Construção do espaço museal:: ciência, educação e sociabilidade na gênese do Parque Zoobotânico do Museu Goeldi (1895-1914)

The article analyses the construction of the Zoobotanical Park of the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi during the administration of its idealizers, Emilio Goeldi (1895-1907) and Jacques Huber (1907-1914). Although the park is now an organic area and spreads across a whole block in the center of Belem (PA), Brazil, it was conceived as two distinct annexes of the museum, the zoo and the botanical garden, each located on opposite sides of the institution’s main building. These annexes were created from the expropriation, transformation, and resignification of lands, buildings and vegetables that already existed in the place. Having as starting points the concept of museality and the issues underlying the creation and functioning of museums, the text is developed in four narratives – communicational and educational, scientific, leisure and sociality, domestic –, which we understand as matrices that shaped and organized the museal space. These narratives allowed us to study the genesis of institutional identity, which, in its essence, is perpetuated to the present day.O artigo analisa a construção do Parque Zoobotânico do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi durante a gestão de seus idealizadores, Emílio Goeldi (1895-1907) e Jacques Huber (1907-1914). Embora o parque constitua hoje uma área orgânica e ocupe todo um quarteirão no centro de Belém, Pará, ele foi concebido como dois anexos distintos do museu, o jardim zoológico e o horto botânico, situados, cada um, em lados opostos ao prédio principal da instituição. Esses anexos foram criados a partir da desapropriação, transformação e ressignificação de terrenos, edificações e vegetais que já existiam no local. Tendo como pontos de partida o conceito de musealidade e as questões que fundamentam a criação e o funcionamento dos museus, o texto se desenvolve em quatro narrativas – comunicacional e educativa, científica, lazer e sociabilidade, doméstica – que entendemos como matrizes que deram forma e organizaram o espaço museal. Essas narrativas permitiram estudar a gênese da identidade institucional, a qual, em sua essência, se perpetua até a atualidade

Voltage-dependent Anion Channel-1 (VDAC-1) Contributes to ATP Release and Cell Volume Regulation in Murine Cells

Extracellular ATP regulates several elements of the mucus clearance process important for pulmonary host defense. However, the mechanisms mediating ATP release onto airway surfaces remain unknown. Mitochondrial voltage-dependent anion channels (mt-VDACs) translocate a variety of metabolites, including ATP and ADP, across the mitochondrial outer membrane, and a plasmalemmal splice variant (pl-VDAC-1) has been proposed to mediate ATP translocation across the plasma membrane. We tested the involvement of VDAC-1 in ATP release in a series of studies in murine cells. First, the full-length coding sequence was cloned from a mouse airway epithelial cell line (MTE7b−) and transfected into NIH 3T3 cells, and pl-VDAC-1-transfected cells exhibited higher rates of ATP release in response to medium change compared with mock-transfected cells. Second, ATP release was compared in cells isolated from VDAC-1 knockout [VDAC-1 (−/−)] and wild-type (WT) mice. Fibroblasts from VDAC-1 (−/−) mice released less ATP than WT mice in response to a medium change. Well-differentiated cultures from nasal and tracheal epithelia of VDAC-1 (−/−) mice exhibited less ATP release in response to luminal hypotonic challenge than WT mice. Confocal microscopy studies revealed that cell volume acutely increased in airway epithelia from both VDAC-1 (−/−) and WT mice after luminal hypotonic challenge, but VDAC-1 (−/−) cells exhibited a slower regulatory volume decrease (RVD) than WT cells. Addition of ATP or apyrase to the luminal surface of VDAC-1 (−/−) or WT cultures with hypotonic challenge produced similar initial cell height responses and RVD kinetics in both cell types, suggesting that involvement of VDAC-1 in RVD is through ATP release. Taken together, these studies suggest that VDAC-1, directly or indirectly, contributes to ATP release from murine cells. However, the observation that VDAC-1 knockout cells released a significant amount of ATP suggests that other molecules also play a role in this function

Epigenetic marks in the mature pollen of Quercus suber L. (Fagaceae)

We have analysed the distribution of epigenetic marks for histone modifications at lysine residues H3 and H4, and DNA methylation, in the nuclei of mature pollen cells of the Angiosperm tree Quercus suber; a monoecious wind pollinated species with a protandrous system, and a long post-pollination period. The ultrasonic treatment developed for the isolation of pollen nuclei proved to be a fast and reliable method, preventing the interference of cell wall autofluorescence in the in situ immunolabelling assays. In contrast with previous studies on herbaceous species with short progamic phases, our results are consistent with a high level of silent (5-mC and H3K9me2) epigenetic marks on chromatin of the generative nucleus, and the prevalence of active marks (H3K9me3 and H4Kac) in the vegetative nucleus. The findings are discussed in terms of the pollination/fertilization timing strategy adopted by this plant specie

Rho Signaling Regulates Pannexin 1-mediated ATP Release from Airway Epithelia

ATP released from airway epithelial cells promotes purinergic receptor-regulated mucociliary clearance activities necessary for innate lung defense. Cell swelling-induced membrane stretch/strain is a common stimulus that promotes airway epithelial ATP release, but the mechanisms transducing cell swelling into ATP release are incompletely understood. Using knockdown and knockout approaches, we tested the hypothesis that pannexin 1 mediates ATP release from hypotonically swollen airway epithelia and investigated mechanisms regulating this activity. Well differentiated primary cultures of human bronchial epithelial cells subjected to hypotonic challenge exhibited enhanced ATP release, which was paralleled by the uptake of the pannexin probe propidium iodide. Both responses were reduced by pannexin 1 inhibitors and by knocking down pannexin 1. Importantly, hypotonicity-evoked ATP release from freshly excised tracheas and dye uptake in primary tracheal epithelial cells were impaired in pannexin 1 knockout mice. Hypotonicity-promoted ATP release and dye uptake in primary well differentiated human bronchial epithelial cells was accompanied by RhoA activation and myosin light chain phosphorylation and was reduced by the RhoA dominant negative mutant RhoA(T19N) and Rho and myosin light chain kinase inhibitors. ATP release and Rho activation were reduced by highly selective inhibitors of transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4). Lastly, knocking down TRPV4 impaired hypotonicity-evoked airway epithelial ATP release. Our data suggest that TRPV4 and Rho transduce cell membrane stretch/strain into pannexin 1-mediated ATP release in airway epithelia

Construção do espaço museal: ciência, educação e sociabilidade na gênese do Parque Zoobotânico do Museu Goeldi (1895-1914)

RESUMO O artigo analisa a construção do Parque Zoobotânico do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi durante a gestão de seus idealizadores, Emílio Goeldi (1895-1907) e Jacques Huber (1907-1914). Embora o parque constitua hoje uma área orgânica e ocupe todo um quarteirão no centro de Belém, Pará, ele foi concebido como dois anexos distintos do museu, o jardim zoológico e o horto botânico, situados, cada um, em lados opostos ao prédio principal da instituição. Esses anexos foram criados a partir da desapropriação, transformação e ressignificação de terrenos, edificações e vegetais que já existiam no local. Tendo como pontos de partida o conceito de musealidade e as questões que fundamentam a criação e o funcionamento dos museus, o texto se desenvolve em quatro narrativas - comunicacional e educativa, científica, lazer e sociabilidade, doméstica - que entendemos como matrizes que deram forma e organizaram o espaço museal. Essas narrativas permitiram estudar a gênese da identidade institucional, a qual, em sua essência, se perpetua até a atualidade

Cloning of the Minimal Functional Domain of Human Lim Mineralization Protein-3 Able To Induce Bone Mineralization: In Vitro and In Vivo Study

Human LIM mineralization protein (LMP)-3 is one of the three splice variants of LMP recently identified. LMPs are involved in the osteoblast differentiation program and structurally characterized by the two conserved LIM and PDZ domains. Human LMP-1 (hLMP-1) shows one N-terminal PDZ domain and three C-term LIM domains connected by a non-conserved Unique region, deleted in the hLMP-2. hLMP-3 misses almost completely the LIM domains along with part of the unique region, due to a frame shift mutation. The three isoforms are expressed almost ubiquitously but show quantitative differences, hLMP-3 being the less expressed in all the analyzed tissues. Both hLMP-1 and hLMP-3 has been demonstrated to induce bone formation in vitro and ectopic bone formation in vivo, while hLMP-2 is not osteoinductive, suggesting that LIM domains are not essential for this function. Thus it has been hypothesized that the osteoinductive domain could reside in the Unique region that is partially conserved in hLMP-3. To examine the osteoinductive properties of this minimal domain we have cloned three different length of the Unique region of the hLMP-3 gene, corresponding to 120, 90 and 60 bp, fused to the enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) and named L40-eGFP, L30-eGFP and L20-eGFP respectively. Thus we tested the ability of these constructs to induce bone specific gene expression and bone mineralization in vitro and ectopic bone formation in vivo in comparison to the full-length gene hLMP-3. Here we demonstrate that adenoviral-mediated gene transfer of all the 3 domains induces expression of certain bone-specific genes in a mouse fibroblasts cell line. The up-regulation of osteo-specific genes was assessed in mouse fibroblasts also by means of biolistic transfection using a plasmid containing a L20-eGFP fusion gene. In addition, we demonstrate that all the domains are able to induce mineralization in fibroblast and mesenchymal stem cells. An experiment to evaluate if direct gene transfer of the three constructs into murine skeletal muscle results in ectopic bone formation as efficiently as using LMP-3 is being performed. Finally in order to propose these new constructs as an effective approach to induce bone formation in vivo for clinical applications, we have synthesized a peptide of 20 aminoacid, corresponding to the fragment of 60 bp of the Unique region (named PTD-OD-1). The peptide enter the cells by a protein transduction domain (PTD-5) and its ability to induce in vitro expression of bone-specific genes and bone mineralization both in fibroblast and in human mesenchymal stem cells will be evaluated. PTD-OD-1 could represent a safe and powerful tool for clinical applications, and merit several analysis to evaluate its ability