Mitochondria as integrators of information in an early-evolving animal: insights from a triterpenoid metabolite

Mitochondria have the capacity to integrate environmental signals and, in animals with active stem cell populations, trigger responses in terms of growth and growth form. Colonial hydroids, which consist of feeding polyps connected by tube-like stolons, were treated with avicins, triterpenoid electrophiles whose anti-cancer properties in human cells are mediated in part by mitochondria. In treated hydroids, both oxygen uptake and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species were diminished relative to controls, similar to that observed in human cells exposed to avicins. While untreated colonies exhibit more stolon branches and connections in the centre of the colony than at the periphery, treated colonies exhibit the opposite: fewer stolon branches in the centre of the colony than at the periphery. The resulting growth form suggests an inversion of the normal pattern of colony development mediated by mitochondrial and redox-related perturbations. An as-yet-uncharacterized gradient within the colony may determine the ultimate phenotypic effect of avicin perturbation

Establishing a constitutional 'right of asylum' in early nineteenth-century Britain

For several generations before the First World War, the idea that the British constitution contained a ‘right of asylum' for foreign nationals was commonplace. Though this belief had profound consequences for Britain's treatment of political and religious exiles, its relations with foreign states, and the drafting of its extradition and immigration laws, there has been little enquiry into its origins. This article delineates the emergence of the idea of a constitutional ‘right of asylum', locating it in a series of political clashes over the ‘Alien Act' that took place during the decade after the Napoleonic Wars. This legislation, which established controls over foreigners during the French Revolution and the quarter-century of war that followed, was increasingly challenged by the Whig and radical oppositions after Waterloo, both for its specific arbitrary provisions and as a more fundamental violation of the rights of aliens guaranteed by key constitutional documents like Magna Carta and the Habeas Corpus Act. By the mid-1820s these objections cohered into a conviction that asylum itself could be claimed as a right. This conviction and the arguments that spawned it were repeated for many subsequent decades, forming the basis of the widespread Victorian belief in the ‘right of asylum’