What is Life Worth? A Rough Guide to Valuation

In this speculative article, the aim is to elaborate a definition of life that is not biological, and a valuation of it that is not commodified. This is undertaken by the development of an understanding of death as a process which is embedded in the life of a community. The idea is that we can best understand what life is worth by first understanding what death means

The Feminization of Body Work

This article explores the relationship between ‘body work’ and gender, asking why paid work involving the physical touch and manipulation of others’ bodies is largely performed by women. It argues that the feminization of body work is not simply explicable as ‘nurturance’, nor as the continuation of a pre-existing domestic division of labour. Rather, feminization resolves dilemmas that arise when intimate touch is refigured as paid labour. These ‘body work dilemmas’ are rooted in the material nature of body work. They are both cultural (related to the meaning of inter-corporeality) and organizational (related to the spatial, temporal and labour process constraints of work on bodies). Two sectors are explored as exemplars: hairdressing and care work. Synthesizing UK quantitative data and existing research, the article traces similarities and differences in the composition of these sectors and in how gender both responds to and re-entrenches the cultural and organizational body work dilemmas identified

Single-molecule dynamics of human mitochondrial transcription

Mitochondria are the major source of energy production in the eukaryotic cell, and mitochondrial transcription is often dysregulated in cancers, ageing, and neurodegenerative diseases. Dissection of mitochondrial transcription at singlemolecule resolution – from initiation to escape to elongation – can provide new insights into mitochondrial transcriptional control and provide new methods to the field of real-time single-molecule spectroscopy. I have developed the first singlemolecule system to dissect transcription by the human mitochondrial RNA polymerase (RNAP), directly visualizing interactions between human mtRNAP and transcription factors TFAM, TFB2M, and TEFM, engaged in initiation and elongation from the Light Stand Promoter (LSP). My work revealed that mtRNAP preinitiation complexes assemble sequentially from monomeric components. TFAM binds to LSP first and recruits mtRNAP, which then recruits FB2M. Upon mtRNAP escape, TFB2M dissociates and immediately gets replaced by TEFM. I have measured all the characteristic binding and dissociation rates for all of the proteins involved, and have identified two key limiting steps in mtRNAP initiation: (i) mtRNAP recruitment to LSP is a slow process (kon ~= 1.1x105 M-1 s-1), consistent with TFAM finding and bending promoter DNA before recruiting mtRNAP; (ii) TFB2M makes several attempts to bind to mtRNAP and to, presumably, melt the promoter – at an overall initiation rate coefficient ~= 2.3x106 M-1 s-1. My measurements provide benchmarks for future analyses of mtRNAP transcription in live cells. In addition, methods and sensors developed will benefit researchers focused on long-term single-molecule imaging of functional molecular interactions in real-time.</p