Work Life Imbalance and Psychosocial Tribulations among Working Women

With the changing scenario, there is vast increase in the number of working women.Women are competent enough to contribute for the betterment of any of the organisation. They are sharp, intelligent, empathetic, flexible and with energy to work hard for the both fronts i. e. office as well the home. They are with dual responsibility to manage multiple tasks at home and at the work. The increasing expectations at both ends make the situation difficult for women , as a result they face difficulty in maintaining a required balance between work and life. This lack of balance results in further problems for working women. Because of work overload, career aspirations, competition, peer pressure at workplace and child care, elder care, relationship maintenance, other household responsibilities at home, it becomes very difficult for females to contribute to the maximum at both ends. And because of this imbalance, females remain with some guilt and stress, as a result came across with many psychosocial tribulations, that may affect their performance as well as health also. This paper examined the concept of work life balance and how women juggle for multiple tasks and as a result face work life imbalance. And paper also revealed that working women with dual roles suffer from psychosocial problems and different strategies have also been discussed which can be of help to working women in maintaining a balance between work and life

Supercoil-induced unusual DNA structures as transcriptional block

The transcriptional activity of pBR322 form V DNA template, a topologically unlinked, highly supercoiled molecule having unusual structures around or within coding regions was studied. Significant transcription was observed in vitro from this template despite high levels of supercoiling. An attenuated transcript, initiated accurately from the P4 promoter of rep gene, was observed which indicated pausing of E. coli RNA polymerase within the gene. This pausing could be removed by relieving the torsional stress implying that a supercoil induced structural alteration within the gene was acting as a transcriptional block. A stabilized unusual structure, most likely a cruciform, was found to be responsible for the elongation block. Absence of initiation from the tetR gene was correlated with the unusual structure present within its promoter region in form V DNA. These in vitro studies show that structural alterations within natural DNA could act as transcriptional blocks both at the level of initiation and elongation

Disseminated peritoneal leiomyomatosis: a rare entity with diagnostic conundrum

Disseminated peritoneal leiomyomatosis (DPL) is a rare, usually benign disease primarily affecting premenopausal women. It is signalized by multiple smooth muscle nodules which grossly or radiologically may simulate peritoneal carcinomatosis or disseminated intraabdominal malignancies. A case study of 45 year female who presented with DPL after 8 years of hysterectomy is reported here

A novel approach to design of cis-acting DNA structural element for regulation of gene expression in vivo

Taking advantage of the degeneracy of the genetic code we have developed a novel approach to introduce, within a gene, DNA sequences capable of adopting unusual structures and to investigate the role of such sequences in regulation of gene expression in vivo. We used a computer program that generates alternative codon sequences for the same amino-acid sequence to convert a stretch of nucleotides into an inverted-repeat sequence with the potential to adopt cruciform structure. This approach was used to replace a 51-base-pair EcoRI-HindIII segment in the N-terminal region of the β-galactosidase gene in plasmid pUC19 with a 51-bp synthetic oligonucleotide sequence with the potential to adopt a cruciform structure with 18 bp in the stem region. In selecting the 51-bp sequence, care was taken to include those codons that are preferred in E. coli. E. coli DH5-α cells harbouring the plasmid containing the redesigned sequence showed drastic reduction in expression of the β-galactosidase gene compared to cells harbouring the plasmid with the native sequence. This approach demonstrates the possibility of introducing DNA secondary-structure elements to alter regulation of gene expression in vivo

Supercoil-induced unusual DNA sturctures as transcriptional block

The transcriptional activity of pBR322 form V DNA template, a topologically unlinked, highly supercoiled molecule having unusual structures around or within coding regions was studied. Significant transcription was observed in vitro from this template despite high levels of supercoiling. An attenuated transcript, initiated accurately from the P4 promoter of rep gene, was observed which indicated pausing of E.coli RNA polymerase within the gene. This pausing could be removed by relieving the torsional stress implying that a supercoil induced structural alteration within the gene was acting as a transcriptional block. A stabilized unusual structure, most likely a cruciform, was found to be responsible for the elongation block. Absence of initiation from the tett gene was correlated with the unusual structure present within its promoter region in form V DNA. These in vitro studies show that structural alterations within natural DNA could act as transcriptional blocks both at the level of initiation and elongation

A novel approach to design of cis-acting DNA structural element for regulation of gene expression in vivo

Taking advantage of the degeneracy of the genetic code we have developed a novel approach to introduce, within a gene, DNA sequences capable of adopting unusual structures and to investigate the role of such sequences in regulation of gene expression in vivo. We used a computer program that generates alternative codon sequences for the same amino-acid sequence to convert a stretch of nucleotides into an inverted-repeat sequence with the potential to adopt cruciform structure. This approach was used to replace a 51-base-pair EcoRI-HindIII segment in the N-terminal region of the beta-galactosidase gene in plasmid pUC19 with a 51-bp synthetic oligonucleotide sequence with the potential to adopt a cruciform structure with 18 bp in the stem region. In selecting the 51-bp sequence, care was taken to include those codons that are preferred in E. coli. E. coli DH5-alpha cells harbouring the plasmid containing the redesigned sequence showed drastic reduction in expression of the beta-galactosidase gene compared to cells harbouring the plasmid with the native sequence. This approach demonstrates the possibility of introducing DNA secondary-structure elements to alter regulation of gene expression in vivo

Covalent Immobilizations of Myosin for In-Vitro Motility of Actin

The present study reports the covalent immobilization of myosin on glass surface and in-vitro motility of actin-myosin biomolecular motor. Myosin was immobilized on poly-L-lysine coated glass using heterobifunctional cross linker EDC and characterized by AFM. The in-vitro motility of actin was carried out on the immobilized myosin. It was observed that velocity of actin over myosin increases with increasing actin concentration (0.4{1.0 mg/ml) and was found in the range of 0.40{3.25 ¹m/s. The motility of actin- myosin motor on arti¯cial surfaces is of immense importance for developing nanodevices for healthcare and engineering applications

HMG I/Y regulates long-range enhancer-dependent transcription on DNA and chromatin by changes in DNA topology

The nature of nuclear structures that are required to confer transcriptional regulation by distal enhancers is unknown. We show that long-range enhancer-dependent β-globin transcription is achieved in vitro upon addition of the DNA architectural protein HMG I/Y to affinity-enriched holo RNA polymerase II complexes. In this system, HMG I/Y represses promoter activity in the absence of an associated enhancer and strongly activates transcription in the presence of a distal enhancer. Importantly, nucleosome formation is neither necessary for long-range enhancer regulation in vitro nor sufficient without the addition of HMG I/Y. Thus, the modulation of DNA structure by HMG I/Y is a critical regulator of long-range enhancer function on both DNA and chromatin-assembled genes. Electron microscopic analysis reveals that HMG I/Y binds cooperatively to preferred DNA sites to generate distinct looped structures in the presence or absence of the β-globin enhancer. The formation of DNA topologies that enable distal enhancers to strongly regulate gene expression is an intrinsic property of HMG I/Y and naked DNA