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The events of the past 2 years related to the pandemic have shown that it is increasingly important to find new tools to help mental health experts in diagnosing mood disorders. Leaving aside the longcovid cognitive (e.g., difficulty in concentration) and bodily (e.g., loss of smell) effects, the short-term covid effects on mental health were a significant increase in anxiety and depressive symptoms. The aim of this study is to use a new tool, the online handwriting and drawing analysis, to discriminate between healthy individuals and depressed patients. To this aim, patients with clinical depression (n = 14), individuals with high sub-clinical (diagnosed by a test rather than a doctor) depressive traits (n = 15) and healthy individuals (n = 20) were recruited and asked to perform four online drawing /handwriting tasks using a digitizing tablet and a special writing device. From the raw collected online data, seventeen drawing/writing features (categorized into five categories) were extracted, and compared among the three groups of the involved participants, through ANOVA repeated measures analyses. Results shows that Time features are more effective in discriminating between healthy and participants with sub-clinical depressive characteristics. On the other hand, Ductus and Pressure features are more effective in discriminating between clinical depressed and healthy participants., In: Mahmud, M., Ieracitano, C., Kaiser, M.S., Mammone, N., Morabito, F.C. (eds) Applied Intelligence and Informatics. AII 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1724. Springer, Cham

To assess the role of dispositional mindfulness in the influence of repetitive negative thinking (worry and rumination) on affective symptoms (anxiety and depression) in people with different autistic-like traits. To this aim, we verified in neurotypical individuals with autistic-like traits whether poor attentional switching, indexed by low dispositional mindfulness, was associated with dysfunctional emotional responses (with anxiety and depression symptoms) through the increase of repetitive negative thinking. Path analysis was used to test the direct and indirect effects of different autistic-like traits, dispositional mindfulness, worry and rumination on anxiety-related concerns and depression symptoms in a sample of neurotypical adults (N = 209).

Funder: Autism Research Trust, Funder: Templeton World Charitable Fund, Funder: NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100018956, Funder: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research, Funder: Care East of England at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Recent data has revealed dissociations between social and non-social skills in both autistic and neurotypical populations. In the present study, we investigated whether specific visuospatial abilities, such as figure disembedding and mental rotation, are differently related to social and non-social autistic traits, in neurotypical women and men. University students (N = 426) completed the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), figure disembedding and mental rotation of two-dimensional figures tasks. AQ social skills (AQ-social) and attention-to-details (AQ-attention) subscales were used as measures of social and non-social autistic traits, respectively. Mental rotation was affected by a significant interaction between sex, social and non-social traits. When non-social traits were above the mean (+ 1 SD), no sex differences in mental rotation were found. Instead, below this value, sex differences depended on the social traits, with men on average outperforming women at middle-to-high social traits, and with a comparable performance, and with women on average outperforming men, at lower social traits. A small positive correlation between figure disembedding and social traits was observed in the overall sample. These results are interpreted in terms of the hyper-systemizing theory of autism and contribute to the evidence of individual differences in the cognitive style of autistic people and neurotypical people with autistic traits.

The thioredoxin system, involved in the preservation of the reduced state of cytoplasmic proteins, includes two ubiquitous key components of the intracellular redox balance: thioredoxin (Trx) and thioredoxin reductase (TrxR). Either Trx or TrxR contain a conserved CXXC sequence, switching between disulfide and free dithiol. Trx is a small monomeric protein; TrxR is a NADPH-dependent homodimeric flavoenzyme. The redox cycle in the Trx/TrxR system also involves oscillation between oxidized and reduced form of FAD, using NADPH as electron donor. This report describes the biochemical characterization of the Trx/TrxR system in Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis (Ph), a psychrophilic eubacterium isolated from marine Antarctic sediments. PhTrxR and PhTrx were obtained as recombinant His-tagged proteins, or isolated from P. haloplanktis cells. The activity of recombinant PhTrxR was evaluated by both DTNB- and thioredoxin-reduction methods and compared with that of endogenous PhTrxR. After exogenous FAD caption, recombinant PhTrxR shows the same activity of the endogenous enzyme. The thermal denaturation of the recombinant enzyme was followed by fluorescence melting curves in the temperature range 5-75°C. Heat inactivation experiments gave a half-life of 10 min at 60°C. However, when studying the thermophilicity with the DTNB-reduction method, maximum activity was reached at 30°C. Like the endogenous counterpart, recombinant PhTrx reduces the insulin disulfides in the presence of either DTT or PhTrxR/NADPH.

The nucleotide-exchange factor isolated from the hyperthermophilic archaeon, S. solfataricus (SsEF-1b), consists of 90 residues and differs from eukaryal EF-1bs. Here, the protein was successfully crystd. using either microbatch-under-oil or vapor-diffusion methods. Crystals of native SsEF-1b diffracted to 1.97 .ANG. resoln. and belonged to space group P21212, with unit-cell parameters a = 106.46, b = 54.87, and c = 44.03 Diffraction data were also collected from a selenomethionine deriv. of SsEF-1b at 1.83 .ANG. resoln. Model building using the phases derived from the MAD expt. is in progress.

The present article reviews our recent work carried out on the translation elongation factors EF-1alpha, EF-2 and EF-1beta isolated from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus. During the elongation cycle the GTPase activity of SsEF-1alpha and SsEF-2 and the nucleotide exchange activity of SsEF-1beta are crucial reactions ensuring the efficiency and the unidirectionality of the entire protein synthesis process. The site-directed mutagenesis carried out on the first consensus motif [G/A]XXXXGK of SsEF-1alpha and SsEF-2 allowed to assess the key role played by the alternate presence of G or A in the first position of this sequence motif. In particular, the data reported indicate that the presence of glycine triggers the intrinsic GTPase of both elongation factors, whereas alanine keeps this activity to a minimum level. The mutagenic analysis of a conserved valine faced to the above mentioned glycine in SsEF-1alpha showed its involvement in the interaction with aa-tRNA and in the stability of the enzyme. Even in S. solfataricus the nucleotide exchange activity of SsEF-1beta is essential to recycle the active GTP-bound form of SsEF-1alpha. However, some relevant structural and functional differences emerge, when comparing the properties of SsEF-1beta with those of eubacterial and eukaryal functional analogues. The smaller size of SsEF-1beta and its transient interaction with the SsEF-1alpha-GDP complex represent distinctive properties of the archaeal exchange factor. In conclusion, the data reported indicate that the general scheme of the elongation cycle is conserved also in the hyperthermophilic source analysed, even though the structural properties and the intermediate reactions catalysed by the elongation factors may be slightly different in different species.