronal precursor that will divide to give rise to two neurons). We identified and analyzed the protein mPar3, which seggregates into one half of the dividing cell, and we identified two other molecules downstream of mPar3, through which mPar3 regulates cell fate (”stem cell” versus “neuron”) of the daughter cells.

Asymmetric Division of Radial Glial Cells

As Christian pointed out, Real Networks is an odd pea in our pot. They do Free Software at some level, but at other levels they appear to truly dislike “us” – the Free Software community. A friend of mine runs a company shipping a media product based on FFmpeg. This media product includes decoding capabilities for Microsoft’s and Real’s proprietary audio formats. When trying to buy patent licenses for their free software-based product (which can be legal; Google does this also in Chrome), this company received the following responses:

• Microsoft: “Sure, no problem”
• Real: “FFmpeg developers are thieves so we don’t want your money if you’ll use their product”

It’s interesting to point out here that the once-so-hated Microsoft has – especially after the EU antitrust case – done everything that we once asked for. They have published many of their protocols on MSDN. They might be corporate to the bone, but they play relatively fair and there’s will & potential for co-existence on both ends. Real wants no co-existence. They do not subscribe to our “Free” ideals.