Dynamics of social corrections to peers sharing COVID-19 misinformation on WhatsApp in Brazil.

OBJECTIVE: Online COVID-19 misinformation is a serious concern in Brazil, home to the second-largest WhatsApp user base and the second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths. We examined the extent to which WhatsApp users might be willing to correct their peers who might share COVID-19 misinformation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional online survey using Qualtrics among 726 Brazilian adults to identify the types of social correction behaviors (SCBs) and health and technological factors that shape the performance of these behaviors. RESULTS: Brazil's WhatsApp users expressed medium to high levels of willingness to engage in SCBs. We discovered 3 modes of SCBs: correction to the group, correction to the sender only, and passive or no correction. WhatsApp users with lower levels of educational attainment and from younger age groups were less inclined to provide corrections. Lastly, the perceived severity of COVID-19 and the ability to critically evaluate a message were positively associated with providing corrections to either the group or the sender. DISCUSSION: The demographic analyses point to the need to strengthen information literacy among population groups that are younger with lower levels of educational attainment. These efforts could facilitate individual-level contributions to the global fight against misinformation by the World Health Organization in collaboration with member states, social media companies, and civil society. CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that Brazil's WhatsApp users might be willing to actively respond with feedback when exposed to COVID-19 misinformation by their peers on small-world networks like WhatsApp groups.

Pyrophosphorylation via selective phosphoprotein derivatization.

An important step in elucidating the function of protein post-translational modifications (PTMs) is gaining access to site-specifically modified, homogeneous samples for biochemical characterization. Protein pyrophosphorylation is a poorly characterized PTM, and here a chemical approach to obtain pyrophosphoproteins is reported. Photo-labile phosphorimidazolide reagents were developed for selective pyrophosphorylation, affinity-capture, and release of pyrophosphoproteins. Kinetic analysis of the reaction revealed rate constants between 9.2 × 10-3 to 0.58 M-1 s-1, as well as a striking proclivity of the phosphorimidazolides to preferentially react with phosphate monoesters over other nucleophilic side chains. Besides enabling the characterization of pyrophosphorylation on protein function, this work highlights the utility of phosphoryl groups as handles for selective protein modification for a variety of applications, such as phosphoprotein bioconjugation and enrichment.

Biosynthesis and genetic encoding of phosphothreonine through parallel selection and deep sequencing.

The phosphorylation of threonine residues in proteins regulates diverse processes in eukaryotic cells, and thousands of threonine phosphorylations have been identified. An understanding of how threonine phosphorylation regulates biological function will be accelerated by general methods to biosynthesize defined phosphoproteins. Here we describe a rapid approach for directly discovering aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase-tRNA pairs that selectively incorporate non-natural amino acids into proteins; our method uses parallel positive selections combined with deep sequencing and statistical analysis and enables the direct, scalable discovery of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase-tRNA pairs with mutually orthogonal substrate specificity. By combining a method to biosynthesize phosphothreonine in cells with this selection approach, we discover a phosphothreonyl-tRNA synthetase-tRNACUA pair and create an entirely biosynthetic route to incorporating phosphothreonine in proteins. We biosynthesize several phosphoproteins and demonstrate phosphoprotein structure determination and synthetic protein kinase activation.

Synthesis of Isomeric Phosphoubiquitin Chains Reveals that Phosphorylation Controls Deubiquitinase Activity and Specificity.

Ubiquitin is post-translationally modified by phosphorylation at several sites, but the consequences of these modifications are largely unknown. Here, we synthesize multi-milligram quantities of ubiquitin phosphorylated at serine 20, serine 57, and serine 65 via genetic code expansion. We use these phosphoubiquitins for the enzymatic assembly of 20 isomeric phosphoubiquitin dimers, with different sites of isopeptide linkage and/or phosphorylation. We discover that phosphorylation of serine 20 on ubiquitin converts UBE3C from a dual-specificity E3 ligase into a ligase that primarily synthesizes K48 chains. We profile the activity of 31 deubiquitinases on the isomeric phosphoubiquitin dimers in 837 reactions, and we discover that phosphorylation at distinct sites in ubiquitin can activate or repress cleavage of a particular linkage by deubiquitinases and that phosphorylation at a single site in ubiquitin can control the specificity of deubiquitinases for distinct ubiquitin linkages.

Efficient genetic encoding of phosphoserine and its nonhydrolyzable analog.

Serine phosphorylation is a key post-translational modification that regulates diverse biological processes. Powerful analytical methods have identified thousands of phosphorylation sites, but many of their functions remain to be deciphered. A key to understanding the function of protein phosphorylation is access to phosphorylated proteins, but this is often challenging or impossible. Here we evolve an orthogonal aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNACUA pair that directs the efficient incorporation of phosphoserine (pSer (1)) into recombinant proteins in Escherichia coli. Moreover, combining the orthogonal pair with a metabolically engineered E. coli enables the site-specific incorporation of a nonhydrolyzable analog of pSer. Our approach enables quantitative decoding of the amber stop codon as pSer, and we purify, with yields of several milligrams per liter of culture, proteins bearing biologically relevant phosphorylations that were previously challenging or impossible to access--including phosphorylated ubiquitin and the kinase Nek7, which is synthetically activated by a genetically encoded phosphorylation in its activation loop.

Mzt1/Tam4, a fission yeast MOZART1 homologue, is an essential component of the γ-tubulin complex and directly interacts with GCP3(Alp6).

In humans, MOZART1 plays an essential role in mitotic spindle formation as a component of the γ-tubulin ring complex. We report that the fission yeast homologue of MOZART1, Mzt1/Tam4, is located at microtubule-organizing centers (MTOCs) and coimmunoprecipitates with γ-tubulin Gtb1 from cell extracts. We show that mzt1/tam4 is an essential gene in fission yeast, encoding a 64-amino acid peptide, depletion of which leads to aberrant microtubule structure, including malformed mitotic spindles and impaired interphase microtubule array. Mzt1/Tam4 depletion also causes cytokinesis defects, suggesting a role of the γ-tubulin complex in the regulation of cytokinesis. Yeast two-hybrid analysis shows that Mzt1/Tam4 forms a complex with Alp6, a fission yeast homologue of γ-tubulin complex protein 3 (GCP3). Biophysical methods demonstrate that there is a direct interaction between recombinant Mzt1/Tam4 and the N-terminal region of GCP3(Alp6). Together our results suggest that Mzt1/Tam4 contributes to the MTOC function through regulation of GCP3(Alp6).