Promoting Healthy Eating Among African-American School-Aged Girls in a Community Setting.

The prevention of obesity is vital to the health of American children. In the urban African-American community, the health of school-aged children is in particular jeopardy due to the high prevalence of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and poor dietary choices such as the purchase of sugary drinks, salty snacks, low consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, and reliance on fast food meals. African-American girls are at a higher risk for obesity and early puberty before age 10, placing them at a greater risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease in adulthood.

Bacteria-to-Human Protein Networks Reveal Origins of Endogenous DNA Damage.

DNA damage provokes mutations and cancer and results from external carcinogens or endogenous cellular processes. However, the intrinsic instigators of endogenous DNA damage are poorly understood. Here, we identify proteins that promote endogenous DNA damage when overproduced: the DNA "damage-up" proteins (DDPs).

Enforcement of science-using a Clostridium perfringens outbreak investigation to take legal action.

Background: We report an outbreak of Clostridium perfringens in a care home in North East England.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study was used to investigate this outbreak. Faecal samples were obtained from symptomatic residents.

An ultra-dense library resource for rapid deconvolution of mutations that cause phenotypes in Escherichia coli.

With the wide availability of whole-genome sequencing (WGS), genetic mapping has become the rate-limiting step, inhibiting unbiased forward genetics in even the most tractable model organisms. We introduce a rapid deconvolution resource and method for untagged causative mutations after mutagenesis, screens, and WGS in Escherichia coli. We created Deconvoluter-ordered libraries with selectable insertions every 50 kb in the E.

Atypical Role for PhoU in Mutagenic Break Repair under Stress in Escherichia coli.

Mechanisms of mutagenesis activated by stress responses drive pathogen/host adaptation, antibiotic and anti-fungal-drug resistance, and perhaps much of evolution generally. In Escherichia coli, repair of double-strand breaks (DSBs) by homologous recombination is high fidelity in unstressed cells, but switches to a mutagenic mode using error-prone DNA polymerases when the both the SOS and general (σS) stress responses are activated. Additionally, the σE response promotes spontaneous DNA breakage that leads to mutagenic break repair (MBR).

Engineered proteins detect spontaneous DNA breakage in human and bacterial cells.

Spontaneous DNA breaks instigate genomic changes that fuel cancer and evolution, yet direct quantification of double-strand breaks (DSBs) has been limited. Predominant sources of spontaneous DSBs remain elusive. We report synthetic technology for quantifying DSBs using fluorescent-protein fusions of double-strand DNA end-binding protein, Gam of bacteriophage Mu.

Two mechanisms produce mutation hotspots at DNA breaks in Escherichia coli.

Mutation hotspots and showers occur across phylogeny and profoundly influence genome evolution, yet the mechanisms that produce hotspots remain obscure. We report that DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) provoke mutation hotspots via stress-induced mutation in Escherichia coli. With tet reporters placed 2 kb to 2 Mb (half the genome) away from an I-SceI site, RpoS/DinB-dependent mutations occur maximally within the first 2 kb and decrease logarithmically to ∼60 kb.

What limits the efficiency of double-strand break-dependent stress-induced mutation in Escherichia coli?

Stress-induced mutation is a collection of molecular mechanisms in bacterial, yeast and human cells that promote mutagenesis specifically when cells are maladapted to their environment, i.e. when they are stressed.

The odd-even effect in Sudoku puzzles: effects of working memory, aging, and experience.

The odd-even effect in numerical processing has been explained as the easier processing of even numbers compared with odd numbers. We investigated this effect in Sudoku puzzles, a reasoning problem that uses numbers but does not require arithmetic operations. Specifically, we asked whether the odd-even effect occurred with Sudoku puzzles and whether individual differences in working memory (WM), aging, and experience with Sudoku modulated this effect.

Impact of a stress-inducible switch to mutagenic repair of DNA breaks on mutation in Escherichia coli.

Basic ideas about the constancy and randomness of mutagenesis that drives evolution were challenged by the discovery of mutation pathways activated by stress responses. These pathways could promote evolution specifically when cells are maladapted to their environment (i.e.

Priming insight in groups: facilitating and inhibiting solving an ambiguously worded insight problem.

We extend research on the priming of insight by studying group problem solving. Groups of 2-4 participants tried to solve an ambiguously worded problem in the presence of a prime that reinforced the dominant but incorrect interpretation of the problem, a prime that reinforced the uncommon but correct interpretation, or no prime. The paradigm involved participants asking questions of the experimenter that could only be answered "yes" or "no.

Separate DNA Pol II- and Pol IV-dependent pathways of stress-induced mutation during double-strand-break repair in Escherichia coli are controlled by RpoS.

Previous work showed that about 85% of stress-induced mutations associated with DNA double-strand break repair in carbon-starved Escherichia coli result from error-prone DNA polymerase IV (Pol IV) (DinB) and that the mutagenesis is controlled by the RpoS stress response, which upregulates dinB. We report that the remaining mutagenesis requires high-fidelity Pol II, and that this component also requires RpoS. The results identify a second DNA polymerase contributing to stress-induced mutagenesis and show that RpoS promotes mutagenesis by more than the simple upregulation of dinB.

The sigma(E) stress response is required for stress-induced mutation and amplification in Escherichia coli.

Pathways of mutagenesis are induced in microbes under adverse conditions controlled by stress responses. Control of mutagenesis by stress responses may accelerate evolution specifically when cells are maladapted to their environments, i.e.

An SOS-regulated type 2 toxin-antitoxin system.

The Escherichia coli chromosome encodes seven demonstrated type 2 toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems: cassettes of two or three cotranscribed genes, one encoding a stable toxin protein that can cause cell stasis or death, another encoding a labile antitoxin protein, and sometimes a third regulatory protein. We demonstrate that the yafNO genes constitute an additional chromosomal type 2 TA system that is upregulated during the SOS DNA damage response. The yafNOP genes are part of the dinB operon, of which dinB underlies stress-induced mutagenesis mechanisms.

Residues that influence in vivo and in vitro CbbR function in Rhodobacter sphaeroides and identification of a specific region critical for co-inducer recognition.

CbbR is a LysR-type transcriptional regulator (LTTR) that is required to activate transcription of the cbb operons, responsible for CO2 fixation, in Rhodobacter sphaeroides. LTTR proteins often require a co-inducer to regulate transcription. Previous studies suggested that ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate (RuBP) is a positive effector for CbbR function in this organism.

Modality-specificity effects in priming of visual and auditory word-fragment completion.

In this study, the researchers examined modality-specificity effects in priming of visual and auditory word-fragment completion by the presentation of visual or auditory primes. In 2 experiments, within-modality priming and cross-modality priming were observed, with greater priming observed in the within-modality conditions. The prime was presented in a word list in Experiment 1 and either presented or inferred in priming sentences in Experiment 2.

Priming guesses on a forced-recall test.

The forced-recall paradigm requires participants to fill all spaces on the memory test even if they cannot remember all the list words. In the present study, the authors used that paradigm to examine the influence of implicit memory on guessing--when participants fill remaining spaces after they cannot remember list items. They measured explicit memory as the percentage of targets that participants designated as remembered from the list and implicit memory as the percentage of targets they wrote but did not designate as remembered (beyond chance level).

Priming problem solving with conceptual processing of relevant objects.

In the present study, the author explored the effect of processing relevant information on producing solutions to brief insight problems. She hypothesized that the conceptual processing of objects relevant to the target solution would facilitate that solution relative to unrelated objects or the shallow processing of words. The author also explored the effect of knowledge of the relationship between the initial object-processing task and the problem-solving task.

Complete genome sequence of the metabolically versatile photosynthetic bacterium Rhodopseudomonas palustris.

Rhodopseudomonas palustris is among the most metabolically versatile bacteria known. It uses light, inorganic compounds, or organic compounds, for energy. It acquires carbon from many types of green plant-derived compounds or by carbon dioxide fixation, and it fixes nitrogen.

Effects of cellulose derivatives and poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(propylene oxide) tri-block copolymers (Pluronic)surfactants) on the properties of alginate based microspheres and their interactions with phagocytic cells.

The goal of this study was to examine the phagocytosis of alginate based microspheres with different surface properties. Favorable interaction with macrophages is critical for uptake subsequent processing of the microspheres used for oral vaccine delivery. We examined the effects of size of alginate microspheres and hydrophobicity on cellular uptake.

Differential expression of the CO2 fixation operons of Rhodobacter sphaeroides by the Prr/Reg two-component system during chemoautotrophic growth.

In Rhodobacter sphaeroides, the two cbb operons encoding duplicated Calvin-Benson Bassham (CBB) CO2 fixation reductive pentose phosphate cycle structural genes are differentially controlled. In attempts to define the molecular basis for the differential regulation, the effects of mutations in genes encoding a subunit of Cbb3 cytochrome oxidase, ccoP, and a global response regulator, prrA (regA), were characterized with respect to CO2 fixation (cbb) gene expression by using translational lac fusions to the R. sphaeroides cbb(I) and cbb(II) promoters.