Conditions Of Repression Research Articles

How to Manage Risk and Investments under Financial Repression Conditions Imposed by Advanced Economies

This working paper discusses how to manage risk and investment opportunities under continuous uncertainty, due to high debts that developed countries hold resulting in Financial Repression conditions. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008, debt in the advanced economies has increased in historical high levels and therefore constitutes the decisive issue for the long-term global economic policies. There are different methodologies to reduce debt, however policy makers in the advanced economies have chosen to implement the financial repression method, since it is the least understandable and least painful for the people who participate mandatorily in the process of debt reduction. The main tool to implement the financial repression method is by using Quantitative Easing program (QE), because it works effectively. However, quantitative easing produces major risks to the economy, hence, market conditions are changed. In line with the new conditions, the investment choices consist of the following asset classes: Infrastructures, Global Equities, Senior Loans, High Yield Corporate Bonds, Floating Rate Notes and Real Estate. Risk management is linked to the expected payoffs from risk taking on different asset classes in regards to how they are chosen and allocated. Risk taking can be measured with the use of the cash flow method that concentrates in past performance and the real option method that concentrates in balancing the probabilities and outcomes from learning and adapting behavior. Crisis management can be effective when information, timely reaction, experience, resources and flexibility, have been integrated into a company.

Abf1 and other general regulatory factors control ribosome biogenesis gene expression in budding yeast.

Ribosome biogenesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae involves a regulon of >200 genes (Ribi genes) coordinately regulated in response to nutrient availability and cellular growth rate. Two cis-acting elements called PAC and RRPE are known to mediate Ribi gene repression in response to nutritional downshift. Here, we show that most Ribi gene promoters also contain binding sites for one or more General Regulatory Factors (GRFs), most frequently Abf1 and Reb1, and that these factors are enriched in vivo at Ribi promoters. Abf1/Reb1/Tbf1 promoter association was required for full Ribi gene expression in rich medium and for its modulation in response to glucose starvation, characterized by a rapid drop followed by slow recovery. Such a response did not entail changes in Abf1 occupancy, but it was paralleled by a quick increase, followed by slow decrease, in Rpd3L histone deacetylase occupancy. Remarkably, Abf1 site disruption also abolished Rpd3L complex recruitment in response to starvation. Extensive mutational analysis of the DBP7 promoter revealed a complex interplay of Tbf1 sites, PAC and RRPE in the transcriptional regulation of this Ribi gene. Our observations point to GRFs as new multifaceted players in Ribi gene regulation both during exponential growth and under repressive conditions.

Engendering civil resistance: Social media and mob tactics in Malaysia

Mass movements in the form of flashmobs and smartmobs, which emerged out of friend-to-friend network topology on different online social media platforms, have revolutionary potential and have become powerful and creative tactics for political protests, particularly under repressive conditions. Focusing on the Bersih rallies in Malaysia, which advocate free and fair elections, it is useful to draw from Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of a rhizomatic assemblage of power to understand the workings of social media in the organization of political rallies among young adults in Malaysia, and the extension of these rallies abroad via the crisscrossing of multiple solidarities online. A textual and discourse analysis of the online mob activities is juxtaposed with interviews conducted with Malaysians who have participated in and/or contributed to these mob movements, to uncover the changing dynamics of social and political protest in the new media ecology. By mapping the rhizomatic patterns and behaviors on social media – from the ‘call to participate’ through to its occurrence (in the form of color-coded rallies) – this article discusses the ‘civic responsibility’ upheld by Malaysians and the (re)purposing of community via internet connectivity.

The transcription factors ADR1 or CAT8 are required for RTG pathway activation and evasion from yeast acetic acid-induced programmed cell death in raffinose.

Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae grown on glucose undergoes programmed cell death (PCD) induced by acetic acid (AA-PCD), but evades PCD when grown in raffinose. This is due to concomitant relief of carbon catabolite repression (CCR) and activation of mitochondrial retrograde signaling, a mitochondria-to-nucleus communication pathway causing up-regulation of various nuclear target genes, such as CIT2, encoding peroxisomal citrate synthase, dependent on the positive regulator RTG2 in response to mitochondrial dysfunction. CCR down-regulates genes mainly involved in mitochondrial respiratory metabolism. In this work, we investigated the relationships between the RTG and CCR pathways in the modulation of AA-PCD sensitivity under glucose repression or de-repression conditions. Yeast single and double mutants lacking RTG2 and/or certain factors regulating carbon source utilization, including MIG1, HXK2, ADR1, CAT8, and HAP4, have been analyzed for their survival and CIT2 expression after acetic acid treatment. ADR1 and CAT8 were identified as positive regulators of RTG-dependent gene transcription. ADR1 and CAT8 interact with RTG2 and with each other in inducing cell resistance to AA-PCD in raffinose and controlling the nature of cell death. In the absence of ADR1 and CAT8, AA-PCD evasion is acquired through activation of an alternative factor/pathway repressed by RTG2, suggesting that RTG2 may play a function in promoting necrotic cell death in repressing conditions when RTG pathway is inactive. Moreover, our data show that simultaneous mitochondrial retrograde pathway activation and SNF1-dependent relief of CCR have a key role in central carbon metabolism reprogramming which modulates the yeast acetic acid-stress response.

Convergent evolution of tRNA gene targeting preferences in compact genomes.

BackgroundIn gene-dense genomes, mobile elements are confronted with highly selective pressure to amplify without causing excessive damage to the host. The targeting of tRNA genes as potentially safe integration sites has been developed by retrotransposons in various organisms such as the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In D. discoideum, tRNA gene-targeting retrotransposons have expanded to approximately 3 % of the genome. Recently obtained genome sequences of species representing the evolutionary history of social amoebae enabled us to determine whether the targeting of tRNA genes is a generally successful strategy for mobile elements to colonize compact genomes.ResultsDuring the evolution of dictyostelids, different retrotransposon types independently developed the targeting of tRNA genes at least six times. DGLT-A elements are long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons that display integration preferences ~15 bp upstream of tRNA gene-coding regions reminiscent of the yeast Ty3 element. Skipper elements are chromoviruses that have developed two subgroups: one has canonical chromo domains that may favor integration in centromeric regions, whereas the other has diverged chromo domains and is found ~100 bp downstream of tRNA genes. The integration of D. discoideum non-LTR retrotransposons ~50 bp upstream (TRE5 elements) and ~100 bp downstream (TRE3 elements) of tRNA genes, respectively, likely emerged at the root of dictyostelid evolution. We identified two novel non-LTR retrotransposons unrelated to TREs: one with a TRE5-like integration behavior and the other with preference ~4 bp upstream of tRNA genes.ConclusionsDictyostelid retrotransposons demonstrate convergent evolution of tRNA gene targeting as a probable means to colonize the compact genomes of their hosts without being excessively mutagenic. However, high copy numbers of tRNA gene-associated retrotransposons, such as those observed in D. discoideum, are an exception, suggesting that the targeting of tRNA genes does not necessarily favor the amplification of position-specific integrating elements to high copy numbers under the repressive conditions that prevail in most host cells.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13100-016-0073-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Maf1-mediated regulation of yeast RNA polymerase III is correlated with CCA addition at the 3′ end of tRNA precursors

In eukaryotic cells tRNA synthesis is negatively regulated by the protein Maf1, conserved from yeast to humans. Maf1 from yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae mediates repression of trna transcription when cells are transferred from medium with glucose to medium with glycerol, a non-fermentable carbon source. The strain with deleted gene encoding Maf1 (maf1Δ) is viable but accumulates tRNA precursors. In this study tRNA precursors were analysed by RNA-Seq and Northern hybridization in wild type strain and maf1Δ mutant grown in glucose medium or upon shift to repressive conditions. A negative effect of maf1Δ mutant on the addition of the auxiliary CCA nucleotides to the 3′ end of pre-tRNAs was observed in cells shifted to unfavourable growth conditions. This effect was reduced by overexpression of the yeast CCA1 gene encoding ATP(CTP):tRNA nucleotidyltransferase. The CCA sequence at the 3′ end is important for export of tRNA precursors from the nucleus and essential for tRNA charging with amino acids. Data presented here indicate that CCA-addition to intron-containing end-processed tRNA precursors is a limiting step in tRNA maturation when there is no Maf1 mediated RNA polymerase III (Pol III) repression. The correlation between CCA synthesis and Pol III regulation by Maf1 could be important in coordination of tRNA transcription, processing and regulation of translation.

Playing Hide-and-Seek with Yeast

I like to think of the late 80s and early 90s as extremely exciting times in my career. I was working as a visiting graduate student in Rick Gaber’s laboratory at Northwestern University, and some of the work I did during those years turned out to be seminal for the then-fledgling field of epigenetics. Together with other scientists, I provided long-awaited in vivo functional evidence for a model proposed by Vince Allfrey in 1964, postulating that post-translational modifications of histones, particularly acetylation and deacetylation, are crucial for transcriptional regulation.

Notch signaling represses hypoxia-inducible factor-1α-induced activation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in osteoblasts under cobalt-mimicked hypoxia.

The modification of Wnt and Notch signaling pathways by hypoxia, and its association with osteoblast proliferation and apoptosis remain to be fully elucidated. To investigate Wnt-Notch crosstalk, and its role in hypoxia-induced osteoblast proliferation and apoptosis regulation, the present study investigated the effects of cobalt-mimicked hypoxia on the mouse pre-osteoblast-like cell line, MC3T3-E1, when the Notch signals were repressed using a γ-secretase inhibitor DAPT. The data showed that the cobalt-mimicked hypoxia suppressed cell proliferation under normal conditions, but increased cell proliferation under conditions of Notch repression, in a concentration-dependent manner. The results of western blot and reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction analyses showed that the cobalt treatment increased the levels of activated β-catenin protein and the expression levels of the target genes, axis inhibition protein 2 and myelocytomatosis oncogene, under DAPT-induced Notch repression. However, no significant changes were found in the expression levels of the Notch intracellular domain protein or the Notch target gene, hes1. In a β-catenin gene-knockdown experiment, the proliferation of the MC3T3-E1 cells under hypoxia were decreased by DAPT treatment, and knockdown of the expression of hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) suppressed the cobalt-induced increase in Wnt target gene levels. No significant difference in cell proliferation rate was found following DAPT treatment when the expression of HIF-1α was knocked down. The results of the present study showed the opposing effects of Wnt and Notch signaling under cobalt-mimicked hypoxia, which were partially regulated by HIF-1α, The results also showed that osteoblast proliferation was dependent on Wnt-Notch signal crosstalk.

Making Southern theory? Gender researchers in South Africa

This article examines the work of six South African gender researchers working in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It suggests that their work should be understood as situated in terms of politics, educational histories, theoretical connections and transnational engagements. It reflects on whether this work can be considered an example of Southern theory, and in turn suggests that Southern theory should itself be understood in relational terms that acknowledge both geopolitical connection and distance. The researchers who were interviewed by the author all draw on a feminist language and conceptual toolbox initially developed in Northern contexts, but in the recent period modified and extended by engagements with postcolonial and other feminisms. The article shows how South Africa’s repressive political conditions and deep racial and social class inequalities influenced the research. There was a strong link between anti-apartheid activism and research choices which reflected a battle for the inclusion of gender in struggles that prioritised the focus on race and class inequalities. Research was also shaped by the researchers’ relationship to activism and their engagement with marginality stemming from histories of colonialism and imperialism.

A novel CRE recombinase assay for quantification of GAL10-non coding RNA suppression on transcriptional leakage

Eukaryotic promoters are tightly regulated and often securely repressed. However, recent reports indicated that transcripts originating from the strictly regulated GAL1-10 promoter can be detected by single-yeast cell imaging under repressive conditions. Such leaky, noisy transcription events were suppressed by a long non-coding RNA (GAL10-ncRNA) transcribed within the GAL1-10 locus. It was further suggested that GAL10-ncRNA repression of GAL1-10 promoter leakage tunes the bimodal expression pattern of the GAL network. Independent evidence has indicated that GAL10-ncRNA transcription establishes a repressive chromatin structure through the Set2 histone methyl-transferase and the Rpd3s histone deacetylase complex. In this report we set up a novel, simple genetic Cre recombinase assay in order to readily quantify transcriptional leakage from tightly repressed promoters. By applying this method we demonstrate that GAL10-ncRNA, Set2p and Rpd3p all suppress leaky GAL1-10 driven transcription. However, GAL10-ncRNA repression is not mediated by Set2p or Rpd3p. Moreover, as opposed to GAL10-ncRNA transcription, Set2 and Rpd3 do not influence the bimodal expression of GAL genes, despite their effect on GAL1-10 promoter leakage. We suggest that GAL10-ncRNA tunes the expression of GAL genes by additional mechanisms besides suppressing leaky transcription from the GAL1-10 promoter.

Natural Law and Anticolonial Revolt: Apolinario Mabini’s La Revolución Filipina and Isabelo de los Reyes’ La Sensacional Memoria

Tatangkain sa papel na ito ang isang preliminaryong kumparatibong analisis ng dalawang pangkasaysayang salaysay nina Mabini, La revolución filipina (sinulat 1901-1902), at Isabelo de los Reyes, La sensacional memoria de Isabelo de los Reyes sobre la revolución Filipina de 1896-97 (1899). Sisikaping palitawin sa ganitong paraan ang maaaring magkakaibang konsepto nila hinggil sa kasaysayan ng Rebolusyong Pilipino. Apolinario Mabini (1864-1903) and Isabelo de los Reyes (1864-1938) (also known as Don Belong) were born on the same year. These two individuals had very different, contrasting personalities, and both of them only reluctantly became involved with the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution of 1896. De los Reyes and Mabini wrote two important texts on their views and experiences of the revolution. De los Reyes’ account was published with the full title, La sensacional memoria de Isabelo de los Reyes sobre La Revolución Filipina de 1896-97 por la cual fué deportado el autor al Castillo de Montjuich [The emotional memoir of Isabelo de los Reyes on the Philippine Revolution of 1896-97 for which the author was deported to the Castle of Montjuich] (De los Reyes, 1899, 2001). This essay will draw mainly upon the first, original section of De los Reyes’ memoria written in Bilibid prison and signed by him on the 25th of April 1887 to be presented to Governor and Captain General Don Fernando Primo de Rivera as a collective plea of innocence to the charge of rebellion. (The second part of the complete memorias published in 1899 in Madrid consists of various compiled texts.) De los Reyes’ memoria will be compared with Mabini’s La Revolución Filipina (Mabini, 1900, 1931, 2001), this latter work was originally written in the years 1901-1902 in Guam where he had been exiled by the American authorities. Both texts were therefore written under conditions of colonial repression, in prison and in exile. Don Belong’s text deals with a shorter period of time than Mabini’s which proceeds beyond the Pact of Biak-na-Bato up to the final years of the Philippine revolution.

High-throughput FACS-based mutant screen identifies a gain-of-function allele of the Fusarium graminearum adenylyl cyclase causing deoxynivalenol over-production

Fusarium head blight and crown rot, caused by the fungal plant pathogen Fusarium graminearum, impose a major threat to global wheat production. During the infection, plants are contaminated with mycotoxins such as deoxynivalenol (DON), which can be toxic for humans and animals. In addition, DON is a major virulence factor during wheat infection. However, it is not fully understood how DON production is regulated in F. graminearum. In order to identify regulators of DON production, a high-throughput mutant screen using Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) of a mutagenised TRI5-GFP reporter strain was established and a mutant over-producing DON under repressive conditions identified. A gain-of-function mutation in the F. graminearum adenylyl cyclase (FAC1), which is a known positive regulator of DON production, was identified as the cause of this phenotype through genome sequencing and segregation analysis. Our results show that the high-throughput mutant screening procedure developed here can be applied for identification of fungal proteins involved in diverse processes.

Angry Women AT 25

Angry Women AT 25 Jonathan P. Eburne, Moderator and Judith Roof, Moderator Twenty-five years ago, in the midst of the Culture Wars, the San Francisco-based punk magazine series re/search published angry women, an anthology of interviews with fifteen contemporary performance artists, writers, musicians, and activists. The anthology marked something of a turning point in the history of feminism, its expression of renewed anger marking a tentative break with identity politics and a recognition of the need for “a renaissance of hope which anger can bring—stuck as we are in the midst of an existential, angst ridden culture of cynicism which has helped implant a widespread attitude of passivity and submissive acceptance,” as its editors remarked.1 In 2016 we continue to live in times of active cultural as well as geopolitical warfare; how much have the conditions of cynicism and repression changed since 1991? There is, after all, still a whole lot to get angry about. Beyond its political claims, we consider the anthology to play no less significant a role in changing the genealogy and discourse of experimental artistic practice, particularly in the United States, where the work of collecting and circulating experimental art by women remains deeply necessary. In light of the twenty-fifth anniversary of angry women we asked a number of scholars and artists, including some of the artists originally featured in the issue, to reflect on the relevance—as well as the inevitable shortcomings and frustrations—of the anthology today. What are we to make of the anthology’s framing concerns: [End Page 199] its frank, aggressive sexuality, its unapologetic recourse to myth, and its claim that “we need an electric revitalization of our life force; a reconnection to the world; a heightened conviction that we can change life”?2 Into what kinds of contemporary genealogies of experimentalism do we—or should we—place the likes of kathy acker, susie bright, wanda coleman, valie export, karen finley, diamanda galás, bell hooks, holly hughes, lydia lunch, suzy kerr and dianne malley, linda montano, avital ronell, sapphire, carolee schneemann, and annie sprinkle? And what are the continued stakes of anger in the arts of the present? Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Angry Women, edited by Andrea Juno and V. Vale. Notes 1. Andrea Juno and V. Vale, introduction to Angry Women (San Francisco: RE/Search, 1991), 5. 2. Ibid. [End Page 200] Copyright © 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press

Review: Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960–1980

Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960-1980 THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NEW YORK CITY SEPTEMBER 5, 2015-JANUARY 3, 2016 The Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) exhibition Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960-1980 is not, as its title seems to imply, about cross-cultural artistic activities and networking between its two titular regions. Sustained artistic contact between the two regions was rare during the 1960s and '70s, one notable exception being an international mail art network that the exhibition briefly explores. (1) Instead, Transmissions investigates parallel but largely separate practices of artistic production and networking in the two regions during this period, beginning from shared conditions of repression between various Eastern European and Latin American countries during the height of the Cold War. Transmissions' bi-regional frame implicitly invokes the horizontal model of art history most closely associated with late Polish art historian Piotr Piotrowski. In contrast to art history's usual vertical model, which orients the art of regions in secondary and tertiary relation to that of the Western European and American center, Piotrowski advocates for a reciprocal model that not only analyzes the periphery through the terms and assumptions of the center, but also challenges the universality of the center through the perspectives of its peripheries. While Transmissions brings together two regions mostly to the exclusion of the center, it also proposes a productive discussion between Eastern European and Latin American artists based their common position as close Others to Western Europe and the United States, respectively. In Piotrowski's words, these regions are on the periphery ... [and] outside the center but still within the same cultural frame of reference [as it]. (2) The exhibition begins with the work of artists who had participated in Art Abstrait Constructif International, the 1962 exhibition of postwar abstraction at the Galerie Denise Rene in Paris. Alongside works culled from MoMA's permanent collection by Lucio Fontana and Piero Marzoni (both Italy), Ellsworth Kelly (USA), and Francois Morellet (France)--all likely already familiar to MoMA's core audience--are newer acquisitions by peripheral artists such as Willys de Castro and Sergio Camargo (both Brazil). (3) Also included are artists who migrated across the Atlantic or through the Iron Curtain to Western Europe, such as Lygia Clark (Brazil to France), Julio Le Parc (Argentina to France), and Victor Vasarely (Hungary to France); and others who immigrated from Western Europe to Latin America to escape Nazi persecution, such as Gego (Germany to Venezuela) and Mira Schendel (Switzerland to Brazil, by way of the former Yugoslavia). In reassembling these artists, Transmissions poses the postwar international proliferation of modernist abstraction and its critical, revisionist, and belated variants, as well as the internationalist exhibition model popularized during that period, as figures for the actual migration of, or communication between, artists across borders. The exhibition's introductory framing of the artistic transmissions of Cold War peripheries through a common visual language establishes the bi-regional organizational scheme of its remaining ten sections (around themes such as anti-art, the body, the street) through the familiar principle of international abstraction. Furthermore, while many of the exhibited artists were often critical of modernist abstraction in its mainstream, universalist guise, the exhibition perhaps also invokes that earlier multi-regional model's utopianism as a spiritual antecedent of what it calls transmissions. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Bridging the exhibition's first and second sections, the latter focusing practices that challenge the borders of artistic media and the autonomous individual artist, are two permutations of Julije Knifer's meander, an abstract geometric form that the Croatian artist repeated from 1960 until his death in 2004. …

Why Are tRNAs Overproduced in the Absence of Maf1, a Negative Regulator of RNAP III, Not Fully Functional?

tRNA biosynthesis in the eukaryotic cell is a multistep pathway, involving transcription, 5' and 3' end maturation, intron removal, and numerous modifications of nucleotides. Most of the genes coding for each of the elements essential for tRNA biosynthetic activities were primarily identified by genetic selection in yeast [1]. In these studies, the parental strain contained a tRNA gene that had been converted to a nonsense suppressor. Given the appropriate genetic background, phenotypic loss of suppression was used to select mutants producing non-functional tRNA. Among other proteins controlling tRNA biosynthesis, this approach led to identification of Maf1, a global repressor of tRNA transcription that is activated in response to stress. The maf1-1 mutant was originally selected in a genetic screen for decreased efficiency of tRNA suppressor SUP11 (tRNA Tyr/UAA) in budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae [2]. The role of Maf1 has been suggested by tRNA accumulation in maf1∆ cells, observed regardless of the repressive growth conditions [3]. An analogous decrease of tRNA-suppressor (tRNA Ser/UCA) activity was detected for the maf1∆ mutant in Schizosaccharomyces pombe [4]. Interestingly, the effect of Maf1 on the efficiency of tRNA-mediated suppression is contrary to that expected. Although one would assume that increased cellular tRNA levels should improve the efficiency of tRNA-mediated nonsense suppression, data show the opposite is true.

Visible Wars and Invisible Women: Interrogating Women’s Roles During Wartime in Goretti Kyomuhendo’s <i>Waiting: A Novel of Uganda at War</i>

Goretti Kyomuhendo’s Waiting: A Novel of Uganda at War explores the atrocities that ordinary people experience during wartime by placing emphasis on the private suffering and humiliation inflicted on women in the domestic space of the home. This article argues that even if women do not actively feature on the battleground, they are still inadvertently drawn into the war, which has an adverse impact on their lives. Kyomuhendo draws on the experiences of different female characters to problematize the inherently ambiguous symbolic image of the mother, and shows that the violence performed on women’s bodies is a result of the interplay between two hegemonic forces, patriarchal authority and state power. This article addresses the following questions: how does Kyomuhendo’s Waiting reflect on the lived experiences of the individual, the family unit and the community during times of conflict? As a female writer, how does she represent the experience of violence and the disintegration of the home? Does this narrative reveal how and why women construct new forms of agency during conditions of repression? What are the various strategies that female characters adopt to defend and maintain their families in times of conflict?

The Vernacular Mobilization of Human Rights in Myanmar's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Movement

This article examines how activists build a movement for sexual orientation and gender identity minorities in Myanmar, a country that is known for violent suppression of protests and is undergoing political reform. Based on original fieldwork, it finds that activists deploy a strategy of “vernacular mobilization of human rights” to persuade others to join their cause despite the risks to personal safety and to get around political constraints on collective organizing. Conceptualized at the intersection of the cultural study of human rights and social movements scholarship, “vernacular mobilization of human rights” theorizes the relationship between vernacularization—the translation and local adaptation of human rights—and movement micromobilization, specifying how the former unfolds as collective action framing processes. Through vernacularization activities, such as human rights workshops, movement leaders reframe grievances and shift the attribution of blame to empower and recruit new activists. Furthermore, with these framing processes, they generate a political community with a collective identity and social networks that they use to continue expanding the movement. The article enriches debates about the implications of implementing human rights and understandings of the relationship between human rights and movement mobilization, especially under repressive or uncertain political conditions.

N-myristoyltransferase is a cell wall target in Aspergillus fumigatus.

Treatment of filamentous fungal infections relies on a limited repertoire of antifungal agents. Compounds possessing novel modes of action are urgently required. N-myristoylation is a ubiquitous modification of eukaryotic proteins. The enzyme N-myristoyltransferase (NMT) has been considered a potential therapeutic target in protozoa and yeasts. Here, we show that the filamentous fungal pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus possesses an active NMT enzyme that is essential for survival. Surprisingly, partial repression of the gene revealed downstream effects of N-myristoylation on cell wall morphology. Screening a library of inhibitors led to the discovery of a pyrazole sulphonamide compound that inhibits the enzyme and is fungicidal under partially repressive nmt conditions. Together with a crystallographic complex showing the inhibitor binding in the peptide substrate pocket, we provide evidence of NMT being a potential drug target in A. fumigatus.

Long non-coding RNA-mediated transcriptional interference of a permease gene confers drug tolerance in fission yeast.

Most long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) encoded by eukaryotic genomes remain uncharacterized. Here we focus on a set of intergenic lncRNAs in fission yeast. Deleting one of these lncRNAs exhibited a clear phenotype: drug sensitivity. Detailed analyses of the affected locus revealed that transcription of the nc-tgp1 lncRNA regulates drug tolerance by repressing the adjacent phosphate-responsive permease gene transporter for glycerophosphodiester 1 (tgp1+). We demonstrate that the act of transcribing nc-tgp1 over the tgp1+ promoter increases nucleosome density, prevents transcription factor access and thus represses tgp1+ without the need for RNA interference or heterochromatin components. We therefore conclude that tgp1+ is regulated by transcriptional interference. Accordingly, decreased nc-tgp1 transcription permits tgp1+ expression upon phosphate starvation. Furthermore, nc-tgp1 loss induces tgp1+ even in repressive conditions. Notably, drug sensitivity results directly from tgp1+ expression in the absence of the nc-tgp1 RNA. Thus, transcription of an lncRNA governs drug tolerance in fission yeast.

Cameron Platter in Conversation with Osei Bonsu

Incited by the tempestuous political histories that engender the repressive conditions of the country’s social reality, South African artists often conspire toward activism. For Cameron Platter, who lives in the urbanized province of KwaZulu-Natal near the former battlefield of Rorkes Drift, mining the country’s past has vitalized his historical imagination. Platter’s “expanded collage” reflects the explanatory narrative of the country’s industrial economy and it’s capitalistic dimensions of desire and consumption, and therefore a deviant contemporaneity: large-scale linocuts, mural paintings, and public installations co-opt the linguistic forms and pictorial metaphors of poster-strewn urban sidewalks. Deriving from the noble visions of John Muafangejo’s politically charged linocuts, Platter’s satirical drawings make textual references to familiar street advertisements bearing straplines and slogans promising services from reincarnation to sexual longevity. These universally resonant signs indexing the unity of cross-cultural depravity open a transcendental void and thus exist as chronicles of apparently self-destructive times in which mass consumption serves to palliate a darker reality.