Geoff Dyer’s Ways of Seeing

In this paper I will try to show how photography informs Geoff Dyer’s novel and essay writing, not only by affecting its contents, but mainly by playing a part in the structures and modes of his works, both on the narrative and non-narrative level. Taking the lead from Dyer’s early essay on John Berger, Ways of Telling (1986), I will try to show in what way Berger’s photographic theory shapes Dyer’s most famous novels, The Colour of Memory (1989) and But Beautiful (1991). I will then first follow the steps Dyer trod in perfecting his knowledge of photography up to his producing a substantial and innovative work on the history and criticism of American photography, The Ongoing Moment (2005); then show how, in one of his most recent works, White Sands (2016), he managed to create a form of essay in which his foremost passions, photography and jazz, become an essential feature of the text, just like he did in But Beautiful, yet, this time, without relying on themes and contents

A Comparative Essay on the Sociology of Literature: Alice Munro’s “Unconsummated Relationships”

Par l’intermédiaire d’une comparaison avec la romancière Anne Tyler, il s’agit ici de mettre en lumière la spécificité de la vision que Munro porte sur le monde. Alors que les romans de Tyler procèdent d’une sensibilité directement héritée de Jane Austen, les nouvelles de Munro témoignent d’une lucidité décapante et d’un refus de céder aux pièges de l’émotion. Son écriture astringente met en scène des personnages solitaires qui refusent de s’engager dans des relations humaines sincères et authentiques

Streetwise Children. Bambini e metropoli da Dickens a Lethem

The aim of my essay is to compare two novels – an English classic, and a contemporary American work – whose main characters have to face and negotiate the metropolitan spaces alone since their childhood. By analyzing how David Copperfield in Charles Dickens’s eponymous novel and Dylan Ebdus in Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude learn to know the city and to leave in it, I will also show the Dickensian elements to be found in the novel of the American author, who defines himself “a follower of Dickens”

L’eclettismo delle narrazioni

L’eclettismo delle narrazioniUna conversazione con Silvia Albertazzidi Serena Guarracin

Lucia Esposito – Alessandra Ruggiero (eds.), Downton Abbey. Il fascino sfacciato dell’aristocrazia

Review of the book  Downton Abbey. Il fascino sfacciato dell’aristocrazia edited by Lucia Esposito and Alessandra Ruggiero.Recensione del libro Downton Abbey. Il fascino sfacciato dell’aristocrazia a cura di Lucia Esposito e Alessandra Ruggiero

Advanced Optical Imaging-Guided Nanotheranostics toward Personalized Cancer Drug Delivery

Nanomedicine involves the use of nanotechnology for clinical applications and holds promise to improve treatments. Recent developments offer new hope for cancer detection, prevention and treatment; however, being a heterogenous disorder, cancer calls for a more targeted treatment approach. Personalized Medicine (PM) aims to revolutionize cancer therapy by matching the most effective treatment to individual patients. Nanotheranostics comprise a combination of therapy and diagnostic imaging incorporated in a nanosystem and are developed to fulfill the promise of PM by helping in the selection of treatments, the objective monitoring of response and the planning of follow-up therapy. Although well-established imaging techniques, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computed Tomography (CT), Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT), are primarily used in the development of theranostics, Optical Imaging (OI) offers some advantages, such as high sensitivity, spatial and temporal resolution and less invasiveness. Additionally, it allows for multiplexing, using multi-color imaging and DNA barcoding, which further aids in the development of personalized treatments. Recent advances have also given rise to techniques permitting better penetration, opening new doors for OI-guided nanotheranostics. In this review, we describe in detail these recent advances that may be used to design and develop efficient and specific nanotheranostics for personalized cancer drug delivery. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Enzyme Purification Improves the Enzyme Loading, Self-Propulsion, and Endurance Performance of Micromotors

Enzyme-powered micro- and nanomotors make use of biocatalysis to self-propel in aqueous media and hold immense promise for active and targeted drug delivery. Most (if not all) of these micro- and nanomotors described to date are fabricated using a commercially available enzyme, despite claims that some commercial preparations may not have a sufficiently high degree of purity for downstream applications. In this study, the purity of a commercial urease, an enzyme frequently used to power the motion of micro- and nanomotors, was evaluated and found to be impure. After separating the hexameric urease from the protein impurities by size-exclusion chromatography, the hexameric urease was subsequently characterized and used to functionalize hollow silica microcapsules. Micromotors loaded with purified urease were found to be 2.5 times more motile than the same micromotors loaded with unpurified urease, reaching average speeds of 5.5 μm/s. After comparing a number of parameters, such as enzyme distribution, protein loading, and motor reusability, between micromotors functionalized with purified vs unpurified urease, it was concluded that protein purification was essential for optimal performance of the enzyme-powered micromotor

Nanoscale Mapping of Recombinant Viral Proteins: From Cells to Virus-Like Particles

Influenza recombinant proteins and virus-like particles (VLPs) play an important role in vaccine development (e.g., CadiFluS). However, their production from mammalian cells suffers from low yields and lack of control of the final VLPs. To improve these issues, characterization techniques able to visualize and quantify the different steps of the process are needed. Fluorescence microscopy represents a powerful tool able to image multiple protein targets; however, its limited resolution hinders the study of viral constructs. Here, we propose the use of super-resolution microscopy and in particular of DNA-point accumulation for imaging in nanoscale topography (DNA-PAINT) microscopy as a characterization method for recombinant viral proteins on both cells and VLPs. We were able to quantify the amount of the three main influenza proteins (hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA), and ion channel matrix protein 2 (M2)) per cell and per VLP with nanometer resolution and single-molecule sensitivity, proving that DNA-PAINT is a powerful technique to characterize recombinant viral constructs

Super-resolution microscopy reveals significant impact of M2e-specific monoclonal antibodies on influenza A virus filament formation at the host cell surface

Influenza A virions are highly pleomorphic, exhibiting either spherical or filamentous morphology. The influenza A virus strain A/Udorn/72 (H3N2) produces copious amounts of long filaments on the surface of infected cells where matrix protein 1(M1) and 2 (M2) play a key role in virus filament formation. Previously, it was shown that an anti-M2 ectodomain (M2e) antibody could inhibit A/Udorn/72 virus filament formation. However, the study of these structures is limited by their small size and complex structure. Here, we show that M2e-specific IgG1 and IgG2a mouse monoclonal antibodies can reduce influenza A/Udorn/72 virus plaque growth and infectivity in vitro. Using Immuno-staining combined with super-resolution microscopy that allows us to study structures beyond the diffraction limit, we report that M2 is localized at the base of viral filaments that emerge from the membrane of infected cells. Filament formation was inhibited by treatment of A/Udorn/72 infected cells with M2e-specific IgG2a and IgG1 monoclonal antibodies and resulted in fragmentation of pre-existing filaments. We conclude that M2e-specific IgGs can reduce filamentous influenza A virus replication in vitro and suggest that in vitro inhibition of A/Udorn/72 virus replication by M2e-specific antibodies correlates with the inhibition of filament formation on the surface of infected cells

Unveiling polymerization mechanism in pH-regulated supramolecular fibers in aqueous media

An amine functionalized C3-symmetric benzotrithiophene (BTT) monomer has been designed and synthetized in order to form pH responsive one-dimensional supramolecular polymers in aqueous media. While most of the reported studies looked at the effect of pH on the size of the aggregates, herein, a detailed mechanistic study is reported, carried out upon modifying the pH to trigger the formation of positively charged ammonium groups. A dramatic and reversible change in the polymerization mechanism and size of the supramolecular fibers is observed and ascribed to the combination of Coulombic repulsive forces and higher monomer solubility. Furthermore, the induced frustrated growth of the fibers is further employed to finely control the one-dimensional supramolecular polymerisation and copolymerization processes.Financial support from MINECO (CTQ2017-85393-P) and ERA-NET/European Commission/MINECO (EuroNanoMed2017-191/PCIN-2017-042) is acknowledged by T.T. IMDEA Nanociencia acknowledges support from the “Severo Ochoa” Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (MINECO, Grant SEV2016-0686). M.G.I thanks Santander Talent Atraction Research (STAR2) for finantial support. This work was also financially supported by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2019-109450RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033), European Research Council/Horizon2020 (ERC-StG-757397), la Caixa Foundation (ID 100010434) and by the Generalitat de Catalunya (2017 SGR 01536) to S.P. and L.A