Sense of Rootlessness and Alienation in Chitra Banerjee’s Arranged Marriage

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, is an Indian-American English writer who traveled to USA in 1976 at the age of 19.  So, she has firsthand experience of diasporic life.  She belongs to the group of Indian English writers who appeared on the literary vista with a postcolonial sense of rootlessness and alienation. Her status as a South Asian writer in English writing is not only diverse but also recognized. The main theme of her writing is to express the life of the Indian immigrants in the America who feel alienation. Most of her main characters are young females who immigrated to America from their motherland India for the betterment of their life; but they face problems and are not able to adjust in the Western culture.    She tries to show the reflection of Indian women who have tried to incorporate the foreign culture in their exile life but their culture and tradition haunts them always. In her works, there is ambulation of Americanization and Indianization. The transformation in characterization becomes lucid in her works.  This Research paper focuses on the troubles and the problems of rootlessness and alienation faced by the immigrants in a foreign land through her important novel “Arranged Marriage”

Deregulation of CRAD-controlled cytoskeleton initiates mucinous colorectal cancer via β-catenin

Epithelial integrity is maintained by the cytoskeleton and through cell adhesion. However, it is not yet known how a deregulated cytoskeleton is associated with cancer. We identified cancer-related regulator of actin dynamics (CRAD) as frequently mutated or transcriptionally downregulated in colorectal cancer. We found that CRAD stabilizes the cadherin-catenin-actin complex via capping protein inhibition. The loss of CRAD inhibits F-actin polymerization and subsequently disrupts the cadherin-catenin-actin complex, which leads to β-catenin release and Wnt signalling hyperactivation. In mice, CRAD knockout induces epithelial cell integrity loss and Wnt signalling activation, resulting in the development of intestinal mucinous adenoma. With APC mutation, CRAD knockout initiates and accelerates mucinous and invasive adenoma development in the colorectum. These results define CRAD as a tumour suppressor, the inactivation of which deregulates the cytoskeleton and hyperactivates Wnt signalling thus initiating mucinous colorectal cancer. Our study reveals the unexpected roles of an actin cytoskeletal regulator in maintaining epithelial cell integrity and suppressing tumorigenesis