Making Sense of Akrasia

There are two extreme poles in the literature on akrasia. Internalists hold that it's impossible to act intentionally against your better judgment, because there's a necessary internal relation between judgment and intentional action. To the contrary, externalists maintain that we can act intentionally against our better judgment, because the will operates independently of judgment. Critics of internalism argue that it fails a realism test—most people seem to think that we can and do act intentionally against our better judgment. And critics of externalism argue that it flirts with incoherence by severing the intimate link between judgment and action. Drawing on resources from phenomenology, the cognitive sciences, analytic action theory, and recent “hybrid models” of skilled action, I argue that one route beyond this theoretical impasse is to understand akrasia as a form of skillful pre-reflective intentional action. This strategy, I argue, preserves the internalist insight that there is indeed an intimate relation between judgment and intentional action; and it also confirms the externalist claim that this relation is defeasible, but it does so without falling into incoherence

Negative regulation of germination-arrest factor production in Pseudomonas fluorescens WH6 by a putative extracytoplasmic function sigma factor

Pseudomonas fluorescens WH6 secretes a germination-arrest factor (GAF) that we have identified previously as 4-formylaminooxyvinylglycine. GAF irreversibly inhibits germination of the seeds of numerous grassy weeds and selectively inhibits growth of the bacterial plant pathogen Erwinia amylovora. WH6-3, a mutant that has lost the ability to produce GAF, contains a Tn5 insertion in prtR, a gene that has been described previously in some strains of P. fluorescens as encoding a transmembrane regulator. As in these other pseudomonads, in WH6, prtR occurs immediately downstream of prtI, which encodes a protein homologous to extracytoplasmic function (ECF) sigma factors. These two genes have been proposed to function as a dicistronic operon. In this study, we demonstrated that deletion of prtI in WT WH6 had no effect on GAF production. However, deletion of prtI in the WH6-3 mutant overcame the effects of the Tn5 insertion in prtR and restored GAF production in the resulting double mutant. Complementation of the double prtIR mutant with prtI suppressed GAF production. This overall pattern of prtIR regulation was also observed for the activity of an AprX protease. Furthermore, reverse transcription quantitative real-time PCR analysis demonstrated that alterations in GAF production were mirrored by changes in the transcription of two putative GAF biosynthetic genes. Thus, we concluded that PrtI exerted a negative regulatory effect on GAF production, although the mechanism has not yet been determined. In addition, evidence was obtained that the transcription of prtI and prtR in WH6 may be more complex than predicted by existing models

A Novel Tool for Studying Auxin-Metabolism: The Inhibition of Grapevine Indole-3-Acetic Acid-Amido Synthetases by a Reaction Intermediate Analogue

An important process for the regulation of auxin levels in plants is the inactivation of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) by conjugation to amino acids. The conjugation reaction is catalysed by IAA-amido synthetases belonging to the family of GH3 proteins. Genetic approaches to study the biological significance of these enzymes have been hampered by large gene numbers and a high degree of functional redundancy. To overcome these difficulties a chemical approach based on the reaction mechanism of GH3 proteins was employed to design a small molecule inhibitor of IAA-amido synthetase activity. Adenosine-5′-[2-(1H-indol-3-yl)ethyl]phosphate (AIEP) mimics the adenylated intermediate of the IAA-conjugation reaction and was therefore proposed to compete with the binding of MgATP and IAA in the initial stages of catalysis. Two grapevine IAA-amido synthetases with different catalytic properties were chosen to test the inhibitory effects of AIEP in vitro. GH3-1 has previously been implicated in the grape berry ripening process and is restricted to two amino acid substrates, whereas GH3-6 conjugated IAA to 13 amino acids. AIEP is the most potent inhibitor of GH3 enzymes so far described and was shown to be competitive against MgATP and IAA binding to both enzymes with Ki-values 17-68-fold lower than the respective Km-values. AIEP also exhibited in vivo activity in an ex planta test system using young grape berries. Exposure to 5–20 µM of the inhibitor led to decreased levels of the common conjugate IAA-Asp and reduced the accumulation of the corresponding Asp-conjugate upon treatment with a synthetic auxin. AIEP therefore represents a novel chemical probe with which to study IAA-amido synthetase function

Perspectives on Risk Perceptions

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72341/1/j.1539-6924.1981.tb01409.x.pd

What’s wrong with evolutionary biology?

There have been periodic claims that evolutionary biology needs urgent reform, and this article tries to account for the volume and persistence of this discontent. It is argued that a few inescapable properties of the field make it prone to criticisms of predictable kinds, whether or not the criticisms have any merit. For example, the variety of living things and the complexity of evolution make it easy to generate data that seem revolutionary (e.g. exceptions to well-established generalizations, or neglected factors in evolution), and lead to disappointment with existing explanatory frameworks (with their high levels of abstraction, and limited predictive power). It is then argued that special discontent stems from misunderstandings and dislike of one well-known but atypical research programme: the study of adaptive function, in the tradition of behavioural ecology. To achieve its goals, this research needs distinct tools, often including imaginary agency, and a partial description of the evolutionary process. This invites mistaken charges of narrowness and oversimplification (which come, not least, from researchers in other subfields), and these chime with anxieties about human agency and overall purpose. The article ends by discussing several ways in which calls to reform evolutionary biology actively hinder progress in the field