Impact of the first COVID-19 outbreak on mental health service utilisation at a Dutch mental health centre: retrospective observational study.

Background: Previous studies into mental health service utilisation during the COVID-19 pandemic are limited to a few countries or specific type of service. In addition, data on changes in telepsychiatry are currently lacking.

Aims: We aimed to investigate whether the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with changes in mental health service utilisation, including telepsychiatry, and how these changes were distributed among patients with mental illness during the first COVID-19 outbreak.

Alanine metabolism in Bacillus subtilis.

Both isomeric forms of alanine play a crucial role in bacterial growth and viability; the L-isomer of this amino acid is one of the building blocks for protein synthesis, and the D-isomer is incorporated into the bacterial cell wall. Despite a long history of genetic manipulation of Bacillus subtilis using auxotrophic markers, the genes involved in alanine metabolism have not been characterized fully. In this work, we genetically characterized the major enzymes involved in B.