Abstract Background Reducing unintended teenage pregnancy and promoting adolescent sexual health remains a priority in England. Both whole-school and social-marketing interventions are promising approaches to addressing these aims. However, such interventions have not been rigorously trialled in the UK and it is unclear if they are appropriate for delivery in English secondary schools. We developed and pilot trialled Positive Choices, a new whole-school social marketing intervention to address unintended teenage pregnancy and promote sexual health. Our aim was to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention and trial methods in English secondary schools against pre-defined progression criteria (relating to randomisation, survey follow-up, intervention fidelity and acceptability and linkage to birth/abortion records) prior to carrying out a phase III trial of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. Methods Pilot RCT with integral process evaluation involving four intervention and two control schools in south-east England. The intervention comprised a student needs survey; a student/staff-led school health promotion council; a classroom curriculum for year-9 students (aged 13–14); whole-school student-led social-marketing activities; parent information; and a review of local and school-based sexual health services. Baseline surveys were conducted with year 8 (aged 12–13) in June 2018. Follow-up surveys were completed 12 months later. Process evaluation data included audio recording of staff training, surveys of trained staff, staff log books and researcher observations of intervention activities. Survey data from female students were linked to records of births and abortions to assess the feasibility of these constituting a phase III primary outcome. Results All six schools were successfully randomised and retained in the trial. Response rates to the survey were above 80% in both arms at both baseline and follow-up. With the exception of the parent materials, the fidelity target for implementation of essential elements in three out of four schools was achieved. Student surveys indicated 80% acceptability among those who reported awareness of the programme and interviews with staff suggested strong acceptability. Linkage to birth/abortion records was feasible although none occurred among participants. Conclusions The criteria for progression to a phase III trial were met. Our data suggest that a whole-school social-marketing approach may be appropriate for topics that are clearly prioritised by schools. A phase III trial of this intervention is now warranted to establish effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. Births and terminations are not an appropriate primary outcome measure for such a trial. Trial registration ISRCTN65324176.

Regulated protein degradation by ATP-dependent proteases plays a fundamental role in the biogenesis of mitochondria. Membrane-bound and soluble ATP-dependent proteases have been identified in various subcompartments of this organelle. Subunits composing these proteases are evolutionarily conserved from yeast to humans and, in support of an endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria, evolved from prokaryotic ancestors: the PIM1/Lon protease is active in the matrix of mitochondria, while the i-AAA protease and the m-AAA protease mediate the turnover of inner membrane proteins. Most of the knowledge concerning the biogenesis and the physiological role of ATP-dependent proteases comes from studies in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Proteases were found to be required for mitochondrial stasis, for the maintenance of the morphology of the organelle and for mitochondrial genome integrity. ATP-dependent proteolysis is crucial for the expression of mitochondrially encoded subunits of respiratory chain complexes and for the assembly of these complexes. Hence, mitochondrial ATP-dependent proteases exert multiple roles which are essential for the maintenance of cellular respiratory competence.

Members of the Hsp100/Clp-family of molecular chaperones form regulatory subunits of ATP-dependent Clp proteases and fulfill crucial roles for cellular thermotolerance. We have identified a Clp-like protein in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Mcx1p, which shares approximately 30% sequence identity with ClpX-proteins in bacteria, plants and nematodes. Mcx1p localizes to the matrix space of mitochondria and is peripherally associated with the inner membrane. A homologue of E. coli ClpP protease was not identified when screening the yeast genome. We therefore propose that Mcx1p represents a novel molecular chaperone of mitochondria with non-proteolytic function.

The ATP-dependent PIM1 protease, a Lon-like protease localized in the mitochondrial matrix, is required for mitochondrial genome integrity in yeast. Cells lacking PIM1 accumulate lesions in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and therefore lose respiratory competence. The identification of a multicopy suppressor, which stabilizes mtDNA in the absence of PIM1, enabled us to characterize novel functions of PIM1 protease during mitochondrial biogenesis. The synthesis of mitochondrially encoded cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (CoxI) and cytochrome b (Cob) is impaired in pim1 mutants containing mtDNA. PIM1-mediated proteolysis is required for the translation of mature COXI mRNA. Moreover, deficiencies in the splicing of COXI and COB transcripts, which appear to be restricted to introns encoding mRNA maturases, were observed in cells lacking the PIM1 gene. Transcripts of COXI and COB genes harboring multiple introns are degraded in the absence of PIM1. These results establish multiple, essential functions of the ATP-dependent PIM1 protease during mitochondrial gene expression.

The biogenesis of the ATP-dependent PIM1 protease of mitochondria was studied by mutational analysis. The ATPase and proteolytic activities of PIM1 were shown to be essential for mitochondrial function. A proteolytically inactive mutant form of PIM1 protease accumulated as a pro-form in mitochondria, revealing a two-step processing of PIM1: the matrix targeting signal is removed by the mitochondrial processing peptidase and then a pro-region of 61 amino acids is cleaved off in an autocatalytic reaction. This latter process depended on the ATP-dependent assembly of PIM1 protease subunits and can occur by an intermolecular and, most probably, also an intramolecular pathway. The respiratory competence of cells harboring mutant PIM1 protease lacking the pro-region was strongly impaired. Subcellular fractionation revealed a cytosolic localization of mutant PIM1 protease. This demonstrates the requirement for the propeptide for efficient sorting of PIM1 protease to mitochondria.

This directory was made possible by a unique international collaboration between the 633 scientists whose names appear below. It represents both the first published description of the complete sequence of most chromsomes from Saccharomyces cerevisiae , and the first published overview of the entire sequence. As such, the authors would like future papers referring to the entire sequence and/or its contents to cite this directory; future papers referring to the sequence of individual chromosomes should refer to the papers listed at the head of page 9. The authors’ affiliations appear in the papers describing the individual chromosomes.

In 1992 we started assembling an ordered library of cosmid clones from chromosome XIV of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae . At that time, only 49 genes were known to be located on this chromosome 1 and we estimated that 80% to 90% of its genes were yet to be discovered. In 1993, a team of 20 European laboratories began the systematic sequence analysis of chromosome XIV. The completed and intensively checked final sequence of 784,328 base pairs was released in April, 1996 (ref. 2). Substantial parts had been published before 3–22 or had previously been made available on request. The sequence contained 419 known or presumptive protein-coding genes, including two pseudogenes and three retrotransposons, 14 tRNA genes, and three small nuclear RNA genes. For 116 (30%) protein-coding sequences, one or more structural homologues were identified elsewhere in the yeast genome. Half of them belong to duplicated groups of 6–14 loosely linked genes, in most cases with conserved gene order and orientation (relaxed interchromosomal synteny). We have considered the possible evolutionary origins of this unexpected feature of yeast genome organization.

A 8.2 kb DNA segment from the left arm of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome XIV (GenBank/EMBL accession number: X83226) encompasses four open reading frames (ORFs) longer than 100 residues. The ORF N0295 is highly similar to the Aspergillus parasiticus and Schizosaccharomyces pombe nmt1 gene products, which are involved in thiamine biosynthesis and are strongly repressed by thiamine. N0300 is 76% identical to YCR107w, a hypothetical protein of yeast chromosome III, and 55% identical to a ligninolytic aryl-alcohol dehydrogenase from the white-rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium. In addition, this fragment encodes Rpd3, a pleiotropic transcription factor (Vidal and Gaber, 1991), and part of Pas8, a protein essential for the biogenesis of peroxisomes (Voorn-Brouwer et al., 1993).

We report the nucleotide sequence of an 11.7 kb fragment from the left arm of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome XI. Analysis reveals a new tRNA for valine and four unknown open reading frames among which YKL245 shows homology with a yeast mitochondrial regulatory protein and YKL244, YKL246 and YKL247 are unknown.

The DNA sequence of two contiguous 7648 bp and 1194 bp BamHI fragments from the cosmid alpha 1201 located about 60 kb from the centromere on the left arm of chromosome II from Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been determined. Sequence analysis reveals four new open reading frames longer than 300 bp: YBL0415 (309 bp), YBL0416 (4539 bp), YBL0417 (1035 bp) and YBL0414 (2115 bp), which extends into the neighbouring 5.2 kb BamHI fragment. The YBL0414 shows homologies to the mouse 68 kDa and Drosophila melanogaster 76 kDa subunits of the DNA polymerase alpha-primase complex. The YBL0417 is homologous to bacterial GTP cyclohydrolase II (EC 3.5.4.25).

ATP dependent proteolytic degradation of misfolded proteins in the mitochondrial matrix is mediated by the PIM1 protease and depends on the molecular chaperone proteins mt‐hsp70 and Mdj1p. Chaperone function is essential to maintain misfolded proteins in a soluble state, a prerequisite for their degradation by PIM1 protease. In the absence of functional mt‐hsp70 or Mdj1p misfolded proteins either remain associated with mt‐hsp70 or form aggregates and thereby are no longer substrates for PIM1 protease. Mdj1p is shown to regulate the ATP dependent association of an unfolded polypeptide chain with mt‐hsp70 affecting binding to as well as release from mt‐hsp70. These findings establish a central role of molecular chaperone proteins in the degradation of misfolded proteins by PIM1 protease and thereby demonstrate a functional interrelation between components of the folding machinery and the proteolytic system within mitochondria.

We report the nucleotide sequence of an 11.4 kb DNA segment from the left arm of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome II. This sequence contains a typical structure of a functional ARS as well as five open reading frames (ORFs) longer than 300 bp. One is PEP1, a gene encoding a transmembrane protein of 1579 amino acids which transits through the secretory pathway and is involved in vacuolar protein sorting. Two genes were previously sequenced: ACH1 (Lee et al., 1990) and FUS3 (Elion et al., 1990), which encode an acetyl-CoA hydrolase and a protein kinase involved in the cell division cycle, respectively. The last two ORFs localized on the complementary strand of ACH1 are not likely to be expressed.