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Phloridzin is the most abundant polyphenolic compound in apple (Malus × domestica Borkh.), which results from the action of a key phloretin-specific UDP-2'-O-glucosyltransferase (MdPGT1). Here, we simultaneously assessed the effects of targeting MdPGT1 by conventional transgenesis and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9)-mediated genome editing. To this end, we conducted transcriptomic and metabolic analyses of MdPGT1 RNA interference knockdown and genome-edited lines. Knockdown lines exhibited characteristic impairment of plant growth and leaf morphology, whereas genome-edited lines exhibited normal growth despite reduced foliar phloridzin. RNA-sequencing analysis identified a common core of regulated genes, involved in phenylpropanoid and flavonoid pathways. However, we identified genes and processes differentially modulated in stunted and genome-edited lines, including key transcription factors and genes involved in phytohormone signalling. Therefore, we conducted a phytohormone profiling to obtain insight into their role in the phenotypes observed. We found that salicylic and jasmonic acid were increased in dwarf lines, whereas auxin and ABA showed no correlation with the growth phenotype. Furthermore, bioactive brassinosteroids were commonly up-regulated, whereas gibberellin GA

In 2020, as public protest against anti-Black police brutality surged globally, institutional public statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement proliferated. Universities, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions rushed to deplore racist violence and express their commitment to anti-racist and decolonial practice. Rather than release a statement of their own, staff at Senate House Library – the central library for the University of London and the School of Advanced Study – chose instead to pursue and embed a fledgling piece of reparative archival work, the Collections Inclusion Review, alongside their continuing efforts to improve the inclusivity and accessibility of their collections, particularly of literatures in English. This interview is a transcribed and edited version of a conversation with the two Senate House Library staff members leading this work: Richard Espley, now Head of Collections (and formerly Head of Modern Collections), and Leila Kassir, Academic Librarian for British, Irish, USA, Latin American, Caribbean, and Commonwealth Literature. The discussion ranged across issues of provenance, archive description, library layout, and the future of English as a discipline, urging attention to and amelioration of the exclusionary aspects of library practice. While critiquing institutional approaches to the legacies of colonialism, past and present, both interviewees expressed reservations about widespread claims to have ‘achieved’ decolonization, stressing that such calls are contingent on surrounding structures and processes, and suggesting that such radical dismantling remains a long-term aspiration, rather than a quick-fix solution.

The groups of plant flavonoid metabolites termed anthocyanins and proanthocyanins (PA) are responsible for pigmentation in seeds, flowers and fruits. Anthocyanins and PAs are produced by a pathway of enzymes which are transcriptionally regulated by transcription factors (TFs) that form the MYB-bHLH-WD40 (MBW) complex. In this study, transcriptomic analysis of purple-pigmented kiwifruit skin and flesh tissues identified MYBC1, from subgroup 5 of the R2R3 MYB family, and WRKY44 (highly similar to Arabidopsis TTG2) as candidate activators of the anthocyanin pathway. Transient over-expression of MYBC1 and WRKY44 induced anthocyanin accumulation in tobacco leaves. Dual luciferase promoter activation assays revealed that both MYBC1 and WRKY44 were able to strongly activate the promoters of the kiwifruit F3′H and F3′5′H genes. These enzymes are branch points of the pathway which specifies the type of anthocyanin accumulated. Stable over-expression of MYBC1 and WRKY44 in kiwifruit calli activated the expression of F3′5′H and PA-related biosynthetic genes as well as increasing levels of PAs. These results suggest that while previously characterised anthocyanin activator MYBs regulate the overall anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway, the PA-related TFs, MYBC1 and WRKY44, more specifically regulate key branch points. This adds a layer of regulatory control that potentially balances anthocyanin and PA levels.

Caroline Playne (1857-1948) was a committed and influential pacifist and internationalist who dissected the causes of the First World War in four idiosyncratic published histories. Diagnosing the growing bellicosity of the peoples of Europe in the years before the war as a shared mental illness, she espoused many deeply conservative opinions, frequently echoing the moral outrage of contemporary temperance groups and purity crusades, for example. However, Playne was privately wholly absorbed in the charitable support of London’s enemy aliens and their dependents, including unmarried mothers and illegitimate children. Evidence of this work survives in fragments in some archives, but is suppressed from her published works and from the papers she left to the University of London, along with much of the rest of her campaigning life. This article seeks to explore the motivations of Caroline Playne in what emerges as a sustained act of biographical erasure. The image ultimately presented is of a woman who secured a voice in the public life of the city through the suppression not only of her sex, but also her limitless human compassion, and so arguably her very self.

Alec Craig (1897-1973) was a passionate, widely published campaigner for freedom from literary censorship. His pioneering analytical history of the subject in 1937 attracted a foreword from E.M. Forster and quickly became a standard work, while he was also a prominent figure in bodies such as PEN and the British Sexological Society. He issued an inflexible call to free literature “from all shackles legal, economic and social” (Craig, 1937, p. 108), and included in this demand pre-publication amendments by cautious publishers, the pricing of works beyond the reach of most consumers, and the absence of controversial works in libraries. However, rather than campaigning for unfettered freedom for its own sake, he insisted that both censorship and pornography were symptoms of the fundamental lack of “rational sex education” and “social conditions which will obviate sex frustration” (1937, p. 155). This chapter will reassess Craig’s radical and now forgotten prescription for social and literary culture, formed in a moment of cultural optimism arguably dissipated by the Second World War. Drawing on Craig’s own archive and that of his publisher, it will explore how his reputation and works fell victim to the forces he resisted, finding poignant illustration in the fate of his library of rare editions of censored books, psychological and legal works; left to the public, it was divided and dispersed, much of it sequestered and never added to public catalogues. Ultimately, a marginalised Craig becomes a case study of the polymorphous power of censorship to limit and distort the creation and dissemination of literary culture.

The biosynthesis of anthocyanin in many plants is affected by environmental conditions. In apple (Malus × domestica Borkh.), concentrations of fruit anthocyanins are lower under hot climatic conditions. We examined the anthocyanin accumulation in the peel of maturing 'Mondial Gala' and 'Royal Gala' apples, grown in both temperate and hot climates, and using artificial heating of on-tree fruit. Heat caused a dramatic reduction of both peel anthocyanin concentration and transcripts of the genes of the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway. Heating fruit rapidly reduced expression of the R2R3 MYB transcription factor (MYB10) responsible for coordinative regulation for red skin colour, as well as expression of other genes in the transcriptional activation complex. A single night of low temperatures is sufficient to elicit a large increase in transcription of MYB10 and consequently the biosynthetic pathway. Candidate genes that can repress anthocyanin biosynthesis did not appear to be responsible for reductions in anthocyanin content. We propose that temperature-induced regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis is primarily caused by altered transcript levels of the activating anthocyanin regulatory complex.

Perhaps the most ubiquitous and evocative image of the Great War in popular culture is the trench on the Western Front. In novels and film, and in both the classroom and the museum, the trench is called upon to encapsulate the conflict. This chapter examines the first British example, opened to the public in Blackpool in 1916, alongside one of the most high profile, the ?Trench Experience,? created in 1990 in London?s Imperial War Museum. The ?Trench Experience? echoes its forebear in loudly declaring its total verisimilitude, but they are both vulnerable to accusations of providing an incomplete and sanitised vision of the battlefield. The curator of the ?Trench Experience? expects it not to be perceived as a portal to an absolute truth, but rather a contribution to one infinite and endlessly reworked popular understanding of the Great War as a whole. Keywords: battlefield; Great War; London?s Imperial War Museum; Trench Experience; Western Front