Female Descendants Research Articles

Self-limiting population genetic control with sex-linked genome editors

In male heterogametic species the Y chromosome is transmitted solely from fathers to sons, and is selected for based only on its impacts on male fitness. This fact can be exploited to develop efficient pest control strategies that use Y-linked editors to disrupt the fitness of female descendants. With simple population genetic and dynamic models we show that Y-linked editors can be substantially more efficient than other self-limiting strategies and, while not as efficient as gene drive approaches, are expected to have less impact on non-target populations with which there is some gene flow. Efficiency can be further augmented by simultaneously releasing an autosomal X-shredder construct, in either the same or different males. Y-linked editors may be an attractive option to consider when efficient control of a species is desired in some locales but not others.

Intergenerational Sex-Specific Transmission of Maternal Social Experience

The social environment is a major determinant of individual stress response and lifetime health. The present study shows that (1) social enrichment has a significant impact on neuroplasticity and behaviour particularly in females; and (2) social enrichment in females can be transmitted to their unexposed female descendants. Two generations (F0 and F1) of male and female rats raised in standard and social housing conditions were examined for neurohormonal and molecular alterations along with changes in four behavioural modalities. In addition to higher cortical neuronal density and cortical thickness, social experience in mothers reduced hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity in F0 rats and their F1 non-social housing offspring. Only F0 social mothers and their F1 non-social daughters displayed improved novelty-seeking exploratory behaviour and reduced anxiety-related behaviour whereas their motor and cognitive performance remained unchanged. Also, cortical and mRNA measurements in the F1 generation were affected by social experience intergenerationally via the female lineage (mother-to-daughter). These findings indicate that social experience promotes cortical neuroplasticity, neurohormonal and behavioural outcomes, and these changes can be transmitted to the F1 non-social offspring in a sexually dimorphic manner. Thus, a socially stimulating environment may form new biobehavioural phenotypes not only in exposed individuals, but also in their intergenerationally programmed descendants.

Les frontières du genre

Résumé Cet article interroge le décalage de normes de genre entre pays d'origine et pays d'installation, expérimenté par des descendantes d'immigrés algériens nées en France, lors de leurs voyages en Algérie. À rebours de discours politiques attribuant aux « cultures d'origine » le sexisme subi par les femmes issues de l'immigration maghrébine, l'enquête ethnographique menée en Algérie analyse, sans les essentialiser, les normes sexuées auxquelles sont confrontées les descendantes d'immigrés sur place. C'est à chaque fois une dimension particulière des rôles sexués (différenciation des attentes en termes de sexualité prénuptiale ; différenciation des formes de sociabilité dans la famille élargie ; différenciation des rôles parentaux dans le couple), articulée avec des trajectoires sociales divergentes, qui vient définir des contraintes spécifiques et les réponses construites par les vacancières pour y faire face. Passer la frontière entre la France et l'Algérie amène les femmes rencontrées à devoir redéfinir aussi bien les limites dans la sexuation des espaces (privés et publics), que les prérogatives identifiées comme féminines ou masculines dans le partage des tâches au sein du couple. L'article se concentre sur les mobilités féminines en vacances, mais il éclaire aussi en contre-point la diversité des mobilités masculines.

고려시대 성씨 확산의 동인과 성씨의 기능

The surname ‘Wang(王),’ which was the last name of the Goryeo royal family, was not only a surname of the founder king Taejo Wang Geon’s direct descendants (the sons), but also the surname of figures who were the descendants of Wang Geon’s ‘daughters.’ Such situation was enabled by the fact that Wang Geon’s male and female descendants continued to marry each other for generations. As a result, this surname itself came to reflect a rather ‘complete’ lineage and a consciousness of such lineage, than a one-sided, patrilineal consciousness.BR Documents regarding governmental officials living in the Capital included their ‘Surnames’ by law, but in general the way surnames spreaded throughout the society and were embraced by the people did not feature any particular, for example patrilineal, consciousness in motion. There were no fixed factions established through or represented by a ‘single’ surname in the local Hyang’ri class. Only a handful of local Hyang’ri figures who were bestowed a military rank from the king branded surnames, yet such practice only became a widely popular one later during the Military regime period. These surnames, which had only been cultural and administrative requirements with no particular attachments to either patrilineal or matrilineal relatives, later did become a thing that was inherited to posterior generations through the patrilineal line, only because the political privileges of a society’s senior class (using surnames) were delivered usually from male ancestors to male descendants.BR The lineage consciousness of class members using surnames had been generally bilateral in nature, to the extent of the state sometimes ordering an individual to change its original surname to the surname of its mother. The reason that patrilineal relatives enjoyed relatively higher merits in Eumseo(蔭敍) institution was only because ‘father and son’ was the most basic pair in terms of succeeding or inheriting political assets. The Eumseo practice in cases of the meritorious leaders’ descendants was essentially a male-oriented institution by design, but only because such meritorious figures were usually males, and not because it was an institution of a society with a lineage sensibility which differentiated patrilineal and non-patrilineal relatives or viewed the former as more important than the latter. The surnames of the Goryeo period reflected a bilateral, comprehensive lineage consciousness.

Paternal sepsis induces alterations of the sperm methylome and dampens offspring immune responses\u2014an animal study

BackgroundSepsis represents the utmost severe consequence of infection, involving a dysregulated and self-damaging immune response of the host. While different environmental exposures like chronic stress or malnutrition have been well described to reprogram the germline and subsequently offspring attributes, the intergenerational impact of sepsis as a tremendous immunological stressor has not been examined yet.MethodsPolymicrobial sepsis in 12-week-old male C57BL/6 mice was induced by cecal ligation and puncture (CLP), followed by a mating of the male survivors (or appropriate sham control animals) 6 weeks later with healthy females. Alveolar macrophages of offspring animals were isolated and stimulated with either LPS or Zymosan, and supernatant levels of TNF-α were quantified by ELISA. Furthermore, systemic cytokine response to intraperitoneally injected LPS was assessed after 24 h. Also, morphology, motility, and global DNA methylation of the sepsis survivors’ sperm was examined.ResultsComparative reduced reduction bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) of sperm revealed changes of DNA methylation (n = 381), most pronounced in the intergenic genome as well as within introns of developmentally relevant genes. Offspring of sepsis fathers exhibited a slight decrease in body weight, with a more pronounced weight difference in male animals (CLP vs. sham). Male descendants of sepsis fathers, but not female descendants, exhibited lower plasma concentrations of IL-6, TNF-alpha, and IL-10 24 h after injection of LPS. In line, only alveolar macrophages of male descendants of sepsis fathers produced less TNF-alpha upon Zymosan stimulation compared to sham descendants, while LPS responses kept unchanged.ConclusionWe can prove that male—but surprisingly not female—descendants of post-sepsis fathers show a dampened systemic as well as pulmonary immune response. Based on this observation of an immune hypo-responsivity, we propose that male descendants of sepsis fathers are at risk to develop fungal and bacterial infections and might benefit from therapeutic immune modulation.

Host-mediated RNAi of a Notch-like receptor gene in Meloidogyne incognita induces nematode resistance.

GLP-1 (abnormal germline proliferation) is a Notch-like receptor protein that plays an essential role in pharyngeal development. In this study, an orthologue of Caenorhabditis elegans glp-1 was identified in Meloidogyne incognita. A computational analysis revealed that the orthologue contained almost all the domains present in the C. elegans gene: specifically, the LIN-12/Notch repeat, the ankyrin repeat, a transmembrane domain and different ligand-binding motifs were present in orthologue, but the epidermal growth factor-like motif was not observed. An expression analysis showed differential expression of glp-1 throughout the life cycle of M. incognita, with relatively higher expression in the egg stage. To evaluate the silencing efficacy of Mi-glp-1, transgenic Arabidopsis plants carrying double-stranded RNA constructs of glp-1 were generated, and infection of these plants with M. incognita resulted in a 47-50% reduction in the numbers of galls, females and egg masses. Females obtained from the transgenic RNAi lines exhibited 40-60% reductions in the transcript levels of the targeted glp-1 gene compared with females isolated from the control plants. Second-generation juveniles (J2s), which were descendants of the infected females from the transgenic lines, showed aberrant phenotypes. These J2s exhibited a significant decrease in the overall distance from the stylet to the metacorpus region, and this effect was accompanied by disruption around the metacorporeal bulb of the pharynx. The present study suggests a role for this gene in organ (pharynx) development during embryogenesis in M. incognita and its potential use as a target in the management of nematode infestations in plants.

Home sweet home: social dynamics and genetic variation of a long-term resident bottlenose dolphin population off the Chilean coast

CONICYT Postdoctoral FONDECYT Program 3140513 CONICYT Iniciacion 11170182 FONDECYT 1140548 ICM P05-002 PFB 023

Les larmes d’OEdipe by Wajdi Mouawad

silence et la malédiction” (309). Between her immediate reply chastising her son and her eventual reply to his inquiry, we read Mabrouka’s great-grandmother Sihème’s account of her life as told to her daughter, Gamra; Gamra’s account to her daughter, Zina; and Zina’s to Mabrouka. A three-generation history of French colonialism in Algeria and Tunisia and the resistance to it forms the backdrop to their lives, as does the immaturity of nearly all of the males they have to deal with. The men wage war incompetently, force women to marry them or their sons, betray their wives, stand on their pride, and generally make a mess of things. In contrast, in the city of La Calle (now officially Kalla), Sihème founded the impressively-named Cité des femmes affranchies et autarciques de l’Est algérien, whose tradition of educating women has strengthened her female descendants. Each has educated her daughter(s) to be literate in Arabic and French, to work in the arts (including restoring and forging ancient manuscripts and mosaics), to negotiate successfully with the men they have to deal with, and to hide their skills from those men as necessary. The detached way in which each woman recounts her life suggests a picaresque tale, as the betrayals, murders, and escapes are narrated rapidly and simply, with little emotion. The adventures are bizarre, funny, or sad, but they all show men asserting power, usually unwisely and unfairly, and women finding ways to survive and to educate their daughters. Mabrouka is furious with Massyre, her only son, because he has deserted Tunisia for France to become a “historien qui ne sait plus quoi faire du passé” (12) when he could have stayed in la Montagne Blanche (officially Nefza), where as a teenager he had been the best local butcher of goats.Although he thought that she was illiterate, she has read his memoir and insists that his account of his early years is inaccurate. She clearly feels that he is as useless as most of the men in her life, and now at age 75 she looks forward to dying and having an “explication sans concession avec Allah sur le renoncement, le silence et le sacrifice” (280), which have largely constituted her life and those of most of the other women she has known. Bridging history and fiction, the novel instructs and entertains. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit Mouawad,Wajdi. Les larmes d’Œdipe.Arles: Actes Sud, 2016. ISBN 978-2-330-060374 . Pp. 41. Chillingly haunting winds and piercing bellows from grief-stricken souls grip the audience and summon it to the community of suffering and healing created by Wajdi Mouawad in his performance of Les larmes d’Œdipe (Théâtre national de Chaillot, juin 2016), the final installment of his series consecrated to the tragedies of Sophocles. In the performance, Mouawad incorporates music as a central element in his mise-ensc ène, which contributes to the play’s success, but whose absence causes the written text to fall flat. The performance boasts a mimetic, cathartic experience for characters and 216 FRENCH REVIEW 91.4 Reviews 217 audience alike that reveals the timelessness and universality of suffering and of the tragedy that clutches daily life, whereas the text allows the reader to remain distant. Antigone and Oedipus traverse time to the night of 6 Dec. 2008 in Athens, where Oedipus finds a final resting place in the ruins of an old theater. They are joined by a man who, anguished by the news of the tragedy that has unfolded in the streets, also seeks refuge. Police officers shot fifteen-year-old Alexander Grigoropoulos. Athens riots in the streets while the symbolic Chorus Head retreats to the old arena to sing and cry out against injustice, where he is united with Oedipus and the tragedies of distant generations. The ruins of the old theater become a place of testimony where the stories of Oedipus and Andréas can be told, heard, and shared again—an obvious symbol of the role of theater and one that is carried out beautifully and masterfully in the text and production of Les larmes d...

Herding and Male Dominance

Infibulation – the narrowing of the vaginal opening after the removal of the clitoris and labia – is the most invasive form of female genital cutting. The extent to which it is practiced varies widely within Africa. This paper studies the historical origins of this variation by testing the anthropological theory that a particular form of preindustrial economic production – subsisting on pastoralism – favored the adoption of this custom. The hypothesis is based on the fact that pastoralism was characterized by heightened paternity uncertainty due to frequent and often extended periods of male absence from the settlement, implying larger payoffs to controlling female sexuality. Using within-country variation across 80,000 women in 12 African countries, the paper first documents that women from historically more pastoral societies are significantly more likely to be infibulated today. Extending the analysis to a set of 500,000 individuals in 34 countries, the paper then shows that formerly pastoral societies also exhibit a broader set of customs and norms that restrict female sexuality: female descendants of pastoral societies (i) are more constrained in their mobility outside their home; (ii) hold more restrictive norms about female sexuality; and (iii) behave less promiscuously. I argue and show empirically that the mechanism behind these patterns is indeed male absenteeism, rather than male dominance per se. Overall, the results suggest that contemporary variation in constraints on female sexuality can be traced back to a functional relationship between historical economic production and societal customs which have persisted until today.

Trio, a novel high fecundity allele: I. Transcriptome analysis of granulosa cells from carriers and noncarriers of a major gene for bovine ovulation rate.

A major gene for bovine ovulation rate has been mapped to a 1.2 Mb region of chromosome 10. Screening of coding regions of positional candidate genes within this region failed to reveal a causative polymorphism, leading to the hypothesis that the phenotype results from differences in candidate gene expression rather than alteration of gene structure. This study tested differences in expression of positional candidate genes in granulosa cells between carriers and noncarriers of the high fecundity allele, as well as characterizing differences in the transcriptomic profile between genotypes. Five carriers and five noncarriers, female descendants of "Trio," a carrier of the high fecundity allele were initially used in an RNA-seq analysis of gene expression. Four of ten samples were contaminated with theca cells, so that six samples were used in the final analysis (three of each genotype). Of 14 973 genes expressed, 143 were differentially expressed (false discovery rate P < 0.05) in carriers versus noncarriers. Among the positional candidate genes, SMAD6 was 6.6-fold overexpressed in the carriers compared to noncarriers (P < 5 × 10-5). This result was replicated in an independent group of 12 females (7 carriers and 5 noncarriers) using quantitative real-time PCR; SMAD6 was 9.3-fold overexpressed in carriers versus noncarriers (P = 1.17 × 10-6). Association of overexpression of SMAD6, an inhibitor of the BMP/SMAD signaling pathway, with high ovulation rate corresponds well with disabling mutations in ligands (BMP15 and GDF9) and a receptor (BMPR1B) of this pathway that cause increased ovulation rate in sheep.

From an Obscured Gaze to a Seeing Eye? Iris as Victim, Villain, and Avenger in the Role of Writer-as-Assassin in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin

In the postmodern period, first-person-limited, unreliable, female narrators may have a greater difficulty in “seeing” and, thus, depicting their landscapes than previous eras’ storytellers. Iris (Chase) Griffen, narrator-protagonist of Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, spins a complicated, self-reflective text exploring her attempts at composing a world vision that consumes the novel’s larger part. Iris’s search for answers about her identity as well as that of other characters may leave readers in the lurch, waiting for their “story,” in Ross Chambers’s terms, as an agreed-upon product. Nonetheless, having amassed assorted textual materials, Iris stockpiles the ammunition she needs to do her “job” as a storyteller-assassin who creates and destroys, as characters suffer a fall. Assuming guises dependent on location, Iris enacts the conflicting roles of a victim, social product, villain, and blind assassin to assault her culture’s masculinist architectures that bar women’s points of views in opposition to what Henry James presents as the unending panoramas offered by his metaphorical “House of Fiction.” Iris’s struggle to construct her life story mirrors the difficulty many women face more broadly, in which they face competing, irreconcilable values. In the novel, Iris’s ability to play differing parts with equal aplomb compels readers to view her as a complex narrator, constructing and assassinating fellow characters to render her female descendants’ fates as open ended.

Economic Origins of Cultural Norms: The Case of Animal Husbandry and Bastardy

This paper explores the historical origins of the cultural norm regarding illegitimacy (formerly known as bastardy). We test the hypothesis that traditional agricultural production structures influenced the historical illegitimacy ratio, and have had a lasting effect until today. Based on data from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and modern Austria, we show that regions that focused on animal husbandry (as compared to crop farming) had significantly higher illegitimacy ratios in the past, and female descendants of these societies are still more likely to approve illegitimacy and give birth outside of marriage today. To establish causality, we exploit, within an IV approach, variation in the local agricultural suitability, which determined the historical dominance of animal husbandry. Since differences in the agricultural production structure are completely obsolete in today's economy, we suggest interpreting the persistence in revealed and stated preferences as a cultural norm. Complementary evidence from an `epidemiological approach' suggests that this norm is passed down through generations, and the family is the most important transmission channel. Our findings point to a more general phenomenon that cultural norms can be shaped by economic conditions, and may persist, even if economic conditions become irrelevant.

The influence of the perinatal chronic hyperglycaemia on the pattern of NOS isoforms expression in left ventricle myocardium in male rats of pre-pubertal age

The aim of our study was to find out the features of the nitric oxide synthase (NOS) isoforms expression in longitudinal and transversal layers of the myocardium of the left ventricle in male rats of 3 months, which are descendants of female rats with experimental gestational diabetes (EGD). Materials and methods. Study was carried out on 10 male rats descendants of female rats with normal course of pregnancy and 10 descendants of female rats with EGD. We evaluated the expression of neuronal, endothelial and inducible isoforms of NOS in histological sections both of transversal and longitudinal layers of the myocardium of left ventricle. With the aim to analyze the pattern of the NOS isoforms expression in 5 um histological slices of left ventricle myocardium we have carried out a complex of histochemical assays. Slices were allocated to 3 groups: 1 st one was incubated with rabbit IgG to neuronal NOS (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, USA) in dilution of 1:200; 2 nd group underwent the incubation with rabbit IgG to endothelial NOS (eNos) (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, USA) in dilution 1:200; 3 rd group was incubated with mice IgG to inducible NOS (iNos) conjugated with FITC (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, USA) in dilution of 1:200. The analysis of images was carried out with VIDAS-2.5 application package (Kontron Elektronik, Germany). Microimages of the left ventricle myocardium obtained with AxioScope (Carl Zeiss, Germany) and COHU 4922 (COHU Inc., USA) camera were processed in the system of digital image analysis VIDAS-386 (Kontron Elektronik, Germany). Results. In the study we have found that prenatal hyperglycaemia leads to the significant changes of the expression of NOS isoforms in the myocardium of left ventricle in male rats descendants of females with EGD, and the contain and the allocation of these enzymes are dependent both on type of the enzyme and its location in muscular layers. For eNOS the increase of the expression and the allocation in both transversal and longitudinal layers was typical, and for nNOS and iNOS we have found the significant decrease of the expression in transversal layers and the significant increase in longitudinal layers. Conclusion. We believe, the glucose homeostasis violation in foetus during the last trimester of the pregnancy changes the ratio of the NOS isoforms expression in the left ventricle myocardium and affects the balance of them in different layers, which could be a reason of the cardiovascular pathology development in adulthood.

Feminism’s family drama: Female genealogies, feminist historiography, and Kate Walbert’s A Short History of Women

This article considers Kate Walbert’s A Short History of Women (2009), a novel that tells the stories of a hunger striking suffragette and four generations of her female descendants. Tracing feminist history through female genealogy, Walbert’s historiographic metafiction helps us think through the perils and potentials of the generational methods that have long dominated feminist historiography. Critically engaging with what has arguably become a feminist family drama, the novel makes an invaluable contribution to contemporary feminist theory and feminist historiography, illustrating of feminist genealogies as simultaneously fruitful and fraught, limiting and liberating and yet inescapable and useful.

Dominance relationships between collared peccaries Pecari tajacu (Cetartiodactyla: Tayassuidae) in intensive breeding system

The collared peccary (Pecari tajacu) is a species with great potential for breeding in captivity since it adapts well to a variety of foods, has a high breeding capacity and there is an existing market for its meat and leather, which is of excellent quality. However, it is necessary to understand its social structure, when maintained in intensive breeding, to adequately manage groups and limit potential aggressions to the stockman. Four family units (dam, sire and descendants) were monitored (phase 1); females descendants were subsequently relocated into four new experimental social groups (phase 2). In these experimental groups, the female descendants were grouped with adult males, without the presence of the parents. Interactions were filmed three times per week, during two months, for each treatment (phase 1=family units and phase 2=experimental groups). A matrix of aggressive and submissive behaviors was developed and the dominance relations were evaluated with the Elo-rating method. A stability index of rank orders, the steepness and the degree of linearity were calculated to analyse the hierarchy in each family unit and experimental group. The parents remained on the highest hierarchical levels in three of the four family units and female descendants occupied the highest hierarchical levels in experimental groups. A linear hierarchy composed of adults of both genders was found in two family units and a mono-sexual linear hierarchy with females at the highest-ranking positions was evidenced in two experimental groups. Hierarchy was stable (all stability indexes values≥0.94), while steepness was variable among family units and experimental groups (range: 0.23–0.84). The ranking-position of a female descendant in a family unit was not a good predictor of her ranking position in experimental units. Male descendants received significantly less friendly behaviors than female descendants did (p=0.01), dams (p<0.01) and sires (p<0.05) in the family units. There was no significant increase in the frequency of aggressive behavior after relocation of the animals. Our results indicate that collared peccaries raised in small group present stable dominance relations, form hierarchies of variable steepness and show females as the highest-ranking individual.

Liquid fructose in pregnancy exacerbates fructose-induced dyslipidemia in adult female offspring

Fructose intake from added sugars correlates with the epidemic rise in metabolic syndrome and related events. Nevertheless, consumption of beverages sweetened with fructose is not regulated in gestation. Previously, we found that maternal fructose intake produces in the progeny, when fetuses, impaired leptin signaling and hepatic steatosis and then impaired insulin signaling and hypoadiponectinemia in adult male rats. Interestingly, adult females from fructose-fed mothers did not exhibit any of these disturbances. However, we think that, actually, these animals keep a programmed phenotype hidden. Fed 240-day-old female progeny from control, fructose- and glucose-fed mothers were subjected for 3weeks to a fructose supplementation period (10% wt/vol in drinking water). Fructose intake provoked elevations in insulinemia and adiponectinemia in the female progeny independently of their maternal diet. In accordance, the hepatic mRNA levels of several insulin-responsive genes were similarly affected in the progeny after fructose intake. Interestingly, adult progeny of fructose-fed mothers displayed, in response to the fructose feeding, augmented plasma triglyceride and NEFA levels and hepatic steatosis versus the other two groups. In agreement, the expression and activity for carbohydrate response element binding protein (ChREBP), a lipogenic transcription factor, were higher after the fructose period in female descendants from fructose-fed mothers than in the other groups. Furthermore, liver fructokinase expression that has been indicated as one of those responsible for the deleterious effects of fructose ingestion was preferentially augmented in that group. Maternal fructose intake does influence the adult female offspring's response to liquid fructose and so exacerbates fructose-induced dyslipidemia and hepatic steatosis.

Sex-Specific Audience Effect in the Context of Mate Choice in Zebra Finches.

Animals observing conspecifics during mate choice can gain additional information about potential mates. However, the presence of an observer, if detected by the observed individuals, can influence the nature of the behavior of the observed individuals, called audience effect. In zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata castanotis), domesticated males show an audience effect during mate choice. However, whether male and female descendants of the wild form show an audience effect during mate choice is unknown. Therefore, we conducted an experiment where male and female focal birds could choose between two distinctive phenotypes of the opposite sex, an artificially adorned stimulus bird with a red feather on the forehead and an unadorned stimulus bird, two times consecutively, once without an audience and once with an audience bird (same sex as test bird). Males showed an audience effect when an audience male was present and spent more time with adorned and less time with unadorned females compared to when there was no audience present. The change in time spent with the respective stimulus females was positively correlated with the time that the audience male spent in front of its cage close to the focal male. Females showed no change in mate choice when an audience female was present, but their motivation to associate with both stimulus males decreased. In a control for mate-choice consistency there was no audience in either test. Here, both focal females and focal males chose consistently without a change in choosing motivation. Our results showed that there is an audience effect on mate choice in zebra finches and that the response to a same-sex audience was sex-specific.

Pride and protein

In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, members of the Bennet family are either sensible or silly, and males are under-represented. This study searches for an underlying medical diagnosis that explains these features. Very retrospective literature review. Mrs Bennet, her five daughters (Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia), her brother (Mr Gardiner) and her sister (Mrs Phillips). Family tree and associated phenotypes The author read Pride and Prejudice. A Bennet family tree was constructed. The number of male and female descendants was analysed using a binomial model. For each character, evidence of behaviour was collected, and members of the Bennet family were categorised as either sensible or silly. Males are under-represented in Mrs Bennet's family. Assuming an equal probability of male or female offspring, this reaches statistical significance (binomial model, P = 0.03). Approximately 50% of females in the family are silly. Silly behaviour is more prevalent during social gatherings. The family tree suggests an X-linked genetic disorder, fatal in utero or in early life to affected males, explaining the paucity of male offspring. Female carriers survive, but with cognitive difficulties, explaining the approximate 50-50 distribution of sensible and silly females in the family. The exacerbation of silliness during social gatherings may suggest an effect of protein intake, raising suspicions of a disorder of protein metabolism. Ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency is one such condition. Unfortunately, there remain significant challenges in performing genetic testing on fictional characters, so definitive evidence remains elusive. Jane and Elizabeth Bennet do not show signs of the disorder. However, carriers may be asymptomatic; they should be offered genetic counselling before Bingley or Darcy offspring are considered.

Bridging identities through religious television contents: Javanese female descendants, Islamic viewing and Malay identity projection

ABSTRACTThis study explores the uses of Islamic television content in bridging the gap between Javanese and Malay identity among the Malay women of Javanese descent in Malaysia. Malaysian religious television programmes have constantly promoted the Islamic identifications of Malayness, enabling the Malay audience to reconstruct the culturally religious identity. While the reconstruction of Islamic identity through television viewing simply represents a lived experience for the majority of the Malay society, it has some cultural meanings for certain Malay sub-ethnic communities, such as the Javanese. This ethnographic study on a Malaysian Javanese community reveals that the interpretive engagement of this particular community in Islamic television viewing serves the purpose of negotiating Malay identity. The results of this study suggest that religious content can serve as an engaging platform to construct multi-ethnic identities beside popular and ethnic-related contents.

Biological aspects of immature stage of Nyssomyia whitmani (Antunes and Coutinho) (Diptera, Psychodidae, Phlebotominae) in laboratory conditions

Nyssomyia whitmani (Antunes and Coutinho, 1939) has been considered as a complex of cryptic species, and some of the populations of this complex plays an important role in the transmission of Leishmania spp. in Brazil. The present study reports the biological aspects concerning the productivity out of eggs and the development time of the descendants of females obtained in Dourados municipality, Mato Grosso do Sul state. The females were captured with modified electric aspirators, fed in hamsters and further individualized in containers for breeding. At the insectary, temperature and relative humidity were maintained on average of 24.5°C and 67.3%, respectively. From 944 females 3737 eggs were obtained, 748 (20.0%) evolved to the stage of larvae, and 93 (12.4%) of these reached adult stage. The life cycle lasted 80.6 days and the last larval instar was the longest. The use of a higher protein diet revealed a significant improvement in larval development.