What determines auditory similarity? The effect of stimulus group and methodology.

Two experiments on the internal representation of auditory stimuli compared the pairwise and grouping methodologies as means of deriving similarity judgements. A total of 45 undergraduate students participated in each experiment, judging the similarity of short auditory stimuli, using one of the methodologies. The experiments support and extend Bonebright's (1996) findings, using a further 60 stimuli. Results from both methodologies highlight the importance of category information and acoustic features, such as root mean square (RMS) power and pitch, in similarity judgements. Results showed that the grouping task is a viable alternative to the pairwise task with N > 20 sounds whilst highlighting subtle differences, such as cluster tightness, between the different task results. The grouping task is more likely to yield category information as underlying similarity judgements

Reminiscence bump in memory for public events

People tend to recall more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than from other lifetime periods. Most evidence suggests that differential encoding causes this reminiscence bump. However, the question why personal events are encoded better in those periods is still unanswered. To shed more light on this discussion, we examined memory for public events. Since it is often impossible to ascertain that queried events are equally difficult, we circumvented the issue of equivalence by calculating deviation scores for each trial. We found that participants more frequently answered questions correctly about events that occurred in the period in which they were between 10 and 25 years old. Furthermore, we found that the reminiscence bump was more pronounced for cued recall than for recognition. We argue that these results support the biological account that events are stored better, because the memory system is working more efficiently during adolescence and early adulthood. These results do not falsify the other accounts for differential encoding, because they are not mutually exclusive. People speak of autobiographical memory when they are referring to the memories they have of their own life experiences (Robinson, 1986). Autobiographical memory does not only consist of personal memories that are remembered vividly, but also of autobiographical facts (Brewer, 1986). Some researchers have examined the contents of autobiographical memories (e.g., Fitzgerald, 1988; Niedźwieńska, 2003; Robinson, 1976), whereas other researchers have focused on the temporal distribution of memories of personal events across the lifespan (e.g., Janssen, Chessa, &amp

Codependence and conduct disorder: Feminine versus masculine coping responses to abusive parenting practices

This study supported the hypothesis that codependence reflects a stereotypically feminine coping strategy to environmental stressors, while conduct disorder represents an alternate coping response reflecting stereotypically masculine behaviors. High school students ( N = 218; 81% Anglo-American, 8% Asian-American, 5% Hispanic-American) completed measures of femininity/masculinity, codependence, conduct disorder, and unhealthy parenting practices. Multiple regression analyses revealed that codependence is related to parental abuse and femininity ( R = .50). A marginal relationship between codependence and parental alcoholism was mediated by parental abuse, calling into question the validity of the codependence construct. Conduct disorder was related to parental abuse, masculinity, parental alcoholism, and gender ( R = .62). The tendency to label stereotypically feminine coping strategies as pathological, while ignoring a more prevalent and destructive masculine coping strategy is discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45612/1/11199_2005_Article_BF01548255.pd

GoldenBraid: An Iterative Cloning System for Standardized Assembly of Reusable Genetic Modules

Synthetic Biology requires efficient and versatile DNA assembly systems to facilitate the building of new genetic modules/pathways from basic DNA parts in a standardized way. Here we present GoldenBraid (GB), a standardized assembly system based on type IIS restriction enzymes that allows the indefinite growth of reusable gene modules made of standardized DNA pieces. The GB system consists of a set of four destination plasmids (pDGBs) designed to incorporate multipartite assemblies made of standard DNA parts and to combine them binarily to build increasingly complex multigene constructs. The relative position of type IIS restriction sites inside pDGB vectors introduces a double loop (“braid”) topology in the cloning strategy that allows the indefinite growth of composite parts through the succession of iterative assembling steps, while the overall simplicity of the system is maintained. We propose the use of GoldenBraid as an assembly standard for Plant Synthetic Biology. For this purpose we have GB-adapted a set of binary plasmids for A. tumefaciens-mediated plant transformation. Fast GB-engineering of several multigene T-DNAs, including two alternative modules made of five reusable devices each, and comprising a total of 19 basic parts are also described

Identification of Dmrt2a downstream genes during zebrafish early development using a timely controlled approach

This research was supported by FCT (Portugal) grant (PTDC/SAU-BID/119627/2010) given to L.S. L.S. was supported by an IF contract from FCT (Portugal). R.A.P. was supported by a PhD fellowship (SFRH/BD/87607/2012) from FCT (Portugal). Publication was sponsored by LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-007391, project co-funded by FEDER through POR Lisboa 2020 - Programa Operacional Regional de Lisboa, PORTUGAL 2020 and by Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia.BACKGROUND: Dmrt2a is a zinc finger like transcription factor with several roles during zebrafish early development: left-right asymmetry, synchronisation of the somite clock genes and fast muscle differentiation. Despite the described functions, Dmrt2a mechanism of action is unknown. Therefore, with this work, we propose to identify Dmrt2a downstream genes during zebrafish early development. RESULTS: We generated and validated a heat-shock inducible transgenic line, to timely control dmrt2a overexpression, and dmrt2a mutant lines. We characterised dmrt2a overexpression phenotype and verified that it was very similar to the one described after knockdown of this gene, with left-right asymmetry defects and desynchronisation of somite clock genes. Additionally, we identified a new phenotype of somite border malformation. We generated several dmrt2a mutant lines, but we only detected a weak to negligible phenotype. As dmrt2a has a paralog gene, dmrt2b, with similar functions and expression pattern, we evaluated the possibility of redundancy. We found that dmrt2b does not seem to compensate the lack of dmrt2a. Furthermore, we took advantage of one of our mutant lines to confirm dmrt2a morpholino specificity, which was previously shown to be a robust knockdown tool in two independent studies. Using the described genetic tools to perform and validate a microarray, we were able to identify six genes downstream of Dmrt2a: foxj1b, pxdc1b, cxcl12b, etv2, foxc1b and cyp1a. CONCLUSIONS: In this work, we generated and validated several genetic tools for dmrt2a and identified six genes downstream of this transcription factor. The identified genes will be crucial to the future understanding of Dmrt2a mechanism of action in zebrafish.publishersversionpublishe

Improved Somatic Mutagenesis in Zebrafish Using Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALENs)

Zinc Finger Nucleases (ZFNs) made by Context-Dependent Assembly (CoDA) and Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALENs) provide robust and user-friendly technologies for efficiently inactivating genes in zebrafish. These designer nucleases bind to and cleave DNA at particular target sites, inducing error-prone repair that can result in insertion or deletion mutations. Here, we assess the relative efficiencies of these technologies for inducing somatic DNA mutations in mosaic zebrafish. We find that TALENs exhibited a higher success rate for obtaining active nucleases capable of inducing mutations than compared with CoDA ZFNs. For example, all six TALENs tested induced DNA mutations at genomic target sites while only a subset of CoDA ZFNs exhibited detectable rates of mutagenesis. TALENs also exhibited higher mutation rates than CoDA ZFNs that had not been pre-screened using a bacterial two-hybrid assay, with DNA mutation rates ranging from 20%–76.8% compared to 1.1%–3.3%. Furthermore, the broader targeting range of TALENs enabled us to induce mutations at the methionine translation start site, sequences that were not targetable using the CoDA ZFN platform. TALENs exhibited similar toxicity to CoDA ZFNs, with >50% of injected animals surviving to 3 days of life. Taken together, our results suggest that TALEN technology provides a robust alternative to CoDA ZFNs for inducing targeted gene-inactivation in zebrafish, making it a preferred technology for creating targeted knockout mutants in zebrafish

Rapid assembly of customized TALENs into multiple

Transcriptional activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) have become a powerful tool for genome editing. Here we present an efficient TALEN assembly approach in which TALENs are assembled by direct Golden Gate ligation into Gateway® Entry vectors from a repeat variable di-residue (RVD) plasmid array. We constructed TALEN pairs targeted to mouse Ddx3 subfamily genes, and demonstrated that our modified TALEN assembly approach efficiently generates accurate TALEN moieties that effectively introduce mutations into target genes. We generated "user friendly" TALEN Entry vectors containing TALEN expression cassettes with fluorescent reporter genes that can be efficiently transferred via Gateway (LR) recombination into different delivery systems. We demonstrated that the TALEN Entry vectors can be easily transferred to an adenoviral delivery system to expand application to cells that are difficult to transfect. Since TALENs work in pairs, we also generated a TALEN Entry vector set that combines a TALEN pair into one PiggyBac transposon-based destination vector. The approach described here can also be modified for construction of TALE transcriptional activators, repressors or other functional domains. © 2013 Zhang et al