SAINT OF STEEL!!

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. At the conclusion of each episode of the 50s TV western \u27The Lone Ranger,\u27 one of the characters would ask: \u27Who is that masked man?\u27 The viewers, of course, knew the identity of the hero, as he raced off, with the famous cry to his faithful steed, \u27HiYo Silver, Away!!!\u2

Genetic, morphological and physiological relationships among coryneform bacteria

The DNA base composition of the soil arthrobacters tested (65.3 - 67.0% GC) suggests that this group is genetically homogeneous. Hybridization experiments, however, revealed clear differences between the Arthrobacter simplex and the Arthrobacter globiformis strains. The orange cheese coryneforms were fairly homologous, which was shown by the narrow %GC range (63.2 - 63.8, except one strain), the significant hybridization with the type species Brevibacterium linens, and the mutual morphological and physiological resemblance. The majority of the orange sea-fish coryneforms resembled both morphologically and in their GC contents the Brevibacterium linens group; the results of hybridization experiments and physiological studies indicated, however, that only a minority of the sea-fish strains are closely related to the orange cheese coryneforms. With the exception of four strains tested, the majority of the non-orange cheese strains were closely related as concluded from their GC contents (65.5 - 66.9%) and their high degree of hybridization. The soil arthrobacters, the orange cheese and sea-fish coryneforms, and the non-orange cheese coryneforms were found to be onlyremotely related because of the poor hybridization between the DNAs of the respective reference strains in addition to differences in GC contents or morphological and physiological characters, or both. In general, the results obtained from DNA analysis and DNA-DNA hybridization experiments and those from morphological and physiological studies were found to be fairly well correlated. A comparative study with native and deep-frozen DNA revealed that freezing at -70 °C and subsequent storing at -21°C for at least half a year had no significant effect on thermal denaturation and hybridization. In the initial renaturation phase, mismatching in hybrids of closely related DNAs was restricted to a few %, and in those of moderately related DNAs to approximately 10%

Impact and cultural acceptance of the Narrative Exposure Therapy in the aftermath of a natural disaster in Burundi

Background: In the aftermath of natural disasters, affected populations are at risk of suffering from trauma-related mental health disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression. Particularly in poor post-conflict regions, these mental disorders have the potential to impair the ability of individuals to move on with their lives. We aimed to evaluate the feasibility, cultural acceptance, and effect of a trauma-focused psychotherapy, Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET), in the aftermath of a flood disaster in Burundi. Methods: Fifty-one individuals who were living in emergency camps overseen by the Burundian Red Cross in the aftermath of a flood disaster, and who had lost homes and close relatives, were invited to participate in semi-structured diagnostic interviews. Trained Burundian psychology students conducted these interviews, and six sessions of NET were offered to the 15 individuals most affected by trauma-related symptoms. An additional group of psychology students, blind to the treatment conditions, conducted three and 9 months follow-ups with them including also 25 participants who had reported significant but less severe trauma-related symptoms, assessing mental health symptoms, acceptance of NET, stigmatization due to trauma symptoms, and participants’ economic well-being. Results: Between baseline and 9-months post-intervention assessment, symptoms of PTSD (Hedges’ g = 3.44) and depression (Hedges’ g = 1.88) improved significantly within participants who received NET and within those who received no treatment (Hedges’ gPTSD = 2.55; Hedges’ gdepression = 0.72). Furthermore, those who received NET felt less stigmatized by their participation in the intervention than by the trauma-related mental health symptoms they experienced. Overall, participants reported that they would be willing to forego as much as 1 month’s worth of income in exchange for receiving trauma-focused interventions in the months following the disaster. Conclusions: Individuals severely affected by trauma-related mental health symptoms might benefit significantly from NET in the aftermath of natural disasters, while less affected individuals seem to recover spontaneously. Despite significant challenges conducting NET in emergency camps in the aftermath of natural disaster in a post-conflict country, such interventions are feasible, appreciated and might have long-lasting impacts on the lives of survivors if conducted with due respect to participants’ privacy. Trial registration: UKCR2014 , the 19.06.2014, retrospectively registered

Evolution of the Drosophila melanogaster Chromatin Landscape and Its Associated Proteins

In the nucleus of eukaryotic cells, genomic DNA associates with numerous protein complexes and RNAs, forming the chromatin landscape. Through a genome-wide study of chromatin-associated proteins in Drosophila cells, five major chromatin types were identified as a refinement of the traditional binary division into hetero- and euchromatin. These five types were given color names in reference to the Greek word chroma. They are defined by distinct but overlapping combinations of proteins and differ in biological and biochemical properties, including transcriptional activity, replication timing, and histone modifications. In this work, we assess the evolutionary relationships of chromatin-associated proteins and present an integrated view of the evolution and conservation of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster chromatin landscape. We combine homology prediction across a wide range of species with gene age inference methods to determine the origin of each chromatin-associated protein. This provides insight into the evolution of the different chromatin types. Our results indicate that for the euchromatic types, YELLOW and RED, young associated proteins are more specialized than old ones; and for genes found in either chromatin type, intron/exon structure is lineage-specific. Next, we provide evidence that a subset of GREEN-associated proteins is involved in a centromere drive in D. melanogaster. Our results on BLUE chromatin support the hypothesis that the emergence of Polycomb Group proteins is linked to eukaryotic multicellularity. In light of these results, we discuss how the regulatory complexification of chromatin links to the origins of eukaryotic multicellularity

Commentary on Raghuraman et al. (2021). On the Long-Term Efficacy and Effectiveness of Narrative Exposure Therapy

In the past years, several systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been published assessing the effectiveness of narrative exposure therapy [NET; (Lely et al., 2019; Raghuraman et al., 2021; Siehl et al., 2021; Wei and Chen, 2021)]. The meta-analyses had different aims and came to different conclusions about the effectiveness of NET. Lely et al. (2019) and Wei and Chen (2021) focused on between-treatment effects, post intervention, comparing NET with active and non-active control- treatment-conditions. In addition to comparing between-treatment effects Raghuraman et al. (2021) and Siehl et al. (2021) assessed also the temporal stability of the effects. The latter two studies investigated the reduction of symptom severity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the percentage of PTSD diagnoses over several follow-up periods. Raghuraman et al. (2021) indicated a medium standardized mean difference (SMD) in favor of NET in comparison to active and inactive control groups in the long-term and no benefit regarding PTSD diagnoses. The authors cautioned against using the existing evidence to inform policies and guidelines. In contrast, Siehl et al. (2021) found a large SMD in favor of NET compared to active or inactive control groups in the long-term. They reported an improvement of effectiveness over time when analyzing active control groups and concluded that NET is an effective treatment approach in post-conflict settings and refugee populations, highlighting the high external validity of the trials. Acknowledging the significant efforts of both author groups to select, code, and analyze the existing evidence, we aim to clarify potential underlying reasons for the differences between the two meta-analyses. The purpose of this commentary is two-fold: (a) discuss more generally ways to assess the quality of a treatment, such as NET, that is used in a broad range of contexts and (b) more specific differences between the two meta-analyses in (1) selecting and analyzing strategies, and (2) potential coding errors

Réseaux de systèmes évolutifs / Network in evolutionary systems

Publication Verd B., Clark E., Wotton K.R., Janssens H., Jiménez-Guri E., Crombach A. et Jaeger J., « A damped oscillator imposes temporal order on posterior gap gene expression in Drosophila », PLOS Biology, vol. 16, no 2, 2018, e2003174, [première version DOI : 10.1101/068072], DOI : 10.1371/journal.pbio.2003174

Treating Traumatized Offenders and Veterans by Means of Narrative Exposure Therapy

Hecker T, Hermenau K, Crombach A, Elbert T. Treating Traumatized Offenders and Veterans by Means of Narrative Exposure Therapy. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2015;6:80

Medium-throughput processing of whole mount in situ hybridisation experiments into gene expression domains

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Understanding the function and evolution of developmental regulatory networks requires the characterisation and quantification of spatio-temporal gene expression patterns across a range of systems and species. However, most high-throughput methods to measure the dynamics of gene expression do not preserve the detailed spatial information needed in this context. For this reason, quantification methods based on image bioinformatics have become increasingly important over the past few years. Most available approaches in this field either focus on the detailed and accurate quantification of a small set of gene expression patterns, or attempt high-throughput analysis of spatial expression through binary pattern extraction and large-scale analysis of the resulting datasets. Here we present a robust, "medium-throughput" pipeline to process in situ hybridisation patterns from embryos of different species of flies. It bridges the gap between high-resolution, and high-throughput image processing methods, enabling us to quantify graded expression patterns along the antero-posterior axis of the embryo in an efficient and straightforward manner. Our method is based on a robust enzymatic (colorimetric) in situ hybridisation protocol and rapid data acquisition through wide-field microscopy. Data processing consists of image segmentation, profile extraction, and determination of expression domain boundary positions using a spline approximation. It results in sets of measured boundaries sorted by gene and developmental time point, which are analysed in terms of expression variability or spatio-temporal dynamics. Our method yields integrated time series of spatial gene expression, which can be used to reverse-engineer developmental gene regulatory networks across species. It is easily adaptable to other processes and species, enabling the in silico reconstitution of gene regulatory networks in a wide range of developmental contexts.The laboratory of Johannes Jaeger and this study in particular was funded by the MEC-EMBL agreement for the EMBL/CRG Research Unit in Systems Biology, by grant 153 (MOPDEV) of the ERANet: ComplexityNET program, by SGR grant 406 from the Catalan funding agency AGAUR, by grant BFU2009-10184 from the Spanish Ministry of Science, and by European Commission grant FP7-KBBE-2011-5/289434 (BioPreDyn)