Hasil untuk "Unlocalized maps (Asian studies only)"

Carmen E. Lamas

Research on 19th-century Latina/o literature offers readers a burgeoning and flourishing field of study. Nevertheless, while scholars have made multiple critical interventions in the study of 19th-century Latina/o literature, the field simultaneously remains ripe for new research because of the depth and breadth of the subject and its continually expanding literary and historical archive. Three major factors define the study of 19th-century Latina/o literature and differentiate it from other areas of study. First, while Latina/os did write in English during the 19th century, many works were also written in Spanish and other languages. This was due to the transamerican, transnational and transatlantic experiences of many of the writers in question. Consequently, while these writings have been excerpted and translated in anthologies, the corpus by and large remains unpublished and untranslated. A second factor concerns the terminology used to refer to Latina/os of the 19th century. Latina/o and Hispanic are both terms in general use in the 20th-century, each with its own historical and contextual demarcations. Both have proven to be insufficient inasmuch as they are insufficiently precise, and as a result different terms have been coined to identify the authors and figures under study. This terminological issue signals the indispensability of a thorough knowledge of the historical and political concerns of the countries from which the authors in question originate. To understand and contextualize the lived realities of Latina/os of the 19th century and the literature they produced, readers must situate the writers within not only US history, but Latin American, European, African, Asian and indigenous histories as well, since these authors negotiated the political realities of varying nations, geographies, and peoples concurrently, while also negotiating multiple racial and ethnic experiences. As the researcher, student, or general reader explores and studies 19th-century Latina/o literature, he or she will find that academic and historically defined terms are challenged by the 19th-century archive and by the lived experiences of the individuals who produced it. A third variable is genre. While those interested in 19th-century Latina/o literature will encounter such traditional literary genres as novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and essays, they must also take into account more diverse sources such as newspapers, pamphlets, political tracts, broadsides, government documents, diplomatic records, speeches, travel diaries, journals, Spanish readers and grammar books, personal correspondence, maps, and corridos. In short, those interested in the literary manifestations of Latina/os in the 19th century will find a vast and growing archive of materials that document not only the literary history of Latina/os, but also the experiences and cultural expressions of Latina/o communities of that era.

Yu-Hua Wang, Dong-Hong Wu, Jin-Hsing Huang et al.

Fruit characters affect consumer preferences and the market value of melons is determined by fruit quality. Most fruit quality-related traits are controlled by multiple genes, and are influenced by environmental factors. Furthermore, powdery mildew is another limiting factor in melon production. To develop new melon cultivars with disease resistance and high quality fruits using the molecular marker-assisted breeding strategy, identification of quantitative trait loci for fruit quality and disease resistance is required. The F2 populations from the cross of TARI-08874 (Cucumis melo ssp. melo) and ‘Bai-li-gua’ (C. melo ssp. agrestis) were used to map the quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for fruit-related traits and powdery mildew resistance in two trials. All traits were significantly different (P < 0.05) between parents. The generated linkage map consisted of twelve major linkage groups (LGs), spanning 626.1 cM in total, with an average distance of 8.3 cM between flanking markers. Nineteen QTLs were detected for seven melon traits, among which ten QTLs were localized to the same positions as the corresponding QTLs described in other studies. Four of these QTLs were detected in both trials. The results of identified QTLs in this study suggested that fruit size in the tested populations were mainly determined by fruit diameter and flesh thickness. All of the major QTLs for fruit diameter and flesh thickness were identified on LG5 and LG11. Four QTLs identified responsible for netting width of fruit rind were co-localized with the QTLs for netting density, suggesting similar genetic mechanisms affecting these two traits. Additionally, only one major QTL for powdery mildew resistance was detected on LG2, and it was closely linked to a simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker CMBR120 which was identified in a previous study. Because the netting feature is a crucial factor for external appearance of fruits in Asia market, we focus on mining the genetic information of fruit netting. This is the first report of QTL mapping to netting width. Furthermore, new QTLs were identified for netting density (qND4, qND6, and qND7) and netting width (qNW2, qNW4, qNW6, and qNW7) successfully. In addition, novel QTLs for fruit diameter (qFD5), flesh thickness (qFT11) were also detected.

Y. Oh, Yoon-Kyeong Kim, Daeil Kim

The pear (Pyrus spp.) is most important fruit crop in the world. The genus Pyrus belongs to the subfamily Maloideae in the Rosaceae family and contains at least 22 primary species; however, only a few species, including P. pyrifolia, P. ussuriensis, P. bretschneideri, and P. communis have been utilized for fruit production. In Korea, awareness of the importance of the fruit industry and fruit tree breeding is low, and there is little support for genetic and genomic studies of fruit trees. In foreign countries, studies have focused on obtaining genomic information of fruit crops and the development of important agronomic trait-related molecular markers, providing a genomic framework for fruit tree breeding. Although Korea does not actively participate in research on the genomics of fruit trees, it is not far behind other countries in terms of technology and is therefore still competitive in research and development. The resequencing of 'Whangkeumbae' and 'Minibae' pears has been performed using the Illumina Hiseq 2000 platform as a part of the Biogreen 21 project, offering novel, rapid methods for identification of molecular marker, such as single nucleotide polymorphisms, insertion-deletions, and simple sequence repeats, through next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology. These NGS-based molecular markers are useful for genetic studies of Asian pears, e.g., for construction of genetic linkage maps, mapping of quantitative trait loci, and marker-assisted selection.

C. Weinstock

J. Goronzy, C. Weyand

S. Dvořák, V. Barták, Z. Macháček et al.

Chan Cheow-Thia

Sinophone Malaysian Literature: Not Made in China Alison M. Groppe Amherst: Cambria Press, 2013, x+325p.Studies of the Chinese overseas have devoted substantial attention to Southeast Asia owing to deep historical connections forged by the overwhelming majority of Chinese migrants to the region. While historical and ethnographic approaches are common modes of inquiries, analyses of literary writings are seldom featured in the relevant scholarship (Liu 2006). From the perspective of modern Chinese literary studies in the English language academe, however, it is Southeast Asia that is an unfamiliar parameter of research. With recent calls by scholars to pay greater attention to "expressive documents" about Chinese migration in order to probe the Chineseness of displaced memories and desires, or to advocate a strategic focus on creative writings for exploring ambivalent Chinese sentiments in different world regions, the two fields have been set up for a productive dialogue and are currently experiencing exciting transformations (Wang 2007; Shih 2013).Participating in the ongoing paradigm shift toward a global conception of Chinese literature and culture, Alison M. Groppe's well-researched Sinophone Malaysian Literature: Not Made in China offers an excellent overview not only of salient works from a fascinating corpus that has thus far eluded English-language scholarship, but also of the lineage of approaches critical for grasping the larger ramifications arising from its anomalous status as "sectional literature" in Malaysia, where only literary works written in the national language of Malay are recognized as "national literature" (pp. 2, 282). The book leverages Malaysia for its unique insights about the adaptive experiences of China-origin people who account for a minority yet politically significant community residing outside the mainland Chinese state, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Broadly speaking, Groppe explores the question of what it means "to be of Chinese descent and to be Chinesespeaking outside of China" (p. 25) primarily through examining modes of literary representations Malaysian-born writers employ to negotiate and express their layered ethnic and national identities in postcolonial Malaysia. In its focus on Malaysia as a vibrant location beyond China's geopolitical borders that has nurtured an active contingent of innovative writers, the monograph joins E. K. Tan's Rethinking Chineseness: Translational Sinophone Identities in the Nanyang Literary World (also published by Cambria Press in 2013) in ushering Southeast Asia into the horizon of modern Chinese literary studies (p. 283).Chapter 1 maps the critical concepts that undergird Groppe's ensuing interpretation of the complicated and multifarious relationships across the locales of China, Taiwan, and Malaysia that a compelling repertoire of Chinese-language narratives contemplates. Of crucial utility to Groppe is the notion of the Sinophone as "a network of places of cultural production" which, in her discourse, follows the coinage and explication by Shu-mei Shih (2013) who foregrounds its non-China and Sinitic traits. Groppe points out how Mandarin functions as the medium of Chinese education and mass media for most of the twentieth century in Malaysia, where it co-exists with other Sinitic topolects including Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, and Hainanese that arrived in tandem with Chinese migrants from China's southern provinces. At the same time that Sinophone Malaysian literature (hereafter SML) gives prominence to both the geographical origin of the writers and the linguistic medium of their works (pp. 5, 9-15), the book also draws upon the ideas of other interlocutors, such as Salman Rushdie, James Clifford, and Chow Tse-Tsung, to suggest an eclectic identification process evinced by migrant writers. Inspired also by Stuart Hall's processual perspective on identity, Groppe ultimately stakes her overarching claim that Sinophone Malaysian fiction should be valued for its ability to represent a distinctive "process of becoming rather than being" in the authorial subjects' self-reflexive search for suitable Chinese cultural identities (p. …

Alexander C. Diener

C. Cantacessi, S. Prasopdee, J. Sotillo et al.

In Thailand and Laos alone, approximately 10 million people are infected with the liver fluke Opisthorchis viverrini [1]. Chronic infection with this parasite is considered the leading cause of cholangiocarcinoma (CCA, or bile-duct cancer) in large areas of Southeast Asia [2]. In these regions, CCA caused by O. viverrini is typically diagnosed 30–40 years after infection, with death occurring within 3–6 months post diagnosis [3]. O. viverrini is characterised by a three-host life cycle, with prosobranch snails of the genus Bithynia and cyprinid fishes acting as first and second intermediate hosts, respectively, while piscivorous mammals, including dogs, cats, and humans, act as definitive hosts [2]. Over the last two decades, much attention has been paid to studies on the epidemiology, developmental biology, and diagnosis of O. viverrini [4], while recent biotechnological advances are contributing large-scale explorations of the fundamental molecular biology of this liver fluke, with a view toward identifying key molecules essential for its development, reproduction, and survival, as well as dissecting the molecular pathways leading to the development of CCA [5]–[8]. These advances provide a solid foundation for the development of novel strategies to fight this devastating disease. However, long-term control of O. viverrini–induced cancer strictly relies on the development of integrated approaches, targeting the parasite as well as its intermediate hosts. Recently, an article in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases by Adema and colleagues [9] served to highlight the substantial gap in knowledge of aspects of the fundamental molecular biology of molluscs harbouring parasites, as well as the extraordinary opportunities that modern research toolkits, including microarray platforms, RNA interference, and high-throughput sequencing, offer for investigations of snail-parasite interactions [9]. Indeed, despite the massive expansion in the demand for and access to low-cost, high-throughput sequencing, large-scale genomic analyses of snails are limited to the draft genome sequence of the pulmonate snail intermediate host of Schistosoma blood flukes (Biomphalaria glabrata Genome Initiative at http://biology.unm.edu/biomphalaria-genome/index.html). Until now, there has been no genomic or transcriptomic information available for the prosobranch snail intermediate hosts of carcinogenic liver flukes, such as O. viverrini and Clonorchis sinensis. In order to provide the research community with a solid resource for molecular studies of these organisms, we generated the first reference transcriptome of Bithynia siamensis goniomphalos (Gastropoda, Bithyniidae), the intermediate host of O. viverrini in areas of northeast Thailand, Lao PDR, Cambodia, and South Vietnam, where the incidence of CCA is highest [cf. 10] (cf. Figure 1). A cDNA library from adult snails [11] was constructed, sequenced using RNA-seq (Illumina), and annotated using an established bioinformatic workflow [12]. Briefly, snails were collected from a natural body of water in Muang District, Khon Kaen Province, northeast Thailand (Figure 1); the taxonomic identity of the specimens was confirmed based on characteristic morphological features of the shells [13]; RNA was extracted from whole adult, parasite-free B. siamensis goniomphalos (n = 5), reverse-transcribed to cDNA, adaptor-ligated, and paired-end sequenced on a Genome Analyzer II (Illumina). Almost 50 million high-quality (Phred score >28) reads were generated; the assembly, produced using the Trinity software [14], yielded 167,029 contigs >200 bp in length, with a GC content of 44.4% (Table 1). Using sequence homology–based searches [12], approximately 40% of the assembled contigs could be annotated (cf. Table 1). A total of 32,026 contigs could be annotated with Gene Ontology terms (via Blast2GO; [15]), according to the categories “biological process,” “cellular component,” and “molecular function.” Approximately 77,000 non-overlapping protein sequences (of which ∼15,000 were full-length) could be inferred from the transcriptome of B. siamensis goniomphalos via BLASTx alignments with protein sequences available in public databases. Of the B. siamensis goniomphalos transcripts encoding proteins that could be mapped to orthologues in the Clusters of Orthologous Groups (COGs) database [16] (Table 1), the largest set was assigned to “general function prediction only” (16%), followed by “translation, ribosomal structure and biogenesis” (10%), “replication, recombination and repair” (7%), and “transcription” (7%) (Table 1). Approximately 54,000 protein-coding transcripts had orthologues in one of the 29 known biological pathways in the KEGG database (Table 1), including “regulation of actin cytoskeleton” (4%), “focal adhesion” (4%), and “spliceosome” (3.9%) (Table 1). Among the major protein classes included in the B. siamensis goniomphalos transcriptome were peptidases (n = 1,944; 4%), kinases (n = 4,757; 9%), phosphatases (n = 2,151; 4%), GTPases (n = 2,533; 5%), receptors (n = 6,243; 11%), transcription factors (n = 1,478; 3%), and channels and transporters (n = 1,287; 2%). Annotation information linked to each transcript characterised in the present study, including top BLASTx hit, GO classification, KEGG pathway mapping, and COG orthologues, is available from Table S1. In the absence of a reference genome for Bithynia spp., the annotation of the sequence data analysed herein was based on comparison with data available in public databases. The relatively small proportion of B. siamensis goniomphalos annotated protein sequences (∼60%) is likely to reflect the paucity of genomic sequence information available for prosobranch molluscan species in these databases [17]; supported by the availability of this dataset, as well as of the draft genome sequence of B. glabrata, future sequencing efforts will provide the depth of coverage required for the determination of the genome of Bithynia spp., which, in turn, will pave the way for comparative genomic studies of prosobranch and pulmonate snails harbouring parasite infections. This knowledge will be pivotal to improve our understanding of the biology of snail-borne parasites, and their “choice” of distinct snail species as their intermediate hosts. Figure 1 Distribution and prevalence of Opisthorchis viverrini, cholangiocarcinoma, and Bithynia spp. snails in Thailand. Table 1 Summary of the RNA-seq data for Bythinia siamensis goniomphalos prior to and following assembly, and bioinformatics annotation and analyses. Both raw and assembled sequence data generated in the present study are freely available from the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) and the Transcriptome Shotgun Assembly Sequence Database at NCBI (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) under accession numbers SRR768418 and GAGS0000000, respectively. To our knowledge, this sequence data represents the first large-scale transcriptomic resource for a prosobranch mollusc intermediate host of a human platyhelminth and represents a major contribution to future fundamental explorations of the developmental biology of O. viverrini in Bithynia spp. snails, as well as the molecular interactions occurring at the snail-parasite interface. We suggest that the extensive sequence data generated in this study will be of great value in future studies aimed at exploring the changes in gene transcription occurring in Bithynia spp. upon infection with O. viverrini eggs and at different time points following infection. Besides yielding a general picture of the modified biology of trematode-infected snails, this data will set a basis for the identification of key genes, gene products, biological pathways, and/or bacterial and viral symbionts [cf. 9] involved in the cascade of molecular events leading to the development of the parasite through the stages of miracidium, sporocyst, redia, and cercaria. In turn, this advance will ultimately result in the development of novel targeted strategies to control snail-borne NTDs. New molecular technologies have a tremendous potential to aid our efforts in controlling snail-borne diseases. However, despite the unanimous acknowledgment that an increased understanding of the fundamental molecular biology of parasite-harbouring snails will provide us with a range of new tools to aid current efforts aimed at controlling snail-borne infections, the progressive but steady decline of malacology expertise and funding for snail vector–related research [cf. 9] poses a serious obstacle to the application of such technologies to snail-oriented NTD control. With this first step toward the establishment of a reference database for genetic research of prosobranch snail vectors of parasitic helminths, we hope to stimulate integrated, interdisciplinary research across malacology, helminthology, genomics, and bioinformatics, in the bid to fight snail-borne infections.

William M. Owens

H. Ogata, Y. Higuchi, T. Ogata et al.

Timothy P. Barnard

M. Heylin

Eliezer B. Ayal

C. T. O'Connor

李培基

Charles Hallisey, Ranjini Obeyesekere, C. Fernando

L. Carrington Goodrich

S. S. Frere

John B. Hattendorf