A novel canine kidney cell line model for the evaluation of neoplastic development: karyotype evolution associated with spontaneous immortalization and tumorigenicity

The molecular mechanisms underlying spontaneous neoplastic transformation in cultured mammalian cells remain poorly understood, confounding recognition of parallels with the biology of naturally occurring cancer. The broad use of tumorigenic canine cell lines as research tools, coupled with the accumulation of cytogenomic data from naturally occurring canine cancers, makes the domestic dog an ideal system in which to investigate these relationships. We developed a canine kidney cell line, CKB1-3T7, which allows prospective examination of the onset of spontaneous immortalization and tumorigenicity. We documented the accumulation of cytogenomic aberrations in CKB1-3T7 over 24 months in continuous culture. The majority of aberrations emerged in parallel with key phenotypic changes in cell morphology, growth kinetics, and tumor incidence and latency. Focal deletion of CDKN2A/B emerged first, preceding the onset and progression of tumorigenic potential, and progressed to a homozygous deletion across the cell population during extended culture. Interestingly, CKB1-3T7 demonstrated a tumorigenic phenotype in vivo prior to exhibiting loss of contact inhibition in vitro. We also performed the first genome-wide characterization of the canine tumorigenic cell line MDCK, which also exhibited CDKN2A/B deletion. MDCK and CKB1-3T7 cells shared several additional aberrations that we have reported previously as being highly recurrent in spontaneous canine cancers, many of which, as with CDKN2A/B deletion, are evolutionarily conserved in their human counterparts. The conservation of these molecular events across multiple species, in vitro and in vivo, despite their contrasting karyotypic architecture, is a powerful indicator of a common mechanism underlying emerging neoplastic activity. Through integrated cytogenomic and phenotypic characterization of serial passages of CKB1-3T7 from initiation to development of a tumorigenic phenotype, we present a robust and readily accessible model (to be made available through the American Type Culture Collection) of spontaneous neoplastic transformation that overcomes many of the limitations of earlier studies. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10577-015-9474-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

'Vernacular Voices: Black British Poetry'

ABSTRACT Black British poetry is the province of experimenting with voice and recording rhythms beyond the iambic pentameter. Not only in performance poetry and through the spoken word, but also on the page, black British poetry constitutes and preserves a sound archive of distinct linguistic varieties. In Slave Song (1984) and Coolie Odyssey (1988), David Dabydeen employs a form of Guyanese Creole in order to linguistically render and thus commemorate the experience of slaves and indentured labourers, respectively, with the earlier collection providing annotated translations into Standard English. James Berry, Louise Bennett, and Valerie Bloom adapt Jamaican Patois to celebrate Jamaican folk culture and at times to represent and record experiences and linguistic interactions in the postcolonial metropolis. Grace Nichols and John Agard use modified forms of Guyanese Creole, with Nichols frequently constructing gendered voices whilst Agard often celebrates linguistic playfulness. The borders between linguistic varieties are by no means absolute or static, as the emergence and marked growth of ‘London Jamaican’ (Mark Sebba) indicates. Asian British writer Daljit Nagra takes liberties with English for different reasons. Rather than having recourse to established Creole languages, and blending them with Standard English, his heteroglot poems frequently emulate ‘Punglish’, the English of migrants whose first language is Punjabi. Whilst it is the language prestige of London Jamaican that has been significantly enhanced since the 1990s, a fact not only confirmed by linguistic research but also by its transethnic uses both in the streets and on the page, Nagra’s substantial success and the mainstream attention he receives also indicate the clout of vernacular voices in poetry. They have the potential to connect with oral traditions and cultural memories, to record linguistic varieties, and to endow ‘street cred’ to authors and texts. In this chapter, these double-voiced poetic languages are also read as signs of resistance against residual monologic ideologies of Englishness. © Book proposal (02/2016): The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing p. 27 of 4

Forging connections: anthologies, arts collectives, and the politics of inclusion

The changing social and political landscape of twentieth-century Britain catalysed a remarkable rise in collaborative activity by artists and activists of black and Asian heritage. Creative communities began to gather in both local and regional contexts, with the aim of sharing resources and securing an audience. This chapter records some of these many activities, tracing the groups’ genesis, manifest objectives, and key contributions. It argues that anthologising should be understood as a specifically motivated activity. Literary anthologies of poetry and fiction served to showcase the diversity of contemporary writing, while also suggesting its coherence. Drawing on the concept of “strategic essentialism” elucidated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, I show that the anthology acts to ensure the visibility of a group, bannered as a unified and singly-titled selection of texts, while also insisting on the differences within: the heterogeneous multiplicity of black and Asian British experiences and creative practices

Reconstructing womanhood, reconstructinng feminism : writings on black women

Reconstructing Womanhood, Reconstructinng Feminism is the first British feminist anthology to examine concepts of womanhood and feminism within the context of 'race' and ethnicity. This collection brings together various perspectives about 'difference' and identity. It covers a wide range of social and cultural issues including the position of Black women in the church, lesbian identity in fiction, contemporary African feminism, and British immigration law.xvii, 201 p.; 23 c

Between the Wars: Caribbean, Pan-African, and Asian Networks from (I) - Global Locals

As heart of empire, London was ‘home’ to a number of colonial writers and intellectuals from across the globe. Key figures in the history of black and Asian British writing such as activist George Padmore, the polymath novelist, dramatist, and political philosopher C. L. R. James, the poet, broadcaster, and dramatist, Una Marson, and a number of South Asians including Cedric Dover, Sajjad Zaheer, M. J. Tambimuttu, and Mulk Raj Anand were active also as public intellectuals in a wide range of political organisations and cultural networks including the Pan-African movement, the League of Coloured Peoples (1931), and the Progressive Writers Association (1935). This chapter outlines the histories, interrelationships, and connections across these distinct British-based political and cultural networks; it explores their objectives and demonstrates how their presence in Britain began to generate a number of parallel creative and political projects. These networks were to become of increasing significance in the formation of anti-colonial resistance and political movements in the period prior to Independence and decolonisation after World War II, connecting a number of these major literary figures

World music at the BBC World Service, 1942-2008: public diplomacy, cosmopolitanism, contradiction

Music plays an important role in the BBC World Service. This article shows how, across sixty five years, notionally global music has been broadcast as a pragmatic way of reaching audiences beyond Britain. There is a contradiction here. The scheduling of 'world music' undoubtedly represents a cosmopolitan imperative to embrace cultural difference. Yet it is also an instrumental means of framing programmes and appealing to those audiences which are particularly significant for the funders of the Service, namely the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Through analysis of music programming and commentary at three conjunctures (World War Two, the 1980s and the contemporary period) a changing, yet in certain respects continuous, pattern in the use of music for public diplomacy is discerned. The article concludes by suggesting that optimistic readings of cosmopolitanism fail to account sufficiently for the contradictions at stake here, contradictions which arise from persisting unequal relations of global powe