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Abstract Background As technology moves rapidly forward and our world becomes more interconnected, we are seeing increases in the complexity and challenge associated with scientific problems. More than ever before, scientists will need to be resilient and able to cope with challenges and failures en route to success. However, we still understand relatively little about how these skills manifest in STEM contexts broadly, and how they are developed by STEM undergraduate students. While recent studies have begun to explore this area, no measures exist that are specifically designed to assess coping behaviors in STEM undergraduate contexts at scale. Fortunately, multiple measures of coping do exist and have been previously used in more general contexts. Drawing strongly from items used in the COPE and Brief COPE, we gathered a pool of items anticipated to be good measures of undergraduate students’ coping behaviors in STEM. We tested the validity of these items for use with STEM students using exploratory factor analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, and cognitive interviews. In particular, our confirmatory factor analyses and cognitive interviews explored whether the items measured coping for persons excluded due to ethnicity or race (PEERs). Results Our analyses revealed two versions of what we call the STEM-COPE instrument that accurately measure several dimensions of coping for undergraduate STEM students. One version is more fine-grained. We call this the Coping Behaviors version, since it is more specific in its description of coping actions. The other contains some specific scales and two omnibus scales that describe what we call challenge-engaging and challenge-avoiding coping. This version is designated the Coping Styles version. We confirmed that both versions can be used reliably in PEER and non-PEER populations. Conclusions The final products of our work are two versions of the STEM-COPE. Each version measures several dimensions of coping that can be used in individual classrooms or across contexts to assess STEM undergraduate students’ coping with challenges or failures. Each version can be used as a whole, or individual scales can be adopted and used for more specific studies. This work also highlights the need to either develop or adapt other existing measures for use with undergraduate STEM students, and more specifically, for use with sub-populations within STEM who have been historically marginalized or minoritized. 

Peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) are high-affinity synthetic nucleic acid analogs capable of hybridization with native nucleic acids. PNAs synthesized having amino acid sidechains installed at the γ-position along the backbone provide a template for a single biopolymer to simultaneously encode nucleic acid and amino acid sequences. Previously, we reported the development of “bilingual” PNAs through the synthesis of an amphiphilic sequence featuring separate blocks of hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acid functional groups. These PNAs combined the sequence-specific binding activity of nucleic acids with the structural organization properties of peptides. Like other amphiphilic compounds, these γ-PNAs were observed to assemble spontaneously into micelle-like nanostructures in aqueous solutions and disassembly was induced through hybridization to a complementary sequence. Here, we explore whether assembly of these bilingual PNAs is possible by harnessing the nucleic acid code. Specifically, we designed an amphiphile-masking duplex system in which spontaneous amphiphile assembly is prevented through hybridization to a nucleic acid masking sequence. We show that the amphiphile is displaced upon introduction of a releasing sequence complementary to the masking sequence through toehold mediated displacement. Upon release, we observe that the amphiphile proceeds to assemble in a fashion consistent with our previously reported structures. Our approach represents a novel method for controlled stimuli-responsive assembly of PNA-based nanostructures. 

Small molecule contaminants pose a significant threat to the environment and human health. While regulations are in place for allowed limits in many countries, detection and remediation of contaminants in more resource-limited settings and everyday environmental sources remains a challenge. Functional nucleic acids, including aptamers and DNA enzymes, have emerged as powerful options for addressing this challenge due to their ability to non-covalently interact with small molecule targets. The goal of this perspective is to outline recent efforts toward the selection of aptamers for small molecules and describe their subsequent implementation for environmental applications. Finally, we provide an outlook that addresses barriers that hinder these technologies from being widely adopted in field friendly settings and propose a path forward toward addressing these challenges.