This study was designed to identify psychological, behavioral, and physiological correlates of short- and long-term weight loss. Measures of psychological functioning, body composition, fat cell size and number, and attendance were evaluated in 76 obese women for their relationship to weight loss at the end of treatment and at a 1-y follow-up evaluation. Losing more weight during the first month of treatment and attending a higher percentage of treatment sessions were strongly associated with greater weight loss at the end of treatment and at 1-y follow-up. In addition, patients with the highest initial weights lost the most weight both at the end of treatment and at 1-y follow-up. Easily obtained measures are as successful in predicting weight loss as are more expensive and complicated measures.

Point mutations in residues comprising the interrupted direct repeats of TFIID eliminated DNA binding in an electrophoretic mobility shift assay. In contrast, mutations in nonconserved residues within the direct repeat regions or in lysine residues comprising the intervening basic repeat had no effect on DNA binding. However, small spacing changes (addition or deletion of one to three residues) in the basic repeat eliminated DNA binding. These results argue for a bipartite DNA binding domain composed of direct repeats with a strict spacing and orientation. Surprisingly, some direct repeat mutations that inhibited DNA binding failed to show a corresponding inhibition of basal transcription, indicating compensating interactions of TFIID with other general factors. The implications of these and other recent results for TFIID structure, promoter recognition, and interactions with other factors are discussed.Transcription initiation by RNA polymerase II is effected by a number of general initiation factors that interact through core (minimal) promoter elements (reviewed in ref. 1) and further regulated by gene-specific factors that interact at distal control elements (reviewed in ref.2). The most common core promoter element is the TATA box, and the direct recognition of this element by TFIID (3, 4), in a manner that may be facilitated by TFIIA (5,6), nucleates the assembly of the remaining factors, beginning with TFIIB, into a functional preinitiation complex (5-7). The earlier suggestions that TFIID might be a target for various activators (3, 8-11) have received further support by the demonstration of direct interactions between TFIID and different activators (12)(13)(14). Thus, TFIID interacts with DNA, with at least two general factors, and with some activators.Yeast TFIID and the corresponding TATA-binding subunit (TFIIDT) of natural TFIID from higher organisms contain a highly conserved 180-residue carboxyl-terminal domain (reviewed in refs. 15 and 16) that is necessary and sufficient for DNA binding and for core promoter function (basal transcription) (17). TFIID has somewhat unusual binding properties, compared to most site-specific DNA binding proteins, in that it binds as a monomer (rather than a dimer) (17), requires elevated temperatures (4,8,17,18), and exhibits very slow on and off rates (3,4,8,(17)(18)(19). The absence in TFIID of any of the motifs (leucine zipper, zinc finger, helix-turn-helix, etc.) common to many site-specific DNAbinding proteins (20) also suggests the presence of an unusual DNA binding domain. Among the structural features noted from sequence analysis are (i) two interrupted direct repeats (21), which could impart a partial similarity to the folded TFIID and which contain portions ofmyc-related helix-loophelix (HLH) domains (HLH/myc homology) implicated in protein-protein interactions (22); (ii) a central basic core with a potentially helical lysine repeat region (23); and (iii) a region with sequence similarity to bacterial or factors (23). It has been speculated (21, 23)...

This study examined changes in body fat distribution in 68 women who lost an average of 12.3 kg from an initial weight of 103.6 kg. Weight reduction was accompanied by a small but statistically significant reduction of 1.2% in the waist-to-hip ratio, suggestive of a reduction in upper-body obesity. Subjects with greater upper-body obesity tended to achieve greater reductions in the waist-to-hip ratio. Changes in five circumference measures were highly correlated with losses of fat and showed that subjects with lower-body obesity tended to lose large amounts of fat from both their upper and lower fat depots while subjects with upper-body obesity lost fat primarily from their upper depots. Women with lower-body obesity tended to lose more total body fat than did women with upper body obesity (r = -0.26, p less than 0.04).

An RNA-involved phase-separation model has been proposed for transcription control. Yet, the molecular links that connect RNA binding to the transcription machinery remain missing. Here we find RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) constitute half of the chromatin proteome in embryonic stem cells (ESCs), and some are colocalized with RNA polymerase (Pol) II at promoters and enhancers. Biochemical analyses of representative RBPs--such as PSPC1 and PTBP1--show that the paraspeckle protein PSPC1 not only prevents the RNA-induced premature release of Pol II, and also makes use of RNA as multivalent molecules to promote Pol II engagement and activity, by enhancing the phase separation and subsequent phosphorylation and release of polymerase condensates. In ESCs, auxin-induced acute degradation of PSPC1 leads to genome-wide defects in Pol II phosphorylation and chromatin-binding and nascent transcription. We propose that the synergistic interplay of RBPs and RNA aids in the rate-limiting step of polymerase condensate formation to promote active transcription.