Rutgers University

About: Rutgers University is a education organization based out in New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 68736 authors who have published 159418 publications receiving 6713860 citations. The organization is also known as: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey & Rutgers.

Self-Ratings of Health: Do they also Predict change in Functional Ability?

Abstract: Self-ratings of health by individuals responding to surveys have shown themselves to be potent predictors of mortality in a growing number of studies; they appear to contribute significant additional independent information to health status indicators gathered through self-reported health histories or medical examinations. A key question raised by these studies is: What are the mediating processes involved in the association? Specifically, do poor self-ratings increase the risk of disability and morbidity, and are these outcomes intervening steps in the link to mortality? In this report we address the first question, of self-ratings predicting future levels of functional disability, our choice of an index of overall impact of morbidity. Data come from the New Haven Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (EPESE) site (N = 2,812). Results show that self-ratings of health in 1982, net of baseline functional ability, health and sociodemographic status, are associated with changes in functional ability over periods of one through six years. These findings extend our understanding of the meaning of excellent, good, fair, and poor ratings of health, and that they have implications not just for survival but for the loss or maintenance of functional ability in daily life.

Factor stimulating transcription by RNA polymerase.

Abstract: A protein component usually associated with RNA polymerase can be separated from the enzyme by chromatography on phosphocellulose. The polymerase is unable to transcribe T4 DNA unless this factor is added back.

A large-scale analysis of mRNA polyadenylation of human and mouse genes

Abstract: mRNA polyadenylation is a critical cellular process in eukaryotes. It involves 3' end cleavage of nascent mRNAs and addition of the poly(A) tail, which plays important roles in many aspects of the cellular metabolism of mRNA. The process is controlled by various cis-acting elements surrounding the cleavage site, and their binding factors. In this study, we surveyed genome regions containing cleavage sites [herein called poly(A) sites], for 13,942 human and 11,155 mouse genes. We found that a great proportion of human and mouse genes have alternative polyadenylation ( approximately 54 and 32%, respectively). The conservation of alternative polyadenylation type or polyadenylation configuration between human and mouse orthologs is statistically significant, indicating that alternative polyadenylation is widely employed by these two species to produce alternative gene transcripts. Genes belonging to several functional groups, indicated by their Gene Ontology annotations, are biased with respect to polyadenylation configuration. Many poly(A) sites harbor multiple cleavage sites (51.25% human and 46.97% mouse sites), leading to heterogeneous 3' end formation for transcripts. This implies that the cleavage process of polyadenylation is largely imprecise. Different types of poly(A) sites, with regard to their relative locations in a gene, are found to have distinct nucleotide composition in surrounding genomic regions. This large-scale study provides important insights into the mechanism of polyadenylation in mammalian species and represents a genomic view of the regulation of gene expression by alternative polyadenylation.