Cross-cultural Reception in the Absence of Texts: The Islamic Appropriation of a Middle Byzantine Rosette Casket

The reception of art and architecture in the Middle Ages is typically studied through the verbal accounts of medieval viewers. This paper explores possibilities for interpreting artistic reception in the absence of texts, through the material record of works of art themselves, specifically, a Byzantine ivory casket altered through the addition of Islamic gilded bronze fixtures. I propose that the transformation of the box expresses a viewer’s cognitive appropriation of the original program, which reconfigured the iconography of the ivory container to accommodate a secular Islamic system of meaning. Rather than representing the changes as misreading or disfigurement of the Byzantine casket, the alterations embody a legitimate interpretation that articulates the viewer’s receptivity to the original object and simultaneous appropriation of its visual framework to support an Islamic princely and astral program

Using CRISPR to Induce a Knock-out of dPRL-1 in Drosophila melanogaster

Phosphatase of regenerating liver (PRL) is a protein that controls cell processes such as growth and division which has unknown targets. PRL has been found to have both oncogenic and tumor suppressive properties. This study aimed to create a knock out of PRL in Drosohpila melanogaster in order to assess its role in development and in order to illuminate its activity when it is expressed in cancers. We hypothesize that dPRL-1 plays an important role in embryogenesis and that the progeny which lack this gene will be unviable. The CRISPR/Cas9 system was selected as the method in which to create a knock-out of this gene due to the specificity that it provides. Guide RNAs were designed in order to knock-out dPRL-1 and a gene called Yellow. The purpose of knocking out Yellow is that its absence leads to flies being yellow in color, which would serve as a positive marker. The gRNA for dPRL-1 was successfully integrated into a vector to cause expression in Drosophila, but the gRNA for Yellow was not able to be inserted. We await the arrival of the transgenic gRNA expressing lines to cross with a line of Cas9 expressing flies. The resulting progeny which lack dPRL-1 which will aid in our understanding of the role it plays in Drosophila development and its possible function in humans