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Rapid and accurate measurements of immune protein markers are essential for diagnosis and treatment in all clinical settings. The recent pandemic has revealed a stark need for developing new tools and assays that could be rapidly used in diverse settings and provide useful information to clinicians. Here, we describe the development and test application of a novel one-step CRP/IP-10 duplex assay for the LightDeck platform capable of delivering reproducible and accurate measurements in under eight minutes. We used the optimized assay to measure CRP and IP-10 levels in human blood and serum samples from healthy, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) positive, and influenza-like illness (ILI) presenting patients. Our results agreed with previously published analyte levels and enabled us to make statistically significant comparisons relevant to multiple clinical parameters. Our duplex assay is a simple and powerful tool for aiding prognostic decision-making in diverse settings.

Naive mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) and primed epiblast stem cells (mEpiSCs) represent successive snapshots of pluripotency during embryogenesis. Using transcriptomic and epigenomic mapping we show that a small fraction of transcripts are differentially expressed between mESCs and mEpiSCs and that these genes show expected changes in chromatin at their promoters and enhancers. Unexpectedly, the cis-regulatory circuitry of genes that are expressed at identical levels between these cell states also differs dramatically. In mESCs, these genes are associated with dominant proximal enhancers and dormant distal enhancers, which we term seed enhancers. In mEpiSCs, the naive-dominant enhancers are lost, and the seed enhancers take up primary transcriptional control. Seed enhancers have increased sequence conservation and show preferential usage in downstream somatic tissues, often expanding into super enhancers. We propose that seed enhancers ensure proper enhancer utilization and transcriptional fidelity as mammalian cells transition from naive pluripotency to a somatic regulatory program.

A function of the transcription factor REST is to block the expression of neuronal phenotypic traits in non-neuronal cells. Previous studies have shown that REST-mediated repression requires histone deacetylase activity and that recruitment of deacetylases is mediated by two co-repressors, Sin3A and CoREST. In this study, we show that a repressor domain in CoREST interacts with BRG1-associated factor (BAF) 57, a component of the hSWI.SNF complex. In vivo, BAF57 occupies the neuronal sodium channel gene (Nav1.2) promoter, and targeting to this gene requires REST. In addition to BAF57, the ATPase BRG1 and BAF170, other members of the hSWI.SNF complex, are also present in the REST.CoREST repressor complex. Microinjection of specific antibodies against BRG1, BAF57, or BAF170 into Rat1 fibroblasts relieves repression of RE1 reporter genes. Together, our data suggest that ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling, as well as histone deacetylation, is needed for REST-mediated repression.