“
“Vaccines represent a new and promising avenue of treatment for drug abuse but pose new medication adherence challenges due to prolonged and widely spaced administration schedules. This study examined effects of prize-based incentives on retention and medication adherence among 26 cocaine users involved

in a 6-month hepatitis B vaccination series. Participants could meet with research staff weekly for 24 weeks and receive 7 injections containing either the Hepatitis B vaccine or a placebo. All participants received $10 at each weekly visit (maximum of $240). Those randomly assigned to the incentive program received additional monetary payments on an escalating schedule MX69 research buy for attendance at weekly monitoring and vaccination visits with maximum possible earnings of $751. Croup attendance diverged after study week 8 with attendance better sustained in the incentive than control group (group by time interaction, p=.035). Overall percent of weekly sessions attended was 82% for incentive versus 649 for control (p=.139). Receiving all scheduled injections were 77% of incentive versus 46% of control participants (p=.107). A significantly larger percentage (74% versus 51%; p=.016) of injections were received by incentive versus control participants on the originally scheduled day. Results suggest that monetary incentives can successfully motivate drug users to attend

sessions regularly and to receive injected medications in a more reliable and timely manner than may be seen under usual care procedures. Thus, incentives may be useful find more for addressing adherence and allowing participants to reap the full benefits of newly developed medications. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Temporal and spatial regulation of gene expression during endospore formation in Bacillus subtilis prompted us to investigate the molecular mechanisms that coordinate the phosphorelay. We targeted KinA for random mutagenesis. In addition, we constructed KinA-GFP transcriptional fusions for verification, via fluorescence. Four distinct types of sporulation-defective mutants were Bafilomycin A1 identified as inactive (no sporulation),

hypoactive (low sporulation efficiency), isoactive (same efficiency as wild-type), and hyperactive (high efficiency) mutants. Surprisingly, the beta-galactosidase activity of hyperactive mutants was barely greater than that of the wild-type strain; the only noticeable difference was early synthesis of KinA, which could allow them to activate Spo0A precociously, undergo sporulation earlier, and yield more spores. There was no fluorescence emission by the spore-defective mutant, which confirmed the presence of a truncated KinA (nonsense mutation) in inactive strains; other mutants harbored missense or silent mutations. We determined the nucleotide sequences of KinA mutants and found a conserved C-terminus region; more variability was observed in the N-terminus region, involving the PAS-A and PAS-C domains.