Creatine as a Novel Treatment for Depression in Females Using Methamphetamine: A Pilot Study.

Objective: Depression among methamphetamine users is more prevalent in females than males, but gender-specific treatment options for this comorbidity have not been described. Reduced brain phosphocreatine levels have been shown to be lower in female methamphetamine users compared to males, and, of relevance, studies have demonstrated an association between treatment-resistant depression and reduced brain phosphocreatine concentrations. The nutritional supplement creatine monohydrate has been reported to reduce symptoms of depression in female adolescents and adults taking antidepressants, as well as to increase brain phosphocreatine in healthy volunteers.

Neural substrates underlying learning-related changes of the unconditioned fear response.

The ability to predict an impending threat during Pavlovian conditioning diminishes the emotional response that is produced once the threat is encountered. Diminution of the threat response appears to be mediated by somewhat independent associative learning and expectancy-related processes. Therefore, the present study was designed to better understand the neural mechanisms that support associative learning processes, independent of expectancy, that influence the emotional response to a threat.

High-affinity DNA base analogs as supramolecular, nanoscale promoters of macroscopic adhesion.

Adhesion phenomena are essential to many biological processes and to synthetic adhesives and manufactured coatings and composites. Supramolecular interactions are often implicated in various adhesion mechanisms. Recently, supramolecular building blocks, such as synthetic DNA base-pair mimics, have drawn attention in the context of molecular recognition, self-assembly, and supramolecular polymers.

A Nest of LTR Retrotransposons Adjacent the Disease Resistance-Priming Gene NPR1 in Beta vulgaris L. U.S. Hybrid H20.

A nest of long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons (RTRs), discovered by LTR_STRUC analysis, is near core genes encoding the NPR1 disease resistance-activating factor and a heat-shock-factor-(HSF-) like protein in sugarbeet hybrid US H20. SCHULTE, a 10 833 bp LTR retrotransposon, with 1372 bp LTRs that are 0.7% divergent, has two ORFs with unexpected introns but encoding a reverse transcriptase with rve and Rvt2 domains similar to Ty1/copia-type retrotransposons and a hypothetical protein.