Engineered Mycobacterium tuberculosis triple-kill-switch strain provides controlled tuberculosis infection in animal models.

Human challenge experiments could accelerate tuberculosis vaccine development. This requires a safe Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) strain that can both replicate in the host and be reliably cleared. Here we genetically engineered Mtb strains encoding up to three kill switches: two mycobacteriophage lysin operons negatively regulated by tetracycline and a degron domain-NadE fusion, which induces ClpC1-dependent degradation of the essential enzyme NadE, negatively regulated by trimethoprim.

Becoming as Open-Minded and Organized as My Classmates? Peer Effects on Self-Reported Personality Trait Development in the Classroom.

Introduction: How does a student's personality development relate to the personality of their classmates? The school class builds a pertinent comparison group during adolescence that has been identified as a critical factor in students' development of abilities and self-perceptions. This study empirically tests the impact of classroom personality composition on changes in adolescents' Big Five personality traits. We hypothesized positive associations between class-level openness and conscientiousness and the individual development of these traits given their role in academic performance.

Development, Implementation, and Impact of an Electronic Medical Record Alert System for Implanted Artificial Urinary Sphincters.

Introduction: The presence of an artificial urinary sphincter can be overlooked resulting in inadvertent urethral catheterization and cuff erosion. A hard-stop best practice advisory was created in the electronic medical record to alert for the presence of an artificial urinary sphincter. We evaluated its utilization and impact on patient outcomes.

Small variant benchmark from a complete assembly of X and Y chromosomes.

The sex chromosomes contain complex, important genes impacting medical phenotypes, but differ from the autosomes in their ploidy and large repetitive regions. To enable technology developers along with research and clinical laboratories to evaluate variant detection on male sex chromosomes X and Y, we create a small variant benchmark set with 111,725 variants for the Genome in a Bottle HG002 reference material. We develop an active evaluation approach to demonstrate the benchmark set reliably identifies errors in challenging genomic regions and across short and long read callsets.

Determination of Ventilatory Thresholds Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy in Recreational Endurance and CrossFit Athletes.

To define training zones, ventilatory thresholds (VTs) are commonly established by cardiopulmonary gas-exchange analysis during incremental exercise tests. Portable near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) devices have emerged as a potential tool for detecting these thresholds by monitoring muscle oxygenation. This study evaluated the accuracy of NIRS measurements to determine VTs or critical power (CP) based on muscle oxygen saturation and assesses the device's consistency across 2 constant-load tests.