Pandemic Silver Lining: Discovering the Reasonableness of Remote Learning as an Accommodation Under the ADA

As society returned to “normal” following the worldwide pandemic caused by the outbreak of COVID-19, higher education students around the world could be heard celebrating and warmly welcoming their return to in-person classes. With this return came the face-to-face social interactions most longed for through the worldwide lockdown with friends, classmates, and professors. Some may even feel that in-person learning is more effective than what had become the norm––Zoom university. At this moment, however, these institutions can and should evaluate the potential benefits and continued utility of this alternate way of doing higher education that was forced upon them for over a year. In doing so, institutions should remember and pay special attention to the way it impacted a growing population within their student body––those with disabilities. Courts in this country must be aware of how this newly discovered way of participating in higher education classes may now be a presumptively reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for those students who, due to their disability, cannot attend in-person. This Note incorporates doctrinal and social science evidence in support of the argument that given the reliance on advanced technologies during the pandemic, virtual learning is a reasonable accommodation for qualified students with disabilities

Noncoding RNAs database (ncRNAdb)

The noncoding RNA database (ncRNAdb) was created as a source of information on RNA molecules, which do not possess protein-coding capacity. It is now widely accepted that, in addition to constitutively expressed, housekeeping or infrastructural RNAs, there is a wide variety of RNAs participating in mechanisms involved in regulation of gene expression at all levels of transmission of genetic information from DNA to proteins. Noncoding RNAs' activities include chromatin structure remodeling, transcriptional and translational regulation of gene expression, modulation of protein function and regulation of subcellular distribution of RNAs as well as proteins. Noncoding transcripts have been identified in organisms belonging to all domains of life. Currently, the ncRNAdb contains >30 000 ncRNA sequences from Eukaryotes, Eubacteria and Archaea, but does not include housekeeping transcripts or microRNAs and snoRNAs for which more specialized databases are available. The contents of the database can be accessed via the WWW at

5SRNAdb: an information resource for 5S ribosomal RNAs

Ribosomal 5S RNA (5S rRNA) is the ubiquitous RNA component found in the large subunit of ribosomes in all known organisms. Due to its small size, abundance and evolutionary conservation 5S rRNA for many years now is used as a model molecule in studies on RNA structure, RNA–protein interactions and molecular phylogeny. 5SRNAdb (http://combio.pl/5srnadb/) is the first database that provides a high quality reference set of ribosomal 5S RNAs (5S rRNA) across three domains of life. Here, we give an overview of new developments in the database and associated web tools since 2002, including updates to database content, curation processes and user web interfaces

Is DNA methylation modulated by wounding-induced oxidative burst in maize?

Plants respond to environmental changes by modifying gene expression. One of the mechanisms regulating gene expression is methylation of cytosine to 5-methylcytosine (m5C) which modulates gene expression by changing chromatin structure. Methylation/demethylation processes affect genes that are controlled upon environmental stresses. Here, on account of the regulatory role of m5C, we evaluate the content of m5C in DNA from normal and wound-damaged maize leaves. Wounding leads to a transient decrease of the global DNA methylation level ca 20-30% 1 hour after the treatment followed by a return to the initial level within the next hours. Similar results were obtained using of radio-labelled nucleotides separated by Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) or using m5C-specific Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Wounding induced in maize leaves a two-step oxidative stress, an early one just after wounding and the second two hours later. It coincides with the transient changes of the cytosine methylation level. In the stress-inducible maize calcium-dependent protein kinase ZmCPK11 gene wounding transiently reduced methylation of cytosines 100 and 126 in the first exon

Structural and biophysical studies of new L-asparaginase variants : lessons from random mutagenesis of the prototypic Escherichia coli Ntn-amido­hydrolase

This work reports the results of random mutagenesis of the Escherichia coli class 2 l-asparaginase EcAIII belonging to the Ntn-hydrolase family. New variants of EcAIII were studied using structural, biophysical and bioinformatic methods. Activity tests revealed that the l-asparaginase activity is abolished in all analyzed mutants with the absence of Arg207, but some of them retained the ability to undergo the autoproteolytic maturation process. The results of spectroscopic studies and the determined crystal structures showed that the EcAIII fold is flexible enough to accept different types of mutations; however, these mutations may have a diverse impact on the thermal stability of the protein. The conclusions from the experiments are grouped into six lessons focused on (i) the adaptation of the EcAIII fold to new substitutions, (ii) the role of Arg207 in EcAIII activity, (iii) a network of residues necessary for autoprocessing, (iv) the complexity of the autoprocessing reaction, (v) the conformational changes observed in enzymatically inactive variants and (vi) the cooperativity of the EcAIII dimer subunits. Additionally, the structural requirements (pre-maturation checkpoints) that are necessary for the initiation of the autocleavage of Ntn-hydrolases have been classified. The findings reported in this work provide useful hints that should be considered before planning enzyme-engineering experiments aimed at the design of proteins for therapeutic applications. This is especially important for l-asparaginases that can be utilized in leukemia therapy, as alternative therapeutics are urgently needed to circumvent the severe side effects associated with the currently used enzymes

Relaxing the Substrate Specificity of an Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetase Allows in vitro and in vivo Synthesis of Proteins Containing Unnatural Amino Acids

It has previously been demonstrated that the unnatural amino acid p‐Cl‐phenylalanine can be attached to tRNAPhe by a modified phenylalanyl‐tRNA synthetase with relaxed amino acid substrate specificity. We show that this modification to the translational machinery of Escherichia coli is the only requirement for the incorporation of either p‐Cl‐ or p‐Br‐phenylalanine into full‐length luciferase in vitro. The incorporation of p‐Cl‐phenylalanine was also demonstrated in vivo using a suitably modified host strain. These results represent the first description of the incorporation into a protein in vivo of an unnatural amino acid which is normally rejected by the cellular translational machinery