Marriage Without Procreation? A Biblical Analysis

Children are a gift from God. Psalm 127:3 says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward” (NKJV). They are not only a gift, but a natural result of the sexual expression of marriage. This naturalness is reinforced by God’s command to Adam and Eve to procreate (Genesis 1:28). Because of the value of children and the mandate given to the first parents, it is no surprise that marriage and procreation are tightly linked. Many believe it is wrong for fertile couples to never have children. However, an analysis of the purpose of marriage, natural law, and the biblical evidence suggests that though marriage as a general principle ought to lead to procreation, it is not morally wrong for married couples to never have children

Reader Offers a Poem about Indian Head Rock

A poem published in the Portsmouth Daily Times on the Indian Head Rock from May 11, 2010.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/indian_head_rock/1145/thumbnail.jp

Manipulation of the Moloney Murine Leukemia Virus Envelope Protein in an Effort to Develop Directly and Indirectly Targeted Retroviral Vectors for Use in Human Gene Therapy

Highly effective, targeted therapies against cancer would revolutionize the way people recover from this devastating illness. Gone would be the lingering side effects of the current non-specific treatments and in their place would be faster recovery times, better quality of life both during and after treatment, and less ambiguity about whether or not treatment was effective. This concept will elude modern medicine until treatments can be tailored to the patient\u27s individual and unique disease. This concept of a transient, targeted, and tailored vehicle aimed at cancer cells lends itself to the use of replication deficient retroviral gene therapy vectors with interchangeable receptor binding sites. These vectors may be used separately or in combination with each other to ensure maximum delivery of a suicide gene only to cancerous cells involved with the primary tumor as well as those equally dangerous metastatic cells. Recently, a prototype retroviral vector incorporating the short peptide Somatostatin in place of its natural receptor binding site has been developed. The design of this chimeric envelope protein has the potential to make the insertion of varied receptor binding sites a simple and efficient process. The goal of my studies was to learn more about the potential of this design by taking steps towards challenging its ligand capacity, both in size and secondary structure, and improving its interaction with the target cell. My studies indicate that the peptide ligand Stromal Derived Factor-1α (lysine 22 through lysine 89) is not a good candidate for use with this chimeric design. They also show that only certain modifications within the Moloney Murine Leukemia Virus heparin binding motif can be tolerated. Supplemental studies point out that (1) the removal of an MluI site at the CMV promoter N-terminus may enhance promoter function, (2) TransIT (Mirus) is an effective reagent for transfection of DNA into the MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cell line, and (3) a eukaryotic α-complementation assay is not sensitive enough to detect cell-cell fusion at levels below that of the wild type MoMLV envelope with its natural receptor. While much investigation remains to be done, these observations will help pave the way to the development of effective retroviral vectors for cancer therapy

Equipping Health Professions Educators to Better Address Medical Misinformation

As part of a cooperative agreement with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Federal Award Identification Number [FAIN]: NU50CK000586), the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) began a strategic initiative in 2022 both to increase confidence in COVID-19 vaccines and to address medical misinformation and mistrust through education in health professions contexts. Specifically, the AAMC solicited proposals for integrating competency-based, interprofessional strategies to mitigate health misinformation into new or existing curricula. Five Health Professions Education Curricular Innovations subgrantees received support from the AAMC in 2022 and reflected on the implementation of their ideas in a series of meetings over several months. Subgrantees included the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, the Maine Medical Center/Tufts University School of Medicine, and the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. This paper comprises insights from each of the teams and overarching observations regarding the challenges and opportunities involved with leveraging health professions education to address medical misinformation and improve patient health

In vitro deletional mutagenesis for bacterial production of the 20,000-dalton form of human pituitary growth hormone

The 20,000-dalton (20K) variant form of human growth hormone (hGH) present in extracts from pituitary glands differs from the major form of hGH (22K, 191 amino acids) by the deletion of amino acid residues 32-46. Using oligonucleotide-mediated mutagenesis, the DNA coding for these amino acids was deleted from the gene previously constructed by us (Goeddel et al., 1979) for microbial hGH production. The DNA to be deleted was looped out by the annealing of a synthetic oligodeoxyribonucleotide to the coding strand of the hGH gene contained on recombinant phage M13 mp8 DNA. Resulting heteroduplex structures were stabilized using primer-directed in vitro DNA synthesis in the presence of T4 DNA ligase. On transformation of Escherichia coli, these heteroduplex DNAs yielded phage whose genomes contained either the original or the partially deleted hGH gene, and genotypes were distinguished by in situ plaque hybridization with synthetic oligonucleotide probes. A gene with the correct deletion was used to express the short hGH variant in E. coli

Conformational stability of alternating d (CG) oligomers in high salt solution.

The conformation of d (CG)n oligomers with n = 2,3 has been studied in aqueous solution in the presence of high salt concentration. A minimum n value of three is necessary to obtain a left-handed Z-helix. When d (CG)3 is flanked by three non Z-helicogenic alternating AT sequences the left-handed helix is unstable and a B-type conformation is obtained also at high salt concentration