The representation of gays and lesbians on Chilean television has increased steadily over the last decades. This paper offers an analysis of the role these images had in the processes of sexual ...identification of a sample of 25 members of the audience who identify as gays or lesbians. Through a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews, it is shown that the respondents believed that the televisual representations of homosexuality have contributed to further marginalize gay and lesbian lives. This strengthened damaging feelings that fed into a sense of shame that was originating from multiple institutions and texts, thus complicating their processes of self-recognition and self-acceptance during their childhood and adolescence. Taking examples of how participants described their relationship with these representations and the ways in which they circulated socially, it is argued that they could only articulate their identification as gays or lesbians by disassociating themselves from these images and establishing a clear difference in regard to them. This was in a process in which several other informational and experiential opportunities came into play, which allowed them to resignify the categories gay/lesbian and lead less conflictive processes of identification.
Myocardial infarction is a leading cause of death worldwide
. Although advances have been made in acute treatment, an incomplete understanding of remodelling processes has limited the effectiveness ...of therapies to reduce late-stage mortality
. Here we generate an integrative high-resolution map of human cardiac remodelling after myocardial infarction using single-cell gene expression, chromatin accessibility and spatial transcriptomic profiling of multiple physiological zones at distinct time points in myocardium from patients with myocardial infarction and controls. Multi-modal data integration enabled us to evaluate cardiac cell-type compositions at increased resolution, yielding insights into changes of the cardiac transcriptome and epigenome through the identification of distinct tissue structures of injury, repair and remodelling. We identified and validated disease-specific cardiac cell states of major cell types and analysed them in their spatial context, evaluating their dependency on other cell types. Our data elucidate the molecular principles of human myocardial tissue organization, recapitulating a gradual cardiomyocyte and myeloid continuum following ischaemic injury. In sum, our study provides an integrative molecular map of human myocardial infarction, represents an essential reference for the field and paves the way for advanced mechanistic and therapeutic studies of cardiac disease.
Rapid advances in single-cell assays have outpaced methods for analysis of those data types. Different single-cell assays show extensive variation in sensitivity and signal to noise levels. In ...particular, scATAC-seq generates extremely sparse and noisy datasets. Existing methods developed to analyze this data require cells amenable to pseudo-time analysis or require datasets with drastically different cell-types. We describe a novel approach using self-organizing maps (SOM) to link scATAC-seq regions with scRNA-seq genes that overcomes these challenges and can generate draft regulatory networks. Our SOMatic package generates chromatin and gene expression SOMs separately and combines them using a linking function. We applied SOMatic on a mouse pre-B cell differentiation time-course using controlled Ikaros over-expression to recover gene ontology enrichments, identify motifs in genomic regions showing similar single-cell profiles, and generate a gene regulatory network that both recovers known interactions and predicts new Ikaros targets during the differentiation process. The ability of linked SOMs to detect emergent properties from multiple types of highly-dimensional genomic data with very different signal properties opens new avenues for integrative analysis of heterogeneous data.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Telenovelas have been one of the main mechanisms by which Chilean television has made gay and lesbian identities visible. Through an analysis of over 50 gay or lesbian characters that have appeared ...on this type of programme from 1990 to 2018, it is argued that Chilean telenovelas have privileged representations of non-heterosexuals that do not destabilise the status quo, but contribute to the reproduction of sexist, homophobic and/or classist discourses. This has been done through the utilisation of four ‘types’ of characters: funny locas, serious machos, fighting mothers and clear lesbians/confused lesbians.
Transposable elements (TEs) are major components of large plant genomes and main drivers of genome evolution. The most recent assembly of hexaploid bread wheat recovered the highly repetitive TE ...space in an almost complete chromosomal context and enabled a detailed view into the dynamics of TEs in the A, B, and D subgenomes.
The overall TE content is very similar between the A, B, and D subgenomes, although we find no evidence for bursts of TE amplification after the polyploidization events. Despite the near-complete turnover of TEs since the subgenome lineages diverged from a common ancestor, 76% of TE families are still present in similar proportions in each subgenome. Moreover, spacing between syntenic genes is also conserved, even though syntenic TEs have been replaced by new insertions over time, suggesting that distances between genes, but not sequences, are under evolutionary constraints. The TE composition of the immediate gene vicinity differs from the core intergenic regions. We find the same TE families to be enriched or depleted near genes in all three subgenomes. Evaluations at the subfamily level of timed long terminal repeat-retrotransposon insertions highlight the independent evolution of the diploid A, B, and D lineages before polyploidization and cases of concerted proliferation in the AB tetraploid.
Even though the intergenic space is changed by the TE turnover, an unexpected preservation is observed between the A, B, and D subgenomes for features like TE family proportions, gene spacing, and TE enrichment near genes.
The inclusion of four gay characters in the telenovela Casa de Muñecos (2018-9) was an event that, until then, had not taken place in any other Chilean telenovela. Through a qualitative textual ...analysis of these figures, this article argues that the programme has strengthened a neoliberal discourse of personal responsibility that makes gay men not only accountable for their own well-being but also for the well-being of others, as they are singled out as responsible for making the ‘right’ decisions that will contribute to the process of articulating a non-homophobic future in the country.
The growing availability of single-cell data, especially transcriptomics, has sparked an increased interest in the inference of cell-cell communication. Many computational tools were developed for ...this purpose. Each of them consists of a resource of intercellular interactions prior knowledge and a method to predict potential cell-cell communication events. Yet the impact of the choice of resource and method on the resulting predictions is largely unknown. To shed light on this, we systematically compare 16 cell-cell communication inference resources and 7 methods, plus the consensus between the methods' predictions. Among the resources, we find few unique interactions, a varying degree of overlap, and an uneven coverage of specific pathways and tissue-enriched proteins. We then examine all possible combinations of methods and resources and show that both strongly influence the predicted intercellular interactions. Finally, we assess the agreement of cell-cell communication methods with spatial colocalisation, cytokine activities, and receptor protein abundance and find that predictions are generally coherent with those data modalities. To facilitate the use of the methods and resources described in this work, we provide LIANA, a LIgand-receptor ANalysis frAmework as an open-source interface to all the resources and methods.
The visceral adipose tissue (VAT) of lean mice hosts a unique population of regulatory T cells (Tregs) that have a distinct transcriptome and T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire and regulate local and ...systemic inflammation and metabolism. Perplexingly, this population disappears in obese mice, limiting the promise of Treg-based therapies for metabolic disorders. We exploited the power of a VAT-Treg TCR-transgenic mouse model to follow the dynamics of, and phenotypic changes in, the VAT-Treg population throughout the development of diet-induced obesity. Our results show that VAT-Tregs are lost under obesogenic conditions due to downregulation of their defining transcription factor, PPARγ, coupled with their strikingly enhanced responses to pro-inflammatory cytokines. In particular, the VAT from obese mice (and reportedly humans) was strongly enriched in plasmacytoid dendritic cells that actively express interferon-alpha. These cells were directly toxic to PPARγ+ VAT-Tregs. Blocking this pathway in obese mice by multiple approaches substantially restored the VAT-Treg population and enhanced insulin sensitivity.
Display omitted
•Long-term, but not short-term, HFD feeding induces the loss of VAT-Tregs•Obesity reduces VAT-Treg Pparg transcripts while inducing IFN-response transcripts•Obesity-induced IFN-α, made by local pDCs, is directly toxic to VAT-Tregs•Blocking the pDC-IFNα axis restores VAT-Tregs and insulin sensitivity
Obesity-induced loss of insulin-sensitizing VAT-Tregs hinders the promise of Treg-based therapy for metabolic disorders. Li et al. demonstrate that VAT-Tregs decrease in obese mice in response to elevated levels of IFN-α made by local pDCs, which can be targeted to restore VAT-Tregs and insulin sensitivity.
A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object or process capable of collecting information from the real environment to represent, validate and simulate the physical twin’s present ...and future behavior. It is a key enabler of data-driven decision making, complex systems monitoring, product validation and simulation and object lifecycle management. As an emergent technology, its widespread implementation is increasing in several domains such as industrial, automotive, medicine, smart cities, etc. The objective of this systematic literature review is to present a comprehensive view on the DT technology and its implementation challenges and limits in the most relevant domains and applications in engineering and beyond.
PDF
