northwestern university, the family institute at northwestern university William Revelle northwestern university Iftah Yovel northwestern university Wen Li northwestern universityWe make theoretical comparisons among five coefficients -Cronbach's , Revelle's , McDonald's h , and two alternative conceptualizations of reliability. Though many end users and psychometricians alike may not distinguish among these five coefficients, we demonstrate formally their nonequivalence. Specifically, whereas there are conditions under which , , and h are equivalent to each other and to one of the two conceptualizations of reliability considered here, we show that equality with this conceptualization of reliability and between and h holds only under a highly restrictive set of conditions and that the conditions under which equals h are only somewhat more general. The nonequivalence of , , and h suggests that important information about the psychometric properties of a scale may be missing when scale developers and users only report as is almost always the case.

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Microautophagy, the non-selective lysosomal degradative process, involves direct engulfment of cytoplasmic cargo at a boundary membrane by autophagic tubes, which mediate both invagination and vesicle scission into the lumen. With its constitutive characteristics, microautophagy of soluble substrates can be induced by nitrogen starvation or rapamycin via regulatory signaling complex pathways. The maintenance of organellar size, membrane homeostasis, and cell survival under nitrogen restriction are the main functions of microautophagy. In addition, microautophagy is coordinated with and complements macroautophagy, chaperone-mediated autophagy, and other self-eating pathways. Three forms of selective microautophagy, including micropexophagy, piecemeal microautophagy of the nucleus, and micromitophagy, share common ground with microautophagy to some degree. As the accumulation of experimental data, the precise mechanisms that govern microautophagy are becoming more appreciated. Here, we review the microautophagic molecular machinery, its physiological functions, and relevance to human diseases, especially in diseases involving multivesicular bodies and multivesicular lysosomes.

Inherited mutations in the rod visual pigment, rhodopsin, cause the degenerative blinding condition, retinitis pigmentosa (RP). Over 150 different mutations in rhodopsin have been identified and, collectively, they are the most common cause of autosomal dominant RP (adRP). Mutations in rhodopsin are also associated with dominant congenital stationary night blindness (adCSNB) and, less frequently, recessive RP (arRP). Recessive RP is usually associated with loss of rhodopsin function, whereas the dominant conditions are a consequence of gain of function and/or dominant negative activity. The in-depth characterisation of many rhodopsin mutations has revealed that there are distinct consequences on the protein structure and function associated with different mutations. Here we categorise rhodopsin mutations into seven discrete classes; with defects ranging from misfolding and disruption of proteostasis, through mislocalisation and disrupted intracellular traffic to instability and altered function. Rhodopsin adRP offers a unique paradigm to understand how disturbances in photoreceptor homeostasis can lead to neuronal cell death. Furthermore, a wide range of therapies have been tested in rhodopsin RP, from gene therapy and gene editing to pharmacological interventions. The understanding of the disease mechanisms associated with rhodopsin RP and the development of targeted therapies offer the potential of treatment for this currently untreatable neurodegeneration.

Blockade of the protein-protein interaction between the transmembrane protein programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and its ligand PD-L1 has emerged as a promising immunotherapy for treating cancers. Using the technology of mirror-image phage display, we developed the first hydrolysis-resistant D-peptide antagonists to target the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway. The optimized compound (D) PPA-1 could bind PD-L1 at an affinity of 0.51 μM in vitro. A blockade assay at the cellular level and tumor-bearing mice experiments indicated that (D) PPA-1 could also effectively disrupt the PD-1/PD-L1 interaction in vivo. Thus D-peptide antagonists may provide novel low-molecular-weight drug candidates for cancer immunotherapy.