Macromolecular interactions and geometrical confinement determine the 3D diffusion of ribosome-sized particles in live cells.

The crowded bacterial cytoplasm is comprised of biomolecules that span several orders of magnitude in size and electrical charge. This complexity has been proposed as the source of the rich spatial organization and apparent anomalous diffusion of intracellular components, although this has not been tested directly. Here, we use biplane microscopy to track the 3D motion of self-assembled bacterial Genetically Encoded Multimeric nanoparticles (bGEMs) with tunable size (20 to 50 nm) and charge (-2160 to +1800 e) in live cells.

Improving Scale Equivalence by Increasing Access to Scale-Specific Information.

Measures of the same phenomenon should produce the same results; this principle is fundamental because it allows for replication-the basis of science. Unfortunately, measures of a psychological construct in one language can often measure something a bit different in another language (i.e.

Character strengths and fluid intelligence.

Objective: Research on the associations between cognitive and noncognitive personality traits has widely neglected character strengths, that means positively and morally valued personality traits that constitute good character.

Method: The present study aimed to bridge this gap by studying the associations between character strengths and fluid intelligence using different operationalizations of character strengths (including self- and informant-reports) and fluid intelligence in children, adolescents, and adults.

Results: The results, based on four samples (N = 193/290/330/324), suggested that morally valued personality traits are independent of fluid intelligence, with the exception of love of learning, which showed small but robust positive relationships with fluid intelligence across all samples.

Character Strengths: Person-Environment Fit and Relationships With Job and Life Satisfaction.

Several studies demonstrated the relevance of character strengths in the workplace. For example, it has been shown that they positively relate to performance and are strong predictors of job satisfaction. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that occupational groups differ in their average levels of character strengths.

Development and Linguistic Cue Analysis of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory-Short Form.

The present study derived a short form of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory-Trait Version (STCI-T30) using an item response theory framework. Latent trait test-retest correlations and reliability across the latent continuum in the STCI-T30 remained high. Moreover, the STCI-T30 showed external validity with criterion variables (e.

The Not so Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Differential Bacterial Adhesion and Invasion Mediated by PagN Allelic Variants.

While advances in genomic sequencing have highlighted significant strain variability between and within serovars, only a few protein variants have been directly related to evolutionary adaptation for survival, such as host specificity or differential virulence. The current study investigated whether allelic variation of the adhesin/invasin PagN influences bacterial interaction with their receptors. The serovar Typhi ( Typhi) allelic variant of PagN was found to bind significantly better to different enterocytes as well as to the extracellular matrix protein laminin than did the major serovar Typhimurium ( Typhimurium) allele.

Drosophila melanogaster as a model for arbovirus infection of adult salivary glands.

Arboviruses are an emerging threat to public health. Arbovirus transmission to vertebrates hinges on dissemination from the arthropod gastrointestinal tract, and ultimately infection of the arthropod salivary glands. Therefore, salivary gland immunity impacts arbovirus transmission; however, these immune responses are poorly understood.

Assessing the Temperamental Basis of the Sense of Humor: Adaptation of the English Language Version of the State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory Long and Standard Form.

The State-Trait Model of Cheerfulness assesses the temperamental basis of the sense of humor with the traits and respective states of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood. Cheerfulness is a dominant factor in current measures of the sense of humor and explains both, the disposition to engaging in smiling and laughter, as well as humor behaviors, and trait seriousness and bad mood are antagonistic to the elicitation of amusement (albeit for different reasons). Several studies have shown the validity and reliability of the STCI questionnaire in German and other language versions (i.

Prolonged systemic hyperglycemia does not cause pericyte loss and permeability at the mouse blood-brain barrier.

Diabetes mellitus is associated with cognitive impairment and various central nervous system pathologies such as stroke, vascular dementia, or Alzheimer's disease. The exact pathophysiology of these conditions is poorly understood. Recent reports suggest that hyperglycemia causes cerebral microcirculation pathology and blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction and leakage.

Laughing away the pain: A narrative review of humour, sense of humour and pain.

Background And Objective: The link between humour and sense of humour with pain has been a topic of research for decades. The purpose of the present article was to review the different studies that have been conducted to date on the association between humour and sense of humour with pain.

Databases And Data Treatment: The literature search was conducted using the PubMed, Science Direct and ProQuest databases.

Aggregative Adherence and Intestinal Colonization by Enteroaggregative Are Produced by Interactions among Multiple Surface Factors.

Enteroaggregative (EAEC) bacteria are exceptional colonizers that are associated with diarrhea. The genome of EAEC strain 042, a diarrheal pathogen validated in a human challenge study, encodes multiple colonization factors. Notable among them are aggregative adherence fimbriae (AAF/II) and a secreted antiaggregation protein (Aap).

Structure and Relaxation in Solutions of Monoclonal Antibodies.

Reversible self-association of therapeutic antibodies is a key factor in high protein solution viscosities. In the present work, a coarse-grained computational model accounting for electrostatic, dispersion, and long-ranged hydrodynamic interactions of two model monoclonal antibodies is applied to understand the nature of self-association, predicting the solution microstructure and resulting transport properties of the solution. For the proteins investigated, the structure factor across a range of solution conditions shows quantitative agreement with neutron-scattering experiments.

Sedimentation Velocity Analysis with Fluorescence Detection of Mutant Huntingtin Exon 1 Aggregation in Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans.

At least nine neurodegenerative diseases that are caused by the aggregation induced by long tracts of glutamine sequences have been identified. One such polyglutamine-containing protein is huntingtin, which is the primary factor responsible for Huntington's disease. Sedimentation velocity with fluorescence detection is applied to perform a comparative study of the aggregation of the huntingtin exon 1 protein fragment upon transgenic expression in Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans.

Assessing Dispositions Toward Ridicule and Laughter in the Workplace: Adapting and Validating the PhoPhiKat-9 Questionnaire.

The current paper addresses the measurement of three dispositions toward ridicule and laughter; i.e., gelotophobia (the fear of being laughed at), gelotophilia (the joy of being laughed at), and katagelasticism (the joy of laughing at others).

Analysis of the brain mural cell transcriptome.

Pericytes, the mural cells of blood microvessels, regulate microvascular development and function and have been implicated in many brain diseases. However, due to a paucity of defining markers, pericyte identification and functional characterization remain ambiguous and data interpretation problematic. In mice carrying two transgenic reporters, Pdgfrb-eGFP and NG2-DsRed, we found that double-positive cells were vascular mural cells, while the single reporters marked additional, but non-overlapping, neuroglial cells.

Self-association motifs in the enteroaggregative Escherichia coli heat-resistant agglutinin 1.

The heat-resistant agglutinin 1 (Hra1) is an integral outer membrane protein found in strains of Escherichia coli that are exceptional colonizers. Hra1 from enteroaggregative E. coli strain 042 is sufficient to confer adherence to human epithelial cells and to cause bacterial autoaggregation.

Diarrhoeagenic Escherichia coli in mother-child Pairs in Ile-Ife, South Western Nigeria.

Background: Diarrhoeagenic Escherichia coli (DEC) pathotypes are among the most common bacterial causes of morbidity and mortality in young children. These pathogens are not sought routinely and capacity for their detection is limited in Africa. We investigated the distribution and dissemination of DEC in 126 children paired with their mothers in a Nigerian community.

Gpr116 Receptor Regulates Distinctive Functions in Pneumocytes and Vascular Endothelium.

Despite its known expression in both the vascular endothelium and the lung epithelium, until recently the physiological role of the adhesion receptor Gpr116/ADGRF5 has remained elusive. We generated a new mouse model of constitutive Gpr116 inactivation, with a large genetic deletion encompassing exon 4 to exon 21 of the Gpr116 gene. This model allowed us to confirm recent results defining Gpr116 as necessary regulator of surfactant homeostasis.

Repression of Sox9 by Jag1 is continuously required to suppress the default chondrogenic fate of vascular smooth muscle cells.

Acquisition and maintenance of vascular smooth muscle fate are essential for the morphogenesis and function of the circulatory system. Loss of contractile properties or changes in the identity of vascular smooth muscle cells (vSMCs) can result in structural alterations associated with aneurysms and vascular wall calcification. Here we report that maturation of sclerotome-derived vSMCs depends on a transcriptional switch between mouse embryonic days 13 and 14.

Intense or malicious? The decoding of eyebrow-lowering frowning in laughter animations depends on the presentation mode.

Joyful laughter is the only laughter type that has received sufficient validation in terms of morphology (i.e., face, voice).

Gelotophobia and the challenges of implementing laughter into virtual agents interactions.

This study investigated which features of AVATAR laughter are perceived threatening for individuals with a fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia), and individuals with no gelotophobia. Laughter samples were systematically varied (e.g.

The character strengths of class clowns.

Class clowns traditionally were studied as a type concept and identified via sociometric procedures. In the present study a variable-centered approach was favored and class clown behaviors were studied in the context of character strengths, orientations to happiness and satisfaction with life. A sample of 672 Swiss children and adolescents filled in an 18 item self-report instrument depicting class clown behaviors.

Lim domain binding 2: a key driver of transendothelial migration of leukocytes and atherosclerosis.

Objective: Using a multi-tissue, genome-wide gene expression approach, we recently identified a gene module linked to the extent of human atherosclerosis. This atherosclerosis module was enriched with inherited risk for coronary and carotid artery disease (CAD) and overlapped with genes in the transendothelial migration of leukocyte (TEML) pathway. Among the atherosclerosis module genes, the transcription cofactor Lim domain binding 2 (LDB2) was the most connected in a CAD vascular wall regulatory gene network.

The Prp19 complex directly functions in mitotic spindle assembly.

The conserved Prp19 (pre-RNA processing 19) complex is required for pre-mRNA splicing in eukaryotic nuclei. Recent RNAi screens indicated that knockdown of Prp19 complex subunits strongly delays cell proliferation. Here we show that knockdown of the smallest subunit, BCAS2/Spf27, destabilizes the entire complex and leads to specific mitotic defects in human cells.

Notch1 regulates angio-supportive bone marrow-derived cells in mice: relevance to chemoresistance.

Host responses to chemotherapy can induce resistance mechanisms that facilitate tumor regrowth. To determine the contribution of bone marrow-derived cells (BMDCs), we exposed tumor-bearing mice to chemotherapeutic agents and evaluated the influx and contribution of a genetically traceable subpopulation of BMDCs (vascular endothelial-cadherin-Cre-enhanced yellow fluorescent protein [VE-Cad-Cre-EYFP]). Treatment of tumor-bearing mice with different chemotherapeutics resulted in a three- to 10-fold increase in the influx of VE-Cad-Cre-EYFP.