Biophysical characterisation of human LincRNA-p21 sense and antisense Alu inverted repeats

Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0) appliesHuman Long Intergenic Noncoding RNA-p21 (LincRNA-p21) is a regulatory noncoding RNA that plays an important role in promoting apoptosis. LincRNA-p21 is also critical in down-regulating many p53 target genes through its interaction with a p53 repressive complex. The interaction between LincRNA-p21 and the repressive complex is likely dependent on the RNA tertiary structure. Previous studies have determined the two-dimensional secondary structures of the sense and antisense human LincRNA-p21 AluSx1 IRs using SHAPE. However, there were no insights into its three-dimensional structure. Therefore, we in vitro transcribed the sense and antisense regions of LincRNA-p21 AluSx1 Inverted Repeats (IRs) and performed analytical ultracentrifugation, size exclusion chromatography, light scattering, and small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) studies. Based on these studies, we determined low-resolution, three-dimensional structures of sense and antisense LincRNA-p21. By adapting previously known two-dimensional information, we calculated their sense and antisense high-resolution models and determined that they agree with the low-resolution structures determined using SAXS. Thus, our integrated approach provides insights into the structure of LincRNA-p21 Alu IRs. Our study also offers a viable pipeline for combining the secondary structure information with biophysical and computational studies to obtain high-resolution atomistic models for long noncoding RNAs.Ye

To live and dine in Dixie: foodways and culture in the twentieth-century South

This dissertation explores the transformation of food culture in urban areas of the American South during the first part of the twentieth century. From 1900 to 1964, southern culinary practices became more public and more in line with national trends. The first three decades of the twentieth century marked an important period of change. In southern homes, white, middle-class, urban women formed a commitment to scientific cooking and used its strict rules to construct new racial and class identities within the urban environment. At the same time, newly urban peoples began frequenting a variety of different types of public eating places. Socio-economic, racial, ethnic, and gender diversity within these spaces encouraged the white power structure in southern cities to implement laws to regulate these public spaces. Such regulation included municipal ordinances that restricted eating places based on race and contributing to the development of a system of racial segregation within the region's urban areas. White southerners maintained racial segregation in public eating places through images and everyday rituals that identified the black consumption of food as subordinate to white consumption. At the height of Jim Crow, however, southern consumption culture also cultivated the seeds of segregation's destruction. Segregated black cafes stimulated African American community building and empowerment, both of which served to undermine the strength of segregation. At the same time, as southern food practices became more entwined with national standards, food systems emerged and spread across the South that encouraged more democratized spaces for the consumption of food. The nationalization of southern food culture, the determined efforts of civil rights activists to end segregated eating patterns, and the continued intransigence of white supremacists to maintain racial segregation in food venues encouraged the United States Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which, among other things, required the desegregation of public eating places. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Novel Insights into Tritrophic Interaction Diversity and Chemical Ecology Using 16 Years of Volunteer-Supported Research

Sixteen years ago, a schoolteacher from New Jersey collected a caterpillar in a Costa Rican rainforest. When a parasitoid emerged several days later, it became the first data point of a long-term volunteer–mediated study on tritrophic interactions across the Americas. The teacher was an Earthwatch Institute scientist and the project an ongoing ecological investigation of caterpillars, host plants, and the wasps and flies (parasitoids) that kill them (Fig. 1). Over the course of 16 years, 1,200 volunteers have contributed to the project, including adult and youth citizen scientists from Earthwatch, teachers, and a number of other volunteers who have offered their time for months or years

Novel Insights into Tritrophic Interaction Diversity and Chemical Ecology Using 16 Years of Volunteer-Supported Research

Sixteen years ago, a schoolteacher from New Jersey collected a caterpillar in a Costa Rican rainforest. When a parasitoid emerged several days later, it became the first data point of a long-term volunteer–mediated study on tritrophic interactions across the Americas. The teacher was an Earthwatch Institute scientist and the project an ongoing ecological investigation of caterpillars, host plants, and the wasps and flies (parasitoids) that kill them (Fig. 1). Over the course of 16 years, 1,200 volunteers have contributed to the project, including adult and youth citizen scientists from Earthwatch, teachers, and a number of other volunteers who have offered their time for months or years

Verbal interaction sequences and group mood: Exploring the role of planning communication.

Kauffeld). Lag sequential analysis revealed complaining as well as interest-in-change cycles in the discussion flow. A two-dimension (arousal and pleasure) rating instrument was developed to assess group mood. Results showed that complaining cycles were linked to a passive group mood, and interest-in-change cycles were correlated with an active group mood. Neither complaining nor interest-in-change cycles were correlated with the pleasure dimension. We discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of our findings as well as prospects for future research on interaction cycles and group mood