In Silico Identification of Specialized Secretory-Organelle Proteins in Apicomplexan Parasites and In Vivo Validation in Toxoplasma gondii

Apicomplexan parasites, including the human pathogens Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium falciparum, employ specialized secretory organelles (micronemes, rhoptries, dense granules) to invade and survive within host cells. Because molecules secreted from these organelles function at the host/parasite interface, their identification is important for understanding invasion mechanisms, and central to the development of therapeutic strategies. Using a computational approach based on predicted functional domains, we have identified more than 600 candidate secretory organelle proteins in twelve apicomplexan parasites. Expression in transgenic T. gondii of eight proteins identified in silico confirms that all enter into the secretory pathway, and seven target to apical organelles associated with invasion. An in silico approach intended to identify possible host interacting proteins yields a dataset enriched in secretory/transmembrane proteins, including most of the antigens known to be engaged by apicomplexan parasites during infection. These domain pattern and projected interactome approaches significantly expand the repertoire of proteins that may be involved in host parasite interactions

“Not merely wifely devotion”: Collaborating in the Construction of Science at Terling Place

In this chapter I critique the literary construction of the scientific practice of John Strutt, Third Baron Rayleigh as a solitary pursuit within a domain separated from family life, and I analyze, instead, the science of his home, Terling Place, as a collaboration with his wife Evelyn Strutt, Baroness Rayleigh. As opposed to judging the character of their marital collaboration anachronistically through a professional lens, I analyze Terling science within the context of late-Victorian country-house society characterized by an aristocratic, evangelical-Anglican orientation. This case demonstrates how collaboration can be an unstable construct reliant upon the meanings imbued by the historical subjects and their discursive representations

Attending to Spirituality in Issues of Science and Religion: Challenges and Triumphs

Addressing students’ authentic selves and spiritual journeys poses pedagogical challenges, particularly for new faculty. The author reflects on his challenges and triumphs experienced while teaching Issues in Science and Religion at DePaul University’s School for New Learning, to highlight three effective strategies: multiple and varied means for students to expose their authentic selves in safe environments; disclosure of one’s authentic self to students to model spiritual reflection; and frequent reinforcement and clarification of course objectives and assessment criteria. The author provides examples of practices and discusses the value of collegial and institutional support and faculty development opportunities

\u27A Triumph of Brains over Brute\u27: Women and Science at the Horticultural College, Swanley, 1890-1910

The founding of Britain\u27s first horticultural college in 1889 advanced a scientific and coeducational response to three troubling national concerns: a major agricultural depression; the economic distress of single, unemployed women; and imperatives to develop the colonies. Buoyed by the technical instruction and women\u27s movements, the Horticultural College and Produce Company, Limited, at Swanley, Kent, crystallized a transformation in the horticultural profession in which new science-based, formalized study threatened an earlier emphasis on practical apprenticeship training, with the effect of opening male-dominated trades to women practitioners. By 1903, the college closed its doors to male students, and new pathways were forged for women students interested in pursuing further scientific study. Resistance to the Horticultural College\u27s model of science-based women\u27s horticultural education positioned science and women as contested subjects throughout this period of horticulture\u27s expansion in the academy

Introduction The Conchologist\u27s Companion

This introduction to the reprint of Mary Roberts\u27s popular conchology text (1831) sets it within the broader scope of her writing on marine biology and explains the influence of the Evangelical Revival on her meditative style

\u27A Triumph of Brains over Brute\u27: Women and Science at the Horticultural College, Swanley, 1890-1910

The founding of Britain\u27s first horticultural college in 1889 advanced a scientific and coeducational response to three troubling national concerns: a major agricultural depression; the economic distress of single, unemployed women; and imperatives to develop the colonies. Buoyed by the technical instruction and women\u27s movements, the Horticultural College and Produce Company, Limited, at Swanley, Kent, crystallized a transformation in the horticultural profession in which new science-based, formalized study threatened an earlier emphasis on practical apprenticeship training, with the effect of opening male-dominated trades to women practitioners. By 1903, the college closed its doors to male students, and new pathways were forged for women students interested in pursuing further scientific study. Resistance to the Horticultural College\u27s model of science-based women\u27s horticultural education positioned science and women as contested subjects throughout this period of horticulture\u27s expansion in the academy

Co-operative Comradeships Versus Same-Sex Partnerships: Historicizing Collaboration Among Homosexual Couples in the Sciences

In this chapter I consider a range of methodological challenges that complicate historical analysis of same-sex partnerships in science and then adopt Joan Scott\u27s concept of imbrications of subjective experiences with political discourses to analyze the sexual-science discourse of Edward Carpenter\u27s homosocial, country ménage near Sheffield, Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. Based on my analysis, I suggest Carpenter\u27s case necessitates an expansion of the category collaborative couples beyond a focus on cohabitating, married partners, and I introduce the contemporary term, co-operative comradeship as a more historically salient means by which to describe Carpenter\u27s collaborative industry

\u27Back to the land\u27: Lady Warwick and the Movement for Women\u27s Collegiate Agricultural Education

Within the late-Victorian and Edwardian movement to promote women\u27s advancement in farming and gardening, Frances Greville, countess of Warwick, founded the first women-only collegiate centre for agricultural education in 1898. Initially affiliated with the University Extension College, Reading, her scheme relocated to Studley, Warwickshire in 1903, where it flourished as an independent, private college. Historians have previously described the founding, development, and ultimate fate of Warwick\u27s project, but in this article I consider the question of its status within the broader movement for women\u27s collegiate agricultural education. As I show, Warwick\u27s advocacy for a \u27Back to the Land\u27 ideology and women\u27s scientific and practical instruction in the \u27lighter branches of agriculture\u27 added a decidedly rural, agrarian orientation to a movement otherwise dominated by an emphasis on urban horticulture; yet, despite her efforts, throughout its first decade, the scheme remained effectively trapped within the mould of horticultural education. The mismatch between Warwick\u27s ideals and practical achievements established her as a visionary whose contributions ironically reinforced the very tendencies she hoped to counteract

For Better or For Worse? Collaborative Couples in the Sciences

In this volume, a distinguished set of international scholars examine the nature of collaboration between life partners in the sciences, with particular attention to the ways in which personal and professional dynamics can foster or inhibit scientific practice. Breaking from traditional gender analyses which focus on divisions of labor and the assignment of credit, the studies scrutinize collaboration as a variable process between partners living in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who were married and divorced, heterosexual and homosexual, aristocratic and working-class and politically right and left. The contributors analyze cases shaped by their particular geographical locations, ranging from retreat settings like the English countryside and Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to university laboratories and urban centers in Berlin, Stockholm, Geneva and London. The volume demonstrates how the terms and meanings of collaboration, variably shaped by disciplinary imperatives, cultural mores, and the agency of the collaborators themselves, illuminate critical intellectual and institutional developments in the modern sciences

Cultivating Genetics in the Country: Whittingehame Lodge, Cambridge

This chapter considers a case in the early history of genetics, that of the foundation of the research station, Whittingehame Lodge, at the University of Cambridge. Unlike other departments’ biological research laboratories, which were centrally clustered in the New Museums Site near the town center, the land allotted to genetics was located in fields outside of town, next to the University Farms and Observatory. The space for experiments was a two-acre plot consisting of gardens, greenhouses, and a laboratory in the professor’s “lodge”—a marrying of field and laboratory that situated genetics in close alignment with the new School of Agriculture as opposed to the other biological departments. This chapter explains how genetics came to be cultivated in this distinctive spatial arrangement, which co-opted both field and laboratory within a purposefully built research site. Despite the Cambridge geneticists’ departure from evolutionary morphology in favor of Mendelian studies, their development of a research program, led by William Bateson, claimed a continuity with gentlemanly natural history of the type practiced by Britain’s champions of evolution and morphology—respectively, Charles Darwin and Francis Balfour. This claim bolstered the authority of the Mendelian approach in a socioeconomic milieu shaped by a widespread concern over the British agricultural depression and a perceived imperative to improve agricultural stocks by applying scientific knowledge.6 Shepherded by a collaboration of Cambridge’s aristocratic machine with private industry, the realization of Bateson’s model and its promise to yield useful knowledge blurred the field/lab distinction sharpened by advocates of a laboratory approach. The case of Whittingehame Lodge thus presents us with another early twentieth-century research site “standing between the standardized space of the lab and the messiness of the field.