Haunted by Solitude: Isolation and Representation in Zanele Muholi’s Archive

This paper focuses on contemporary South African photographer Zanele Muholi’s (b. 1972) extensive photographic archival project, Faces and Phases, which documents South Africa’s black queer community. The series exists not only as a book published in 2014, but as an exhibition that has been shown globally. In the introduction to her book of the Faces and Phases series Muholi states her goal as “[articulating] the collective pain [black lesbians] as a community experience” (emphasis mine). Yet the series, composed of over two hundred black and white portraits, is made up of photographs of individual black lesbians. This paper explores the central tension between the seclusion or isolation that is evident in the portraits of Faces and Phases and the objective of community representation that Muholi notes as her goal for the project. To situate Faces and Phases within a legacy of colonial archival projects, Muholi’s project will be examined in relation to Santu Mofokeng, another prominent South African artist

Assessment Of Floral-Derived Aromatic Compounds And Sugar Lures To Capture Male And Female Aedes Aegypti (diptera: Culicidae)

Abstract The viruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti, including dengue and Zika viruses, are rapidly expanding in geographic range and as a threat to public health. In response, control programs are increasingly turning to the use of sterile insect techniques resulting in a need to trap male Ae. aegypti in order to monitor the efficacy of the intervention. However, there is a lack of effective and cheap methods for trapping males. We attempted to exploit the male physiological need to obtain energy from sugar feeding in order lure the mosquitoes into a passive trap. We tested promising aromatic and sugar lures identified in the literature in order to determine whether small-scale attraction is indicative of success in larger scale trapping. First, all five lures were compared against a water control in an attraction assay using males and females (nulliparous and gravid). Guava mango was indicated to be the most promising lure among males, although it did not perform statistically significantly better than the water control (P=0.08). Next, the number of mosquitoes captured by a Gravid Aedes Trap (GAT) treated with guava mango was compared to the number captured by a control GAT. No statistical difference in the number of mosquitoes captured was detected among males (P=0.45), nulliparous females (P=0.67), or gravid females (P=0.47). Our findings suggest that the use of the floral-derived aromatic compounds and sugar mixtures that have been identified in the literature is not an effective lure by which to capture Ae. aegypti in the GAT. Future trapping efforts would likely be more successful if focused on more promising methods for male capture

Haunted by Solitude: Isolation and Communal Representation in Zanele Muholi\u27s Archive

This paper focuses on contemporary South African photographer Zanele Muholi’s (b. 1972) extensive photographic archival project, Faces and Phases, which documents South Africa’s black queer community. The series exists not only as a book published in 2014, but as an exhibition that has been shown globally. In the introduction to their book of the Faces and Phases series Muholi states their goal as “[articulating] the collective pain [black lesbians] as a community experience” (emphasis mine). Yet the series, composed of over two hundred black and white portraits, is made up of photographs of individual black lesbians. This paper explores the central tension between the seclusion or isolation that is evident in the portraits of Faces and Phases and the objective of community representation that Muholi notes as their goal for the project. Both Faces and Phases\u27s place within a legacy of colonial archival projects and the contemporary display practices associated with the project will be examined to understand the subversive qualities of the series as a postcolonial archive. Using queer theory, I will consider the display of Muholi’s archive as a queering of the colonial archival projects that have dominated South African visual history. Case study exhibitions from around the world of Muholi’s work will be compared to other artist reimaginings of the archive such as Santu Mofokeng’s The Black Photo Album / Look at Me 1890-1950, and examined individually in order to establish the affect of display on photographic archival projects

Postgenomic Analyses reveal development of infectious Anaplasma phagocytophilum during transmission from ticks to mice

Obligate intracellular bacteria of the Rickettsiales order have evolved to colonize both arthropod and mammalian hosts, but few details are known about the bacterial adaptations that occur during transmission from blood-feeding arthropods to mammals. Here we apply proteomics and transcriptome sequencing to Anaplasma phagocytophilum, the agent of human granulocytic anaplasmosis, in Ixodes scapularis tick salivary glands, to detect proteins or genes expressed by the pathogen during transmission feeding by the tick. We detected expression of 139 genes, representing 11% of the open reading frames (ORFs) in the A. phagocytophilum genome. The predominant categories of proteins were ribosomal proteins, cell surface proteins, chaperones, and uncharacterized proteins. There was no evidence of DNA replication enzymes, suggesting that most of the A. phagocytophilum cells were no longer dividing. Instead, protein expression reflected conversion to the extracellular, infectious "dense-core" (DC) form. High expression of a DC-specific marker, APH_1235, further suggested this developmental transition in ticks. We showed that blocking APH_1235 with antibodies reduced A. phagocytophilum infection levels in mammalian cell culture. This work represents a starting point for clarifying essential proteins expressed by A. phagocytophilum during transmission from ticks to mammals and demonstrates that the abundantly expressed, DC-associated APH_1235 protein is important during in vivo infection by A. phagocytophilu

An Essential Role of PI3k in the Control of West Nile Virus Infection

The phosphatidyl-inositol-3 kinases (PI3K) pathway regulates a variety of cellular processes, including cell proliferation, RNA processing, protein translation, autophagy, apoptosis and antiviral immunity. Many viruses depend on PI3K signaling for replication. However, its role in flaviviral infection has not been clearly defined. Here we report that PI3K signaling is critical for the control of West Nile virus (WNV) infection by regulating type I IFN (IFN-I) response. Inhibition of PI3K activity by 3-methyl adenine (3-MA), Wortmannin (WM) and LY294002 (LY) increased viral titers by 3-16 folds in primary mouse macrophages, embryonic fibroblasts and human cell lines. Both 3-MA and LY repressed IFN-I mRNA and protein expression significantly. Surprisingly, WM enhanced the mRNA expression of IFN-I and TNF-alpha, and TNF-alpha protein production modestly, while dramatically decreased the secreted IFN-I. Further studies showed that the catalytic subunit p110delta of class I PI3K played a role in induction of antiviral immune responses. Lastly translocation of interferon regulatory factor 7(IRF7) from the cytosol to the nuclei was effectively blocked in the presence of PI3K inhibitors. Our results clearly define an antiviral role of PI3K by modulating immune responses and demonstrate differential mode of action of three PI3K inhibitors on IFN-I

Embodying Future Possibilities: Nostalgic potential in Lebohang Kganye’s Ke Lefa Laka: Her Story

In her series Ke Lefa Laka: Her Story, South African artist Lebohang Kganye digitally manipulates her mother’s family photographs, photoshopping herself into snapshots of her mother as a young woman to create fantastical records of her family’s past. Through the two-part process of restaging the photographs as self-portraits and then overlaying them onto the source snapshots, she expands her family album to include composite scenes that are recreated through memory and longing. By layering the images, Kganye fabricates an alternative space and time in which to be reunited with her deceased mother that operates outside of the “then” vs. “now” nostalgic paradigm. Through performing family photographs—and making their artifice explicit via the layering of multiple images—Kganye makes visible and grapples with the ways in which histories, such as the legacy of apartheid, are transmitted and negotiated generationally. In this thesis, I argue that Kganye’s use of family photographs mobilizes reflective nostalgia and a fully embodied experience of memories to imagine both alternative histories and possible futures that can counter universalizing narratives of generational trauma.Master of Art

Molecular Adaptation of Borrelia burgdorferi in the Murine Host

An analysis of expression of 137 lipoprotein genes on the course of murine infection revealed a two-step molecular adaptation by Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme disease spirochete. For the first step, regardless whether the initial inocula of B. burgdorferi expressed either all (cultured spirochetes) or less than 40 (host-adapted spirochetes) of the 137 lipoprotein genes, the spirochetes were modulated to transcribe 116 of the genes within 10 d after being introduced to the murine host. This step of adaptation was induced by the microenvironment of the host tissue. During the second step, which was forced by host immune selection pressure and occurred between 17 and 30 d after infection, B. burgdorferi down-regulated most of the lipoprotein genes and expressed less than 40 of the 137 genes. This novel adaptation mechanism could be a critical step for B. burgdorferi to proceed to chronic infection, as the pathogen would be cleared at the early stage of infection if the spirochetes failed to undergo this process

Assessment of synthetic floral-based attractants and sugar baits to capture male and female Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae)

Background: The viruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti, including dengue and Zika viruses, are rapidly expanding in geographic range and as a threat to public health. In response, control programs are increasingly turning to the use of sterile insect techniques resulting in a need to trap male Ae. aegypti to monitor the efficacy of the intervention. However, there is a lack of effective and cheap methods for trapping males. Thus, we attempted to exploit the physiological need to obtain energy from sugar feeding in order to passively capture male and female Ae. aegypti (nulliparous and gravid) in free-flight attraction assays. Candidate lures included previously identified floral-based (phenylacetaldehyde, linalool oxide, phenylethyl alcohol, and acetophenone) attractants and an attractive toxic sugar bait-based (ATSB) solution of guava and mango nectars. A free-flight attraction assay assessed the number of mosquitoes attracted to each candidate lure displayed individually. Then, a choice test was performed between the best-performing lure and a water control displayed in Gravid Aedes Traps (GAT). Results: Results from the attraction assays indicated that the ATSB solution of guava and mango nectars was the most promising lure candidate for males; unlike the floral-based attractants tested, it performed significantly better than the water control. Nulliparous and gravid females demonstrated no preference among the lures and water controls indicating a lack of attraction to floral-based attractants and sugar baits in a larger setting. Although the guava-mango ATSB lure was moderately attractive to males when presented directly (i.e. no need to enter a trap or other confinement), it failed to attract significantly more male, nulliparous female, or gravid female Ae. aegypti than water controls when presented inside a Gravid Aedes Trap. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the use of volatile floral-based attractants and sugar mixtures that have been identified in the literature is not an effective lure by which to kill Ae. aegypti at ATSB stations nor capture them in the GAT. Future trapping efforts would likely be more successful if focused on more promising methods for capturing male and female Ae. aegypti

Use of a tandem affinity purification assay to detect interactions between West Nile and dengue viral proteins and proteins of the mosquito vector

AbstractWest Nile and dengue viruses are (re)emerging mosquito-borne flaviviruses that cause significant morbidity and mortality in man. The identification of mosquito proteins that associate with flaviviruses may provide novel targets to inhibit infection of the vector or block transmission to humans. Here, a tandem affinity purification (TAP) assay was used to identify 18 mosquito proteins that interact with dengue and West Nile capsid, envelope, NS2A or NS2B proteins. We further analyzed the interaction of mosquito cadherin with dengue and West Nile virus envelope protein using co-immunoprecipitation and immunofluorescence. Blocking the function of select mosquito factors, including actin, myosin, PI3-kinase and myosin light chain kinase, reduced both dengue and West Nile virus infection in mosquito cells. We show that the TAP method may be used in insect cells to accurately identify flaviviral–host protein interactions. Our data also provides several targets for interrupting flavivirus infection in mosquito vectors