Preparation and Characterization of the Extracellular Domain of Human Sid-1

In C. elegans, the cell surface protein Sid-1 imports extracellular dsRNA into the cytosol of most non-neuronal cells, enabling systemic spread of RNA interference (RNAi) throughout the worm. Sid-1 homologs are found in many other animals, although for most a function for the protein has not yet been established. Sid-1 proteins are composed of an N-terminal extracellular domain (ECD) followed by 9–12 predicted transmembrane regions. We developed a baculovirus system to express and purify the ECD of the human Sid-1 protein SidT1. Recombinant SidT1 ECD is glycosylated and spontaneously assembles into a stable and discrete tetrameric structure. Electron microscopy (EM) and small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) studies reveal that the SidT1 ECD tetramer is a compact, puck-shaped globular particle, which we hypothesize may control access of dsRNA to the transmembrane pore. These characterizations provide inroads towards understanding the mechanism of this unique RNA transport system from structural prospective

“What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity, Stigma, and the Racial Formation Project

Using interview data from individuals who were frequently asked some version of the question What are you? in regards to their race, we apply a deviance perspective to frame these encounters as micro level racial formation projects. Racial formation projects are problematized when one\u27s race is not readily classifiable. These data suggest that when race is perceptibly ambiguous, stigma is assigned and normativity is enforced through discursive constraint and other means. Racially ambiguous individuals use many forms of resistance to navigate these encounters and make identity claims that either affirm or endanger the normative racial formation order. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Rethinking conversion : beyond the religious and the secular

This article seeks to pinpoint some of the consequences of the secularization process – conceived as the dissociation of religion from both state politics and culture – with the aim of broadening the conceptualization of conversion. Conversion is therefore considered to be a social fact beyond the religious and the secular, for which the concept of 'trans-formation' is employed in order to grasp this phenomenon. The concept of trans-formation posits processes of conversion as shifts from intimate convictions to public values. From this perspective, based on a pragmatic sociology of values, religious conversions are put forth as one possible way to qualify trajectories that the concept of trans-formation aims to comprehend. The article ends by considering the status of religious convictions in comparison with convictions otherwise qualified