Between biology and chemistry in the Enlightenment: how nutrition shapes vital organization. Buffon,Bonnet, C.F. Wolff

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences - In teasing out the diverse origins of our “modern, ecological understanding of epidemic disease” (Mendelsohn, in: Lawrence and Weisz (eds)...     

Sexual Isolation Between Drosophila Melanogaster, D. Simulans and D. Mauritiana: Sex and Species Specific Discrimination

The sexual isolation among the related species Drosophila melanogaster, D. simulans and D. mauritiana is asymmetrical. While D. mauritiana males mate well with both D. melanogaster and D. simulans females, females of D. mauritiana discriminate strongly against males of these two species. Similarly, D. simulans males mate with D. melanogaster females but the reciprocal cross is difficult. Interspecific crosses between several populations of the three species were performed to determine if (i) males and females of the same species share a common sexual isolation genetic system, and (ii) males (or females) use the same genetic system to discriminate against females (or males) of the other two species. Results indicate that although differences in male and female isolation depend on the populations tested, the isolation behaviour between a pair of species is highly correlated despite the variations. However, the rank order of the isolation level along the populations was not correlated in both sexes, which suggests that different genes act in male and female sexual isolation. Neither for males nor for females, the isolation behaviour of one species was paralleled in the other two species, which indicates that the genetic systems involved in this trait are species-pair specific. The implications of these results are discussed. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Neutrophils: Between Host Defence,Immune Modulation,and Tissue Injury

Neutrophils, the most abundant human immune cells, are rapidly recruited to sites of infection, where they fulfill their life-saving antimicrobial functions. While traditionally regarded as short-lived phagocytes, recent findings on long-term survival, neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) formation, heterogeneity and plasticity, suppressive functions, and tissue injury have expanded our understanding of their diverse role in infection and inflammation. This review summarises our current understanding of neutrophils in host-pathogen interactions and disease involvement, illustrating the versatility and plasticity of the neutrophil, moving between host defence, immune modulation, and tissue damage.     

Between Knowledge And Technology: Patenting Methods,Rethinking Materiality

How does the law construe certain things and activities as knowledge that can become the object of intellectual property? When we look at the quantitative trends in recent patenting activities—more people patenting many more things—we tend to view that, in part, as an effect of the law's ability to construe new kinds of innovation (software, genetic sequences, etc.) in ways that conform to established legal concepts of patentable invention. The assumption is that what changes is not the shape of the box called invention, but the objects that are made to fit that box. But in fact while new technologies produce new innovations, the very concept of invention has not just expanded but undergone substantial qualitative change. The wave of inventive activity associated with the industrial revolution led to an unprecedented reliance on patenting, but as the law articulated ways to protect those inventions, it also took their emblematic form—the machine—as the template for the legal concept of invention. Analogously, the recent reinterpretations of patent law to enable the protection of living organism and biological entities have challenged and modified the traditional machine-inspired concept of invention, initiating a trend toward a more developmental one. The information-based inventions discussed here may elicit a reconceptualization of invention in yet another way.     

Sexual Interactions Between Two Distantly Related Drosophila Species, D. melanogaster and D. willistoni (Diptera: Drosophilidae)

Molecular analysis suggests that the pomace fly Drosophila melanogaster acquired the P family of transposable elements from another Drosophila species, D. willistoni. Since the two species are distantly related, it has been assumed that transmission of P element DNA from D. willistoni to D. melanogaster was mediated by a vector. The possibility of an alternative mode of transmission was assessed by characterizing the sexual behaviors of D. willistoni males and females, then observing D. willistoni and D. melanogaster males and females to see whether males from one species interacted sexually with females from the other species in a laboratory setting. We observed that D. melanogaster males court D. willistoni females vigorously and, in some cases, stimulate the females to be receptive to copulation. However, D. willistoni males perform relatively little courtship in response to D. melanogaster females and do not attempt to copulate. Thus, it is unlikely that sexual interactions effected the transmission of P element DNA from D. willistoni to D. melanogaster in the flies' natural habitat.     

Apoptosis,Necrosis and Between

No abstract available.