4 research outputs found
Characterization of the Potential Antiviral Activity of Peptides and Peptoids against Influenza A Virus and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2
No full textSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has caused worldwide panic during 2020. To date SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, has caused 1 million deaths and infected over 35 million people in under 10 months. On the other hand, influenza A virus (IAV) has been responsible for several epidemics and millions of deaths during the last 100 years. Our study joins the race to identify novel COVID-19 treatments by investigating the antiviral capabilities and clinical potential of a series of antimicrobial peptides and peptoids against these two important respiratory viruses. The project aimed to identify potential candidates within a panel of peptides (n=4) and peptoids (n=14) kindly provided by Dr. Daniel Pletzer (University of Otago, New Zealand) and A/Prof Annelise Barron (Stanford University, USA), respectively. Standard drug discovery strategies were employed to determine the ability of the peptides/peptoids to inhibit viral replication (EC50 values), while causing negligible cytotoxicity (CC50 values) in different cell lines. We uncovered 8 peptides/peptoids which showed antiviral activity against IAV (EC50 values ranging from 49 μg/ml to 5.7 ug/ml), as well as 12 antimicrobial peptides/peptoids able to inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 (EC50 values range, 41 μg/ml to 3.2 ug/ml). In summary, promising selectivity index (SI) values warrant continued characterization of the antiviral activity of the novel antimicrobial peptides/peptoids, including but not limited to (i) verifying their specificity by testing other influenza and coronavirus strains and (ii) in vitro selection of viruses with reduced susceptibility to these peptides/peptoids. Our results add to the growing evidence that some antimicrobial peptides and peptoids are also capable of inhibiting viral replication. The need for additional SARS-CoV-2 and IAV treatments is urgent and studies such as this one contribute to essential research against these deadly viruses
Characterization of the Potential Antiviral Activity of Peptides and Peptoids against Influenza A Virus and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2
No full textSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has caused worldwide panic during 2020. To date SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, has caused 1 million deaths and infected over 35 million people in under 10 months. On the other hand, influenza A virus (IAV) has been responsible for several epidemics and millions of deaths during the last 100 years. Our study joins the race to identify novel COVID-19 treatments by investigating the antiviral capabilities and clinical potential of a series of antimicrobial peptides and peptoids against these two important respiratory viruses. The project aimed to identify potential candidates within a panel of peptides (n=4) and peptoids (n=14) kindly provided by Dr. Daniel Pletzer (University of Otago, New Zealand) and A/Prof Annelise Barron (Stanford University, USA), respectively. Standard drug discovery strategies were employed to determine the ability of the peptides/peptoids to inhibit viral replication (EC50 values), while causing negligible cytotoxicity (CC50 values) in different cell lines. We uncovered 8 peptides/peptoids which showed antiviral activity against IAV (EC50 values ranging from 49 μg/ml to 5.7 ug/ml), as well as 12 antimicrobial peptides/peptoids able to inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 (EC50 values range, 41 μg/ml to 3.2 ug/ml). In summary, promising selectivity index (SI) values warrant continued characterization of the antiviral activity of the novel antimicrobial peptides/peptoids, including but not limited to (i) verifying their specificity by testing other influenza and coronavirus strains and (ii) in vitro selection of viruses with reduced susceptibility to these peptides/peptoids. Our results add to the growing evidence that some antimicrobial peptides and peptoids are also capable of inhibiting viral replication. The need for additional SARS-CoV-2 and IAV treatments is urgent and studies such as this one contribute to essential research against these deadly viruses
Harold Pinter and the Performance of Power: Considerations of Affect in Select Plays, Screenplays and Films, Poetry and Political Speeches
No full textThis thesis looks at selections of Harold Pinter's work across multiple media: written dramatic texts, screenplays and poetry, activity in theatrical and film production and his political activism. It has been argued that Pinter's dramatic medium is exceeded by movements, intensities and
forces that operate on and circulate within the corporeal bodies of Pinter's 'audiences'. However, approaches to Pinter to date remain overly focused on representation and hermeneutics and tied to a decidedly idealist conception of being, perception and knowledge. I argue that in order to
appreciate the politics of Pinter's aesthetics, readings of Pinter's work need to move in a more decidedly materialist direction. To do so, I enlist the conceptual tools of Gilles Deleuze and felix Guattari, specifically 'affect'. In bringing affect theory to Pinter I illustrate how 'the direct, mutual involvement of language and extra-linguistic forces,1 must be taken into account at every
critical step, and that meaning need be construed as a material process, the expression of forces
acting upon each other. The diversity of Pinter's work is explored over six chapters with a view to its aesthetic disposition and function, how it enters into noteworthy relations with those who engage with it, and how it establishes conditions that are propitious for transitory but ultimately productive trans formative encounters. Proceeding as such necessitates appraisal of ethical and
political positions in relation to Pinter's expression without distinguishing politics from aesthetics - a trend common to intellectual enterprise. Rather, the three keywords in the title of this thesis - performance, power and affect - function as concepts to advance the argument for Pinter's aesthetics as a politics. In considering the aesthetics of Pinter's work in varied media, this thesis invites the reader to see the strategies by which Pinter intervenes in each area as interrelated and political
Eyewitness accounts of 'the Indies' in the Later Medieval West: reading, reception, and re-use (c. 1300-1500)
No full textDespite increased mercantile and missionary contact between the Latin West and India and China between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, scholars have often
noted that Western Europe's knowledge of India, as judged by geographical texts from the period, changed surprisingly little during this time. This thesis employs
some of the methodologies of reception studies in order to investigate the role played by first-hand travel accounts in the construction and change of concepts of the Indies
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It investigates in particular the reception in Italy, France and England of the information about the area known as
India or the 'three Indies' presented in the texts produced by two Italian travellers to the East: the Divisament dou monde of the Venetian merchant Marco Polo (c. 1298),
and the Relatio of the Franciscan missionary Odorico da Pordenone (1330).
The thesis falls into three distinct parts. In the first section, I contextualise the project with a broad survey of the Latin European ideas of India in the late thirteenth
and early fourteenth centuries and with an outline of the travellers' journeys and their contexts. The second part of the thesis provides a broad overview of the
circumstances of diffusion of the two travel accounts in England, France and Italy over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, before conducting a detailed, manuscriptbased
investigation of the ways in which the two accounts of India were approached by their early readers. This investigation focuses principally upon the presentation
and possible modes of reception of the texts' geographical and ethnographic details and relies heavily on the evidence of presentation, paratext and the traces of reading
present in the physical texts of the accounts.
The third and final part of the thesis considers the evidence of the reception of elements from first-hand travel accounts in other textual and cartographic
productions. Proceeding on the basis of case studies, it demonstrates that first-hand accounts of 'the Indies' were used by the authors and compilers of cosmo graphical
texts in this period in a variety of ways. It suggests, however, that the manner and context of the deployment of elements from such accounts often tended to assimilate
these with, rather than distinguish them from, the writings of accepted authorities. This section also contrasts the way that details from travel accounts were re-used in
texts with the way the same information was handled in the composition of maps. Finally, by analysis of the ways eyewitness accounts of the Indies were re-used in
certain ambiguous and comic texts produced in this period, the thesis sheds light on an underexplored aspect of the reception both of eyewitness information and of the
genres in which it appeared. The appendices contain tables presenting information relative to the manuscripts discussed that support the arguments presented in section
two
