Collaborative Speculations on Future Themes for Participatory Design in Germany

Participatory Design means recognizing that those who will be affected by a future technology should have an active say in its creation. Yet, despite continuous interest in involving people as future users and consumers into designing novel and innovative future technology, participatory approaches in technology design remain relatively underdeveloped in the German HCI community. This article brings together the diversity of voices, domains, perspectives, approaches, and methods that collectively shape Participatory Design in Germany. In the following, we (1) outline our understanding of participatory practice and how it is different from mere user involvement; (2) reflect current issues of participatory and fair technology design within the German Participatory Design community; and (3) discuss tensions relevant to the field, that we expect to arise in the future, and which we derived from our 2021 workshop through a speculative method. We contribute an introduction and an overview of current themes and a speculative outlook on future issues of Participatory Design in Germany. It is meant to inform, provoke, inspire and, ultimately, invite participation within the wider Computer Science community

Genetic makeup of the Corynebacterium glutamicum LexA regulon deduced from comparative transcriptomics and in vitro DNA band shift assays

Jochmann N, Kurze A-K, Czaja LF, et al. Genetic makeup of the Corynebacterium glutamicum LexA regulon deduced from comparative transcriptomics and in vitro DNA band shift assays. MICROBIOLOGY. 2009;155(5):1459-1477.The lexA gene of Corynebacterium glutamicum ATCC 13032 was deleted to create the mutant strain C. glutamicum NJ2114, which has an elongated cell morphology and an increased doubling time. To characterize the SOS regulon in C. glutamicum, the transcriptomes of NJ2114 and a DNA-damage-induced wild-type strain were compared with that of a wild-type control using DNA microarray hybridization. The expression data were combined with bioinformatic pattern searches for LexA binding sites, leading to the detection of 46 potential SOS boxes located upstream of differentially expressed transcription units. Binding of a hexahistidyl-tagged LexA protein to 40 double-stranded oligonucleotides containing the potential SOS boxes was demonstrated in vitro by DNA band shift assays. It turned out that LexA binds not only to SOS boxes in the promoter-operator region of upregulated genes, but also to SOS boxes detected upstream of downregulated genes. These results demonstrated that LexA controls directly the expression of at least 48 SOS genes organized in 36 transcription units. The deduced genes encode a variety of physiological functions, many of them involved in DNA repair and survival after DNA damage, but nearly half of them have hitherto unknown functions. Alignment of the LexA binding sites allowed the corynebacterial SOS box consensus sequence TcGAA(a/c)AnnTGTtCGA to be deduced. Furthermore, the common intergenic region of lexA and the differentially expressed divS-nrdR operon, encoding a cell division suppressor and a regulator of deoxyribonucleotide biosynthesis, was characterized in detail. Promoter mapping revealed differences in divS-nrdR expression during SOS response and normal growth conditions. One of the four LexA binding sites detected in the intergenic region is involved in regulating divS-nrdR transcription, whereas the other sites are apparently used for negative autoregulation of lexA expression