Thoughts from the Editors

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including teaching and learning language arts from preschool to middle school age, the several children\u27s literature, and interviews with several scholars, authors, and researchers

Laboratory Evolution of Fast-Folding Green Fluorescent Protein Using Secretory Pathway Quality Control

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) has undergone a long history of optimization to become one of the most popular proteins in all of cell biology. It is thermally and chemically robust and produces a pronounced fluorescent phenotype when expressed in cells of all types. Recently, a superfolder GFP was engineered with increased resistance to denaturation and improved folding kinetics. Here we report that unlike other well-folded variants of GFP (e.g., GFPmut2), superfolder GFP was spared from elimination when targeted for secretion via the SecYEG translocase. This prompted us to hypothesize that the folding quality control inherent to this secretory pathway could be used as a platform for engineering similar ‘superfolded’ proteins. To test this, we targeted a combinatorial library of GFPmut2 variants to the SecYEG translocase and isolated several superfolded variants that accumulated in the cytoplasm due to their enhanced folding properties. Each of these GFP variants exhibited much faster folding kinetics than the parental GFPmut2 protein and one of these, designated superfast GFP, folded at a rate that even exceeded superfolder GFP. Remarkably, these GFP variants exhibited little to no loss in specific fluorescence activity relative to GFPmut2, suggesting that the process of superfolding can be accomplished without altering the proteins' normal function. Overall, we demonstrate that laboratory evolution combined with secretory pathway quality control enables sampling of largely unexplored amino-acid sequences for the discovery of artificial, high-performance proteins with properties that are unparalleled in their naturally occurring analogues

Toward Culturally Relevant Literacies with Children and Families of Color

Family literacy education has arguably created change, ranging from a focus on sustaining informal family interactions among parents and children driven by the need to eliminate intergenerational cycles of poverty to more formal and federally funded programs driven by legislative definitions that advance traditional literacy skills, life skills as well as problem-solving skills deemed necessary to enhance opportunities for both parents and children in families to overcome challenges posed by illiteracy. Yet, a persistent concern lingers that family literacy programs can do much more to balance the development of programs with an adequate emphasis on the community and cultural practices of families of color, a dynamic critical to enhancing teachers\u27 capacity to support parents and children in and beyond schools, both in the United States and across the globe. To advance this argument in this chapter, we discuss family literacy and its evolution over time, taking into consideration local and global realities of families, and particularly, families of color. Following this, we describe family literacy implementation and programming in the US followed by a discussion of the same across the globe, highlighting the ways in which these initiatives may have potentially deterred the economic or social realities of families of color even while perceived as advancement. Subsequently, we discuss long-standing efforts to examine and support the literacies of families of color, pointing to key indicators that characterize these research and community practices. Finally, we identify key insights gleaned from our discussion by presenting certain culturally relevant literacy practices that can sustain the literacies of families of color and proposing a way forward for the field