Connections and Disconnections between Academic Writing Theory and Writing in the Business World

Although not all college students will become professional writers, many, if not all, will need to learn to write professionally. The ability to write well is an essential skill in any profession, and while few would dispute the importance of being able to write well, the ways in which one’s academic writing experiences inform her ability to write successfully in professional settings remain a mystery to many. My thesis begins with a discussion of attempts made to bridge academic and business writing and a review of the history of efforts made by advocates of professional and workplace writing instruction and their influence on academic writing pedagogies. I then discuss characteristics of successful academic and business writing. After defining the characteristics of successful writing in each of these discourses, I examine the ways in which they are similar and dissimilar. In doing so, I conclude that while there are many writing values that are unique to academic or business contexts, there are also three significant attributes that are shared by these two discourse communities

\u3ci\u3eDrosophila\u3c/i\u3e Muller F Elements Maintain a Distinct Set of Genomic Properties Over 40 Million Years of Evolution

The Muller F element (4.2 Mb, ~80 protein-coding genes) is an unusual autosome of Drosophila melanogaster; it is mostly heterochromatic with a low recombination rate. To investigate how these properties impact the evolution of repeats and genes, we manually improved the sequence and annotated the genes on the D. erecta, D. mojavensis, and D. grimshawi F elements and euchromatic domains from the Muller D element. We find that F elements have greater transposon density (25–50%) than euchromatic reference regions (3–11%). Among the F elements, D. grimshawi has the lowest transposon density (particularly DINE-1: 2% vs. 11–27%). F element genes have larger coding spans, more coding exons, larger introns, and lower codon bias. Comparison of the Effective Number of Codons with the Codon Adaptation Index shows that, in contrast to the other species, codon bias in D. grimshawi F element genes can be attributed primarily to selection instead of mutational biases, suggesting that density and types of transposons affect the degree of local heterochromatin formation. F element genes have lower estimated DNA melting temperatures than D element genes, potentially facilitating transcription through heterochromatin. Most F element genes (~90%) have remained on that element, but the F element has smaller syntenic blocks than genome averages (3.4–3.6 vs. 8.4–8.8 genes per block), indicating greater rates of inversion despite lower rates of recombination. Overall, the F element has maintained characteristics that are distinct from other autosomes in the Drosophila lineage, illuminating the constraints imposed by a heterochromatic milieu