@inproceedings{4388,
  abstract     = {GIST is a tool that (a) solves the qualitative analysis problem of turn-based probabilistic games with ω-regular objectives; and (b) synthesizes reasonable environment assumptions for synthesis of unrealizable specifications. Our tool provides the first and efficient implementations of several reduction-based techniques to solve turn-based probabilistic games, and uses the analysis of turn-based probabilistic games for synthesizing environment assumptions for unrealizable specifications.},
  author       = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Henzinger, Thomas A and Jobstmann, Barbara and Radhakrishna, Arjun},
  location     = {Edinburgh, UK},
  pages        = {665 -- 669},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{GIST: A solver for probabilistic games}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-642-14295-6_57},
  volume       = {6174},
  year         = {2010},
}

@inproceedings{4389,
  abstract     = {Digital components play a central role in the design of complex embedded systems. These components are interconnected with other, possibly analog, devices and the physical environment. This environment cannot be entirely captured and can provide inaccurate input data to the component. It is thus important for digital components to have a robust behavior, i.e. the presence of a small change in the input sequences should not result in a drastic change in the output sequences. In this paper, we study a notion of robustness for sequential circuits. However, since sequential circuits may have parts that are naturally discontinuous (e.g., digital controllers with switching behavior), we need a flexible framework that accommodates this fact and leaves discontinuous parts of the circuit out from the robustness analysis. As a consequence, we consider sequential circuits that have their input variables partitioned into two disjoint sets: control and disturbance variables. Our contributions are (1) a definition of robustness for sequential circuits as a form of continuity with respect to disturbance variables, (2) the characterization of the exact class of sequential circuits that are robust according to our definition, (3) an algorithm to decide whether a sequential circuit is robust or not.},
  author       = {Doyen, Laurent and Henzinger, Thomas A and Legay, Axel and Nickovic, Dejan},
  pages        = {77 -- 84},
  publisher    = {IEEE},
  title        = {{Robustness of sequential circuits}},
  doi          = {10.1109/ACSD.2010.26},
  year         = {2010},
}

@inproceedings{4390,
  abstract     = {Concurrent data structures with fine-grained synchronization are notoriously difficult to implement correctly. The difficulty of reasoning about these implementations does not stem from the number of variables or the program size, but rather from the large number of possible interleavings. These implementations are therefore prime candidates for model checking. We introduce an algorithm for verifying linearizability of singly-linked heap-based concurrent data structures. We consider a model consisting of an unbounded heap where each vertex stores an element from an unbounded data domain, with a restricted set of operations for testing and updating pointers and data elements. Our main result is that linearizability is decidable for programs that invoke a fixed number of methods, possibly in parallel. This decidable fragment covers many of the common implementation techniques — fine-grained locking, lazy synchronization, and lock-free synchronization. We also show how the technique can be used to verify optimistic implementations with the help of programmer annotations. We developed a verification tool CoLT and evaluated it on a representative sample of Java implementations of the concurrent set data structure. The tool verified linearizability of a number of implementations, found a known error in a lock-free implementation and proved that the corrected version is linearizable.},
  author       = {Cerny, Pavol and Radhakrishna, Arjun and Zufferey, Damien and Chaudhuri, Swarat and Alur, Rajeev},
  location     = {Edinburgh, UK},
  pages        = {465 -- 479},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Model checking of linearizability of concurrent list implementations}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-642-14295-6_41},
  volume       = {6174},
  year         = {2010},
}

@inbook{4392,
  abstract     = {While a boolean notion of correctness is given by a preorder on systems and properties, a quantitative notion of correctness is defined by a distance function on systems and properties, where the distance between a system and a property provides a measure of “fit” or “desirability.” In this article, we explore several ways how the simulation preorder can be generalized to a distance function. This is done by equipping the classical simulation game between a system and a property with quantitative objectives. In particular, for systems that satisfy a property, a quantitative simulation game can measure the “robustness” of the satisfaction, that is, how much the system can deviate from its nominal behavior while still satisfying the property. For systems that violate a property, a quantitative simulation game can measure the “seriousness” of the violation, that is, how much the property has to be modified so that it is satisfied by the system. These distances can be computed in polynomial time, since the computation reduces to the value problem in limit average games with constant weights. Finally, we demonstrate how the robustness distance can be used to measure how many transmission errors are tolerated by error correcting codes. },
  author       = {Cerny, Pavol and Henzinger, Thomas A and Radhakrishna, Arjun},
  booktitle    = {Time For Verification: Essays in Memory of Amir Pnueli},
  editor       = {Manna, Zohar and Peled, Doron},
  pages        = {42 -- 60},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Quantitative Simulation Games}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-642-13754-9_3},
  volume       = {6200},
  year         = {2010},
}

@inproceedings{4393,
  abstract     = {Boolean notions of correctness are formalized by preorders on systems. Quantitative measures of correctness can be formalized by real-valued distance functions between systems, where the distance between implementation and specification provides a measure of “fit” or “desirability.” We extend the simulation preorder to the quantitative setting, by making each player of a simulation game pay a certain price for her choices. We use the resulting games with quantitative objectives to define three different simulation distances. The correctness distance measures how much the specification must be changed in order to be satisfied by the implementation. The coverage distance measures how much the implementation restricts the degrees of freedom offered by the specification. The robustness distance measures how much a system can deviate from the implementation description without violating the specification. We consider these distances for safety as well as liveness specifications. The distances can be computed in polynomial time for safety specifications, and for liveness specifications given by weak fairness constraints. We show that the distance functions satisfy the triangle inequality, that the distance between two systems does not increase under parallel composition with a third system, and that the distance between two systems can be bounded from above and below by distances between abstractions of the two systems. These properties suggest that our simulation distances provide an appropriate basis for a quantitative theory of discrete systems. We also demonstrate how the robustness distance can be used to measure how many transmission errors are tolerated by error correcting codes.},
  author       = {Cerny, Pavol and Henzinger, Thomas A and Radhakrishna, Arjun},
  location     = {Paris, France},
  pages        = {235 -- 268},
  publisher    = {Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik},
  title        = {{Simulation distances}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-642-15375-4_18},
  volume       = {6269},
  year         = {2010},
}

@inproceedings{4395,
  abstract     = {The problem of locally transforming or translating programs without altering their semantics is central to the construction of correct compilers. For concurrent shared-memory programs this task is challenging because (1) concurrent threads can observe transformations that would be undetectable in a sequential program, and (2) contemporary multiprocessors commonly use relaxed memory models that complicate the reasoning. In this paper, we present a novel proof methodology for verifying that a local program transformation is sound with respect to a specific hardware memory model, in the sense that it is not observable in any context. The methodology is based on a structural induction and relies on a novel compositional denotational semantics for relaxed memory models that formalizes (1) the behaviors of program fragments as a set of traces, and (2) the effect of memory model relaxations as local trace rewrite operations. To apply this methodology in practice, we implemented a semi- automated tool called Traver and used it to verify/falsify several compiler transformations for a number of different hardware memory models.},
  author       = {Burckhardt, Sebastian and Musuvathi, Madanlal and Singh, Vasu},
  editor       = {Gupta, Rajiv},
  location     = {Pahos, Cyprus},
  pages        = {104 -- 123},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Verifying local transformations on relaxed memory models}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-642-11970-5_7},
  volume       = {6011},
  year         = {2010},
}

@inproceedings{4396,
  abstract     = {Shape analysis is a promising technique to prove program properties about recursive data structures. The challenge is to automatically determine the data-structure type, and to supply the shape analysis with the necessary information about the data structure. We present a stepwise approach to the selection of instrumentation predicates for a TVLA-based shape analysis, which takes us a step closer towards the fully automatic verification of data structures. The approach uses two techniques to guide the refinement of shape abstractions: (1) during program exploration, an explicit heap analysis collects sample instances of the heap structures, which are used to identify the data structures that are manipulated by the program; and (2) during abstraction refinement along an infeasible error path, we consider different possible heap abstractions and choose the coarsest one that eliminates the infeasible path. We have implemented this combined approach for automatic shape refinement as an extension of the software model checker BLAST. Example programs from a data-structure library that manipulate doubly-linked lists and trees were successfully verified by our tool.},
  author       = {Beyer, Dirk and Henzinger, Thomas A and Théoduloz, Grégory and Zufferey, Damien},
  editor       = {Rosenblum, David and Taenzer, Gabriele},
  location     = {Paphos, Cyprus},
  pages        = {263 -- 277},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Shape refinement through explicit heap analysis}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-642-12029-9_19},
  volume       = {6013},
  year         = {2010},
}

@article{474,
  abstract     = {Classical models of gene flow fail in three ways: they cannot explain large-scale patterns; they predict much more genetic diversity than is observed; and they assume that loosely linked genetic loci evolve independently. We propose a new model that deals with these problems. Extinction events kill some fraction of individuals in a region. These are replaced by offspring from a small number of parents, drawn from the preexisting population. This model of evolution forwards in time corresponds to a backwards model, in which ancestral lineages jump to a new location if they are hit by an event, and may coalesce with other lineages that are hit by the same event. We derive an expression for the identity in allelic state, and show that, over scales much larger than the largest event, this converges to the classical value derived by Wright and Malécot. However, rare events that cover large areas cause low genetic diversity, large-scale patterns, and correlations in ancestry between unlinked loci.},
  author       = {Barton, Nicholas H and Kelleher, Jerome and Etheridge, Alison},
  journal      = {Evolution},
  number       = {9},
  pages        = {2701 -- 2715},
  publisher    = {Wiley-Blackwell},
  title        = {{A new model for extinction and recolonization in two dimensions: Quantifying phylogeography}},
  doi          = {10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.01019.x},
  volume       = {64},
  year         = {2010},
}

@inproceedings{488,
  abstract     = {Streaming string transducers [1] define (partial) functions from input strings to output strings. A streaming string transducer makes a single pass through the input string and uses a finite set of variables that range over strings from the output alphabet. At every step, the transducer processes an input symbol, and updates all the variables in parallel using assignments whose right-hand-sides are concatenations of output symbols and variables with the restriction that a variable can be used at most once in a right-hand-side expression. It has been shown that streaming string transducers operating on strings over infinite data domains are of interest in algorithmic verification of list-processing programs, as they lead to PSPACE decision procedures for checking pre/post conditions and for checking semantic equivalence, for a well-defined class of heap-manipulating programs. In order to understand the theoretical expressiveness of streaming transducers, we focus on streaming transducers processing strings over finite alphabets, given the existence of a robust and well-studied class of &quot;regular&quot; transductions for this case. Such regular transductions can be defined either by two-way deterministic finite-state transducers, or using a logical MSO-based characterization. Our main result is that the expressiveness of streaming string transducers coincides exactly with this class of regular transductions. },
  author       = {Alur, Rajeev and Cerny, Pavol},
  location     = {Chennai, India},
  pages        = {1 -- 12},
  publisher    = {Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik},
  title        = {{Expressiveness of streaming string transducers}},
  doi          = {10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2010.1},
  volume       = {8},
  year         = {2010},
}

@inproceedings{489,
  abstract     = {Graph games of infinite length are a natural model for open reactive processes: one player represents the controller, trying to ensure a given specification, and the other represents a hostile environment. The evolution of the system depends on the decisions of both players, supplemented by chance. In this work, we focus on the notion of randomised strategy. More specifically, we show that three natural definitions may lead to very different results: in the most general cases, an almost-surely winning situation may become almost-surely losing if the player is only allowed to use a weaker notion of strategy. In more reasonable settings, translations exist, but they require infinite memory, even in simple cases. Finally, some traditional problems becomes undecidable for the strongest type of strategies.},
  author       = {Cristau, Julien and David, Claire and Horn, Florian},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of GandALF 2010},
  location     = {Minori, Amalfi Coast, Italy},
  pages        = {30 -- 39},
  publisher    = {Open Publishing Association},
  title        = {{How do we remember the past in randomised strategies?}},
  doi          = {10.4204/EPTCS.25.7},
  volume       = {25},
  year         = {2010},
}

@article{533,
  abstract     = {Any programming error that can be revealed before compiling a program saves precious time for the programmer. While integrated development environments already do a good job by detecting, e.g., data-flow abnormalities, current static analysis tools suffer from false positives (&quot;noise&quot;) or require strong user interaction. We propose to avoid this deficiency by defining a new class of errors. A program fragment is doomed if its execution will inevitably fail, regardless of which state it is started in. We use a formal verification method to identify such errors fully automatically and, most significantly, without producing noise. We report on experiments with a prototype tool.},
  author       = {Hoenicke, Jochen and Leino, Kari and Podelski, Andreas and Schäf, Martin and Wies, Thomas},
  journal      = {Formal Methods in System Design},
  number       = {2-3},
  pages        = {171 -- 199},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Doomed program points}},
  doi          = {10.1007/s10703-010-0102-0},
  volume       = {37},
  year         = {2010},
}

@misc{5388,
  abstract     = {We present an algorithmic method for the synthesis of concurrent programs that are optimal with respect to quantitative performance measures. The input consists of a sequential sketch, that is, a program that does not contain synchronization constructs, and of a parametric performance model that assigns costs to actions such as locking, context switching, and idling. The quantitative synthesis problem is to automatically introduce synchronization constructs into the sequential sketch so that both correctness is guaranteed and worst-case (or average-case) performance is optimized. Correctness is formalized as race freedom or linearizability.

We show that for worst-case performance, the problem can be modeled
as a 2-player graph game with quantitative (limit-average) objectives, and
for average-case performance, as a 2 1/2 -player graph game (with probabilistic transitions). In both cases, the optimal correct program is derived from an optimal strategy in the corresponding quantitative game. We prove that the respective game problems are computationally expensive (NP-complete), and present several techniques that overcome the theoretical difficulty in cases of concurrent programs of practical interest.

We have implemented a prototype tool and used it for the automatic syn- thesis of programs that access a concurrent list. For certain parameter val- ues, our method automatically synthesizes various classical synchronization schemes for implementing a concurrent list, such as fine-grained locking or a lazy algorithm. For other parameter values, a new, hybrid synchronization style is synthesized, which uses both the lazy approach and coarse-grained locks (instead of standard fine-grained locks). The trade-off occurs because while fine-grained locking tends to decrease the cost that is due to waiting for locks, it increases cache size requirements.},
  author       = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Cerny, Pavol and Henzinger, Thomas A and Radhakrishna, Arjun and Singh, Rohit},
  issn         = {2664-1690},
  pages        = {17},
  publisher    = {IST Austria},
  title        = {{Quantitative synthesis for concurrent programs}},
  doi          = {10.15479/AT:IST-2010-0004},
  year         = {2010},
}

@misc{5389,
  abstract     = {Boolean notions of correctness are formalized by preorders on systems. Quantitative measures of correctness can be formalized by real-valued distance functions between systems, where the distance between implementation and specification provides a measure of “fit” or “desirability.” We extend the simulation preorder to the quantitative setting, by making each player of a simulation game pay a certain price for her choices. We use the resulting games with quantitative objectives to define three different simulation distances. The correctness distance measures how much the specification must be changed in order to be satisfied by the implementation. The coverage distance measures how much the im- plementation restricts the degrees of freedom offered by the specification. The robustness distance measures how much a system can deviate from the implementation description without violating the specification. We consider these distances for safety as well as liveness specifications. The distances can be computed in polynomial time for safety specifications, and for liveness specifications given by weak fairness constraints. We show that the distance functions satisfy the triangle inequality, that the distance between two systems does not increase under parallel composition with a third system, and that the distance between two systems can be bounded from above and below by distances between abstractions of the two systems. These properties suggest that our simulation distances provide an appropriate basis for a quantitative theory of discrete systems. We also demonstrate how the robustness distance can be used to measure how many transmission errors are tolerated by error correcting codes.},
  author       = {Cerny, Pavol and Henzinger, Thomas A and Radhakrishna, Arjun},
  issn         = {2664-1690},
  pages        = {24},
  publisher    = {IST Austria},
  title        = {{Simulation distances}},
  doi          = {10.15479/AT:IST-2010-0003},
  year         = {2010},
}

@misc{5390,
  abstract     = {The class of ω regular languages provide a robust specification language in verification. Every ω-regular condition can be decomposed into a safety part and a liveness part. The liveness part ensures that something good happens “eventually.” Two main strengths of the classical, infinite-limit formulation of liveness are robustness (independence from the granularity of transitions) and simplicity (abstraction of complicated time bounds). However, the classical liveness formulation suffers from the drawback that the time until something good happens may be unbounded. A stronger formulation of liveness, so-called finitary liveness, overcomes this drawback, while still retaining robustness and simplicity. Finitary liveness requires that there exists an unknown, fixed bound b such that something good happens within b transitions. In this work we consider the finitary parity and Streett (fairness) conditions. We present the topological, automata-theoretic and logical characterization of finitary languages defined by finitary parity and Streett conditions. We (a) show that the finitary parity and Streett languages are Σ2-complete; (b) present a complete characterization of the expressive power of various classes of automata with finitary and infinitary conditions (in particular we show that non-deterministic finitary parity and Streett automata cannot be determinized to deterministic finitary parity or Streett automata); and (c) show that the languages defined by non-deterministic finitary parity automata exactly characterize the star-free fragment of ωB-regular languages.},
  author       = {Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Fijalkow, Nathanaël},
  issn         = {2664-1690},
  pages        = {21},
  publisher    = {IST Austria},
  title        = {{Topological, automata-theoretic and logical characterization of finitary languages}},
  doi          = {10.15479/AT:IST-2010-0002},
  year         = {2010},
}

@misc{5391,
  abstract     = {Concurrent data structures with fine-grained synchronization are notoriously difficult to implement correctly. The difficulty of reasoning about these implementations does not stem from the number of variables or the program size, but rather from the large number of possible interleavings. These implementations are therefore prime candidates for model checking. We introduce an algorithm for verifying linearizability of singly-linked heap-based concurrent data structures. We consider a model consisting of an unbounded heap where each node consists an element from an unbounded data domain, with a restricted set of operations for testing and updating pointers and data elements. Our main result is that linearizability is decidable for programs that invoke a fixed number of methods, possibly in parallel. This decidable fragment covers many of the common implementation techniques — fine-grained locking, lazy synchronization, and lock-free synchronization. We also show how the technique can be used to verify optimistic implementations with the help of programmer annotations. We developed a verification tool CoLT and evaluated it on a representative sample of Java implementations of the concurrent set data structure. The tool verified linearizability of a number of implementations, found a known error in a lock-free imple- mentation and proved that the corrected version is linearizable.},
  author       = {Cerny, Pavol and Radhakrishna, Arjun and Zufferey, Damien and Chaudhuri, Swarat and Alur, Rajeev},
  issn         = {2664-1690},
  pages        = {27},
  publisher    = {IST Austria},
  title        = {{Model checking of linearizability of concurrent list implementations}},
  doi          = {10.15479/AT:IST-2010-0001},
  year         = {2010},
}

@inbook{5940,
  author       = {Juhás, Gabriel and Kazlov, Igor and Juhásová, Ana},
  booktitle    = {Applications and Theory of Petri Nets},
  isbn         = {9783642136740},
  issn         = {0302-9743},
  pages        = {1--17},
  publisher    = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg},
  title        = {{Instance Deadlock: A Mystery behind Frozen Programs}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-642-13675-7_1},
  year         = {2010},
}

@article{598,
  abstract     = {It is not well understood how the human Mediator complex, transcription factor IIH and RNA polymerase II (Pol II) work together with activators to initiate transcription. Activator binding alters Mediator structure, yet the functional consequences of such structural shifts remain unknown. The p53 C terminus and its activation domain interact with different Mediator subunits, and we find that each interaction differentially affects Mediator structure; strikingly, distinct p53-Mediator structures differentially affect Pol II activity. Only the p53 activation domain induces the formation of a large pocket domain at the Mediator-Pol II interaction site, and this correlates with activation of stalled Pol II to a productively elongating state. Moreover, we define a Mediator requirement for TFIIH-dependent Pol II C-terminal domain phosphorylation and identify substantial differences in Pol II C-terminal domain processing that correspond to distinct p53-Mediator structural states. Our results define a fundamental mechanism by which p53 activates transcription and suggest that Mediator structural shifts trigger activation of stalled Pol II complexes.},
  author       = {Meyer, Krista and Lin, Shih and Bernecky, Carrie A and Gao, Yuefeng and Taatjes, Dylan},
  journal      = {Nature Structural and Molecular Biology},
  number       = {6},
  pages        = {753 -- 760},
  publisher    = {Nature Publishing Group},
  title        = {{P53 activates transcription by directing structural shifts in Mediator}},
  doi          = {10.1038/nsmb.1816},
  volume       = {17},
  year         = {2010},
}

@article{6142,
  abstract     = {Defining the mutational landscape when individuals of a species grow separately and diverge over many generations can provide insights into trait evolution. A specific example of this involves studying changes associated with domestication where different lines of the same wild stock have been cultivated independently in different standard environments. Whole genome sequence comparison of such lines permits estimation of mutation rates, inference of genes' ancestral states and ancestry of existing strains, and correction of sequencing errors in genome databases. Here we study domestication of the C. elegans Bristol strain as a model, and report the genome sequence of LSJ1 (Bristol), a sibling of the standard C. elegans reference wild type N2 (Bristol). The LSJ1 and N2 lines were cultivated separately from shortly after the Bristol strain was isolated until methods to freeze C. elegans were developed. We find that during this time the two strains have accumulated 1208 genetic differences. We describe phenotypic variation between N2 and LSJ1 in the rate at which embryos develop, the rate of production of eggs, the maturity of eggs at laying, and feeding behavior, all the result of post-isolation changes. We infer the ancestral alleles in the original Bristol isolate and highlight 2038 likely sequencing errors in the original N2 reference genome sequence. Many of these changes modify genome annotation. Our study provides a starting point to further investigate genotype-phenotype association and offers insights into the process of selection as a result of laboratory domestication.},
  author       = {Weber, Katherine P. and De, Subhajyoti and Kozarewa, Iwanka and Turner, Daniel J. and Babu, M. Madan and de Bono, Mario},
  issn         = {1932-6203},
  journal      = {PLoS ONE},
  number       = {11},
  publisher    = {Public Library of Science},
  title        = {{Whole genome sequencing highlights genetic changes associated with laboratory domestication of C. elegans}},
  doi          = {10.1371/journal.pone.0013922},
  volume       = {5},
  year         = {2010},
}

@inbook{619,
  abstract     = {Sinclair Ross’s novel As for Me and My House has long since been canonized as Canadian prairie fiction. Accordingly, it has been the subject of many critical studies and academic papers. Most commentators have concentrated on such literary issues as the representation of the western landscape or the reliability of the female narrator. But so far little consideration has been given to the social and cultural implications of the novel. Few attempts have been made to analyze the text from a cultural perspective including such social markers as class, gender and ethnicity. That is all the more surprising because Sinclair Ross has often been credited for being a realistic author and As for Me and My House has often been interpreted as a regional novel characteristic of a particular time and place.},
  author       = {Zacharasiewicz, Waldemar and Kirsch, Fritz Peter},
  booktitle    = {Social and cultural interaction and literary landscapes in the Canadian West : impressions of an exploratory field trip and academic interaction in the Canadian West : Rapports interculturels et paysages littéraires dans l'Ouest canadien},
  pages        = {173 -- 179},
  publisher    = {Facultas.WUV},
  title        = {{“This is a fundamentalist town”: The Prairie Town as a Site of Social and Cultural Conflict in Sinclair Ross’s As for Me and My House}},
  year         = {2010},
}

@article{6198,
  abstract     = {Stroke is a major public health problem leading to high rates of death and disability in adults. Excessive stimulation of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) and the resulting neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) activation are crucial for neuronal injury after stroke insult. However, directly inhibiting NMDARs or nNOS can cause severe side effects because they have key physiological functions in the CNS. Here we show that cerebral ischemia induces the interaction of nNOS with postsynaptic density protein-95 (PSD-95). Disrupting nNOS-PSD-95 interaction via overexpressing the N-terminal amino acid residues 1-133 of nNOS (nNOS-N(1-133)) prevented glutamate-induced excitotoxicity and cerebral ischemic damage. Given the mechanism of nNOS-PSD-95 interaction, we developed a series of compounds and discovered a small-molecular inhibitor of the nNOS-PSD-95 interaction, ZL006. This drug blocked the ischemia-induced nNOS-PSD-95 association selectively, had potent neuroprotective activity in vitro and ameliorated focal cerebral ischemic damage in mice and rats subjected to middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) and reperfusion. Moreover, it readily crossed the blood-brain barrier, did not inhibit NMDAR function, catalytic activity of nNOS or spatial memory, and had no effect on aggressive behaviors. Thus, this new drug may serve as a treatment for stroke, perhaps without major side effects. },
  author       = {Zhou, L and Li, F and Xu, Haibing and Luo, CX and Wu, HY and Zhu, MM and Lu, W and Ji, X and Zhou, QG and Zhu, DY},
  issn         = {1078-8956},
  journal      = {Nature Medicine},
  number       = {12},
  pages        = {1439--1443},
  publisher    = {Nature Publishing Group},
  title        = {{Treatment of cerebral ischemia by disrupting ischemia-induced interaction of nNOS with PSD-95}},
  doi          = {10.1038/nm.2245},
  volume       = {16},
  year         = {2010},
}

