When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew out in 2010, the immediate threats to productive deep water and estuarial fisheries and the region's fishing and energy economies were obvious. Less immediately obvious, but equally unsettling, were risks to human health posed by potential damage to the regional food web. This paper describes grassroots and regional efforts by the Gulf Coast Health Alliance: health risks related to the Macondo Spill Fishermen's Citizen Science Network project. Using a community-based participatory research approach and a citizen science structure, the multiyear project measured exposure to petrogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, researched the toxicity of these polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compounds, and communicated project findings and seafood consumption guidelines throughout the region (coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama). Description/analysis focuses primarily on the process of building a network of working fishermen and developing group environmental health literacy competencies.
E2F1 is a transcription factor classically known to regulate G/G to S phase progression in the cell cycle. In addition, E2F1 also regulates a wide range of apoptotic genes and thus has been well studied in the context of neuronal death and neurodegenerative diseases. However, its function and regulation in the mature central nervous system are not well understood. Alternative splicing is a well-conserved post-transcriptional mechanism common in cells of the CNS and is necessary to generate diverse functional modifications to RNA or protein products from genes. Heretofore, physiologically significant alternatively spliced E2F1 transcripts have not been reported. In the present study, we report the identification of two novel alternatively spliced E2F1 transcripts: E2F1b, an E2F1 transcript retaining intron 5, and E2F1c, an E2F1 transcript excluding exon 6. These alternatively spliced transcripts are observed in the brain and neural cell types including neurons, astrocytes, and undifferentiated oligodendrocytes. The expression of these E2F1 transcripts is distinct during maturation of primary hippocampal neuroglial cells. Pharmacologically-induced global translation inhibition with cycloheximide, anisomycin or thapsigargin lead to significantly reduced expression of E2F1a, E2F1b and E2F1c. Conversely, increasing neuronal activity by elevating the concentration of potassium chloride selectively increased the expression of E2F1b. Furthermore, experiments expressing these variants in vitro show the transcripts can be translated to generate a protein product. Taken together, our data suggest that the alternatively spliced E2F1 transcript behave differently than the E2F1a transcript, and our results provide a foundation for future investigation of the function of E2F1 splice variants in the CNS.
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