Art-Based Heuristically Informed Social Action for a Survivor of Childhood Complex Trauma

Social action - art therapy and complex trauma are relatively unknown and are not yet understood by the mental health field. This heuristic study seeks to explore the synergy between art making and social action as it applies to an adult survivor of childhood complex trauma. The researcher used 14 of 46 childhood complex trauma life stores as a stimulus for art making. The data was then analyzed to explicate meanings, patterns and connections. This analysis revealed that the art was used as evidence to counteract invisible systems of abuse. The art highlighted secondary traumas, contexts, and multiplicity effects of numerous traumas. These art works and new meanings culminated in a creative synthesis, which compelled the social action component. New and profound understanding of the researcher’s history of complex trauma was illuminated through the art. Social action respectfully empowered a transformation from trauma survivor to thriving activist. This study supports the use of art and social action with adult complex trauma survivors

One Hand Clapping: detection of condition-specific transcription factor interactions from genome-wide gene activity data

We present One Hand Clapping (OHC), a method for the detection of condition-specific interactions between transcription factors (TFs) from genome-wide gene activity measurements. OHC is based on a mapping between transcription factors and their target genes. Given a single case-control experiment, it uses a linear regression model to assess whether the common targets of two arbitrary TFs behave differently than expected from the genes targeted by only one of the TFs. When applied to osmotic stress data in S. cerevisiae, OHC produces consistent results across three types of expression measurements: gene expression microarray data, RNA Polymerase II ChIP-chip binding data and messenger RNA synthesis rates. Among the eight novel, condition-specific TF pairs, we validate the interaction between Gcn4p and Arr1p experimentally. We apply OHC to a large gene activity dataset in S. cerevisiae and provide a compendium of condition-specific TF interactions

Periodic mRNA synthesis and degradation co-operate during cell cycle gene expression

During the cell cycle, the levels of hundreds of mRNAs change in a periodic manner, but how this is achieved by alterations in the rates of mRNA synthesis and degradation has not been studied systematically. Here, we used metabolic RNA labeling and comparative dynamic transcriptome analysis (cDTA) to derive mRNA synthesis and degradation rates every 5 min during three cell cycle periods of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A novel statistical model identified 479 genes that show periodic changes in mRNA synthesis and generally also periodic changes in their mRNA degradation rates. Peaks of mRNA degradation generally follow peaks of mRNA synthesis, resulting in sharp and high peaks of mRNA levels at defined times during the cell cycle. Whereas the timing of mRNA synthesis is set by upstream DNA motifs and their associated transcription factors (TFs), the synthesis rate of a periodically expressed gene is apparently set by its core promoter. Synopsis image Genome-scale measurement of changes in mRNA synthesis and degradation rates during the yeast cell cycle identifies genes with periodic synthesis and degradation and reveals a tight temporal coupling of both processes. The first high-resolution time series of mRNA synthesis and degradation rates during the cell cycle is presented. A novel statistical algorithm identifies periodically expressed genes and parameters of their temporal profile. The timing of periodic expression is set by upstream DNA motifs and the associated transcription factors, whereas the synthesis rate is set by the core promoter. Sharp and high peaks of mRNA levels are obtained by a temporal coupling of periodic mRNA synthesis and degradation maxima