Silencing, Positive Selection and Parallel Evolution: Busy History of Primate Cytochromes c

Cytochrome c (cyt c) participates in two crucial cellular processes, energy production and apoptosis, and unsurprisingly is a highly conserved protein. However, previous studies have reported for the primate lineage (i) loss of the paralogous testis isoform, (ii) an acceleration and then a deceleration of the amino acid replacement rate of the cyt c somatic isoform, and (iii) atypical biochemical behavior of human cyt c. To gain insight into the cause of these major evolutionary events, we have retraced the history of cyt c loci among primates. For testis cyt c, all primate sequences examined carry the same nonsense mutation, which suggests that silencing occurred before the primates diversified. For somatic cyt c, maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian phylogenetic analyses yielded the same tree topology. The evolutionary analyses show that a fast accumulation of non-synonymous mutations (suggesting positive selection) occurred specifically on the anthropoid lineage root and then continued in parallel on the early catarrhini and platyrrhini stems. Analysis of evolutionary changes using the 3D structure suggests they are focused on the respiratory chain rather than on apoptosis or other cyt c functions. In agreement with previous biochemical studies, our results suggest that silencing of the cyt c testis isoform could be linked with the decrease of primate reproduction rate. Finally, the evolution of cyt c in the two sister anthropoid groups leads us to propose that somatic cyt c evolution may be related both to COX evolution and to the convergent brain and body mass enlargement in these two anthropoid clades

Greed, fear and irrational exuberance - the deep play of financial and cultural speculation

This thesis is based on a body of work completed between 2001 and 2009, comprisingperformance/installations that addressed the impacts of global financial speculation and themechanisms of a free-market economy. Arguably, financial speculation has either driven, orprofoundly influenced, political policy and social behaviour ‘from Wall Street to Main Street’;from the corporate boardrooms of developed nations to the informal markets of nations stillstruggling to come to terms with the demise of classical socialism in the postmodern world.Each 24-hour cycle of global financial markets, comprising millions of transactions, representsnot only objectively calculated risk management, but also a spectrum of speculators’emotions ranging between greed, fear, and ‘irrational exuberance’. Theperformance/installations included in this thesis address the motivations behind speculativemarket activity, as well as the interaction between the human and technological processesembedded in the markets. Art and cultural critic Brian Holmes posits this interaction as ‘deepplay’, or ‘the aestheticized exploration of the actions and gestures unfolding within a globalmicrostructure’. The microstructure referred to in this thesis is that of the global financialmarket, its foundations, development and impacts on contemporary society. My explorationwill unpack aspects of the history and current manifestations of the free-market economy, andwhile it is not the intention of this thesis to theorise economics, nor the phenomenon ofglobalization, certain premises will be addressed as relevant to the projects. In the process,shared borders between the financial market and art practice have inevitably become blurred.The methodological enquiry that underscores this thesis does not reject the free-marketeconomy, nor speculative financial activity. Instead, I have suggested that they might becritiqued by means of cultural intervention. I imply that by direct participation in capital flows,and through exposure to the fears and anxieties bred in the financial market’s domain, thecomplex elements that have produced, and continue to produce significant impacts onsociety, might be better understood

Frank O. Gehry : the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota.

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