The Potential for IVDR Feedback and Parental Guidance to Improve Novice Young Drivers’ Behavior

Young male drivers are well known for their increased involvement in road crashes when moving to the independent driving phase. This study examines the potential of IVDR (In-Vehicle Data Recorder) systems, which provide feedback on driving performances, and parental monitoring to restrain young male drivers’ aggressive driving behavior. The IVDR system was installed in the family car of young drivers for a period of 12 months, starting in the accompanied driving phase and continuing to the first nine months of independent driving. The system documents events based on measurements of extreme G-forces in the vehicles. 242 families of young male drivers participated in the study. They were randomly allocated into 4 groups: (1) FFNG- Family Feedback No Guidance- all members of the family were exposed to feedback on their own driving behavior and that of the other family members; (2) FFPG- Family Feedback Parental Guidance - similar to the previous group with the addition of personal guidance given to parents on ways to enhance their involvement and monitoring of their sons’ driving; (3) IFNG- Individual Feedback No Guidance- each driver received feedback only on his own driving behavior; (4) CNTL- a control group that received no feedback or parental guidance. The collected data from the IVDR was analyzed and the results indicate substantial benefits to drivers in the FFPG group in which parents received personal guidance to enhance their parental involvement and feedback on their son’s driving behavior, compared to the CNTL group which did not receive any feedback

Transfer of noncoding DNA drives regulatory rewiring in bacteria

Understanding the mechanisms that generate variation is a common pursuit unifying the life sciences. Bacteria represent an especially striking puzzle, because closely related strains possess radically different metabolic and ecological capabilities. Differences in protein repertoire arising from gene transfer are currently considered the primary mechanism underlying phenotypic plasticity in bacteria. Although bacterial coding plasticity has been extensively studied in previous decades, little is known about the role that regulatory plasticity plays in bacterial evolution. Here, we show that bacterial genes can rapidly shift between multiple regulatory modes by acquiring functionally divergent nonhomologous promoter regions. Through analysis of 270,000 regulatory regions across 247 genomes, we demonstrate that regulatory “switching” to nonhomologous alternatives is ubiquitous, occurring across the bacterial domain. Using comparative transcriptomics, we show that at least 16% of the expression divergence between Escherichia coli strains can be explained by this regulatory switching. Further, using an oligonucleotide regulatory library, we establish that switching affects bacterial promoter architecture. We provide evidence that regulatory switching can occur through horizontal regulatory transfer, which allows regulatory regions to move across strains, and even genera, independently from the genes they regulate. Finally, by experimentally characterizing the fitness effect of a regulatory transfer on a pathogenic E. coli strain, we demonstrate that regulatory switching elicits important phenotypic consequences. Taken together, our findings expose previously unappreciated regulatory plasticity in bacteria and provide a gateway for understanding bacterial phenotypic variation and adaptation.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant DEB-0936234

Combined Analysis of Variation in Core, Accessory and Regulatory Genome Regions Provides a Super-Resolution View into the Evolution of Bacterial Populations

The use of whole-genome phylogenetic analysis has revolutionized our understanding of the evolution and spread of many important bacterial pathogens due to the high resolution view it provides. However, the majority of such analyses do not consider the potential role of accessory genes when inferring evolutionary trajectories. Moreover, the recently discovered importance of the switching of gene regulatory elements suggests that an exhaustive analysis, combining information from core and accessory genes with regulatory elements could provide unparalleled detail of the evolution of a bacterial population. Here we demonstrate this principle by applying it to a worldwide multi-host sample of the important pathogenic E. coli lineage ST131. Our approach reveals the existence of multiple circulating subtypes of the major drug-resistant clade of ST131 and provides the first ever population level evidence of core genome substitutions in gene regulatory regions associated with the acquisition and maintenance of different accessory genome elements.Peer reviewe

Standing on the shoulders of microbes: How cancer biologists are expanding their view of hard‐to‐kill persister cells

Similar to persister bacterial cells that survive antibiotic treatments, some cancer cells can evade drug treatments. This Commentary discusses the different classes of persister cells and their implications for developing more efficient cancer treatments.[Image: see text

Reward-related regions play a role in natural story comprehension

Summary: The reward system was shown to be involved in a wide array of processes. Nevertheless, the exploration of the involvement of the reward system during language processing has not yet been directly tested. We investigated the role of reward-processing regions while listening to a natural story. We utilized a published dataset in which half of the participants listened to a natural story and the others listened to a scrambled version of it to compare the functional MRI signals in the reward system between these conditions and discovered a distinct pattern between conditions. This suggests that the reward system is activated during the comprehension of natural stories. We also show evidence that the fMRI signals in reward-related areas might potentially correlate with the predictability level of processed sentences. Further research is needed to determine the nature of the involvement and the way the activity interacts with various aspects of the sentences

The Lats2 tumor suppressor augments p53-mediated apoptosis by promoting the nuclear proapoptotic function of ASPP1

Apoptosis is an important mechanism to eliminate potentially tumorigenic cells. The tumor suppressor p53 plays a pivotal role in this process. Many tumors harbor mutant p53, but others evade its tumor-suppressive effects by altering the expression of proteins that regulate the p53 pathway. ASPP1 (apoptosis-stimulating protein of p53-1) is a key mediator of the nuclear p53 apoptotic response. Under basal conditions, ASPP1 is cytoplasmic. We report that, in response to oncogenic stress, the tumor suppressor Lats2 (large tumor suppressor 2) phosphorylates ASPP1 and drives its translocation into the nucleus. Together, Lats2 and ASPP1 shunt p53 to proapoptotic promoters and promote the death of polyploid cells. These effects are overridden by the Yap1 (Yes-associated protein 1) oncoprotein, which disrupts Lats2–ASPP1 binding and antagonizes the tumor-suppressing function of the Lats2/ASPP1/p53 axis