Private parts of Pakistan: food and privacy in Sara Suleri's Meatless Days

Este ensayo examina la autobiografía de Sara Suleri, Meatless Days (1989), en la que los alimentos son la metáfora central de las tribulaciones de una infancia en Pakistán antes de la división. Suleri ofrece imágenes entremezcladas de comida real y metafórica, de cocinar y del hambre en una apremiante triangulación entre comida, cuerpo, y políticas del cuerpo que proporciona nítidos contrastes entre su vida pública y privada en un Pakistán postcolonial politizado. Sara Suleri trabaja deliberadamente con los ingredientes que tiene a mano, mientras adivina quiénes serán los lectores que asistan a la cena. Suleri quiere combinar la característica más sobresaliente de la autobiografía —la necesidad de revelar y de ocultar— a través de la escritura de un libro que puede ayudarla a reconciliar las omplicaciones de su yo más privado y sus relaciones con su vida pública. Sara Suleri Goodyear es en la actualidad profesora de inglés en Yale, y busca una receta que le permita combinar su vida en los Estados Unidos, su infancia en Pakistán e Inglaterra, su madre nacida en Gales, y la confusión y violencia políticas.This essay considers Sara Suleri’s autobiography, Meatless Days (1989), in which food is the central metaphor for the complications of a childhood spent in Pakistan before partition. Suleri offers interwoven images of actual and metaphorical eating, cooking, and hunger in a compelling triangulation between food, body, and body politics, providing sharp contrasts between her private and public lives in a politically charged post-colonial Pakistan. Sara Suleri deliberately works with the ingredients available to her, while guessing who might be coming to dinner as her readers. She wants to combine autobiography’s most salient characteristic —the need to reveal and conceal— by writing a book which can begin to help her reconcile the complications of her most private self and her relationship to her public life. Now an English professor at Yale, Sara Suleri Goodyear seeks to create a recipe that will allow her to blend her life in the United States, her childhood spent in Pakistan and England, her Welsh-born mother, and the political turmoil and violence

Increasing water-use efficiency directly through genetic manipulation of stomatal density

Improvement in crop water-use efficiency (WUE) is a critical priority for regions facing increased drought or diminished groundwater resources. Despite new tools for the manipulation of stomatal development, the engineering of plants with high WUE remains a challenge. We used Arabidopsis epidermal patterning factor (EPF) mutants exhibiting altered stomatal density to test whether WUE could be improved directly by manipulation of the genes controlling stomatal density. Specifically, we tested whether constitutive overexpression of EPF2 reduced stomatal density and maximum stomatal conductance (gw(max)) sufficiently to increase WUE. We found that a reduction in gw(max) via reduced stomatal density in EPF2-overexpressing plants (EPF2OE) increased both instantaneous and long-term WUE without altering significantly the photosynthetic capacity. Conversely, plants lacking both EPF1 and EPF2 expression (epf1epf2) exhibited higher stomatal density, higher gw(max) and lower instantaneous WUE, as well as lower (but not significantly so) long-term WUE. Targeted genetic modification of stomatal conductance, such as in EPF2OE, is a viable approach for the engineering of higher WUE in crops, particularly in future high-carbon-dioxide (CO2) atmospheres

Taking Snapshots, Living the Picture: The Kodak Company's Making of Photographic Biography

In this article I explore how George Eastman and the Eastman Kodak Company encouraged early twentieth-century camera users to think of snapshots as pictorial biographies. Analysing a wide selection of articles from the Kodakery, one of Kodak’s most popular magazines in the first half of the twentieth century, I demonstrate that the company endeavoured to secure its prominence in the photographic market by encouraging members of the public to integrate picture-taking into everyday life, and regard photographs as self-contained repositories of biographical details. To this end, Kodak framed the speedy pace of life that characterised the practice of being in the industrial world as a reality that allegedly weakened the human eye and mind’s ability to process the experience of life itself. Introducing the idea of the camera and picturetaking as the ultimate cures for this purported human deficiency, Kodak provided camera users with advice that helped to cement an understanding of photographs as surrogates of both the changing human body and individual subjects’ experiences in time and space. As in popular culture, and sometimes also in academia, photographs are still widely regarded as pictorial biographies, I argue that considering the popular photographic industry’s role in shaping photographic practices and photographs’ perceived meanings can help clarify the relationship between photography and life-writing

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Zinc limitation triggers anticipatory adaptations in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) has complex and dynamic interactions with the human host, and subpopulations of Mtb that emerge during infection can influence disease outcomes. This study implicates zinc ion (Zn2+) availability as a likely driver of bacterial phenotypic heterogeneity in vivo. Zn2+ sequestration is part of "nutritional immunity", where the immune system limits micronutrients to control pathogen growth, but this defense mechanism seems to be ineffective in controlling Mtb infection. Nonetheless, Zn2+-limitation is an environmental cue sensed by Mtb, as calprotectin triggers the zinc uptake regulator (Zur) regulon response in vitro and co-localizes with Zn2+-limited Mtb in vivo. Prolonged Zn2+ limitation leads to numerous physiological changes in vitro, including differential expression of certain antigens, alterations in lipid metabolism and distinct cell surface morphology. Furthermore, Mtb enduring limited Zn2+ employ defensive measures to fight oxidative stress, by increasing expression of proteins involved in DNA repair and antioxidant activity, including well described virulence factors KatG and AhpC, along with altered utilization of redox cofactors. Here, we propose a model in which prolonged Zn2+ limitation defines a population of Mtb with anticipatory adaptations against impending immune attack, based on the evidence that Zn2+-limited Mtb are more resistant to oxidative stress and exhibit increased survival and induce more severe pulmonary granulomas in mice. Considering that extracellular Mtb may transit through the Zn2+-limited caseum before infecting naïve immune cells or upon host-to-host transmission, the resulting phenotypic heterogeneity driven by varied Zn2+ availability likely plays a key role during early interactions with host cells