The Metacolonial State: Pakistan, the Deoband 'Ulama and the Biopolitics of Islam.

"The Metacolonial State" is a genealogical project that is concerned with understanding the nature of political space in contemporary Pakistan. My contention is that political Islam, and specifically the Deoband and Taliban ‘ulama, have taken on an increasingly biopolitical character. As “a history of the present” I show how the crisis in Pakistan today is itself a manifestation of the biopoliticization of Islam. While the Deoband ‘ulama remain the primary thematic subject and focus of the work, they are largely signposts towards a broader attempt to disclose a cartography of power. Within the multiplicity of Islamist practices in Pakistan, the Deoband movement has emerged as one of the most highly organized and yet remarkably polycentric institutions that claim orthodox religious authority. Until September 11 2001, scholarship on political Islam in Pakistan had been focused on ‘modernist’ and ‘fundamentalist’ movements; traditional ‘ulama were considered to be politically and culturally insignificant. The dramatic rise of the Taliban and its fateful alliance with Al-Qaeda have however resulted in a proliferation of new discourses about the ‘ulama, their traditions and educational institutions. Precisely because of the imperial gaze directed towards the control, reform and regulation of Islam, this study places our understanding of Islamist politics within a broader, complex, and overlapping set of governmentalities and competing sovereign powers. The work aims to be a material, embodied history and politics of the ‘ulama as a form of power. I argue that while ‘ulama practices have undergone a series of dramatic transformations since 1947, these cannot be understood in isolation from the broader militarization of political space; hence the need for opening this investigation with an analysis of the mullah-military complex that emerged in the 1980’s. The ‘metacolonial’ is itself a neologism that articulates two influential critical paradigms: Foucault’s concern with biopolitics and governmentality and Agamben’s illuminating thesis on sovereign power, bare life and the state of exception. Pakistan is shown to be an exemplary space of biopolitical sovereignty where the state of exception takes on a near permanent localization and where distinctions between dictatorship and democracy, between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ forces becomes indistinctPh.D.HistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75807/1/janna_1.pd

X-ray screening identifies active site and allosteric inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 main protease

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 is creating tremendous human suffering. To date, no effective drug is available to directly treat the disease. In a search for a drug against COVID-19, we have performed a high-throughput X-ray crystallographic screen of two repurposing drug libraries against the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (M^(pro)), which is essential for viral replication. In contrast to commonly applied X-ray fragment screening experiments with molecules of low complexity, our screen tested already approved drugs and drugs in clinical trials. From the three-dimensional protein structures, we identified 37 compounds that bind to M^(pro). In subsequent cell-based viral reduction assays, one peptidomimetic and six non-peptidic compounds showed antiviral activity at non-toxic concentrations. We identified two allosteric binding sites representing attractive targets for drug development against SARS-CoV-2

Massive X-ray screening reveals two allosteric drug binding sites of SARS-CoV-2 main protease

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 is creating tremendous health problems and economical challenges for mankind. To date, no effective drug is available to directly treat the disease and prevent virus spreading. In a search for a drug against COVID-19, we have performed a massive X-ray crystallographic screen of repurposing drug libraries containing 5953 individual compounds against the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro), which is a potent drug target as it is essential for the virus replication. In contrast to commonly applied X-ray fragment screening experiments with molecules of low complexity, our screen tested already approved drugs and drugs in clinical trials. From the three-dimensional protein structures, we identified 37 compounds binding to Mpro. In subsequent cell-based viral reduction assays, one peptidomimetic and five non-peptidic compounds showed antiviral activity at non-toxic concentrations. Interestingly, two compounds bind outside the active site to the native dimer interface in close proximity to the S1 binding pocket. Another compound binds in a cleft between the catalytic and dimerization domain of Mpro. Neither binding site is related to the enzymatic active site and both represent attractive targets for drug development against SARS-CoV-2. This X-ray screening approach thus has the potential to help deliver an approved drug on an accelerated time-scale for this and future pandemics

Proceedings of Abstracts, School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science Research Conference 2022

© 2022 The Author(s). This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. For further details please see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Plenary by Prof. Timothy Foat, ‘Indoor dispersion at Dstl and its recent application to COVID-19 transmission’ is © Crown copyright (2022), Dstl. This material is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: [email protected] present proceedings record the abstracts submitted and accepted for presentation at SPECS 2022, the second edition of the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science Research Conference that took place online, the 12th April 2022

Colonisation of hospital surfaces from low- and middle-income countries by extended spectrum β-lactamase- and carbapenemase-producing bacteria

Hospital surfaces can harbour bacterial pathogens, which may disseminate and cause nosocomial infections, contributing towards mortality in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). During the BARNARDS study, hospital surfaces from neonatal wards were sampled to assess the degree of environmental surface and patient care equipment colonisation by Gram-negative bacteria (GNB) carrying antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Here, we perform PCR screening for extended-spectrum β-lactamases (blaCTX-M-15) and carbapenemases (blaNDM, blaOXA-48-like and blaKPC), MALDI-TOF MS identification of GNB carrying ARGs, and further analysis by whole genome sequencing of bacterial isolates. We determine presence of consistently dominant clones and their relatedness to strains causing neonatal sepsis. Higher prevalence of carbapenemases is observed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia, compared to other countries, and are mostly found in surfaces near the sink drain. Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterobacter hormaechei, Acinetobacter baumannii, Serratia marcescens and Leclercia adecarboxylata are dominant; ST15 K. pneumoniae is identified from the same ward on multiple occasions suggesting clonal persistence within the same environment, and is found to be identical to isolates causing neonatal sepsis in Pakistan over similar time periods. Our data suggests persistence of dominant clones across multiple time points, highlighting the need for assessment of Infection Prevention and Control guidelines