Everything\u27s Zen: Review of The Body Artist by Don DeLillo

Reading the beginning of Don DeLillo’s latest book feels like groping through a room in the blinding morning light before you’ve had a cup of coffee. Words flow from one impression to the next through the half-articulated thoughts of Laura, the body artist, who presses the “what’s it called, the lever” of the toaster as she performs her breakfast rituals

Getting Conspiratorial: Review of: Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to the X-files by Peter Knight

Peter Knight begins his foray into the conspiratorial corners of popular culture with the following provocation: conspiracy theories are no longer the “delusional rantings” of the fringe elements in society, but rather constitute “many people’s normal way of thinking about who they are and how the world works.” Conspiracy theories, in his view, reflect a general skepticism of governmental authority, covert actions, “official” versions of history, and, more broadly, express a philosophical anxiety about agency and causality in these postmodern, poststructural times—and he argues that this skepticism is largely justified

Review of the Culture of Lies and The Museum of Unconditional Surrender by Dubravka Ugresic

In 1993, a Danish critic reviewing Dubravka Ugrešić\u27s novel Fording the Stream of Consciousness, a clever satire of a literary conference, accused her of engaging in a crass form of literary escapism when she should have been writing about the bloody war raging at home in her native Yugoslavia. Since the novel was first published in 1988, this criticism was entirely misplaced. In fact, the war has been on her mind the entire time, as is evident from her two most recent books, The Culture of Lies (essays 1991-1998) and The Museum of Unconditional Surrender (1991-1996)

The Double Writing of Agota Kristof and the New Europe

Agota Kristof, a native of Hungary who lives in Switzerland and writes in French, has written a trilogy of novels that explore the borderlines and fractured history of the New Europe : The Notebook (1986), The Proof (1988), and The Third Lie (1991). Set in an unnamed Central European country, the novels traverse the three successive shocks of Nazism, Socialism, and Capitalism. Through the device of identical twin narrators, brothers Lucas and Claus, Kristof inscribes the story/history (histoire) with a double writing that opposes personal and official histories. But this opposition is not a simple one, for the two versions are combined into a narrative Moebius strip that continually exposes the act of its own composition. Although her writing is deceptively naive, the narrative structure of the trilogy forms the architecture of a fictional labyrinth that can be read as a parable for Europe. Which narrative is the authoritative one? Each successive novel rewrites the story of the previous one in a self-consuming fictional trap, a reminder that history is always narrated by the victor. This article demonstrates how Kristof\u27s works enact, both in the narrative and at the linguistic level, the double writing of history, and relates her works to contemporary debates that trouble the conscience of the New Europe

The Rodin-Ohno hypothesis that two enzyme superfamilies descended from one ancestral gene: an unlikely scenario for the origins of translation that will not be dismissed

Abstract Background Because amino acid activation is rate-limiting for uncatalyzed protein synthesis, it is a key puzzle in understanding the origin of the genetic code. Two unrelated classes (I and II) of contemporary aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRS) now translate the code. Observing that codons for the most highly conserved, Class I catalytic peptides, when read in the reverse direction, are very nearly anticodons for Class II defining catalytic peptides, Rodin and Ohno proposed that the two superfamilies descended from opposite strands of the same ancestral gene. This unusual hypothesis languished for a decade, perhaps because it appeared to be unfalsifiable. Results The proposed sense/antisense alignment makes important predictions. Fragments that align in antiparallel orientations, and contain the respective active sites, should catalyze the same two reactions catalyzed by contemporary synthetases. Recent experiments confirmed that prediction. Invariant cores from both classes, called Urzymes after Ur = primitive, authentic, plus enzyme and representing ~20% of the contemporary structures, can be expressed and exhibit high, proportionate rate accelerations for both amino-acid activation and tRNA acylation. A major fraction (60%) of the catalytic rate acceleration by contemporary synthetases resides in segments that align sense/antisense. Bioinformatic evidence for sense/antisense ancestry extends to codons specifying the invariant secondary and tertiary structures outside the active sites of the two synthetase classes. Peptides from a designed, 46-residue gene constrained by Rosetta to encode Class I and II ATP binding sites with fully complementary sequences both accelerate amino acid activation by ATP ~400 fold. Conclusions Biochemical and bioinformatic results substantially enhance the posterior probability that ancestors of the two synthetase classes arose from opposite strands of the same ancestral gene. The remarkable acceleration by short peptides of the rate-limiting step in uncatalyzed protein synthesis, together with the synergy of synthetase Urzymes and their cognate tRNAs, introduce a new paradigm for the origin of protein catalysts, emphasize the potential relevance of an operational RNA code embedded in the tRNA acceptor stems, and challenge the RNA-World hypothesis. Reviewers This article was reviewed by Dr. Paul Schimmel (nominated by Laura Landweber), Dr. Eugene Koonin and Professor David Ardell

Functional Class I and II Amino Acid-activating Enzymes Can Be Coded by Opposite Strands of the Same Gene

Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRS) catalyze both chemical steps that translate the universal genetic code. Rodin and Ohno offered an explanation for the existence of two aaRS classes, observing that codons for the most highly conserved Class I active-site residues are anticodons for corresponding Class II active-site residues. They proposed that the two classes arose simultaneously, by translation of opposite strands from the same gene. We have characterized wild-type 46-residue peptides containing ATP-binding sites of Class I and II synthetases and those coded by a gene designed by Rosetta to encode the corresponding peptides on opposite strands. Catalysis by WT and designed peptides is saturable, and the designed peptides are sensitive to active-site residue mutation. All have comparable apparent second-order rate constants 2.9–7.0E-3 m−1 s−1 or ∼750,000–1,300,000 times the uncatalyzed rate. The activities of the two complementary peptides demonstrate that the unique information in a gene can have two functional interpretations, one from each complementary strand. The peptides contain phylogenetic signatures of longer, more sophisticated catalysts we call Urzymes and are short enough to bridge the gap between them and simpler uncoded peptides. Thus, they directly substantiate the sense/antisense coding ancestry of Class I and II aaRS. Furthermore, designed 46-mers achieve similar catalytic proficiency to wild-type 46-mers by significant increases in both kcat and Km values, supporting suggestions that the earliest peptide catalysts activated ATP for biosynthetic purposes

The Rodin-Ohno hypothesis that two enzyme superfamilies descended from one ancestral gene: an unlikely scenario for the origins of translation that will not be dismissed

Background Because amino acid activation is rate-limiting for uncatalyzed protein synthesis, it is a key puzzle in understanding the origin of the genetic code. Two unrelated classes (I and II) of contemporary aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRS) now translate the code. Observing that codons for the most highly conserved, Class I catalytic peptides, when read in the reverse direction, are very nearly anticodons for Class II defining catalytic peptides, Rodin and Ohno proposed that the two superfamilies descended from opposite strands of the same ancestral gene. This unusual hypothesis languished for a decade, perhaps because it appeared to be unfalsifiable. Results The proposed sense/antisense alignment makes important predictions. Fragments that align in antiparallel orientations, and contain the respective active sites, should catalyze the same two reactions catalyzed by contemporary synthetases. Recent experiments confirmed that prediction. Invariant cores from both classes, called Urzymes after Ur = primitive, authentic, plus enzyme and representing ~20% of the contemporary structures, can be expressed and exhibit high, proportionate rate accelerations for both amino-acid activation and tRNA acylation. A major fraction (60%) of the catalytic rate acceleration by contemporary synthetases resides in segments that align sense/antisense. Bioinformatic evidence for sense/antisense ancestry extends to codons specifying the invariant secondary and tertiary structures outside the active sites of the two synthetase classes. Peptides from a designed, 46-residue gene constrained by Rosetta to encode Class I and II ATP binding sites with fully complementary sequences both accelerate amino acid activation by ATP ~400 fold. Conclusions Biochemical and bioinformatic results substantially enhance the posterior probability that ancestors of the two synthetase classes arose from opposite strands of the same ancestral gene. The remarkable acceleration by short peptides of the rate-limiting step in uncatalyzed protein synthesis, together with the synergy of synthetase Urzymes and their cognate tRNAs, introduce a new paradigm for the origin of protein catalysts, emphasize the potential relevance of an operational RNA code embedded in the tRNA acceptor stems, and challenge the RNA-World hypothesis. Reviewers This article was reviewed by Dr. Paul Schimmel (nominated by Laura Landweber), Dr. Eugene Koonin and Professor David Ardell

Review of: Remaining Relevant after Communism: The Role of the Writer in Eastern Europe

Murder in Byzantium might disappoint the real aficionados of detective fiction, at least those who like their thrillers light and simple. Kristeva’s novel is anything but that. Part academic novel, part psychoanalytical treaty on childhood scars, part historical novel on the Crusades, part travel narrative, part political essay on the state of the world today, part philosophical meditation on identity, this is a rich and..

The Avant-Garde Aesthetic of Vojtěch Mašek

Vojtěch Mašek, a graduate of the Czech film school FAMU, is not a traditional cartoonist. Given that his wide-ranging interests have led him to collaborations in film, theater, anthropology, and literature, he has been relatively free to invent his own unique aesthetic and approach to comics. Whether working in fiction or in a more documentary vein, however, what makes Mašek\u27s work unusual is the way that he revives and recuperates an avant-garde sensibility in his graphic narrative. Mašek is drawn to stories about monstrosity—some figurative, like Fred Brunold\u27s melancholic freakshow in Monstrkabaret Freda Brunolda uvádí [Fred Brunold\u27s Monster Cabaret presents] (2004–2008), which he co-wrote with Džian Baban, and others literal, in the case of mistreated minorities and dark episodes in Czech history (see O přibjehi [Stories] (2010) about Roma in the Czech Republic and the series Nejisté domovy [Precarious Homes] (2015) about children from orphanages and other institutions). This fascination with cruelty and the absurd is expressed through his use of collage, repetition, intertextual references, and unconventional page layouts, all of which renders his work highly unusual and experimental. From an ideological standpoint, Mašek\u27s work is quite subversive, as these stories undermine standard assumptions about who is marked as deviant and what is considered normal. This essay analyzes how Mašek develops his avant-garde aesthetic in the Monstrkabaret trilogy, which is primarily fictional but reflects historical realities, and compares this to his later work 1952: Jak Gottwald zavraždil Slánského [How Gottwald Murdered Slansky], (2014), which is historical in focus but elaborated with fictional details