Faculty Bibliography

In this paper, the recipient of the 2020 John Fryer Award from the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Billy E. Jones, and his co-author Dr. Alfonso Ferguson tell the story of Black gay men from the time of pre-colonial Africa to the present day. Billy E. Jones, M.D., M.S., is a senior psychiatrist who has served as President/CEO, NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation, and as Commissioner, NYC Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Alcoholism Services. Previously, he was Medical Director, Lincoln Hospital, and Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Psychiatry, NYMC. Dr. Jones is the author/editor of numerous publications on African American mental health and LGBTQ issues Including the recently published, "BLACK MENTAL HEALTH, Patients, Providers, and Systems." The John E Fryer, MD Award honors an individual whose work has contributed to the mental health of sexual and gender minorities. It was named for John Fryer, the psychiatrist who appeared as "Dr. H. Anonymous" at the 1972 APA meeting and helped move forward the process of removing the diagnosis of homosexuality from the DSM. The Award was funded by members of AGLP: The Association of LGBTQ Psychiatrists, a matching grant from the Gill Foundation, and a bequest from AGLP founding member Frank Rundle, MD. The Fryer Award is given at the APA Annual Meeting, and includes an honorarium and a lecture at the APA meeting.

Three Gram-positive, moderately halophilic, spore-forming rods, designated XH-63T, XH-62 and EJ-15, were isolated from two salt lakes located near Xilin Hot and Ejinor, in Inner Mongolia, China. The strains were strictly aerobic and motile, with spherical, terminal and deforming endospores. They grew at pH 5.0-9.0 (optimal growth at pH 7.5), between 4 and 45 degrees C (optimal growth at 37 degrees C) and at salinities of 1-20% (w/v) total salts, growing optimally at 10% (w/v) salts. They had meso-diaminopimelic acid in the cell wall peptidoglycan and DNA G + C contents of 36.1-37.1 mol%. The polar lipid pattern of strain XH-63T, selected as the representative strain, consisted of diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, and a phospholipid and two amino phospholipids of unknown structure. This strain possessed anteiso-C(15:0) and anteiso-C(17:0) as the major fatty acids (altogether representing 72.5% of total) and MK-7 as the major menaquinone. 16S rRNA gene analysis of the three strains showed that they were within the Gracilibacillus cluster, with highest sequence similarity (95.4-95.8%) with Gracilibacillus dipsosauri. Based on a combination of phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and phylogenetic features, it is proposed that the three isolates represent a novel species of the genus Gracilibacillus, Gracilibacillus orientalis sp. nov. The type strain is strain XH-63T (= CCM 7326T = AS 1.4250T = CECT 7097T).