Captivating behaviour: mouse models, experimental genetics and reductionist returns in the neurosciences

This a post-print, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in The Sociological Review. Copyright © 2010 Wiley Blackwell. The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.comNo Abstract availabl

The turn of the valve: representing with material models

Many scientific models are representations. Building on Goodman and Elgin’s notion of representation-as we analyse what this claim involves by providing a general definition of what makes something a scientific model, and formulating a novel account of how they represent. We call the result the DEKI account of representation, which offers a complex kind of representation involving an interplay of, denotation, exemplification, keying up of properties, and imputation. Throughout we focus on material models, and we illustrate our claims with the Phillips-Newlyn machine. In the conclusion we suggest that, mutatis mutandis, the DEKI account can be carried over to other kinds of models, notably fictional and mathematical models

Making science at home: visual displays of space science and nuclear physics at the Science Museum and on television in postwar Britain

The public presentation of science and technology in postwar Britain remains a field open to exploration. Current scholarship on the topic is growing but still tends to concentrate on the written word, thus making theorizing, at this stage, difficult. This paper is an attempt to expand the literature through two case studies that compare and synthesize displays of scientific and technological knowledge in two visual media, the Science Museum and television, in the 1950s and 1960s. The topics of these case studies are space exploration and nuclear energy. The thesis this paper explores is that both media fleshed out strategies of displays based on the use of categories from everyday life. As a result, outcomes of large-scale public scientific and technological undertakings were interwoven within audiences’ daily life experiences, thus appearing ordinary rather than extraordinary. This use of symbols and values drawn from private life worked to alleviate fears of risk associated with these new fields of technological exploration and at the same time give them widespread currency in the public sphere

B-RAF Mutant Alleles Associated with Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis, a Granulomatous Pediatric Disease

Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) features inflammatory granuloma characterised by the presence of CD1a+ dendritic cells or 'LCH cells'. Badalian-Very et al. recently reported the presence of a canonical (V600E)B-RAF mutation in 57% of paraffin-embedded biopsies from LCH granuloma. Here we confirm their findings and report the identification of two novel B-RAF mutations detected in LCH patients.Mutations of B-RAF were observed in granuloma samples from 11 out of 16 patients using 'next generation' pyrosequencing. In 9 cases the mutation identified was (V600E)B-RAF. In 2 cases novel polymorphisms were identified. A somatic (600DLAT)B-RAF insertion mimicked the structural and functional consequences of the (V600E)B-RAF mutant. It destabilized the inactive conformation of the B-RAF kinase and resulted in increased ERK activation in 293 T cells. The (600DLAT)B-RAF and (V600E)B-RAF mutations were found enriched in DNA and mRNA from the CD1a+ fraction of granuloma. They were absent from the blood and monocytes of 58 LCH patients, with a lower threshold of sequencing sensitivity of 1%-2% relative mutation abundance. A novel germ line (T599A)B-RAF mutant allele was detected in one patient, at a relative mutation abundance close to 50% in the LCH granuloma, blood monocytes and lymphocytes. However, (T599A)B-RAF did not destabilize the inactive conformation of the B-RAF kinase, and did not induce increased ERK phosphorylation or C-RAF transactivation.Our data confirmed presence of the (V600E)B-RAF mutation in LCH granuloma of some patients, and identify two novel B-RAF mutations. They indicate that (V600E)B-RAF and (600DLAT)B-RAF mutations are somatic mutants enriched in LCH CD1a(+) cells and absent from the patient blood. Further studies are needed to assess the functional consequences of the germ-line (T599A)B-RAF allele

Organisms in experimental research

Rachel A. Ankeny and Sabina Leonell