Reconnecting Students and Faculty to Maximize Academic Integrity and Minimize Student Stress in the Virtual Classroom.

The article documents faculty experiences with the shift online due to the pandemic and provides recommendations to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instructors. Over 100 faculty members were surveyed on these topics and contrasted with previously reported student experiences. The online shift changed how faculty administered exams, ran courses, and acted to ensure academic integrity.

Maximizing Academic Integrity While Minimizing Stress in the Virtual Classroom.

The article documents students' experiences with the shift online at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides informed recommendations to STEM instructors regarding academic integrity and student stress. Over 500 students were surveyed on these topics, including an open-ended question. Students experienced more stress and perceived a greater workload in online courses and therefore preferred in-person courses overall.

Triage and Recovery of STEM Laboratory Skills.

The global COVID-19 pandemic left universities with few options but to turn to remote learning. With much effort, STEM courses made this change in modality; however, many laboratory skills, such as measurement and handling equipment, are more difficult to teach in an online learning environment. A cohort of instructors who are part of the NSF RCN-UBE funded Sustainable, Transformative Engagement across a Multi-Institution/Multidisciplinary STEM (STEM) Network (a working group of faculty from two community colleges and three 4-year universities) analyzed introductory biology and chemistry courses to identify essential laboratory skills that students will need in advanced courses.

KL1 is a novel microtubule severing enzyme that regulates mitotic spindle architecture.

Katanin is a microtubule severing enzyme with demonstrated roles in a variety of cellular activities including mitosis. Here we identify the closely related, but relatively uncharacterized human protein, Katanin-like 1 (KL1), as a novel mitotic regulator. Over expression of KL1 in tissue culture cells results in the complete disassembly of cellular microtubules strongly suggesting that it is an active microtubule severing protein.

Methylation protects cytidines from AID-mediated deamination.

Somatic hypermutation (SHM), class switch recombination (CSR), and gene conversion of immunoglobulin genes require activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID). AID initiates these events by deaminating cytidines within antibody variable and switch regions. The mechanism that restricts mutation to antibody genes is not known.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) origin-binding protein associates with mitotic spindles to enable viral DNA partitioning.

Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) establish long-term infections in patients. The mechanism for extrachromosomal HPV DNA persistence in cycling cells is unknown. We show that HPV origin-containing plasmids partition as minichromosomes, attributable to an association of the viral origin recognition protein E2 with mitotic spindles.

Mammalian linker-histone subtypes differentially affect gene expression in vivo.

Posttranslational modifications and remodeling of nucleosomes are critical factors in the regulation of transcription. Higher-order folding of chromatin also is likely to contribute to the control of gene expression, but the absence of a detailed description of the structure of the chromatin fiber has impaired progress in this area. Mammalian somatic cells contain a set of H1 linker-histone subtypes, H1 (0) and H1a to H1e, that bind to nucleosome core particles and to the linker DNA between nucleosomes.