Reconstructing the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes.

Understanding the origin of eukaryotic cells is one of the most difficult problems in all of biology. A key challenge relevant to the question of eukaryogenesis is reconstructing the gene repertoire of the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA). As data sets grow, sketching an accurate genomics-informed picture of early eukaryotic cellular complexity requires provision of analytical resources and a commitment to data sharing.

Molecular Evidence of CeO Nanoparticle Modulation of ABA and Genes Containing ABA-Responsive Cis-Elements to Promote Rice Drought Resistance.

Cerium dioxide nanoparticles (CeO NPs) have enzyme-like properties and scavenge excess ROS induced by stressors such as drought. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms by which CeO NPs enhance drought resistance are unknown. In this work, both foliar application and soil injection of CeO NPs were used to rice seedlings under a 30 day moderate drought (40% soil relative moisture).

Natural menopause timing and menopause symptoms among lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women in the Nurses' Health Study II.

Objective: This study aimed to examine sexual orientation differences in natural menopause timing and symptoms between lesbian and bisexual women compared with heterosexual women.

Methods: We used longitudinal questionnaire data (1989-2015) from 92,314 women (858 lesbian, 375 bisexual) in the Nurses' Health Study II cohort. Women were 24-44 yr old at baseline and biennially reported their menopause status, including reasons for cessation of menstrual periods.

Tracking flaviviral protease conformational dynamics by tuning single-molecule nanopore tweezers.

The flaviviral NS2B/NS3 protease is a conserved enzyme required for flavivirus replication. Its highly dynamic conformation poses major challenges but also offers opportunities for antiviral inhibition. Here, we established a nanopore tweezers-based platform to monitor NS2B/NS3 conformational dynamics in real time.

TomoPicker: Annotation-Efficient Particle Picking in cryo-electron Tomograms.

Particle picking in cryo-electron tomograms (cryo-ET) is crucial for in situ structure detection of macromolecules and protein complexes. The traditional template-matching-based approaches for particle picking suffer from template-specific biases and have low throughput. Given these problems, learning-based solutions are necessary for particle picking.

Disparities in Receipt of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the US Veterans Health Administration.

Background: Populations disproportionately impacted by the opioid epidemic are less likely to receive medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD; OUD). The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these disparities. We performed an ecological survey of subpopulations to compare differences in MOUD receipt among Veterans with OUD before versus during the pandemic.

Controlled bioorthogonal catalyst self-assembly and activity using rationally designed polymer scaffolds.

Polymer-based nanocatalysts have been extensively utilized in advanced drug delivery due to their versatility and high reactivity. Incorporating bioorthogonal transition metal catalysts (TMCs) into polymers generates bioorthogonal nanocatalysts capable of producing therapeutic agents , minimizing off-target effects. The supramolecular interactions within the polymer matrix, including hydrophobic interactions and aromatic stacking, play a crucial role in catalytic properties.

Multiplexed Quantitative Screening of the Cellular Uptake of Proteins Delivered by Polymeric Nanocarriers.

Proteins are important therapeutic agents, yet better methods are needed to deliver them inside of cells. Polymeric nanocarriers (PNCs) are versatile materials for this purpose, and to enhance their development, it is necessary to quantify protein delivery efficiency into cells by numerous PNC designs at the same time. Current strategies for screening PNC systems are qualitative and mostly serial.

Using ROC Analysis to Refine Cut Scores Following a Standard Setting Process.

In educational assessment, cut scores are often defined through standard setting by a group of subject matter experts. This study aims to investigate the impact of several factors on classification accuracy using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to provide statistical and theoretical evidence when the cut score needs to be refined. Factors examined in the study include the sample distribution relative to the cut score, prevalence of the positive event, and cost ratio.

Multidimensional energy poverty and its effects on household consumption and savings: Evidence from Nepal.

This study examines the impact of multidimensional energy poverty (MDEP) on household consumption and savings, with a focus on potential differences by the gender of the household head. Using data from the Household Risk and Vulnerability Survey (HRVS) 2016-2018, a three-year panel dataset from Nepal covering 6000 households, we apply pooled OLS, dynamic panel fixed effects (FE), panel instrumental variable (IV), and Lewbel's (Lewbel, 2012) 2SLS methods. Our findings reveal that MDEP significantly reduces both household consumption and savings, with more pronounced effects on savings.

Nursing advocacy and activism: A critical analysis of regulatory documents.

Advocacy and activism are dynamic terms representing a spectrum of political action, aiming to achieve social or political change. The extent to which nursing advocacy and activism are legitimate nursing roles has been debated for around 50 years. Nursing regulatory documents, such as codes of conduct and professional standards, may provide direction to nurses on how they should act in the context of advocacy and activism.

Crucial hurdles to achieving human-robot harmony.

Holistic consideration of the human and the robot is necessary to overcome hurdles in human-robot interaction.

Likely Overstabilization of Charge-Charge Interactions in CHARMM36m(w): A Case for a99SB-disp Water.

Recent years have witnessed drastic improvements in general-purpose explicit solvent protein force fields, partially driven by the need to study intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), and yet the state-of-the-art force fields such as CHARMM36m (c36m) and a99SB-disp still provide different performances in simulating disordered protein states, where c36m has a bias toward overcompaction for large IDPs. Here, we examine the performance of c36m and a99SB-disp in describing the stabilities of a set of 46 amino acid backbone and side chain pairs in various configurations. The free energy results show that c36m systematically predicts stronger interactions compared to a99SB-disp by an average of 0.

Weight control efforts and practices and health professional advice: a cross-sectional national survey in England.

Objectives: There is evidence that general practitioners (GPs) can increase the uptake of weight management programmes that enhance weight loss compared with self-directed efforts, but the rate at which they do so is unclear. This study examined the prevalence of weight control efforts and practices, the reported frequency and impact of receipt of GP advice on weight loss attempts and perceptions of the appropriateness of health professionals delivering weight loss advice.

Design: A nationally representative cross-sectional survey.

Successful Invasion Into New Environments Without Evidence of Rapid Adaptation by a Predatory Marine Gastropod.

Invasive species with native ranges spanning strong environmental gradients are well suited for examining the roles of selection and population history in rapid adaptation to new habitats, providing insight into potential evolutionary responses to climate change. The Atlantic oyster drill (Urosalpinx cinerea) is a marine snail whose native range spans the strongest coastal latitudinal temperature gradient in the world, with invasive populations established on the US Pacific coast. Here, we leverage this system using genome-wide SNPs and environmental data to examine invasion history and identify genotype-environment associations indicative of local adaptation across the native range, and then assess evidence for allelic frequency shifts that would signal rapid adaptation within invasive populations.

Disrupted nitric oxide homeostasis impacts fertility through multiple processes including protein quality control.

Plant fertility is fundamental to plant survival and requires the coordinated interaction of developmental pathways and signaling molecules. Nitric oxide (NO) is a small, gaseous signaling molecule that plays crucial roles in plant fertility as well as other developmental processes and stress responses. NO influences biological processes through S-nitrosation, the posttranslational modification of protein cysteines to S-nitrosocysteine (R-SNO).

The power of prompts: Encouraging children to think about fairness promotes the costly rejection of unfairness.

Children in the United States have an early-emerging understanding that resources should be divided fairly among agents, yet their behavior does not begin to reflect this understanding until later in development. Why does this gap between knowledge and behavior exist, and how can we close it? Here, we tested the role of explicit prompts in closing the gap, asking whether prompting 4- to 9-year-olds to make fair decisions would promote the costly rejection of unfairness in the Inequity Game. Children were presented with either advantageous (more for actor, less for recipient) or disadvantageous (less for actor, more for recipient) allocations and assigned to one of three experimental conditions: Fairness Prompt, Autonomous Prompt, or Baseline.

Parenting Risk and Protective Factors in the Development of Conduct Problems in Seven Countries.

This study advances the understanding of risk and protective factors in trajectories of conduct problems in adolescence in seven countries that differ widely on a number of sociodemographic factors as well as norms related to adolescent behavior. Youth- and parent-report data from 988 adolescents in seven countries (Colombia, Italy, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the USA) who were followed longitudinally from ages 10 to 18 (yielding 6872 total data points) were subject to latent class growth analysis. A 4-class model provided the best fit to the data: Late Starters, Alcohol Experimenters, Mid-Adolescent Starters, and Pervasive Risk Takers.

Diverse Genome Structures among Eukaryotes May Have Arisen in Response to Genetic Conflict.

In contrast to the typified view of genome cycling only between haploidy and diploidy, there is evidence from across the tree of life of genome dynamics that alter both copy number (i.e. ploidy) and chromosome complements.

Decreased DNA density is a better indicator of a nuclear bleb than lamin B loss.

Nuclear blebs are herniations of the nucleus that occur in diseased nuclei that cause nuclear rupture leading to cellular dysfunction. Chromatin and lamins are two of the major structural components of the nucleus that maintain its shape and function, but their relative roles in nuclear blebbing remain elusive. To determine the composition of nuclear blebs, we compared the immunofluorescence intensity of DNA and lamin B in the main nucleus body to the nuclear bleb across cell types and perturbations.