Teaching College in the Time of COVID-19: Gender and Race Differences in Faculty Emotional Labor.

The COVID-19 pandemic placed new teaching demands upon faculty that may have exacerbated existing race and gender disparities in the amount of emotional labor they perform. The present study surveyed 182 full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty from three small private liberal arts colleges to examine the effect of social and professional statuses on emotional labor (i.e., managing the expression of emotions to meet job requirements) during the emergency switch to remote instruction in spring 2020. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression revealed that white cisgender men performed less emotional labor than Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) cisgender men, BIPOC cisgender women, and white cisgender women and gender non-conforming (GNC) faculty. Student demands for special favors fully mediated the relationship between intersectional race and gender identity and self-directed emotional labor and partially mediated its relationship with student-directed emotional labor. We conclude that the status shield afforded white cisgender men by their race and gender protected them from student demands that would have required them to engage in as much emotional labor as faculty with other intersectional race and gender identities during the pandemic. We discuss considering differences in emotional labor when making personnel decisions. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11199-021-01271-0.

The Dictyostelium discoideum prespore-specific catalase B functions to control late development and to protect spore viability.

Changes in the levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been associated previously with cell differentiation and development in several systems. Thus, there is interest in studying the developmental regulation of antioxidant enzymes, whose activities may modulate ROS levels and subsequent oxidant-mediated signal transduction events in specific tissues. Our recent identification in Dictyostelium discoideum of the prespore-specific catalase B (CatB) enzyme suggested (a) that the CatB enzyme functions to provide protection to the mature spores, and (b) that the CatB enzyme may have a regulatory role in cell differentiation and morphogenesis. We have now confirmed both these hypotheses. We specifically disrupted the catB gene by homologous recombination. The resulting catB null strain displays a 4-h delay in development at the time of normal catB gene expression, followed by slow and asynchronous development of fruiting bodies, taking 10 h longer than the isogenic parent strain. The expression of both prestalk- and prespore-specific genes was altered in the mutant both temporally and quantitatively, and the resultant mutant spores had increased sensitivity to H(2)O(2). This study supports the idea that CatB functions in the development of D. discoideum by regulating the level of ROS, and adds to the growing body of evidence for regulatory roles for ROS.

Electron microscopy of actin rods and bundles in Dictyostelium discoideum by high-pressure freezing.

A new type of actin rods comprising actin tubules appears in dormant spores of Dictyostelium discoideum. Occasionally, the rods in the nucleus were observed in an amorphous state using a combination of high-pressure freezing and freeze-substitutions. Also in the case of actin bundles formed in the nudeus of vegetative cells exposed to dimethyl sulphoxide, actin filaments seemed to be embedded in matrices. The karyoplasm of spores fixed by the above method appeared to be denser than that obtained by other methods. As soluble materials may be efficiently retained in the nucleus, actin tubules or actin filaments embedded in those materials may result in hazy images of actin rods and bundles.

High cAMP in spores of Dictyostelium discoideum: association with spore dormancy and inhibition of germination.

Signalling mechanisms involving cAMP have a well-documented role in the coordination of multicellular development and differentiation leading to spore formation in the social amoeba, Dictyostelium discoideum. The involvement of cAMP in the poorly understood developmental stages of spore dormancy and germination have been investigated in this study. Dormant spores contained up to 11-fold more cAMP than nascent amoebae. The spore cAMP levels were not constant, but typically underwent a surge at 14-18 d when spores acquired the ability to germinate spontaneously. The high cAMP levels decreased only during successful spore germination, i.e. emergence of nascent amoebae. The temporal pattern of cAMP decrease was complex and unique to the method of spore activation, supporting our hypothesis that exogenously (e.g. heat) activated and autoactivated spores germinate by different mechanisms. During heat-induced activation, transcription of acg (a gene encoding adenylyl cyclase associated with germination) correlated well with spore cAMP content. Young wild-type spores, incapable of spontaneous germination, maintained a uniformly high cAMP level, and spore cAMP levels also remained high if germination was inhibited. When activated spores were deactivated by applying increased osmotic pressure, cAMP concentrations rose and ultimately levelled off at the high levels typical of dormant spores. The correlation between high cAMP and failure to germinate was also evident when autoactivation was inhibited by the cAMP analogue, 8-bromo-cAMP. Also, spores from a strain (HTY217) with unrestrained protein kinase A activity were incapable of spontaneous germination. Overall, our experiments provide evidence for continued cAMP signalling in spores up to 18 d after sporulation and for linkages between elevated cAMP, spore deactivation and inhibition of spontaneous germination.

Ammonium phosphate in sori of Dictyostelium discoideum promotes spore dormancy through stimulation of the osmosensor ACG.

The sori of Dictyostelium discoideum (strains SG1, SG2, NC4 and V12) contained more than 100 mM ammonium phosphate. Glutamine synthetase (GS), which could remove ammonia from the sorus, was not present in 2-d-old dormant spores but enzyme activity returned to vegetative levels after spore germination. Based on mRNA blotting, the activity of this enzyme in germinating spores appeared to be transcriptionally controlled. At the same time that GS activity was increasing, ammonia was released from germinating spores. Exogenous ammonium ions at a concentration of 28 mM did not block germination nor modulate GS activity in nascent amoebae. It was concluded that the transcription and translation of GS is not environmentally regulated but is an integral part of the germination process, preparing nascent amoebae for vegetative growth. An exogenous concentration of 69 mM ammonium phosphate could maintain dormancy in spores of strains SG1 and SG2 for at least a week in the absence of any other inhibitory component from the sori. The inhibition was reversible at any time either by dilution or by washing the spores free of the ammonium ion. Spores of strain acg- were not inhibited by 100 mM ammonium phosphate. A model is presented in which GS in prespore cells serves as a sink for ammonia to allow the osmotically sensitive adenylyl cyclase aggregation protein (ACA) to activate protein kinase A (PKA) to induce fruiting-body formation. After fruiting-body formation is complete, the decline in GS and ACA activities in developing spores is offset by their replacement with the osmotically and ammonia-stimulated adenylyl cyclase osmosensor for germination (ACG). Ammonia and discadenine may act as separate signals to synergistically activate PKA by stimulating ACG activity while inhibiting cAMP phosphodiestrase activity in fully dormant spores.