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In 2002 we published an article describing a population of vessel-associated progenitors that we termed mesoangioblasts (MABs). During the past decade evidence had accumulated that during muscle development and regeneration things may be more complex than a simple sequence of binary choices (e.g., dorsal vs. ventral somite). LacZ expressing fibroblasts could fuse with unlabelled myoblasts but not among themselves or with other cell types. Bone marrow derived, circulating progenitors were able to participate in muscle regeneration, though in very small percentage. Searching for the embryonic origin of these progenitors, we identified them as originating at least in part from the embryonic aorta and, at later stages, from the microvasculature of skeletal muscle. While continuing to investigate origin and fate of MABs, the fact that they could be expanded in vitro (also from human muscle) and cross the vessel wall, suggested a protocol for the cell therapy of muscular dystrophies. We tested this protocol in mice and dogs before proceeding to the first clinical trial on Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy patients that showed safety but minimal efficacy. In the last years, we have worked to overcome the problem of low engraftment and tried to understand their role as auxiliary myogenic progenitors during development and regeneration.

In 2002 we published an article describing a population of vessel-associated progenitors that we termed mesoangioblasts (MABs). During the past decade evidence had accumulated that during muscle development and regeneration things may be more complex than a simple sequence of binary choices (e.g., dorsal vs. ventral somite). LacZ expressing fibroblasts could fuse with unlabelled myoblasts but not among themselves or with other cell types. Bone marrow derived, circulating progenitors were able to participate in muscle regeneration, though in very small percentage. Searching for the embryonic origin of these progenitors, we identified them as originating at least in part from the embryonic aorta and, at later stages, from the microvasculature of skeletal muscle. While continuing to investigate origin and fate of MABs, the fact that they could be expanded in vitro (also from human muscle) and cross the vessel wall, suggested a protocol for the cell therapy of muscular dystrophies. We tested this protocol in mice and dogs before proceeding to the first clinical trial on Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy patients that showed safety but minimal efficacy. In the last years, we have worked to overcome the problem of low engraftment and tried to understand their role as auxiliary myogenic progenitors during development and regeneration., Depto. de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular, TRUE, pub

Viruses have lurked on the margins of cultural theory ever since Deleuze and Guattari suggested that “our viruses make us form a rhizome with other creatures.” According to Patricia Clough and Jasbir Puar, in the age of the internet, virality became “a form of communication and transmission across various domains: the biological, the cultural, the financial, the political, the linguistic, the technical, and computational.” In recent years, however, viral theory in the humanities and social sciences hasn’t kept pace with the scientific initiatives starting to peek into the virosphere’s vast unknown realms. This special issue of e-flux journal seeks to reckon with the multitude of invisible viral agents waiting to disrupt, detour, and reroute established modes of life… Editorial: Welcome to the Virosphere Eben Kirksey Kinship Is Anarchy Caitlin Berrigan Viral Things: Twelve Keywords Stephan Guttinger Contingent Contagion Sria Chatterjee Death to Death / Life by Cuts Mel Y. Chen The Viral Real Celia Lowe Viral Junk Rachel Vaughn Barebacking in Restaurants and Other Fantasies of the Virosphere Tim Dean Viruses Are More Like Cone Snails Than Hijackers Hannah Landecker Getting Lucky in Thailand: Or How to Coexist with Coronaviruses in Multispecies Contact Zones Eben Kirksey, Areeya Tivasuradej, Blake Palmer, Myint Than, Anne Atchara Changwong, Pietro Lo Casto, and Maya Kóvskaya, https://www.librarystack.org/e-flux-journal-130/?ref=unknown

This volume reports on a study to investigate the effectiveness of a developmental, individualized reading laboratory program at the middle-school and high-school levels. The program was developed and evaluated over a four-year period, at the F.K. Yonge Laboratory School, located at the University of Florida at Gainesville. Promising results during the first and second years led to field testing at a county high school, a suburban middle school, and a rural middle school. In each setting, group pretesting, individual goal-setting conferences, individual programming, 15 hours of reading-laboratory time, group posttesting, and final individual conferences were provided. Evaluation of program results indicated that the average pupil in the laboratory school read about one-fourth faster and with significantly better comprehension and that pupils in the field testing schools evidenced similar gains. In addition to discussion provided in the main text--a program description and analysis of the implications of this research for other schools--appendixes provide definition of terms, materials and equipment lists, reading-test ordering information, several sample programs, and a directory of schools adapting the model. Tabulations of data and a list of references are included. (KS)

A central tool in comparative genomics is sequence alignment. This makes it possible to identify stretches of DNA that exhibit different degrees of similarity across closely and distantly related organisms. In much of this work, phylogenetic conservation of sequence structure (i.e., homology) is a proxy for genomic function. After the Human Genome Project, there was growing interest in moving from structural or descriptive genomics to functional genomics. The goal of the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project was to identify and catalogue all the functional elements or active structures of the human genome. A parallel project attempted to catalogue shared functional elements of genomes across model organisms (modENCODE). The key methodological question for both projects was how to identify functional elements in the first place. As noted, an evolutionary approach uses comparative analysis of sequence similarity to identify sequence conservation across species, which is treated as a proxy for the functional relevance of those genomic elements. A biochemical approach focuses on signatures of activity that functional elements leave behind as proxies for the elements themselves. ENCODE primarily utilized the biochemical approach. modENCODE ended up doing something different and distinctive: it fused the biochemical and evolutionary approaches to genomic function and adopted an increased abstraction about what counts as a genomic property. This was a novel methodological maneuver. ENCODE focused on functional elements of the genome (i.e., structures), but modENCODE shifted to general regulatory principles (i.e., abstract functional rules). Evolutionary conservation is combined with biochemical activity to isolate shared relational functional properties—not elements or structures—of metazoan genomes. This methodological shift by modENCODE introduced a theoretical tension: the notion of conservation applies straightforwardly to sequence-based functional elements (i.