Disordered eating among young Jewish American women: exploring religion's role

There has been little scientific work exploring eating pathology among Jewish women in the United States, even though research has suggested that body image and eating behavior may be especially problematic within this group. Research has also demonstrated the importance of religion in eating pathology, such that extrinsic religiousness may represent a vulnerability mechanism, whereas intrinsic religiousness may act as a protective factor against disordered eating. Thus, the current study examines the association between religion and disordered eating among Christian (n = 145) and Jewish Caucasian (n = 73) women. The role of culture was also explored among Jewish women. All participants completed self-report questionnaires at Time 1 and then six weeks later at Time 2. Jewish and Christian women had comparable levels of disordered eating and body dissatisfaction. Results revealed that neither extrinsic religiousness nor intrinsic religiousness predicted disordered eating among the Jewish group. Hypotheses regarding religious motivation and religious adherence were partially supported among the Christian group. These findings highlight that Allport and Ross’s religion framework may not be appropriate for use with Jewish female samples. Similarly, identifying with Jewish culture did not predict disordered eating. As a whole, these findings emphasize the striking need for more empirical data on what does contribute to a Jewish woman’s vulnerability to eating disorder symptoms

Interethnic Interactions: Expectancies, Emotions, and Behavioral Intentions

Two studies examine Hispanic and non-Hispanic White people's responses to interethnic interactions. Consistent with previous findings regarding White/Black interactions, participants who had negative expectations about intergroup interactions reported more anger and anxiety about interethnic interactions. These negative emotional responses, in turn, were associated with negative behavioral intentions such as the desire to avoid interethnic interactions and the externalization of blame if an interethnic interaction did not go well. Across the studies, White participants who were angry about interethnic interactions wanted to avoid these interactions, whereas anxiety was the key predictor of avoidance for the Hispanic participants. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for developing models of intergroup interactions and designing approaches to improve these interactions

De Novo Design and In Vitro Testing of Antimicrobial Peptides against Gram-Negative Bacteria

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been identified as a potentially new class of antibiotics to combat bacterial resistance to conventional drugs. The design of de novo AMPs with high therapeutic indexes, low cost of synthesis, high resistance to proteases and high bioavailability remains a challenge. Such design requires computational modeling of antimicrobial properties. Currently, most computational methods cannot accurately calculate antimicrobial potency against particular strains of bacterial pathogens. We developed a tool for AMP prediction (Special Prediction (SP) tool) and made it available on our Web site (https://dbaasp.org/prediction). Based on this tool, a simple algorithm for the design of de novo AMPs (DSP) was created. We used DSP to design short peptides with high therapeutic indexes against gram-negative bacteria. The predicted peptides have been synthesized and tested in vitro against a panel of gram-negative bacteria, including drug resistant ones. Predicted activity against Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 was experimentally confirmed for 14 out of 15 peptides. Further improvements for designed peptides included the synthesis of D-enantiomers, which are traditionally used to increase resistance against proteases. One synthetic D-peptide (SP15D) possesses one of the lowest values of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) among all DBAASP database short peptides at the time of the submission of this article, while being highly stable against proteases and having a high therapeutic index. The mode of anti-bacterial action, assessed by fluorescence microscopy, shows that SP15D acts similarly to cell penetrating peptides. SP15D can be considered a promising candidate for the development of peptide antibiotics. We plan further exploratory studies with the SP tool, aiming at finding peptides which are active against other pathogenic organisms

<i>Listeria monocytogenes</i> ST37 Distribution in the Moscow Region and Properties of Clinical and Foodborne Isolates

Listerias of the phylogenetic lineage II (PLII) are common in the European environment and are hypovirulent. Despite this, they caused more than a third of the sporadic cases of listeriosis and multi-country foodborne outbreaks. L. monocytogenes ST37 is one of them. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ST37 appeared in clinical cases and ranked second in occurrence among food isolates in the Moscow region. The aim of this study was to describe the genomic features of ST37 isolates from different sources. All clinical cases of ST37 were in the cohort of male patients (age, 48–81 years) with meningitis–septicemia manifestation and COVID-19 or Influenza in the anamnesis. The core genomes of the fish isolates were closely related. The clinical and meat isolates revealed a large diversity. Prophages (2–4/genome) were the source of the unique genes. Two clinical isolates displayed pseudolysogeny, and excided prophages were A006-like. In the absence of plasmids, the assortment of virulence factors and resistance determinants in the chromosome corresponded to the hypovirulent characteristics. However, all clinical isolates caused severe disease, with deaths in four cases. Thus, these studies allow us to speculate that a previous viral infection increases human susceptibility to listeriosis