24 research outputs found
MicroRNA regulation of enteric nervous system development and disease
No full textThe enteric nervous system (ENS), an elaborate network of neurons and glia woven through the gastrointestinal tract, is integral for digestive physiology and broader human health. Commensurate with its importance, ENS dysfunction is linked to a range of debilitating gastrointestinal disorders. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), with their pleiotropic roles in post-transcriptional gene regulation, serve as key developmental effectors within the ENS. Herein, we review the regulatory dynamics of miRNAs in ENS ontogeny, showcasing specific miRNAs implicated in both congenital and acquired enteric neuropathies, such as Hirschsprung's disease (HSCR), achalasia, intestinal neuronal dysplasia (IND), chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction (CIPO), and slow transit constipation (STC). By delineating miRNA-mediated mechanisms in these diseases, we underscore their importance for ENS homeostasis and highlight their potential as therapeutic targets.This work was supported by grants from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO: G036320N, W001620N), the Dutch Research Council (NWO VIDI: 016.196.367), and the Special Research Fund (BOF) of UHasselt (BOF22KP17). W.B. acknowledges additional funding from the Francqui Foundation. S.G.W. was supported by the National Eye Institute (NEI, R01EY032532). J.V. was supported by a fellowship from FWO (1193925N) and additional BOF funding from UHasselt (BOF24DOC49). Figures were created using BioRender.com
Gastrointestinal Dysfunction and Low-Grade Inflammation Associate With Enteric Neuronal Amyloid-β in a Model for Amyloid Pathology
No full textBackground Patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder involving cognitive decline and memory impairment, often present with gastrointestinal comorbidities. Accumulating data also indicate that alterations in the gut can modulate Alzheimer's disease pathology, highlighting the need to better understand the link between gastrointestinal abnormalities and neurodegeneration in the brain. Methods To disentangle the pathophysiology of gastrointestinal dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease, we conducted a detailed pathological characterization of the gastrointestinal tract of 5xFAD mice by performing histological analyses, gene expression studies, immunofluorescence labeling and gut function assays. Results We found that 5xFAD mice have elevated levels of intestinal amyloid precursor protein and accumulate amyloid-beta in enteric neurons. Histopathology revealed that this is associated with mild intestinal inflammation and fibrosis and accompanied by increased expression of proinflammatory cytokines. While overall enteric nervous system composition and organization appeared unaffected, 5xFAD mice have faster gastrointestinal transit. Conclusion Our findings indicate that amyloid-beta accumulation in enteric neurons is associated with low-grade intestinal inflammation and altered motility and suggest that peripheral pathology may cause gastrointestinal dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease patients.We acknowledge the Advanced Optical Microscopy Centre at Hasselt University, especially the help provided by Sam Duwé, for support with microscopy experiments, which were made possible by FWO (I001222N) and Methusalem UHasselt. We also thank the members of the Laboratory for Enteric Neurobiology and the Melotte Lab for their support and insightful comments on the manuscript. The graphical abstract was created using
BioRender.com, accessed on December 18, 2024
‘A Museum Label Is Not Enough!’: Diffraction, Urban Fascist Legacy, and Participatory Artivism from Contemporary Rome
No full textThrough the adoption of a methodology that combines ‘diffraction’ and personal experience, alongside an ecocritical interpretation of non-human bodies, this article demonstrates how literary works can be utilized to generate participatory ‘artivism’ initiatives in urban spaces, that intertwine the Roman districts EUR and Trastevere.
These Roman landscapes, both central and marginal, marked by an ambiguous and naturalized fascist legacy, risk promoting the appropriation of urban spaces and buildings by neo-fascist discourse. Bearing in mind a specific genealogy of the term ‘artivism’, the article foregrounds the double position of the author as both a scholar and an activist, and discusses (we) Are Not GIL, a participatory artivism action geared towards decolonizing the former GIL – Gioventù italiana del Littorio (Italian Youth of Littorio) building, in 2019. This endeavour, which involved a comparative and performative use of two literary texts by Ghermandi and Flaiano, played a pivotal role in dismantling the uniformity of institutional narratives pertaining to the fascist, colonial, and patriarchal legacies – prefiguring a participatory artistic practice and politics aimed at depatriarchalizing, decolonizing, and defascistizing the artistic heritage of the city of Rome
Tierra quemada by Óscar Collazos as an Allegory of Displacement in Colombia
No full textThrough the portrayal of never-ending march of a caravan of internally displaced persons (IDPs), the novel Tierra quemada (2013) by the Colombian author Óscar Collazos explores the interrelation between different forms of violence and their devastating impact on the peripheric outposts of Colombia. This article proposes an allegorical reading of the novel by examining how it represents the difficulty to break the cycle of violence and the impact of a low-intensity conflict on the IDPs, without presenting a voyeuristic perspective of the violence nor a Manichean vision of the armed conflict
The Baroque in the Work of Carlos Fuentes. A Reading of Four Novels.
No full textAlthough Carlos Fuentes is generally regarded as one of the leading figures of contemporary Mexican literature, the literary criticism tends to connect the complex, sumptuous style of some of his works with the seventeenth-century Spanish baroque. Strangely enough, the authors reflections on the European and Latin-American baroque are systematically disregarded in those analyses. Contrary to existing studies on particular aspects of the baroque in Fuentess work, we propose to analyze its baroqueness in a constant dialogue with the reflections of the author himself and those of other theoreticians of the baroque. Hence the first text we take into account is the novella Aura (1962), which Fuentes has attributed in an ironic essay from 1982 to the baroque poet Quevedo. By means of this explicit intertextual links between the love poetry of Quevedo and Aura, we first examine a number of baroque topoi or recurring themes such as the transitoriness of all earthy things (the experience of vanitas), the interaction between illusion (engaño) and disillusion (desengaño) or the fading of a eschatological horizon without any possibility of salvation, a sensibility which is made concrete in the complex of melancholia. A second, implicit intertext is the study by the philosopher Walter Benjamin on the German baroque mourning play as an allegory or a concrete representation of a general and abstract concept, in this case an episode of the Mexican national history.Like Aura, the short story cycle Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins (1989) is commonly associated with the gothic novel, characterized by supernatural elements and horrifying, often ruinous landscapes. A baroque interpretation of these elements sheds a new light on the historical vision that underlies Constancia. On the basis of Benjanins theory of baroque tragedy we first analyze some topoi such as the ruin and the labyrinth. Next, the time experience of the present is far from being homogeneous in Constancia: the characters regard time rather as spectral since a traumatic past keeps haunting their present, resulting in a melancholic humour. Moreover, Benjamin appears as a character in one of the stories, which also contains quotations of his ninth historical-philosophical thesis, in which the paralyzed angel of history is driven backwards into the future while her gaze is fixed on the ruins of the past. As illustrated by the front cover of the novel, the author has clearly been inspired by the religious paintings by the Spanish baroque master Zurbarán, which he seeks to parody in one of the stories.According to Benjamin the baroque topos of the ruin must be regarded as a spatial representation of time. In addition to the baroque vision of the historical process as illustrated by Constancia, our discussion of the novel in nine stories The Crystal Frontier (1995) involves the Bakhtinian concept of the chronotope, which describes a specific coexistence of time and space and a specific world-view. This perspective enables us to counterbalance the one-sided emphasis on the spatial turn that many critics observe in the evolution of Fuentess oeuvre. More concretely, we read the novel as an encounter of a chronotope of the frontier and a baroque chronotope that undermines the stability of the classic concept of the chronotope. To this process not only contributes the interplay between illusion and disillusion, but also the omnipresent melancholia, which not only stems from the irremediable loss of an era, but also of a place such as the native region or the territories which were incorporated by the United States in 1848. From this perspective, The Crystal Frontier points to an instable time-space construction that can be compared to what is called dischronotope in recent studies on diaspora.In Happy Families (2006), finally, the baroqueness takes the form of the tragic. The short stories from this volume are interconnected by means of poetic choruses which are closer to the baroque drama as described by Benjamin than to the more didactic, univocal choruses of the classic tragedy. The polyphonic lamentations are a source of consolation because they stress a sense of community in a society in which the traditional family ties are breaking down, as is thematized in the short stories. This interpretation is also based on what Fuentes, with regard to William Faulkner (whom he calls the only baroque author from North-America), has called the novel as tragedy, in which different voices and opposite values come together without neutralizing each other. Drawing on the assumption that the Latin-American culture lacks a sense of the tragic, Fuentes tries in Happy Families to go beyond the black-and-white melodrama as well as the melancholic disposition (turned to the past) by means of a novel that incorporates a sense of the tragic and the utopian thought (looking to the future).Besides putting into practice an organic and spiral method of reading that exploits the interconnections between theory, novel, essay and literary critique, the thesis intends to contribute to the study of the work by Fuentes, on the one hand, and to the debate on the current interest of the baroque, on the other. The implicit and explicit dialogue with the Benjamins thought shows that the affinity with the baroque reaches further than the mere homage to a specific author of the baroque period: both Fuentes and Benjamin try to think modernity from the baroque.status: Publishe
Tierra quemada de Óscar Collazos como alegoría del desplazamiento en Colombia
No full textThrough the portrayal of never-ending march of a caravan of internally displaced persons (IDPs), the novel Tierra quemada (2013) by the Colombian author Óscar Collazos explores the interrelation between different forms of violence and their devastating impact on the peripheric outposts of Colombia. This article proposes an allegorical reading of the novel by examining how it represents the difficulty to break the cycle of violence and the impact of a low-intensity conflict on the IDPs, without presenting a voyeuristic perspective of the violence nor a Manichean vision of the armed conflict.A través del retrato de una caravana interminable de desplazados internos, la novela Tierra quemada (2013) del escritor colombiano Óscar Collazos explora la interrelación de diferentes formas de violencia y su impacto devastador en las zonas periféricas de Colombia. El presente artículo propone una lectura alegórica de la novela al examinar cómo ésta representa la dificultad de cerrar el ciclo de las violencias y el impacto de un conflicto de baja intensidad sobre las víctimas del desplazamiento armado, sin caer en una perspectiva voyerista de la violencia ni en una visión maniquea del conflicto armado
Ethos : pour une mise au point conceptuelle et méthodologique
No full textEn guise de préambule théorique aux études de cas réunies dans ce numéro, le présent article se veut une mise au point du concept d’ethos et de ses concepts voisins, tout en formulant quelques-uns des défis, tant définitionnels que méthodologiques, qui en résultent. Aussi cette contribution adopte-t-elle une double démarche, proposant d’abord un regard rétrospectif, qui résume le parcours historique de la notion d’ethos et de la figure de l’auteur en général, avant de formuler quelques pistes de réflexion à portée méthodologique. D’une part, celles-ci découlent du constat d’un certain flou notionnel qui semble subsister dans la recherche consacrée à la figure de l’auteur, en dépit – ou peut-être en raison – des nombreuses tentatives de définition des spécialistes concernés. D’autre part, elles font le point sur quelques problèmes de méthode résultant de la confrontation des diverses conceptions de la figure de l’auteur, mais aussi de leur mise en œuvre respective dans des études de cas dont la grande diversité historique, générique et discursive demande à être davantage prise en compte.By way of theoretical prelude to the case-studies collected in this issue, the present article proposes a clarification of the concept of ethos and its related concepts, as well as of the definitional and methodological challenges they present. From the outset, this contribution adopts a double approach: it proposes a historical survey of the notion of ethos and the authorial figure in general, before formulating some methodological considerations. On the one hand, these reflections originate from a notional vagueness, which seems to subsist in the research on the author figure, in spite of – or perhaps because of – multiple attempts to clarify the variety of definitions proposed by the specialists concerned. On the other hand, the article touches upon different methodological problems, which derive from the confrontation of different conceptions of the author figure or from their application in case-studies of which the historical, generic and discursive diversity needs to be taken more fully into account
Tríptico de la infamia de Pablo Montoya como cuadro barroco
No full textCompuesta de tres retratos de sendos artistas victimizados por las monarquías católicas en el convulsionado siglo XVI, la novela histórica Tríptico de la infamia (2015) del escritor colombiano Pablo Montoya puede leerse como una transposición ecfrástica de la iconografía en torno a la leyenda negra. El tríptico narrativo de Montoya no se limita a desplegar y descodificar un corpus visual centrado en las atrocidades ocurridas en el contexto de las pugnas religiosas en el Viejo Mundo y los horrores de la empresa colonizadora en el Nuevo Mundo, sino que reescribe la historia a través de un lenguaje visual. La recreación imaginativa de la vida de los artistas a partir de sus crónicas pictóricas propulsa una escritura del pasado en la que el diálogo entre literatura, pintura e imágenes archivadas en la memoria colectiva lleva a una interpretación actualizante y revisionista del pasado.Composta de tres retrats d'ambdós artistes victimitzats per les monarquies catòliques en el convulsionat segle XVI, la novel·la històrica Tríptico de la infamia (2015) de l'escriptor colombià Pablo Montoya pot llegir-se com una transposició ecfràstica de la iconografia entorn de la llegenda negra. El tríptic narratiu de Montoya no es limita a desplegar i descodificar un corpus visual centrat en les atrocitats que van tenir lloc en el context de les pugnes religioses en el Vell Món, sinó que reescriu la història a través d'un llenguatge visual. La recreació imaginativa de la vida dels artistes a partir de les seves cròniques pictòriques propulsa una escriptura del passat en què el diàleg entre literatura, pintura i imatges arxivades en la memòria col·lectiva porta a una interpretació més actual i revisionista del passat.Portraying three different artists who were victimized by the Catholic monarchies in the agitated sixteenth century, the historical novel Tríptico de la infamia (2015) by the Colombian author Pablo Montoya can be regarded as an ekphrastic transposition of the iconography of the anti-Spanish Black Legend. Montoya's narrative triptych does not only display and decode an imagery that revolves around the atrocities that took place in the context of the wars of religion in the Old World and the horrors of the colonizing enterprise in the New World, it also revisions history by means of a visual language. Indeed, the imaginative recreation of the artists' lives through their visual chronicles triggers a writing of the past in which the dialogue between literature, painting and images archived in the collective memory leads to a reinterpretation of the past which makes present what it remembers
