Comparative Risk of Human Injury/Exposure While Collecting Blood from Sedated and Unsedated Nonhuman Primates.

Collection of blood samples for research or clinical evaluation is one of the most common procedures performed in nonhuman primates. Several possible methods can be used to obtain samples. In the early days of primate research, manual or physical restraint was used, which was stressful for the animal and risky for the human. As the field developed, chemical immobilization with ketamine or other anesthetics has become the most commonly used method. More recently, training using positive reinforcement has allowed collection of blood samples from unsedated primates that are unrestrained or minimallyrestrained. Elimination of anesthesia reduces risks to the animal. We wanted to determine whether the risks to humans were different between the sedated or unsedated blood collection. We evaluated injury and near-miss reports in conjunction with blood collection data from 2009 to 2019 at the Washington National Primate Research Center, which houses macaques (M. nemestrina, M. mulatta, and M. fasicularis) and squirrel monkeys (S. sciureus), and has housed baboons (Papio sp.) in the past. Injuries associated with sedated blood collection included those occurring during the sedation procedure and recovery as well as those directly associated with blood collection. Injuries associated with unsedated blood collection included those which occurred both during animal training and during blood collection. Overall, 22 human injury exposures and 5 nearmisses were associated with 73,626 blood collection procedures. Based on these numbers, 0.026% of sedated blood collections and 0.116% of unsedated blood collections were associated with exposure incidents. In conclusion, our data indicate a very low risk of exposure associated with blood collection. In this data set, the risk was statistically higher for unsedated animals, but the low number of incidents and the variability in the methods of blood collection make the general applicability of this finding questionable.

The Patients as Partners Movement and the emerging health leader.

Over the past decade, the Patients as Partners Movement has spread throughout healthcare systems across Canada. This movement aims to overcome the paternalistic approach, where the system and its providers act for or deliver services to the patient. Instead, decision-making at all levels is to be shared with the patient. Delivering patient- and family-centred care is the goal of the Patients as Partners Movement and authentic engagement is at its core. This article aims to explore the link between the Patients as Partners Movement and authentic engagement. It will then outline how senior leaders can capitalize on the mindset of emerging leaders and support their development through mentorship and encouraging skill-building in key competencies related to authentic engagement. Support in these areas by senior leaders is suggested to enable the retention and development of a powerful generation of health system leaders who view patients as their partners.

The EDLL motif: a potent plant transcriptional activation domain from AP2/ERF transcription factors.

In plants, the ERF/EREBP family of transcriptional regulators plays a key role in adaptation to various biotic and abiotic stresses. These proteins contain a conserved AP2 DNA-binding domain and several uncharacterized motifs. Here, we describe a short motif, termed 'EDLL', that is present in AtERF98/TDR1 and other clade members from the same AP2 sub-family. We show that the EDLL motif, which has a unique arrangement of acidic amino acids and hydrophobic leucines, functions as a strong activation domain. The motif is transferable to other proteins, and is active at both proximal and distal positions of target promoters. As such, the EDLL motif is able to partly overcome the repression conferred by the AtHB2 transcription factor, which contains an ERF-associated amphiphilic repression (EAR) motif. We further examined the activation potential of EDLL by analysis of the regulation of flowering time by NF-Y (nuclear factor Y) proteins. Genetic evidence indicates that NF-Y protein complexes potentiate the action of CONSTANS in regulation of flowering in Arabidopsis; we show that the transcriptional activation function of CONSTANS can be substituted by direct fusion of the EDLL activation motif to NF-YB subunits. The EDLL motif represents a potent plant activation domain that can be used as a tool to confer transcriptional activation potential to heterologous DNA-binding proteins.

Prediction of tyrosine sulfation sites in animal viruses.

Post-translational modification of proteins by tyrosine sulfation enhances the affinity of extracellular ligand-receptor interactions important in the immune response and other biological processes in animals. For example, sulfated tyrosines in polyomavirus and varicella-zoster virus may help modulate host cell recognition and facilitate viral attachment and entry. Using a Position-Specific-Scoring-Matrix with an accuracy of 96.43%, we analyzed the possibility of tyrosine sulfation in all 1517 animal viruses available in the Swiss-Prot database. From a total of 97,729 tyrosines, we predicted 5091 sulfated tyrosine sites from 1024 viruses. Our site predictions in hemagglutinin of influenza A, VP4 of rotavirus, and US28 of cytomegalovirus strongly suggest an important link between tyrosine sulfation and viral disease mechanisms. In each of these three viral proteins, we observed highly conserved amino acid sequences surrounding predicted sulfated tyrosine sites. Tyrosine sulfation appears to be much more common in animal viruses than is currently recognized.