Land of the Free? Immigration in the Gilded Age, An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Sources

Annotated bibliography to accompany the Land of the Free? lesson plan.https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/gilded_age/1027/thumbnail.jp

Learning How to Relax: Culture of Leisure in the Gilded Age

America as a whole was undergoing dramatic changes during the last quarter of the 19th century. Industrialization was a major part of that change, as it pushed industry to new heights and sparked the biggest wave of immigration in U.S. history. It also helped create a new emphasis on leisure among American workers, as improved production led to shorter work days and higher wages meant those workers had more money to spend with their newfound free time. Additionally, the boom in railroad production and advancement of subways and electric trollies in urban areas made transportation easier and encouraged people to find activities outside their homes. All of those factors resulted in an explosion of recreational activities across all interests and socioeconomic classes. Through an examination of primary sources, this lesson will look at some of those activities and explore the deeper questions of what those activities said about American society during the Gilded Age.https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/gilded_age/1025/thumbnail.jp

Land of the Free? Immigration in the Gilded Age

Immigration has always been a controversial topic in America, from the first wave of Irish and German immigrants to the current issues surrounding Middle Eastern arrivals. Many Americans have been welcoming to the new cultures and workers, while others have been less than enthusiastic. The Gilded Age is no exception to this controversy. Millions of immigrants were able to make a life for themselves in America during this time period, as the boom in industrialization created a need for laborers and highly-concentrated settlement areas sprung up across the country. However, these immigrants also encountered many challenges and hardships along the way. Many encountered prejudice and discrimination at every turn and legislative actions – most notably the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 – sought to limit the influx of immigrants in the interest of protecting American jobs. This lesson focuses on the controversy surrounding immigration through an examination of primary sources that are both supportive and negative toward immigrants. The lesson will also seek to differentiate the immigrant experience for different countries through an activity in which students will be divided into groups of countries which the most people migrated from during that time period. From there, groups will analyze sources given to them, conduct independent research outside of class and present their findings to the rest of the classroom.https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/gilded_age/1026/thumbnail.jp

Spiral Growth and Step Edge Barriers

The growth of spiral mounds containing a screw dislocation is compared to the growth of wedding cakes by two-dimensional nucleation. Using phase field simulations and homoepitaxial growth experiments on the Pt(111) surface we show that both structures attain the same characteristic large scale shape when a significant step edge barrier suppresses interlayer transport. The higher vertical growth rate observed for the spiral mounds on Pt(111) reflects the different incorporation mechanisms for atoms in the top region and can be formally represented by an enhanced apparent step edge barrier.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, partly in colo

Programming a Human Commensal Bacterium, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, to Sense and Respond to Stimuli in the Murine Gut Microbiota

Engineering commensal organisms for challenging applications, such as modulating the gut ecosystem, is hampered by the lack of genetic parts. Here, we describe promoters, ribosome-binding sites, and inducible systems for use in the commensal bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, a prevalent and stable resident of the human gut. We achieve up to 10,000-fold range in constitutive gene expression and 100-fold regulation of gene expression with inducible promoters and use these parts to record DNA-encoded memory in the genome. We use CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) for regulated knockdown of recombinant and endogenous gene expression to alter the metabolic capacity of B. thetaiotaomicron and its resistance to antimicrobial peptides. Finally, we show that inducible CRISPRi and recombinase systems can function in B. thetaiotaomicron colonizing the mouse gut. These results provide a blueprint for engineering new chassis and a resource to engineer Bacteroides for surveillance of or therapeutic delivery to the gut microbiome.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant EEC-0540879)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grants P50GM098792, 1DP2OD008435, 1R01EB017755, and GM095765)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Grant CLIO N66001-12-C-4016)United States. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (Grant HDTRA1-14-1-0007)United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-13-1-0424)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Microbiome Informatics and TherapeuticsQUALCOMM Inc. (Innovation Fellowship

Plasma proteomic analysis of active and torpid greater mouse-eared bats (Myotis myotis)

Hibernation is a physiological adaptation to overcome extreme environmental conditions. It is characterized by prolonged periods of torpor interrupted by temporary arousals during winter. During torpor, body functions are suppressed and restored rapidly to almost pre-hibernation levels during arousal. Although molecular studies have been performed on hibernating rodents and bears, it is unclear how generalizable the results are among hibernating species with different physiology such as bats. As targeted blood proteomic analysis are lacking in small hibernators, we investigated the general plasma proteomic profile of European Myotis myotis and hibernation associated changes between torpid and active individuals by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Results revealed an alternation of proteins involved in transport, fuel switching, innate immunity and blood coagulation between the two physiological states. The results suggest that metabolic changes during hibernation are associated with plasma proteomic changes. Further characterization of the proteomic plasma profile identified transport proteins, coagulation proteins and complement factors and detected a high abundance of alpha-fetoprotein. We were able to establish for the first time a basic myotid bat plasma proteomic profile and further demonstrated a modulated protein expression during torpor in Myotis myotis, indicating both novel physiological pathways in bats in general, and during hibernation in particular

The Making of Modern America: Quantifying Chaos

As we begin to explore the Gilded Age (1870-1900), that era in American History sandwiched between the Civil War/Reconstruction and the Progressive Era to the Great War, we want students to grasp the enormity of the changes impacting the lives of Americans who have largely been engaged in farming in many cases not so different than their ancestors had for several hundreds of years. Technological changes in the first half of the 19th century contributed to some mechanization and manufacturing, but the enormity of the Civil War and the acquisition of the entire continental territory in the 1850s, accelerated changes in the production of goods, in the development of communication and transportation, in the growth of cities, in the opportunities for immigrants, for participation in politics, and in the reach of the government. In this lesson, students will dip into the many changes over the decades from 1860 to 1900 by searching for information on a variety of topics, including: Banking or Finance, Demographics, Government, Industrialization, Immigration, Middle Class Angst, Military, Natural Resources, Politics, Racism, Robber Barons/Captains of Industry, Technological Innovations, Transportation, Urbanization, Voter Turnout, and Xenophobia.https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/gilded_age/1001/thumbnail.jp

The histone H3.1 variant regulates TONSOKU-mediated DNA repair during replication

The tail of replication-dependent histone H3.1 varies from that of replication-independent H3.3 at the amino acid located at position 31 in plants and animals, but no function has been assigned to this residue to demonstrate a unique and conserved role for H3.1 during replication. Here, we show that TONSOKU (TSK/TONSL), which rescues broken replication forks, specifically interacts with H3.1 via recognition of alanine 31 by its tetratricopeptide repeat domain. Our results indicate that genomic instability in the absence of ATXR5/ATXR6-catalyzed H3K27me1 in plants depends on H3.1, TSK and DNA polymerase theta (Pol θ). Overall, this work reveals an H3.1-specific function during replication and the common strategy used in multicellular eukaryotes for regulating post-replicative chromatin maturation and TSK, which relies on histone mono-methyltransferases and reading the H3.1 variant

The domesticated transposase ALP2 mediates formation of a novel Polycomb protein complex by direct interaction with MSI1, a core subunit of Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2)

A large fraction of plant genomes is composed of transposable elements (TE), which provide a potential source of novel genes through "domestication"-the process whereby the proteins encoded by TE diverge in sequence, lose their ability to catalyse transposition and instead acquire novel functions for their hosts. In Arabidopsis, ANTAGONIST OF LIKE HETEROCHROMATIN PROTEIN 1 (ALP1) arose by domestication of the nuclease component of Harbinger class TE and acquired a new function as a component of POLYCOMB REPRESSIVE COMPLEX 2 (PRC2), a histone H3K27me3 methyltransferase involved in regulation of host genes and in some cases TE. It was not clear how ALP1 associated with PRC2, nor what the functional consequence was. Here, we identify ALP2 genetically as a suppressor of Polycomb-group (PcG) mutant phenotypes and show that it arose from the second, DNA binding component of Harbinger transposases. Molecular analysis of PcG compromised backgrounds reveals that ALP genes oppose silencing and H3K27me3 deposition at key PcG target genes. Proteomic analysis reveals that ALP1 and ALP2 are components of a variant PRC2 complex that contains the four core components but lacks plant-specific accessory components such as the H3K27me3 reader LIKE HETEROCHROMATION PROTEIN 1 (LHP1). We show that the N-terminus of ALP2 interacts directly with ALP1, whereas the C-terminus of ALP2 interacts with MULTICOPY SUPPRESSOR OF IRA1 (MSI1), a core component of PRC2. Proteomic analysis reveals that in alp2 mutant backgrounds ALP1 protein no longer associates with PRC2, consistent with a role for ALP2 in recruitment of ALP1. We suggest that the propensity of Harbinger TE to insert in gene-rich regions of the genome, together with the modular two component nature of their transposases, has predisposed them for domestication and incorporation into chromatin modifying complexes