An Exploratory Study Examining Germany’s Integration Processes of Syrian Refugees into Society – Multiculturalism or a Post-Migrant Society?

The aim of this exploratory study is to examine factors, that account for the differential treatment of Syrian refugees in Germany, in the wake of the Syrian Refugee Crisis. The paper will discuss motives within the context of national citizenship laws, security issues, and public perception of asylum seekers. Since 2015, Germany has experienced a surge of refugees from Syria fleeing danger and persecution. The conflict has placed a strain on the German parliament to adapt national policies and develop integration programs, as well as preserve the fundamentals of German society. Along with distinct historical events, such as the Holocaust, national identity has been shaping the public’s perception towards migrants. The paper will examine whether Germany is leaning towards a policy of multiculturalism or a post-migrant society with integration deficits. It will look at the steps Germany has taken to assist refugees with integration processes, as well as the degree to which Syrians have adjusted to German culture. To determine integration trends, a case study was conducted in Berlin, Germany, with a focus group of fifty-five participants. It is through a complex analysis of factors, that a larger picture of today’s integration issues can be constructed

The Composition and the Structure of MCC/Eisosomes in Neurospora crassa

MCC/eisosomes are protein-organized domains in the plasma membrane of fungi and algae. However, the composition and function(s) of MCC/eisosomes in the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa were previously unknown. To identify proteins that localize to MCC/eisosomes in N. crassa, we isolated proteins that co-purified with the core MCC/eisosome protein LSP-1, which was tagged with GFP. Proteins that co-fractionated with LSP-1:GFP were then identified by mass spectrometry. Eighteen proteins were GFP-tagged and used to identify six proteins that highly colocalized with the MCC/eisosome marker LSP-1:RFP, while five other proteins showed partial overlap with MCC/eisosomes. Seven of these proteins showed amino acid sequence homology with proteins known to localize to MCC/eisosomes in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. However, homologs of three proteins known to localize to MCC/eisosomes in S. cerevisiae (Can1, Pkh1/2, and Fhn1) were not found to colocalize with MCC/eisosome proteins in N. crassa by fluorescence microscopy. Interestingly, one new eisosome protein (glutamine-fructose-6-phosphate aminotransferase, gene ID: NCU07366) was detected in our studies. These findings demonstrate that there are interspecies differences of the protein composition of MCC/eisosomes. To gain further insight, molecular modeling and bioinformatics analysis of the identified proteins were used to propose the organization of MCC/eisosomes in N. crassa. A model will be discussed for how the broad range of functions predicted for the proteins localized to MCC/eisosomes, including cell wall synthesis, response and signaling, transmembrane transport, and actin organization, suggests that MCC/eisosomes act as organizing centers in the plasma membrane

Higher yields of cyclodepsipetides from Scopulariopsis brevicaulis by random mutagenesis

The ascomycete Scopulariopsis brevicaulis, which was isolated from the marine sponge Tethya aurantium, produces two cyclodepsipeptides, scopularides A and B [1]. Both peptides exhibit activity against several tumor cell lines. Within the EU-project MARINE FUNGI (EU FP7, 265926) one of our aims is to enhance the production of these secondary metabolites. We are in the process to establish two ways of random mutagenesis by both UV radiation and transposon-mediated. To this end we created UV-mutants and a miniaturised screening method was developed. UV-radiation was performed at 312 nm and the survival rate was set to 1 %. With this method a mutant library was established. To screen these mutants for higher secondary metabolites production, we developed a miniaturised screening method which includes decreased cultivation volume, fast extraction and an optimised LC-MS analysis format. Using the UV mutagenesis, we were able to identify several mutants with a higher scopularide production in comparison to the wild type. One of these mutants, which produces three times more biomass and more than double the amount of scopularide A, has been used for another round of mutation. Next generation sequencing is being employed to identify the molecular genetic basis of the observed mutations. In parallel we employ transposable elements to introduce mutants [2]. The impact of transposons on gene expression as well as their ability to cause major mutations within the genome or single genes makes them an interesting tool for random mutagenesis [3, 4, 5]. We employ the Vader transposon in its homologous host and found that Vader mostly integrates within or very close to genes. Thus it appears to be a useful tool for transposon-mediated mutagenesis in A. niger (6). At current we try to enhance its usability by modifying the Vader element

Nilpotent pairs, dual pairs, and sheets

Recently, V.Ginzburg introduced the notion of a principal nilpotent pair (= pn-pair) in a semisimple Lie algebra {\frak g}. It is a double counterpart of the notion of a regular nilpotent element. A pair (e_1,e_2) of commuting nilpotent elements is called a pn-pair, if the dimension of their simultaneous centralizer is equal to the rank of {\frak g} and some bi-homogeneity condition is satisfied. Ginzburg proved that many familiar results of the `ordinary' theory have analogues for pn-pairs. The aim of this article is to develop the theory of nilpotent pairs a bit further and to present some applications of it to dual pairs and sheets. It is shown that a large portion of Ginzburg's theory can be extended to the pairs whose simultaneous centraliser is of dimension rk{\frak g}+1. Such pairs are called almost pn-pairs. It is worth noting that the very existence of almost pn-pairs is a purely "double" phenomenon, because the dimension of "ordinary" orbits is always even. We prove that to any principal or almost nilpotent pair one naturally associates a dual pair. Moreover, this dual pair is reductive if and only if e_1 and e_2 can be included in commuting sl_2-triples. We also study sheets containing members of pn-pairs. Some cases are described, where these sheets are smooth and admit a section.Comment: 27 pages, LaTeX 2.0

The P-type pentatricopeptide repeat protein DWEORG1 is a non-previously reported rPPR protein of Arabidopsis mitochondria

Gene expression in plant mitochondria is mainly regulated by nuclear-encoded proteins on a post-transcriptional level. Pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins play a major role by participating in mRNA stability, splicing, RNA editing, and translation initiation. PPR proteins were also shown to be part of the mitochondrial ribosome (rPPR proteins), which may act as regulators of gene expression in plants. In this study, we focus on a mitochondrial-located P-type PPR protein-DWEORG1-from Arabidopsis thaliana. Its abundance in mitochondria is high, and it has a similar expression pattern as rPPR proteins. Mutant dweorg1 plants exhibit a slow-growth phenotype. Using ribosome profiling, a decrease in translation efficiency for cox2, rps4, rpl5, and ccmFN2 was observed in dweorg1 mutants, correlating with a reduced accumulation of the Cox2 protein in these plants. In addition, the mitochondrial rRNA levels are significantly reduced in dweorg1 compared with the wild type. DWEORG1 co-migrates with the ribosomal proteins Rps4 and Rpl16 in sucrose gradients, suggesting an association of DWEORG1 with the mitoribosome. Collectively, this data suggests that DWEORG1 encodes a novel rPPR protein that is needed for the translation of cox2, rps4, rpl5, and ccmFN2 and provides a stabilizing function for mitochondrial ribosomes

Untersuchung eines mitochondrialen Proteins führt zu neuen Erkenntnissen über die Proteinbiosynthese in pflanzlichen Mitochondrien

Der Beitrag stellt aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse der Abteilung ›Botanische Genetik und Molekularbiologie‹ der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel vor, die bei der Untersuchung molekularer Prozesse innerhalb der pflanzlichen Mitochondrien des Modellorganismus Arabidopsis thaliana gewonnen wurden. Sie legen nahe, dass Ribosomen in den Mitochondrien eine variable Zusammensetzung haben und die Genexpression unter verschiedenen Bedingungen steuern.This article presents recent research results from the Department of ›Botanical Genetics and Molecular Biology‹ at Kiel University, which were obtained by studying molecular processes within the plant mitochondria of the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana. They suggest that ribosomes in mitochondria have variable composition and control gene expression under different conditions

Development and Validation of a Fast and Optimized Screening Method for Enhanced Production of Secondary Metabolites Using the Marine Scopulariopsis brevicaulis Strain LF580 Producing Anti-Cancer Active Scopularide A and B

Natural compounds from marine fungi are an excellent source for the discovery and development of new drug leads. The distinct activity profiles of the two cyclodepsipeptides scopularide A and B against cancer cell lines set their marine producer strain Scopulariopsis brevicaulis LF580 into the focus of the EU project MARINE FUNGI. One of the main goals was the development of a sustainable biotechnological production process for these compounds. The secondary metabolite production of strain LF580 was optimized by random mutagenesis employing UV radiation. For a fast and reliable detection of the intracellular secondary metabolite production level, a miniaturized bioactivity-independent screening method was developed, as the random mutagenesis yielded a large number of mutants to be analysed quantitatively and none of the existing hyphenated bioassay-dependent screening systems could be applied. The method includes decreased cultivation volume, a fast extraction procedure as well as an optimized LC-MS analysis. We show that deviation could be specifically reduced at each step of the process: The measuring deviation during the analysis could be minimized to 5% and technical deviation occurring in the downstream part to 10–15%. Biological variation during the cultivation process still has the major influence on the overall variation. However, the approach led to a 10-fold reduction of time and similar effects on costs and effort compared to standard reference screening methods. The method was applied to screen the UV-mutants library of Scopulariopsis brevicaulis LF580. For validation purposes, the occurring variations in the miniaturized scale were compared to those in the classical Erlenmeyer flask scale. This proof of concept was performed using the wild type strain and 23 randomly selected mutant strains. One specific mutant strain with an enhanced production behavior could be obtained

Comparison of distance measures for historical spelling variants

This paper describes the comparison of selected distance measures in their applicability for supporting retrieval of historical spelling variants (hsv). The interdisciplinary project Rule-based search in text databases with nonstandard orthography develops a fuzzy fulltext search engine for historical text documents. This engine should provide easier text access for experts as well as interested amateurs. The FlexMetric framework enhances the distance measure algorithm found to be most efficient according to the results of the evaluation. This measure can be used for multiple applications, including searching, post-ranking, transformation and even reflection about one’s own language.IFIP International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Theory and Practice - Speech and Natural LanguageRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI