Middle-School Student Engagement in a Tick Testing Community Science Project.

Studies of tickborne illness have benefited from interactions between scientists and community members. Most participants in community science projects are well-educated adults, but there are anticipated benefits from engaging younger students in research. We evaluated whether an outreach experience for rural middle-school students promoted student interest in science and resulted in the generation of samples that could be used for tick testing to assess disease risk.

Induction of expression through JNK and cGAS-STING modulates DNA damage-induced cytokine production.

Cytokine production is a critical component of cell-extrinsic responses to DNA damage and cellular senescence. Here, we demonstrated that expression of the gene encoding interleukin-19 (IL-19) was enhanced by DNA damage through pathways mediated by c-Jun amino-terminal kinase (JNK) and cGAS-STING and that expression was required for the subsequent production of the cytokines IL-1, IL-6, and IL-8. expression was stimulated by diverse cellular stresses, including inhibition of the DNA replication checkpoint kinase ATR (ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3-related protein), oncogene expression, replicative exhaustion, oxidative stress, and DNA double-strand breaks.

Targeting the ATR/CHK1 Axis with PARP Inhibition Results in Tumor Regression in -Mutant Ovarian Cancer Models.

PARP inhibition (PARPi) has modest clinical activity in recurrent -mutant () high-grade serous ovarian cancers (HGSOC). We hypothesized that PARPi increases dependence on ATR/CHK1 such that combination PARPi with ATR/CHK1 blockade results in increased cell death and tumor regression. Effects of PARPi (olaparib), CHK1 inhibition (CHK1i;MK8776), or ATR inhibition (ATRi;AZD6738) alone or in combination on survival, colony formation, cell cycle, genome instability, and apoptosis were evaluated in HGSOC cells.

pH responsive poly amino-acid hydrogels formed via silk sericin templating.

Poly(amino acid) hydrogels have attracted a great deal of attention as biodegradable biomaterials that can limit products of synthetic polymer degradation. Here we report on a stimuli-responsive, porous, composite biomaterial based on the protein templating of the poly(amino acid) hydrogel from poly(aspartic acid) with the silk protein sericin. This low-cost, biocompatible and biodegradable hydrogel demonstrates a greatly increased porosity and improvement in volumetric swelling over networks formed from pure poly(aspartic acid).