Modeling Varicella Zoster Virus Persistence and Reactivation - Closer to Resolving a Perplexing Persistent State.

The latent state of the human herpesvirus varicella zoster virus (VZV) has remained enigmatic and controversial. While it is well substantiated that VZV persistence is established in neurons after the primary infection (varicella or chickenpox), we know little of the types of neurons harboring latent virus genomes, if all can potentially reactivate, what exactly drives the reactivation process, and the role of immunity in the control of latency. Viral gene expression during latency has been particularly difficult to resolve, although very recent advances indicate that it is more restrictive than was once thought.

A contextual perspective on talented female participants and their development in extracurricular STEM programs.

We advocate a more contextual perspective in giftedness research. In our view, doing so opens up three particularly interesting research areas, which we refer to as the participation issue, the effectiveness issue, and the interaction issue. To illustrate their utility, we examined characteristics of females participating in German high achiever-track secondary education who had applied for participation in a 1-year extracurricular e-mentoring program in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) (n = 1237).

Constitutive Expression of GATA4 Dramatically Increases the Cardiogenic Potential of D3 Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells.

The transcription factor GATA binding protein 4 (GATA4) is a vital regulator of cardiac programming that acts by inducing the expression of many different genes involved in cardiomyogenesis. Here we generated a D3 mouse embryonic stem cell line that constitutively expresses high levels of GATA4 and show that these cells have dramatically increased cardiogenic potential compared to an eGFP-expressing control cell line. Embryoid bodies (EB) derived from the D3-GATA4 line displayed increased levels of cardiac gene expression and showed more abundant cardiomyocyte differentiation than control eGFP EB.