Representasi Superhero Dalam Film X-Men: the Days of the Future Past

Penelitian ini untuk mengetahui bagaimana representasi figur superhero dan villain dalam Film X-Men: Days of The Future Past dan mengetahui mengapa karakteristik superhero dan villain dalam X-Men: Days of The Future Past divisualkan menggunakan citraan yang tidak mengikuti ‘tradisi\u27 superhero Amerika. Hal ini dilatarbelakangi karena munculnya banyak film-film superhero yang sangat menonjolkan kekuatan dan superioritas Amerika terhadap musuh-musuh ‘historisnya\u27. Film X-Men The Days of The Future Past tidak lagi menunjukkan figur superhero ikonik khas Amerika dengan bintang dan warna putih biru mengacu bendera Amerika, atau memvisualkan villain sebagaimana musuh dalamhistoris Amerika (Nazi, komunis Rusia-Cina, dan teroris timur tengah). Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah deskriptif kualitatif dengan memahami bahwa film adalah bentuk hiperealitas yang didalamnya menjadi suatu representasi. Semiologi Roland Barthes dipakai sebagai cara yang memudahkan dalam menganalisis, dimana didalamnya terdapat denotatif, konotatif, dan mitos. Teknik menganalisis dilakukan dengan cara mengumpulkan data tentang film X-Men The Days of The Future Past kemudian dianalisis menggunakan Teori Praktik Pierre Bourdieu yakni habitus: nilai–nilai yang terinternalisasi dalam individu atau kelompok; Kapital: potensi yang dimiliki oleh individu atau kelompok untuk mendapatkan kesempatan di arena; Arena: sebuah tempat dimana didalamnya terdapat berbagai habitus dan kapital yangbersaing; Distinction: sebuah pembeda yang dilakukan untuk menunjukan kelas yang berbeda; Dominasi simbolik: kapital simbolik yang digunakan untuk menindas orang lain; Doxa: pandangan penguasa yang dianggap sebagai kebenaran. Dari deskripsi yang dianalisis menggunakan teori akan memunculkan pemaknaan mengenai film X -Men The Days of The Future Past

Probabilistic control of HIV latency and transactivation by the Tat gene circuit

Copyright © 2020 National Academy of Sciences.The reservoir of HIV latently infected cells is the major obstacle for eradication of HIV infection. The “shock-and-kill” strategy proposed earlier aims to reduce the reservoir by activating cells out of latency. While the intracellular HIV Tat gene circuit is known to play important roles in controlling latency and its transactivation in HIV-infected cells, the detailed control mechanisms are not well understood. Here we study the mechanism of probabilistic control of the latent and the transactivated cell phenotypes of HIV-infected cells. We reconstructed the probability landscape, which is the probability distribution of the Tat gene circuit states, by directly computing the exact solution of the underlying chemical master equation. Results show that the Tat circuit exhibits a clear bimodal probability landscape (i.e., there are two distinct probability peaks, one associated with the latent cell phenotype and the other with the transactivated cell phenotype). We explore potential modifications to reactions in the Tat gene circuit for more effective transactivation of latent cells (i.e., the shock-and-kill strategy). Our results suggest that enhancing Tat acetylation can dramatically increase Tat and viral production, while increasing the Tat–transactivation response binding affinity can transactivate latent cells more rapidly than other manipulations. Our results further explored the “block and lock” strategy toward a functional cure for HIV. Overall, our study demonstrates a general approach toward discovery of effective therapeutic strategies and druggable targets by examining control mechanisms of cell phenotype switching via exactly computed probability landscapes of reaction networks.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Prediction of protein structural class with Rough Sets

BACKGROUND: A new method for the prediction of protein structural classes is constructed based on Rough Sets algorithm, which is a rule-based data mining method. Amino acid compositions and 8 physicochemical properties data are used as conditional attributes for the construction of decision system. After reducing the decision system, decision rules are generated, which can be used to classify new objects. RESULTS: In this study, self-consistency and jackknife tests on the datasets constructed by G.P. Zhou (Journal of Protein Chemistry, 1998, 17: 729–738) are used to verify the performance of this method, and are compared with some of prior works. The results showed that the rough sets approach is very promising and may play a complementary role to the existing powerful approaches, such as the component-coupled, neural network, SVM, and LogitBoost approaches. CONCLUSION: The results with high success rates indicate that the rough sets approach as proposed in this paper might hold a high potential to become a useful tool in bioinformatics

Conservation of noncoding microsatellites in plants: implication for gene regulation

BACKGROUND: Microsatellites are extremely common in plant genomes, and in particular, they are significantly enriched in the 5' noncoding regions. Although some 5' noncoding microsatellites involved in gene regulation have been described, the general properties of microsatellites as regulatory elements are still unknown. To address the question of microsatellites associated with regulatory elements, we have analyzed the conserved noncoding microsatellite sequences (CNMSs) in the 5' noncoding regions by inter- and intragenomic phylogenetic footprinting in the Arabidopsis and Brassica genomes. RESULTS: We identified 247 Arabidopsis-Brassica orthologous and 122 Arabidopsis paralogous CNMSs, representing 491 CT/GA and CTT/GAA repeats, which accounted for 10.6% of these types located in the 500-bp regions upstream of coding sequences in the Arabidopsis genome. Among these identified CNMSs, 18 microsatellites show high conservation in the regulatory regions of both orthologous and paralogous genes, and some of them also appear in the corresponding positions of more distant homologs in Arabidopsis, as well as in other plants. A computational scan of CNMSs for known cis-regulatory elements showed that light responsive elements were clustered in the region of CT/GA repeats, as well as salicylic acid responsive elements in the (CTT)(n)/(GAA)(n )sequences. Patterns of gene expression revealed that 70–80% of CNMS (CTT)(n)/(GAA)(n )associated genes were regulated by salicylic acid, which was consistent with the prediction of regulatory elements in silico. CONCLUSION: Our analyses showed that some noncoding microsatellites were conserved in plants and appeared to be ancient. These CNMSs served as regulatory elements involved in light and salicylic acid responses. Our findings might have implications in the common features of the over-represented microsatellites for gene regulation in plant-specific pathways

Information theory-based algorithm for in silico prediction of PCR products with whole genomic sequences as templates

BACKGROUND: A new algorithm for assessing similarity between primer and template has been developed based on the hypothesis that annealing of primer to template is an information transfer process. RESULTS: Primer sequence is converted to a vector of the full potential hydrogen numbers (3 for G or C, 2 for A or T), while template sequence is converted to a vector of the actual hydrogen bond numbers formed after primer annealing. The former is considered as source information and the latter destination information. An information coefficient is calculated as a measure for fidelity of this information transfer process and thus a measure of similarity between primer and potential annealing site on template. CONCLUSION: Successful prediction of PCR products from whole genomic sequences with a computer program based on the algorithm demonstrated the potential of this new algorithm in areas like in silico PCR and gene finding