I mötet med andra

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka relationen och gränsen mellan människa och djur i Per Odenstens Andningskonstnären (2013) och att studera djuren funktion i romanen. Metoden som används är en läsning av Andningskonstnären utifrån ett "animal studies"-perspektiv. I huvudsak tillämpas teoretiska begrepp från Giorgio Agamben, som antropocentrism, den antropologiska maskinen, antropomorfism och animalisering. Odensten skildrar inte människosläktet som någon tydligt definierad art, utan som en konstant fortgående maskin som identifierar sig själv i det omedelbara mötet med andra varelser. De ständiga antropomorfiseringarna och animaliseringarna som äger rum i romanen gör att en flytande gräns etableras mellan humant och animalt

DNA-dependent conversion of Oct-1 and Oct-2 into transcriptional repressors by Groucho/TLE

POU domain proteins contain a bipartite DNA-binding element that can confer allosteric control of coactivator recruitment. Dimerization of Oct-1 and Oct-2 on palindromic response elements results in the conformational dependent inclusion or exclusion of the transcriptional coactivator OBF-1. In this paper, we demonstrate that Oct-1 and Oct-2 can function as transcriptional repressors by recruiting and physically interacting with members of the Grg/TLE family of corepressors. In accordance with a model of DNA induced cofactor assembly, and analogous to the recruitment of the OBF-1 coactivator, the different Grg/TLE members can discriminate between both Oct-1 and Oct-2, and the monomeric or dimeric nature of the POU/DNA complex

An amphioxus orthologue of the estrogen receptor that does not bind estradiol: Insights into estrogen receptor evolution

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The origin of nuclear receptors (NRs) and the question whether the ancestral NR was a liganded or an unliganded transcription factor has been recently debated. To obtain insight into the evolution of the ligand binding ability of estrogen receptors (ER), we comparatively characterized the ER from the protochordate amphioxus (<it>Branchiostoma floridae</it>), and the ER from lamprey (<it>Petromyzon marinus</it>), a basal vertebrate.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Extensive phylogenetic studies as well as signature analysis allowed us to confirm that the amphioxus ER (amphiER) and the lamprey ER (lampER) belong to the ER group. LampER behaves as a "classical" vertebrate ER, as it binds to specific DNA Estrogen Responsive Elements (EREs), and is activated by estradiol (E₂), the classical ER natural ligand. In contrast, we found that although amphiER binds EREs, it is unable to bind E₂and to activate transcription in response to E₂. Among the 7 natural and synthetic ER ligands tested as well as a large repertoire of 14 cholesterol derivatives, only Bisphenol A (an endocrine disruptor with estrogenic activity) bound to amphiER, suggesting that a ligand binding pocket exists within the receptor. Parsimony analysis considering all available ER sequences suggest that the ancestral ER was not able to bind E₂and that this ability evolved specifically in the vertebrate lineage. This result does not support a previous analysis based on ancestral sequence reconstruction that proposed the ancestral steroid receptor to bind estradiol. We show that biased taxonomic sampling can alter the calculation of ancestral sequence and that the previous result might stem from a high proportion of vertebrate ERs in the dataset used to compute the ancestral sequence.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Taken together, our results highlight the importance of comparative experimental approaches vs ancestral reconstructions for the evolutionary study of endocrine systems: comparative analysis of extant ERs suggests that the ancestral ER did not bind estradiol and that it gained the ability to be regulated by estradiol specifically in the vertebrate lineage, before lamprey split.</p

Verksamhetsberättelse 2008

QC 20210604</p

Verksamhetsberättelse 2009

QC 20210607</p

The nomos of the university : Introducing the professor's privilege in 1940s Sweden

The paper examines the introduction of the so-called professor’s privilege in Sweden in the 1940s and shows how this legal principle for university patents emerged out of reforms of techno-science and the patent law around World War II. These political processes prompted questions concerning the nature and functions of university research: How is academic science different than other forms of knowledge production? What are the contributions of universities for economy and welfare? Who is the rightful owner of scientific findings? Is academic science ‘‘work’’? By following the introduction of the professor’s privilege, the paper shows how spokespersons for the academic profession addressed such questions and contributed to a new definition of university science through boundary-setting, normative descriptions, and by producing symbolic relationships between science and the economy. The totality of those positions is here referred to as a ‘‘nomos’’ – that is: a generic and durable set of seemingly axiomatic claims about universities. This Swedish nomos, as it took shape in the 1940s, amalgamated classical notions of academic science as exceptional and autonomous with emerging ideas of inventiveness and close connections between academics and business. Crucially, though, the academic-industrial relations embedded in this nomos were private and individual, thus in sharp conflict with the ideas of entrepreneurial universities evolving globally by the end of the 20th century

The handshake : Swedish industrial research policy 1940-1980

The thesis follows the emergence of industrial research policy in Sweden from the 1940s to the early 1980s. It reveals political principles and key considerations at stake when a group of state supported industrial research institutes were established and reorganized during the period. The institutes were knowledge producers in industries as paper and pulp, textiles, iron and steel, food, and production engineering. They were closely linked with the technical universities in Stockholm and Gothenburg and their position at the nexus of academe, state policy and industry gave the institutes a central role in managing relations between these domains Two questions are at the core of the analysis: 1. How did political actors define the roles and responsibilities of state and industry for industrially oriented technical re-search? 2. How did they define relations between scientific knowledge production, industrial production and society? A key hypothesis of the study is that the industrial research policy that emerged in the 1940s is to be understood as a “handshake” between an organized industry on the one hand, and the Swedish state on the other. Theoretically, the handshake was an agreement between the government’s "helping hand" and the "visible hand" of industrial organizations. The handshake implied a general agreement on the distri-bution of responsibility for technical-industrial research. Conceptually, the responsi-bility was divided so that the state financed “basic research” whereas industry fi-nanced “applied research”. The latter part of the thesis explains how the handshake was released in the 1960s as the role of the state moved more towards an active and interfering role in the Swedish economy. Formally, and in practice, this meant that the state now took responsibility for applied research, which up until then had been considered an industrial domain.QC 20121109</p

Verksamhetsberättelse 2008

QC 20210604</p