The meaning and loss of place in times of globalisation

Im Mittelpunkt meiner Arbeit steht das Interesse an Zugehörigkeitskonstruktionen von Bauern der fünften Generation familienbetriebener Bauernhöfe im ländlichen New South Wales, Australien. Die strukturelle Umverteilung von Nationalzugehörigkeit identifiziere ich als postkolonialisierend, während die Umverteilung von Produktionsmitteln, wie z.B. agrikulturellen Landflächen, einer neoliberalen Logik folgen, von der mittelständische Betriebe nicht profitieren. Meine Forschungsfrage konzentriert sich einerseits auf die Legitimierung von Landansprüchen und anderseits auf die Gründe, warum Bauern unter Druck geraten, der sie zunehmend dazu zwingt, ihre Ländereinen aufzugeben.I focus on the relation between the Australian nation-state and its claim to territory by drawing on my field research among family farmers in the 5th generation in the Central West of rural New South Wales, Australia. I ask how family farmers´ senses of belonging to place are constructed in times of uprooting redistributional processes in the Australian nation that affect farmers in both the imaginary and the material realm. As early British structural-functionalism was influential in the founding phase of Australian anthropology correlating with the invention of the Australian nation, I deconstruct the epistemological framing for its implicit methodological nationalism. I show that national identities and belonging call into question anthropological assumptions about "culture/society", an implicit isomorphism of culture and place. Describing Indigenous-settler relations by contrasting two opposing “complex wholes” is not only a paradigm in the identity politics of the nation-state, but also present in recent anthropological work. Engaging with narratives of family history, I focus on how belonging to place is maintained among family farmers despite postcolonialising processes active in the idea of nationhood, which question their legitimacy to the land, of being in place. The general decline of family farms is identified as a neoliberal reterritorialisation process that demands farming systems to be more efficient in the capital intensifying agricultural economy, often in contrast to environmentally sustainable practices. Aiming to understand the pressures families face in the maintenance of their farms, I reason why many are forced to sell their land. The redistributional processes in the imaginary and material realm for family farmers in the rural Central West are identified as neoliberal and postcolonialising. The symbol and place of these processes is the family farm. Both, the historic legacies as well as new challenges of the environmental and economic constraints render it difficult for family farmers to determine and maintain ´their place´ in the Australian nation

Mutations in AraR leading to constitutive of arabinolytic genes in Aspergillus niger under depressing conditions

Plant science

Biophysical Investigation of the Mode of Inhibition of Tetramic Acids, the Allosteric Inhibitors of Undecaprenyl Pyrophosphate Synthase

Undecaprenyl pyrophosphate synthase (UPPS) catalyzes the consecutive condensation of eight molecules of isopentenyl pyrophosphate (IPP) with farnesyl pyrophosphate (FPP) to generate the C(55) undecaprenyl pyrophosphate (UPP). It has been demonstrated that tetramic acids (TAs) are selective and potent inhibitors of UPPS, but the mode of inhibition was unclear. In this work, we used a fluorescent FPP probe to study possible TA binding at the FPP binding site. A photosensitive TA analogue was designed and synthesized for the study of the site of interaction of TA with UPPS using photo-cross-linking and mass spectrometry. The interaction of substrates with UPPS and with the UPPS.TA complex was investigated by protein fluorescence spectroscopy. Our results suggested that tetramic acid binds to UPPS at an allosteric site adjacent to the FPP binding site. TA binds to free UPPS enzyme but not to substrate-bound UPPS. Unlike Escherichia coli UPPS which follows an ordered substrate binding mechanism, Streptococcus pneumoniae UPPS appears to follow a random-sequential substrate binding mechanism. Only one substrate, FPP or IPP, is able to bind to the UPPS.TA complex, but the quaternary complex, UPPS.TA.FPP.IPP, cannot be formed. We propose that binding of TA to UPPS significantly alters the conformation of UPPS needed for proper substrate binding. As the result, substrate turnover is prevented, leading to the inhibition of UPPS catalytic activity. These probe compounds and biophysical assays also allowed us to quickly study the mode of inhibition of other UPPS inhibitors identified from a high-throughput screening and inhibitors produced from a medicinal chemistry program