An English cover-up: masks, murders, and English cruelty in Goncourt, Lorrain, and Schwob

Fin-de-siècle writers from diverse disciplines were drawn to the seductive potential of masks and disguise; mask-wearing characters of indefinite identity, indeterminate gender, and insecure psychology proliferate in their texts. However, when characters are designated as English in such stories, they are also, and with remarkable frequency, associated with cruelty or murder: the mask-wielding murderers of Marcel Schwob’s ‘MM. Burke et Hare, Assassins’ carry out their crimes in Britain upon British victims; Edmond de Goncourt weaves his theatrical narrative around the mask-like demeanour of Lord Annandale in La Faustin; and Jean Lorrain’s malicious Lord Ethal exacerbates the Duc de Fréneuse’s perverse obsessions with masks in Monsieur de Phocas. This article explores this unexpected correlation, and examines the ways that English masks are used as narrative devices – at once to mould and play with national distinctions, and to reflect upon the psychological state of the French subject

The Somatic Genomic Landscape of Glioblastoma

We describe the landscape of somatic genomic alterations based on multi-dimensional and comprehensive characterization of more than 500 glioblastoma tumors (GBMs). We identify several novel mutated genes as well as complex rearrangements of signature receptors including EGFR and PDGFRA. TERT promoter mutations are shown to correlate with elevated mRNA expression, supporting a role in telomerase reactivation. Correlative analyses confirm that the survival advantage of the proneural subtype is conferred by the G-CIMP phenotype, and MGMT DNA methylation may be a predictive biomarker for treatment response only in classical subtype GBM. Integrative analysis of genomic and proteomic profiles challenges the notion of therapeutic inhibition of a pathway as an alternative to inhibition of the target itself. These data will facilitate the discovery of therapeutic and diagnostic target candidates, the validation of research and clinical observations and the generation of unanticipated hypotheses that can advance our molecular understanding of this lethal cancer

The Somatic Genomic Landscape of Glioblastoma

We describe the landscape of somatic genomic alterations based on multidimensional and comprehensive characterization of more than 500 glioblastoma tumors (GBMs). We identify several novel mutated genes as well as complex rearrangements of signature receptors, including EGFR and PDGFRA. TERT promoter mutations are shown to correlate with elevated mRNA expression, supporting a role in telomerase reactivation. Correlative analyses confirm that the survival advantage of the proneural subtype is conferred by the G-CIMP phenotype, and MGMT DNA methylation may be a predictive biomarker for treatment response only in classical subtype GBM. Integrative analysis of genomic and proteomic profiles challenges the notion of therapeutic inhibition of a pathway as an alternative to inhibition of the target itself. These data will facilitate the discovery of therapeutic and diagnostic target candidates, the validation of research and clinical observations and the generation of unanticipated hypotheses that can advance our molecular understanding of this lethal canceropen40