Raising "Antiracist Disruptors": Illuminating Socialization Practices that Support Antiracism in Multiracial Households.

Although an emerging body of literature has advanced our knowledge of how monoracial parents can support their multiracial children in understanding the ethnic-racial identities they hold, there is a dearth of research exploring how parents socialize their children towards antiracism. Drawing from ten interviews with monoracial parents of multiracial children, this paper illuminates how parents leverage multiracial socialization practices, as identified in previous academic research, to instill an antiracist orientation in their children. Using consensual qualitative analyses, we find that although all parents had a vested interest in the wellbeing and identity development of their multiracial children, parents qualitatively differed in their ability and willingness to instill an antiracist orientation in their children. Specifically, parents in our sample exhibited five approaches to multiracial socialization, ranging from those that reinforced dominant racial ideologies to those that explicitly aimed to prepare youth to become antiracist activists. We also describe how monoracial parents' lived experiences are implicated in their engagement in multiracial socialization practices, especially those that better position them to prepare their children to engage in antiracism. Our findings illuminate how monoracial parents may engage in a repertoire of strategies in order to foster antiracism in multiracial children, molding the next generation of "antiracist disruptors."

Extracellular vesicles released following heat stress induce bystander effect in unstressed populations.

Cells naïve to stress can display the effects of stress, such as DNA damage and apoptosis, when they are exposed to signals from stressed cells; this phenomenon is known as the bystander effect. We previously showed that bystander effect induced by ionising radiation are mediated by extracellular vesicles (EVs). Bystander effect can also be induced by other types of stress, including heat shock, but it is unclear whether EVs are involved. Here we show that EVs released from heat shocked cells are also able to induce bystander damage in unstressed populations. Naïve cells treated with media conditioned by heat shocked cells showed higher levels of DNA damage and apoptosis than cells treated with media from control cells. Treating naïve cells with EVs derived from media conditioned by heat shocked cells also induced a bystander effect when compared to control, with DNA damage and apoptosis increasing whilst the level of cell viability was reduced. We demonstrate that treatment of naïve cells with heat shocked cell-derived EVs leads to greater invasiveness in a trans-well Matrigel assay. Finally, we show that naïve cells treated with EVs from heat-shocked cells are more likely to survive a subsequent heat shock, suggesting that these EVs mediate an adaptive response. We propose that EVs released following stress mediate an intercellular response that leads to apparent stress in neighbouring cells but also greater robustness in the face of a subsequent insult.

Meta-analysis using a novel database, miRStress, reveals miRNAs that are frequently associated with the radiation and hypoxia stress-responses.

Organisms are often exposed to environmental pressures that affect homeostasis, so it is important to understand the biological basis of stress-response. Various biological mechanisms have evolved to help cells cope with potentially cytotoxic changes in their environment. miRNAs are small non-coding RNAs which are able to regulate mRNA stability. It has been suggested that miRNAs may tip the balance between continued cytorepair and induction of apoptosis in response to stress. There is a wealth of data in the literature showing the effect of environmental stress on miRNAs, but it is scattered in a large number of disparate publications. Meta-analyses of this data would produce added insight into the molecular mechanisms of stress-response. To facilitate this we created and manually curated the miRStress database, which describes the changes in miRNA levels following an array of stress types in eukaryotic cells. Here we describe this database and validate the miRStress tool for analysing miRNAs that are regulated by stress. To validate the database we performed a cross-species analysis to identify miRNAs that respond to radiation. The analysis tool confirms miR-21 and miR-34a as frequently deregulated in response to radiation, but also identifies novel candidates as potentially important players in this stress response, including miR-15b, miR-19b, and miR-106a. Similarly, we used the miRStress tool to analyse hypoxia-responsive miRNAs. The most frequently deregulated miRNAs were miR-210 and miR-21, as expected. Several other miRNAs were also found to be associated with hypoxia, including miR-181b, miR-26a/b, miR-106a, miR-213 and miR-192. Therefore the miRStress tool has identified miRNAs with hitherto unknown or under-appreciated roles in the response to specific stress types. The miRStress tool, which can be used to uncover new insight into the biological roles of miRNAs, and also has the potential to unearth potential biomarkers for therapeutic response, is freely available at http://mudshark.brookes.ac.uk/MirStress.