Dissecting the Pennsylvania Anatomy Act: Laws, bodies, and science, 1880--1960

When the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a mandatory anatomy law in 1883, they were conceding to medicine and science the need for human dissection material. The legislature was also conceding authority, entrusting physicians and scientists to regulate the messy business of human dissection. In addition to providing bodies for dissection, the Pennsylvania Anatomy Act of 1883 created a modern, state-level bureaucratic entity run by medical experts empowered with self governance: the Anatomical Board of Pennsylvania. Scholars have paid scant attention to the post grave-robbing history of anatomy and dissection in the United States. When the state engaged in body procurement for medicine and science, who wound up on the dissection tables and in the specimen jars of anatomy laboratories? Specifically, whose bodies were used for the promotion of medical science ? Dissecting the Pennsylvania Anatomy Act takes a critical look at state-sanctioned body procurement under this anatomy law from its three constituent perspectives: the bureaucratic structure of the anatomical board---laws; the people who became cadavers---bodies; and, anatomists and their research---science. The Records of the Anatomical Board of the State of Pennsylvania document the administration, interpretation, and implementation of the law, and provide the means to construct a social portrait of the individuals who became cadavers. A quantitative analysis of data on dissection subjects reveals that these people are not strangers to history: their lives have provided the topical building blocks to construct narratives of the modern United States. Analysis of the Pennsylvania anatomy law illuminates an important beginning of the modern period of legal, medical, and scientific authority, alliance, and bureaucracy. The creation of anatomical boards provided the bureaucratic veneer necessary to modernize dissection. The Pennsylvania law succeeded because physicians found a way to routinize body procurement for science under the banner for the public good. In their effort to side-step public resistance to dissection, physicians and legislators designed laws that targeted powerless groups. Legalization did not end the inequality of dissection. On the contrary, legalization institutionalized the discrimination

From novel to webcomic:Transmedial translation and collaborative process in graphic storytelling

The subject of this PhD will analyse the collaborative process within a creative team and the practice of writing as research when it explores a new medium under emergence, in this case webcomics. As the project is concerned with the transposition of my trilogy of novels, I assumed the responsibilities of translating the prose into script and creating the story boarding. After the first brainstorming session with the illustrator on panels design and flow, changes are negotiated by the team and worked by the artist in the final draft of the panels. It is important to note that, while the illustrator’s input is a vital part of this project, choices concerning the structure and the narrative of the project are in the hands of the author. The research project will take into consideration the dynamics of such partnership and how the loop of creating and feedbacking challenges previously established creative processes while it helps to set new ones. Similarly, as the project has taken the shape of a webcomic, the behaviour of online readers and their response to the content will be monitored through tracking tools on media platforms to see if and to what extent (likes, shares, visit prior posts) readers interact, thus affecting dissemination. This project will research how modern politics, historical events (the Italian Years of Lead) and attitudes feed the narrative, and show how these are balanced and blended with fictional elements. It will also take into consideration the inner mechanisms of both genre and medium as tools capable of dissecting, analysing, and offer alternatives to the questions asked by the contemporary discourse. Finally, as an Italian/English bilingual Fantasy writer, I will reflect on how writing in English has actively shaped my work and argue that my conscious decision to write in English aims at placing my work within the British comic books’ tradition. This choice is also motivated by the lack of an Italian academic tradition in studying creative writing and genres other than literary fiction

Nuclear-cytoplasmic Shuttling in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia: Implications in Leukemia Maintenance and Therapy

Nuclear-cytoplasmic shuttling is a highly regulated and complex process, which involves both proteins and nucleic acids. Changes in cellular compartmentalization of various proteins, including oncogenes and tumor suppressors, affect cellular behavior, promoting or inhibiting proliferation, apoptosis and sensitivity to therapies. In this review, we will recapitulate the role of various shuttling components in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia and we will provide insights on the potential role of shuttling proteins as therapeutic targets

Systems-level organization of yeast methylotrophic lifestyle

BACKGROUND: Some yeasts have evolved a methylotrophic lifestyle enabling them to utilize the single carbon compound methanol as a carbon and energy source. Among them, Pichia pastoris (syn. Komagataella sp.) is frequently used for the production of heterologous proteins and also serves as a model organism for organelle research. Our current knowledge of methylotrophic lifestyle mainly derives from sophisticated biochemical studies which identified many key methanol utilization enzymes such as alcohol oxidase and dihydroxyacetone synthase and their localization to the peroxisomes. C1 assimilation is supposed to involve the pentose phosphate pathway, but details of these reactions are not known to date. RESULTS: In this work we analyzed the regulation patterns of 5,354 genes, 575 proteins, 141 metabolites, and fluxes through 39 reactions of P. pastoris comparing growth on glucose and on a methanol/glycerol mixed medium, respectively. Contrary to previous assumptions, we found that the entire methanol assimilation pathway is localized to peroxisomes rather than employing part of the cytosolic pentose phosphate pathway for xylulose-5-phosphate regeneration. For this purpose, P. pastoris (and presumably also other methylotrophic yeasts) have evolved a duplicated methanol inducible enzyme set targeted to peroxisomes. This compartmentalized cyclic C1 assimilation process termed xylose-monophosphate cycle resembles the principle of the Calvin cycle and uses sedoheptulose-1,7-bisphosphate as intermediate. The strong induction of alcohol oxidase, dihydroxyacetone synthase, formaldehyde and formate dehydrogenase, and catalase leads to high demand of their cofactors riboflavin, thiamine, nicotinamide, and heme, respectively, which is reflected in strong up-regulation of the respective synthesis pathways on methanol. Methanol-grown cells have a higher protein but lower free amino acid content, which can be attributed to the high drain towards methanol metabolic enzymes and their cofactors. In context with up-regulation of many amino acid biosynthesis genes or proteins, this visualizes an increased flux towards amino acid and protein synthesis which is reflected also in increased levels of transcripts and/or proteins related to ribosome biogenesis and translation. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, our work illustrates how concerted interpretation of multiple levels of systems biology data can contribute to elucidation of yet unknown cellular pathways and revolutionize our understanding of cellular biology. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12915-015-0186-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users