1,993 publications from this institution
Part 1 Methods and issues behavioural epidemiology understanding and changing health behaviours the health care system compliance with medical regimens. Part 2 Life stress stress and coping social support. Part 3 Chronic illnesses pain and arthritis diabetes cardiovascular disease cancer the Acquired Immune Defiency Syndrome (AIDS) injury, violence, and substance abuse. Part 4 Health behaviour and health promotion dietary risk factors and interventions physical activity smoking obesity person factors - personality and demographic influences on health community interventions. Part 5 Summary - for those interested in more information about the field of health psychology.
Regulated mRNA turnover is a highly important process in control of gene expression. The specific sequence elements in mRNA modulate the stability of different mRNAs, which varies considerably in response to extracellular stimuli. But the mechanistic basis for regulation of mRNA turnover remains nebulous. Recent works indicate that several signaling pathways have been implicated in regulating the decay of specific mRNA and certain ARE binding proteins mediate rapid degradation of the mRNAs. This review provides a current knowledge of diverse extracellular signals contributing to stabilization of short-lived mRNA.
Accelerometry and other sensing technologies are important tools for physical activity measurement. Engineering advances have allowed developers to transform clunky, uncomfortable, and conspicuous monitors into relatively small, ergonomic, and convenient research tools. New devices can be used to collect data on overall physical activity and, in some cases, posture, physiological state, and location, for many days or weeks from subjects during their everyday lives. In this review article, we identify emerging trends in several types of monitoring technologies and gaps in the current state of knowledge.The only certainty about the future of activity-sensing technologies is that researchers must anticipate and plan for change. We propose a set of best practices that may accelerate adoption of new devices and increase the likelihood that data being collected and used today will be compatible with new data sets and methods likely to appear on the horizon.We describe several technology-driven trends, ranging from continued miniaturization of devices that provide gross summary information about activity levels and energy expenditure to new devices that provide highly detailed information about the specific type, amount, and location of physical activity. Some devices will take advantage of consumer technologies, such as mobile phones, to detect and respond to physical activity in real time, creating new opportunities in measurement, remote compliance monitoring, data-driven discovery, and intervention.
No abstract is provided for this article.
No abstract is provided for this article.
JunB differs considerably from c-Jun in its ability to activate AP-1-responsive genes and induce oncogenic transformation. We demonstrate that the decreased ability of JunB to activate gene expression is the result of a small number of amino acid changes between its DNA-binding and dimerization motifs and the corresponding regions of c-Jun. These changes lead to a 10-fold decrease in the DNA-binding activity of JunB. JunB can be converted into a c-Jun-like activator by substituting four amino acids in its DNA-binding and dimerization motifs with the corresponding c-Jun sequences. JunB can also attenuate trans-activation by c-Jun, an activity mediated by its leucine zipper. This ability depends on two glycine residues that decrease the stability of the JunB leucine zipper, resulting in decreased homodimerization and increased heterodimerization. These results illustrate how small changes in primary structure, including chemically conservative changes, can result in functional divergence of two highly related transcriptional regulators.
In this study DNA-binding and gene transfer experiments were performed to examine a potential glucocorticoid regulatory element (GRE) in the human growth hormone gene. As assayed by nitrocellulose filter binding, only two regions of the human growth hormone gene, the 5'-flanking sequences and a fragment containing part of the first intron, were retained preferentially by purified glucocorticoid-receptor complexes. The relative binding by the transcribed sequences was three times greater than the relative binding by the 5'-flanking sequences, but less than the relative binding by a fragment containing the human metallothionein-IIA gene GRE. The intron, but not the 5'-flanking sequences, generated a "footprint" when the receptor complex was used to protect the segments against exonuclease III digestion; the protected sequence spanned nucleotides +86 to +115 in the first intron and contained a structure homologous in 14 of 16 nucleotides to a 16-nucleotide consensus GRE. The hexanucleotide 5'-TGTCCT-3', thought to be important for GRE activity, not only was found in this sequence and in the 5'-flanking region, but also was present twice in the 3' end of the gene that did not show specific receptor binding. The latter results suggest that the hexanucleotide alone is not sufficient to generate specific receptor binding tight enough to be assayed in this way. To test the biological activity of the intron binding site, a fragment containing these sequences was fused 5' to the human metallothionein-IIA gene promoter depleted of its GRE and linked to the structural sequences of the herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (TK) gene. When this hybrid gene was transfected into Rat 2 TK- cells, its expression was induced threefold by the glucocorticoid dexamethasone, as assessed by transfection efficiency and RNA blotting analyses. Expression of the same gene without the human growth hormone gene segment was not affected by the steroid, whereas the wild-type human metallothionein-IIA gene promoter containing its GRE responded to the hormone by a sixfold increase in thymidine kinase mRNA. These results indicate that the human growth hormone gene contains a structure within its first intron that can function as a GRE.