Cultural Adaptation and Validation of the General Self-Efficacy Scale in Ugandan Community Health Workers.

Self-efficacy is central to community health workers' capacity and motivation to deliver evidence-based care; thus, validated measures of self-efficacy are needed to assess the effectiveness of community health worker programs. In this study, we culturally adapted and evaluated the General Self-Efficacy Scale among community health workers in Uganda using multiple methods. We adapted the ten-item General Self-Efficacy Scale through cross-cultural discussions within our multidisciplinary research team, translation from English into Luganda and back-translation into English, and six cognitive interviews with community health workers.

Chemoselective restoration of para-azido-phenylalanine at multiple sites in proteins.

The site-specific incorporation of nonstandard amino acids (nsAAs) during translation has expanded the chemistry and function of proteins. The nsAA para-azido-phenylalanine (pAzF) encodes a biorthogonal chemical moiety that facilitates "click" reactions to attach diverse chemical groups for protein functionalization. However, the azide moiety is unstable in physiological conditions and is reduced to para-amino-phenylalanine (pAF).

A human apolipoprotein L with detergent-like activity kills intracellular pathogens.

Activation of cell-autonomous defense by the immune cytokine interferon-γ (IFN-γ) is critical to the control of life-threatening infections in humans. IFN-γ induces the expression of hundreds of host proteins in all nucleated cells and tissues, yet many of these proteins remain uncharacterized. We screened 19,050 human genes by CRISPR-Cas9 mutagenesis and identified IFN-γ-induced apolipoprotein L3 (APOL3) as a potent bactericidal agent protecting multiple non-immune barrier cell types against infection.

Surveying the Side-Chain Network Approach to Protein Structure and Dynamics: The SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein as an Illustrative Case.

Network theory-based approaches provide valuable insights into the variations in global structural connectivity between different dynamical states of proteins. Our objective is to review network-based analyses to elucidate such variations, especially in the context of subtle conformational changes. We present technical details of the construction and analyses of protein structure networks, encompassing both the non-covalent connectivity and dynamics.