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In this article, I analyze instances of Ukrainian poetry written between Taras Ševčenko’s death and the establishment of modernism that deal with the theme of the precarity of Ukrainian literature as a consequence of the lack of a Ukrainian nation in those times. On the basis of examples drawn from the works of Pantelejmon Kuliš, Lesja Ukrajinka, Mychajlo Staryc’kyj, Borys Hrinčenko, Volodymyr Samijlenko, Volodymyr Šaškevyč, and Ivan Franko, I aim to show how Ukrainian poets of the second half of the 19thcentury tended to imagine the Ukrainian community as belonging to the past and/or the future, while its presence and its agency in the present are made impossible by imperial subjugation, hence making communication, including literary, impossible or powerless. In the final part of my article, I also reflect on the complex nexus between aesthetic judgment and the re-evaluation of Ukrainian literary history.

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes representations of the body in Belarusian poetry linked to the 2020 protests. The author argues that the remarkable poetic productivity regarding corporeality, comparable to literary texts inspired by other upheavals, such as the French, Russian, and the most recent Ukrainian revolutions, is directed towards the depiction of a new Belarusian identity shaped by the 2020 revolt against Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s latest electoral fraud. On the basis of poetic texts by Iulia Tsimafeeva, Tatstsiana Svetashova, Al′herd Bakharevich, Artur Kamaroŭski, Dmitrii Strotsev, Dmitrii Rubin, and Krystsina Banduryna, the author proposes a reading of the different ways in which living Belarusian poets have represented Belarus, its rethinking of its own identity, and its political struggle through images pertaining to corporeality, including decay, the juxtaposition of masculinity and femininity, violence, and pregnancy. He also argues that in contemporary Belarusian poetry the thematization of the body is related to an important, ongoing, metaliterary reflection on the limits and possibilities of poetry writing in times of change, in the context of revitalized poetry dissemination in the digital age.

Turano-Mongolian cattle are a group of taurine cattle from Northern and Eastern Asia with distinct morphological traits, which are known for their ability to tolerate harsh environments, such as the Asian steppe and the Tibetan plateau. Through the analysis of 170 mitogenomes from ten modern breeds, two sub-lineages within T3 (T3119and T3055) were identified as specific of Turano-Mongolian cattle. These two T3 sub-lineages, together with the previously identified T4, were also present in six Neolithic samples, dated to ~3900 years BP, which might represent the earliest domestic taurine stocks from Southwest Asia. The rare haplogroup Q, found in three Tibetan cattle, testifies for the legacy of ancient migrations from Southwest Asia and suggests that the isolated Tibetan Plateau preserved unique prehistoric genetic resources. These findings confirm the geographic substructure of Turano-Mongolian cattle breeds, which have been shaped by ancient migrations and geographic barriers.

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes polyphonic memory in recent works by Serhii Zhadan and Marianna Kiianovs'ka, two leading contemporary Ukrainian writers. Before focusing on Zhadan and Kiianovs'ka, the author analyzes some excerpts from poems by other contemporary writers in which memory is thematized at the crossroads of individual and collective remembering. In his latest collections, Zhadan has shown a tendency to shape his poetic world around a lyrical subject keen to collect human voices and memories with the aim of preserving them from oblivion. Kiianovs'ka’s 2017 collection Babyn Iar: Holosamyconsists of memory fragments expressed by the various voices that constitute its collective subject, the victims of the 1941 Babyn Iar tragedy. In spite of the difference between these two models of poetic polyphony, the former conveyed through the mediation of a lyrical subject and the latter directly expressed by individual voices, the author here argues that Zhadan’s and Kiianovs'ka’s recent poetry successfully links the singularity of individual memory to the collective experience. He also argues that polyphonic poetic memory can be read as a strategy to overcome the opposition between the “populist” and “modernist” approaches to literature that has marked the self-perception of Ukrainian literature since the early twentieth century.

Genetic and archaeological data indicate that the initial Paleoindian settlers of South America followed two entry routes separated by the Andes and the Amazon rainforest. The interactions between these paths and their impact on the peopling of South America remain unclear. Analysis of genetic variation in the Peruvian Andes and regions located south of the Amazon River might provide clues on this issue. We analyzed mitochondrial DNA variation at different Andean locations and >360,000 autosomal SNPs from 28 Native American ethnic groups to evaluate different trans-Andean demographic scenarios. Our data reveal that the Peruvian Altiplano was an important enclave for early Paleoindian expansions and point to a genetic continuity in the Andes until recent times, which was only marginally affected by gene flow from the Amazonian lowlands. Genomic variation shows a good fit with the archaeological evidence, indicating that the genetic interactions between the descendants of the settlers that followed the Pacific and Atlantic routes were extremely limited.

Although it is widely recognized that the ancestors of Native Americans (NAs) primarily came from Siberia, the link between mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineage D4h3a (typical of NAs) and D4h3b (found so far only in East China and Thailand) raises the possibility that the ancestral sources for early NAs were more variegated than hypothesized. Here, we analyze 216 contemporary (including 106 newly sequenced) D4h mitogenomes and 39 previously reported ancient D4h data. The results reveal two radiation events of D4h in northern coastal China, one during the Last Glacial Maximum and the other within the last deglaciation, which facilitated the dispersals of D4h sub-branches to different areas including the Americas and the Japanese archipelago. The coastal distributions of the NA (D4h3a) and Japanese lineages (D4h1a and D4h2), in combination with the Paleolithic archaeological similarities among Northern China, the Americas, and Japan, lend support to the coastal dispersal scenario of early NAs.

Background: Modern sequencing technologies should make the assembly of the relatively small mitochondrial genomes an easy undertaking. However, few tools exist that address mitochondrial assembly directly. Results: As part of the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP) we develop mitoVGP, a fully automated pipeline for similarity-based identification of mitochondrial reads and de novo assembly of mitochondrial genomes that incorporates both long (> 10 kbp, PacBio or Nanopore) and short (100–300 bp, Illumina) reads. Our pipeline leads to successful complete mitogenome assemblies of 100 vertebrate species of the VGP. We observe that tissue type and library size selection have considerable impact on mitogenome sequencing and assembly. Comparing our assemblies to purportedly complete reference mitogenomes based on short-read sequencing, we identify errors, missing sequences, and incomplete genes in those references, particularly in repetitive regions. Our assemblies also identify novel gene region duplications. The presence of repeats and duplications in over half of the species herein assembled indicates that their occurrence is a principle of mitochondrial structure rather than an exception, shedding new light on mitochondrial genome evolution and organization. Conclusions: Our results indicate that even in the “simple” case of vertebrate mitogenomes the completeness of many currently available reference sequences can be further improved, and caution should be exercised before claiming the complete assembly of a mitogenome, particularly from short reads alone.

A novel mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) transition (3733G→A) inducing the E143 K amino acid change at a very conserved site of the NADH dehydrogenase subunit 1 (ND1) was identified in a family with six maternally related individuals with Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) and in an unrelated sporadic case, all negative for known mutations and presenting with the canonical phenotype. The transition was not detected in 1,082 control mtDNAs and was heteroplasmic in several individuals from both pedigrees. In addition, the mtDNAs of the two families were found to belong to different haplogroups (H and X), thus confirming that the 3733G→A mutation occurred twice independently. Phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy disclosed an in vivo brain and skeletal muscle energy metabolism deficit in the four examined patients. Muscle biopsy from two patients showed slight mitochondrial proliferation with abnormal mitochondria. Biochemical investigations in platelets showed partially insensitive complex I to rotenone inhibition. We conclude that the 3733G→A transition is a novel cause of LHON and, after those at positions 3460 and 4171, is the third ND1 mutation to be identified in multiple unrelated families. This finding shows that, in addition to ND6, the ND1 subunit gene is also a mutational hot spot for LHON. Ann Neurol 2004;56:631–641