Gender, Body, Biomedicine: How Some Feminist Concerns Dragged Reproduction to the Center of Social Theory

This article tracks the growth of medical anthropology in the United States in the decades since the 1970s, as it has intersected the expansion of feminist activism and scholarship. I argue that feminist attention to embodied inequalities quickly focused on reproduction as a site of investigation and intervention. Medical anthropology has benefited from feminist concern with stratified reproduction, especially its interrogation of nonnormative and stigmatized fertility and childbearing. When reproduction becomes problematic, it provides a lens through which cultural norms, struggles, and transformations can be viewed. Examples drawn from prenatal diagnosis are particularly revelatory of the diverse interests and stakes we all hold in reproduction.     

Communication and control in reproduction: the ubiquity of periodic phenomena

Two statements will be presented and defended in this paper. First, it is claimed that oscillations are common in all biological systems. From the subcellular to the organismic levels of organization, oscillations are the normal operational mode for many biochemical and physiological control networks. Second, it will be demonstrated that periodic control offers several functional advantages over steady-state control.     

1,3-Beta-glucan synthase in cell-free extracts from mycelium and protoplasts of Sclerotium glucanicum

Conditions for obtaining stable protoplasts from Sclerotium glucanicum and their reversion to hyphal growth were determined. 1,3-beta-Glucan synthase activity was detected in particulate enzyme fractions from mycelium and protoplasts of Scl. glucanicum. UDP-[U-14C]glucose was linearly incorporated into a beta-glucan for about 20 min at 25 degrees C. Optimum pH and temperature values, as well as thermal stabilities of the 1,3-beta-glucan synthase activity, were determined. High concentrations of EDTA were inhibitory. Enzyme activity was stimulated by ATP and GTP. The apparent Km value for UDP-glucose was 0.54 mM. The reaction product was characterized as 1,3-beta-glucan by 13C NMR spectroscopy and hydrolysis products of an exo-1,3-beta-glucanase.