Assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on small and medium businesses in North Carolina: Results from the Carolina PROSPER COVID-19 Worksite Impact Survey.

Objective: As the COVID-19 pandemic presented new challenges for businesses and worker safety and health, an interdisciplinary team launched the COVID-19 Worksite Impact Survey to assess COVID-19-related impacts and responses at small and medium businesses in 10 North Carolina counties.

Methods: We collected data from October 2 to December 1, 2020, and analyzed survey results to evaluate businesses' operational changes, concerns, needs, pandemic preparedness, workplace health promotion programming, and infection control practices.

Results: Most businesses, including essential ones, were inadequately prepared for the pandemic and did not implement the most effective COVID-19 infection control practices.

Elevated levels of intracellular RNA lariats suppress the antiviral response.

Unlabelled: Recent studies report the genetic loss of the lariat debranching enzyme ( ) activity increases susceptibility to viral infection. Here, we show that more than 25% of human introns contain large hairpin structures created by the folding of two elements inserted in opposite orientation. In wildtype cells, this large reservoir of endogenous dsRNA is efficiently degraded.

Global impact of unproductive splicing on human gene expression.

Alternative splicing (AS) in human genes is widely viewed as a mechanism for enhancing proteomic diversity. AS can also impact gene expression levels without increasing protein diversity by producing 'unproductive' transcripts that are targeted for rapid degradation by nonsense-mediated decay (NMD). However, the relative importance of this regulatory mechanism remains underexplored.

Mentor communication skills training: development, feasibility, and preliminary efficacy.

Background: Mentoring is vital to career development in academic medicine, and communication underlies all aspects of the mentoring relationship. Although training research mentors has been shown to be effective, few academic medicine faculties have received training in how to mentor. The investigators developed a novel intervention, the Mentor Communication Skills Training for Oncology Faculty ("Comskil Mentor Training") and examined feasibility and preliminary efficacy.

The debranching enzyme Dbr1 regulates lariat turnover and intron splicing.

The majority of genic transcription is intronic. Introns are removed by splicing as branched lariat RNAs which require rapid recycling. The branch site is recognized during splicing catalysis and later debranched by Dbr1 in the rate-limiting step of lariat turnover.