Wellness and Stress Management Practices Among Healthcare Professionals and Health Professional Students.

Purpose: Healthcare professionals experience stressors that begin during training and persist into their careers that adversely impact their well-being. This study aims to identify students' and professionals' stress levels, satisfaction with wellness domains, barriers to wellness, and stress management practices.

Design: This study was a cross-sectional self-reported survey study.

Increasing Students' Publication Productivity: Could Launching a University Scientific Journal be a Catalyst?

Our institution established an online medical journal to promote publication opportunities and to foster a culture of scholarship. In two years of activity, there was an increase in the proportion of students reporting authorship of peer-reviewed publications at our institution suggesting an increase in students' scholarly interest and output.

Elf5 is a principal cell lineage specific transcription factor in the kidney that contributes to Aqp2 and Avpr2 gene expression.

The mammalian kidney collecting ducts are critical for water, electrolyte and acid-base homeostasis and develop as a branched network of tubular structures composed of principal cells intermingled with intercalated cells. The intermingled nature of the different collecting duct cell types has made it challenging to identify unique and critical factors that mark and/or regulate the development of the different collecting duct cell lineages. Here we report that the canonical Notch signaling pathway components, RBPJ and Presinilin1 and 2, are involved in patterning the mouse collecting duct cell fates by maintaining a balance between principal cell and intercalated cell fates.

Online Faculty Development for Implementation and Use of Student Portfolios.

Introduction: Over the past decade, portfolios have gained popularity in medical education as tools to evaluate and provide feedback about learning and completion of professionally authentic tasks. Though faculty development has been noted to be key for successful portfolios, there are few available resources. As part of an interinstitutional collaborative project, we have developed online faculty development modules that provide pedagogical information about portfolios, practical advice, and resources from the available literature.

Enu mutagenesis identifies a novel platelet phenotype in a loss-of-function Jak2 allele.

Utilizing ENU mutagenesis, we identified a mutant mouse with elevated platelets. Genetic mapping localized the mutation to an interval on chromosome 19 that encodes the Jak2 tyrosine kinase. We identified a A3056T mutation resulting in a premature stop codon within exon 19 of Jak2 (Jak2(K915X)), resulting in a protein truncation and functionally inactive enzyme.

Cytopenia induction by 5-fluorouracil identifies thrombopoietic mutants in sensitized ENU mutagenesis screens.

The ability of random mutagenesis techniques to annotate the mammalian genome can be hampered due to genetic redundancy and compensatory pathways that mask heterozygous mutations under homeostatic conditions. The objective of this study was to devise a pharmacologically sensitized screen using the chemotherapeutic drug, 5-fluorouracil (5FU), to induce cytopenia. 5FU dose was optimized in the 129/SvImJ, C57BL/6J, BALB/cJ, and C3H/HeJ strains of laboratory mice.

The inositol phosphatase SHIP-1 is negatively regulated by Fli-1 and its loss accelerates leukemogenesis.

The activation of Fli-1, an Ets transcription factor, is the critical genetic event in Friend murine leukemia virus (F-MuLV)-induced erythroleukemia. Fli-1 overexpression leads to erythropoietin-dependent erythroblast proliferation, enhanced survival, and inhibition of terminal differentiation, through activation of the Ras pathway. However, the mechanism by which Fli-1 activates this signal transduction pathway has yet to be identified.

Src homology 2 domain-containing inositol 5-phosphatase 1 deficiency leads to a spontaneous allergic inflammation in the murine lung.

Background: Src homology 2 domain-containing inositol 5-phosphatase 1 (SHIP-1) controls the intracellular level of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase product phosphotidylinositol-3,4,5-trisphosphate and functions as a negative regulator of cytokine and immune receptor signaling. Emerging evidence suggests that the phosphoinositide 3-kinase pathway might be involved in allergic inflammation in the lung. However, the functional relevance of SHIP-1 in the T(H)2 activation pathway has not been established.

A novel role for STAT1 in regulating murine erythropoiesis: deletion of STAT1 results in overall reduction of erythroid progenitors and alters their distribution.

Erythropoietin (EPO) activates many distinct signal transduction cascades on engagement of its receptor. Deletion of the EPO, EPO receptor (EPO-R), or JAK2 genes in mice results in embryonic lethality due to a fatal anemia. EPO activates signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT1), STAT3, and STAT5a/b transcription factors in erythroid cell lines.