Does group membership affect children's judgments of social transgressions?

Children judge in-group members more favorably than out-group members. They also judge moral transgressions as more serious and more worthy of punishment than conventional transgressions. Here we asked whether children's judgments of moral and conventional transgressions vary by the group membership of the transgressor (in-group, neutral, out-group, or self). In addition, we asked whether judgments of the transgressions would extend to the transgressors themselves, including cases in which the self was the transgressor. Results show that transgressions committed by out-group members were judged as being more serious and more punish-worthy than those committed by members of other groups. In addition, children judged out-group transgressors more harshly, and the self more leniently, than other group members. Overall, results suggest that group membership does affect judgments of transgressions and transgressors, with out-group members consistently judged the most negatively and the self consistently judged the least negatively. However, when judging the transgressor or the seriousness of the transgression, domain distinctions do persist even as group membership varies. Although, when assigning punishment, domain distinctions persist only when judging the transgressions of out-group members and neutral individuals. These findings demonstrate the powerful effect of group membership on the judgments of both acts and actors, indicating that when judging transgressions children consider not only the moral or conventional status of the act but also the group membership of the actor.

A target repurposing approach identifies N-myristoyltransferase as a new candidate drug target in filarial nematodes.

Myristoylation is a lipid modification involving the addition of a 14-carbon unsaturated fatty acid, myristic acid, to the N-terminal glycine of a subset of proteins, a modification that promotes their binding to cell membranes for varied biological functions. The process is catalyzed by myristoyl-CoA:protein N-myristoyltransferase (NMT), an enzyme which has been validated as a drug target in human cancers, and for infectious diseases caused by fungi, viruses and protozoan parasites. We purified Caenorhabditis elegans and Brugia malayi NMTs as active recombinant proteins and carried out kinetic analyses with their essential fatty acid donor, myristoyl-CoA and peptide substrates. Biochemical and structural analyses both revealed that the nematode enzymes are canonical NMTs, sharing a high degree of conservation with protozoan NMT enzymes. Inhibitory compounds that target NMT in protozoan species inhibited the nematode NMTs with IC50 values of 2.5-10 nM, and were active against B. malayi microfilariae and adult worms at 12.5 µM and 50 µM respectively, and C. elegans (25 µM) in culture. RNA interference and gene deletion in C. elegans further showed that NMT is essential for nematode viability. The effects observed are likely due to disruption of the function of several downstream target proteins. Potential substrates of NMT in B. malayi are predicted using bioinformatic analysis. Our genetic and chemical studies highlight the importance of myristoylation in the synthesis of functional proteins in nematodes and have shown for the first time that NMT is required for viability in parasitic nematodes. These results suggest that targeting NMT could be a valid approach for the development of chemotherapeutic agents against nematode diseases including filariasis.