Tributes to Prof David Sanders

Obituary within letters to the editor for Professor David Sander

The developmental cell biology of Trypanosoma brucei

Trypanosoma brucei provides an excellent system for studies of many aspects of cell biology, including cell structure and morphology, organelle positioning, cell division and protein trafficking. However, the trypanosome has a complex life cycle in which it must adapt either to the mammalian bloodstream or to different compartments within the tsetse fly. These differentiation events require stage-specific changes to basic cell biological processes and reflect responses to environmental stimuli and programmed differentiation events that must occur within a single cell. The organization of cell structure is fundamental to the trypanosome throughout its life cycle. Modulations of the overall cell morphology and positioning of the specialized mitochondrial genome, flagellum and associated basal body provide the classical descriptions of the different life cycle stages of the parasite. The dependency relationships that govern these morphological changes are now beginning to be understood and their molecular basis identified. The overall picture emerging is of a highly organized cell in which the rules established for cell division and morphogenesis in organisms such as yeast and mammalian cells do not necessarily apply. Therefore, understanding the developmental cell biology of the African trypanosome is providing insight into both fundamentally conserved and fundamentally different aspects of the organization of the eukaryotic cell

The Failure of Maternal Domesticity: An Evaluation of Frankenstein as a Didactic Source

Is man inherently good or evil? Nineteenth century Romantics, inspired by the doctrine of Jean Jacques Rousseau, hypothesized that man is a product of his or her environment. Middle class society imputed the mother as the gateway by which a child learns to become a model human being. This theory held that mothers nurture their offspring naturally. Children learn proper morals and social conduct based upon a female-inspired education. Without this domestic influence on their lives, children fall into the trap of an “eye for an eye” ideology. The monster that Mary Shelley conceives in Frankenstein defies the domestic conception of a maternally guided household. The piece serves as a didactic tool; Shelley, in representing the Romantic Movement, warns nineteenth century society about the dangers of a maternally void world, a world that contradicted the Romantic conception of proper maternal guidance in both the home and in society

New Directions for New Dimensions: From Strings to Neutrinos to Axions to...

In this talk, I discuss recent developments concerning the possibility of large extra spacetime dimensions. After briefly reviewing how such dimensions can lower the fundamental GUT, Planck, and string scales, I then outline how these scenarios lead to a new higher-dimensional seesaw mechanism for generating neutrino oscillations --- perhaps even without neutrino masses. I also discuss how extra dimensions lead to new mechanisms contributing to the ``invisibility'' of the QCD axion. This talk reports on work done in collaboration with Emilian Dudas and Tony Gherghetta.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures. Invited plenary talk given at PASCOS '99 (held at Lake Tahoe, California, 10-16 December 1999). To appear in the Proceeding