Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Identification And Characterization Of Sigma(S), A Novel Component Of The Staphylococcus Aureus Stress And Virulence Responses, Lindsey N. Shaw, Catharina Lindholm, Tomasz K. Prajsnar, Halie K. Miller, Melanie C. Brown, Ewa Golonka, George C. Stewart, Andrej Tarkowski, Jan Potempa

Molecular Biosciences Faculty Publications

S. aureus is a highly successful pathogen that is speculated to be the most common cause of human disease. The progression of disease in S. aureus is subject to multi-factorial regulation, in response to the environments encountered during growth. This adaptive nature is thought to be central to pathogenesis, and is the result of multiple regulatory mechanisms employed in gene regulation. In this work we describe the existence of a novel S. aureus regulator, an as yet uncharacterized ECF-sigma factor (sigma(S)), that appears to be an important component of the stress and pathogenic responses of this organism. Using biochemical approaches …

Profile Of Alcohol And Drug Indicators For Hillsborough County, Florida, Kathleen A. Moore, M. Scott Young, Ellen Snelling, Sue Carrigan

Mental Health Law & Policy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Factors Contributing To The Biofilm-Deficient Phenotype Of Staphylococcus Aureus Sara Mutants, Laura H. Tsang, James E. Cassat, Lindsey N. Shaw, Karen E. Beenken, Mark S. Smeltzer

Molecular Biosciences Faculty Publications

Mutation of sarA in Staphylococcus aureus results in a reduced capacity to form a biofilm, but the mechanistic basis for this remains unknown. Previous transcriptional profiling experiments identified a number of genes that are differentially expressed both in a biofilm and in a sarA mutant. This included genes involved in acid tolerance and the production of nucleolytic and proteolytic exoenzymes. Based on this we generated mutations in alsSD, nuc and sspA in the S. aureus clinical isolate UAMS-1 and its isogenic sarA mutant and assessed the impact on biofilm formation. Because expression of alsSD was increased in a biofilm but …

Subjective And Objective Napping And Sleep In Older Adults: Are Evening Naps “Bad” For Nighttime Sleep?, Natalie D. Dautovich, Christina S. Mccrae, Meredeth A. Rowe

Nursing Faculty Publications

Objectives: To compare objective and subjective measurements of napping, and to examine the relationship between evening napping and nocturnal sleep in older adults.

Design: For twelve days, participants wore actigraphs and completed sleep diaries.

Setting: Community

Participants: 100 individuals who napped, 60–89 years (including good and poor sleepers with typical age-related medical comorbidities).

Measurements: Twelve days of sleep diary and actigraphy provided subjective and objective napping and sleep data.

Results: Evening naps (within 2 hours of bedtime) were characteristic of the sample with peak nap time occurring between 20:30–21:00 (average nap time occurred between 14:30–15:00). Two categories of nappers were …

When Agencies And Families Come Together: Dealing With Conflict In Building Partnerships, Robyn Boustead, Sheryl Schrepf, Huey Chen, Mary Evans, Andrea K. Blanch, Roger A. Boothroyd

Mental Health Law & Policy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Extracellular Matrix And Matrix-Degrading Proteases In Neonatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Injury, Christopher C. Leonardo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Improvements in medical care over recent decades have increased the number of premature and low birth weight infants that survive hypoxic-ischemic (H-I) insults. Because there is a rising incidence in diseases associated with these events, it is critical to develop effective therapies to treat the various resulting neuropathies. Extracellular matrix constitutes the majority of brain parenchyma. Lecticans and matrix-degrading proteases including ADAMTSs (a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin repeats) and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) exert effects on cell viability and may be associated with either protective or destructive processes after H-I. Both ADAMTSs (Cross et al. 2006; Tian et al. 2007) …

Food Restriction Compromises Immune Memory In Deer Mice (Peromyscus Maniculatus) By Reducing Spleen-Derived Antibody-Producing B Cell Numbers, Lynn B. Martin, Kristen J. Navara, Michael T. Bailey, Chelsea R. Hutch, Nicole D. Powell, John F. Sheridan, Randy J. Nelson

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Immune activity is variable in many wild animals, despite presumed strong selection against immune incompetence. Much variation may be due to changes in prevalence and abundance of pathogens (and/or their vectors) in time and space, but the costs of immune defenses themselves may also be important. Induction of immune activity often increases energy and protein expenditure, sometimes to the point of compromising fitness. Whether immune defenses are expensive to maintain once they are generated, however, is less well appreciated. If so, organisms would face persistent challenges of allocating resources between immunity and other expensive physiological processes, which would mandate trade-offs. …

Sleep And Affect In Older Adults: Using Multilevel Modeling To Examine Daily Associations, Christina S. Mccrae, Joseph P. H. Mcnamara, Meredeth Rowe, Joseph M. Dzierzewski, Judith Dirk, Michael Marsiske, Jason G. Craggs

Nursing Faculty Publications

The main objective of the present study was to examine daily associations (intraindividual variability or IIV) between sleep and affect in older adults. Greater understanding of these associations is important, because both sleep and affect represent modifiable behaviors that can have a major influence on older adults’ health and well-being. We collected sleep diaries, actigraphy, and affect data concurrently for 14 days in 103 community-dwelling older adults. Multilevel modeling was used to assess the sleep–affect relationship at both the group (between-persons) and individual (within-person or IIV) levels. We hypothesized that nights characterized by better sleep would be associated with days …

The Administrative Data Component Of The Pre Paid Managed Care Evaluation: Year 11, Rose Murrin Mary, J. Constantine Robert

Mental Health Law & Policy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Flexible Nets: Disorder And Induced Fit In The Associations Of P53 And 14-3-3 With Their Partners, Christopher J. Oldfield, Jingwei Meng, Jack Y. Yang, Mary Qu Yang, Vladimir N. Uversky, A. Keith Dunker

Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

Background: Proteins are involved in many interactions with other proteins leading to networks that regulate and control a wide variety of physiological processes. Some of these proteins, called hub proteins or hubs, bind to many different protein partners. Protein intrinsic disorder, via diversity arising from structural plasticity or flexibility, provide a means for hubs to associate with many partners (Dunker AK, Cortese MS, Romero P, Iakoucheva LM, Uversky VN: Flexible Nets: The roles of intrinsic disorder in protein interaction networks. FEBS J 2005, 272:5129-5148).

Results: Here we present a detailed examination of two divergent examples: 1) p53, which uses different …

The Unfoldomics Decade: An Update On Intrinsically Disordered Proteins, A. Keith Dunker, Christopher J. Oldfield, Jingwei Meng, Pedro Romero, Jack Y. Yang, Jessica Walton Chen, Vladimir Vacic, Zoran Obradovic, Vladimir N. Uversky

Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

Our first predictor of protein disorder was published just over a decade ago in the Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Neural Networks (Romero P, Obradovic Z, Kissinger C, Villafranca JE, Dunker AK (1997) Identifying disordered regions in proteins from amino acid sequence. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Neural Networks, 1: 90–95). By now more than twenty other laboratory groups have joined the efforts to improve the prediction of protein disorder. While the various prediction methodologies used for protein intrinsic disorder resemble those methodologies used for secondary structure prediction, the two types of structures are entirely different. …

Malleable Machines In Transcription Regulation: The Mediator Complex, Ágnes Tóth-Petróczy, Christopher J. Oldfield, István Simon, Yuichiro Takagi, A. Keith Dunker, Vladimir N. Uversky, Monika Fuxreiter

Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

The Mediator complex provides an interface between gene-specific regulatory proteins and the general transcription machinery including RNA polymerase II (RNAP II). The complex has a modular architecture (Head, Middle, and Tail) and cryoelectron microscopy analysis suggested that it undergoes dramatic conformational changes upon interactions with activators and RNAP II. These rearrangements have been proposed to play a role in the assembly of the preinitiation complex and also to contribute to the regulatory mechanism of Mediator. In analogy to many regulatory and transcriptional proteins, we reasoned that Mediator might also utilize intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) to facilitate structural transitions and transmit …

A Comparative Analysis Of Viral Matrix Proteins Using Disorder Predictors, Gerard Kian-Meng Goh, A. Keith Dunker, Vladimir N. Uversky

Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

Background: A previous study (Goh G.K.-M., Dunker A.K., Uversky V.N. (2008) Protein intrinsic disorder toolbox for comparative analysis of viral proteins. BMC Genomics. 9 (Suppl. 2), S4) revealed that HIV matrix protein p17 possesses especially high levels of predicted intrinsic disorder (PID). In this study, we analyzed the PID patterns in matrix proteins of viruses related and unrelated to HIV-1.

Results: Both SIVmac and HIV-1 p17 proteins were predicted by PONDR VLXT to be highly disordered with subtle differences containing 50% and 60% disordered residues, respectively. SIVmac is very closely related to HIV-2. A specific region that is predicted …

Foreign Accent Syndrome Mimicked By Garcin Syndrome With Spontaneous Resolution, Michael Hoffmann

Neurology Faculty Publications

An English speaking women developed a French accent, without any aphasic syndromes, in conjunction with multiple left sided cranial nerve deficits, temporally related to cranial trauma. Extensive testing with multimodality magnetic resonance imaging, cerebrospinal fluid and laboratory analysis was unremarkable. She was followed over a 3 year period during which her French accent resolved as did the majority of her multiple unilateral cranial neuropathies. The neurological diagnoses included a foreign accent syndrome attributed to a reversible Garcin syndrome.

Isolated Right Temporal Lobe Stroke Patients Present With Geschwind Gastaut Syndrome, Frontal Network Syndrome And Delusional Misidentification Syndromes, Michael Hoffmann

Neurology Faculty Publications

Background: Right temporal lobe lesion syndrome elicitation presents a clinical challenge. Aside from occasional covert quadrantanopias, heralding elementary neurological deficits are absent.Aim: Isolated right and left temporal lobe stroke patients were analyzed for the panoply of known temporal and frontal cognitive and neuropsychiatric syndromes.Methods: Temporal lobe stroke patients were analyzed, derived from a dedicated cognitive stroke registry. Patients were screened by a validated bedside cognitive battery and a neuropsychological test battery, including the Bear Fedio Inventory for diagnosis of the Geschwind Gastaut (GG) syndrome, frontal network syndrome testing (FNS), emotional intelligence testing and delusional misidentification syndromes (DMIS). NIH …

Etiology Of Frontal Network Syndromes In Isolated Subtentorial Stroke, Michael Hoffmann, Lourdes Benes Cases

Neurology Faculty Publications

Background: The neurobiology of the frontal network syndrome (FNS) that may occur with isolated subtentorial stroke is unknown.Aim: Evaluate for frontal network syndromes in young people post subtentorial stroke who have recovered neurologically and compare to a stroke lesion group least likely to manifest frontal network syndromes.Methods: Young people (18–49 years) with isolated cerebellar or brainstem subtentorial stroke (ST) that had recovered to independency (Rankin score ࣘ 2) with minimal or no residual neurological deficit (NIHSS ࣘ 4) with neurological recovery enabling resumption of former employment. Comparison was made to age and education matched young people with posterior …

Short Linear Motifs Recognized By Sh2, Sh3 And Ser/Thr Kinase Domains Are Conserved In Disordered Protein Regions, Siyun Ren, Vladimir N. Uversky, Zhengjun Chen, A. Keith Dunker, Zoran Obradovic

Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

Background: Protein interactions are essential for most cellular functions. Interactions mediated by domains that appear in a large number of proteins are of particular interest since they are expected to have an impact on diversities of cellular processes such as signal transduction and immune response. Many well represented domains recognize and bind to primary sequences less than 10 amino acids in length called Short Linear Motifs (SLiMs).

Results: In this study, we systematically studied the evolutionary conservation of SLiMs recognized by SH2, SH3 and Ser/Thr Kinase domains in both ordered and disordered protein regions. Disordered protein regions are protein sequences …

Assessing Conservation Of Disordered Regions In Proteins, Ágnes Tóth-Petróczy, Bálint Mészáros, István Simon, A. Keith Dunker, Vladimir N. Uversky, Monika Fuxreiter

Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are highly populated in eukaryotic proteomes and serve pivotal, mostly regulatory functions. Many IDRs appear to be functionally conserved and analysis of protein domains indicates high propensity of conserved regions predicted to be disordered. Nevertheless, it is difficult to assess conservation of IDRs in general due to their fast evolution and low sequence similarity. We propose three measures to evaluate conservation of IDRs: i) similarities of the disorder profiles using different prediction conditions; ii) the conservation of amino acids with propensities for promoting either disorder or order; and iii) the overlap between disordered/ordered regions. These measures …

The Relationship Of Suicide Death To Baker Act Examination, Client Characteristics And Service Use Patterns, Stephen Roggenbaum, Annette Christy, Amanda Leblanc, Mark Mccranie, Mary Rose Murrin, Yanen Li

Mental Health Law & Policy Faculty Publications

Suicide is the eleventh leading cause of death across all ages in the United States. Florida had the third highest number of suicide deaths among all states in 2005 with over 2,300 deaths (CDC WISQARS, 2008; Kung, Hoyert, Xu, & Murphy, 2008). In Florida, it was the tenth leading cause of death in 2005, ranking as high as the second leading cause of death for 25-34 year olds in the state (CDC WISQARS, 2008). Risk factors for death by suicide include being male, having a diagnosis of depression and/or a substance use disorder, and having made a previous suicide attempt …