The "Controversial Cundurango Cure": Medical professionalization and the global circulation of drugs.

This article examines the medical and political discussions regarding a controversial medicinal bark from Ecuador - cundurango - that was actively sponsored by the Ecuadorian government as a new botanical cure for cancer in the late nineteenth century United States and elsewhere. The article focuses on the commercial and diplomatic interests behind the public discussion and advertising techniques of this drug. It argues that diverse elements - including the struggle for positioning scientific societies and the disapproval of the capacities of Ecuadorian doctors, US abolitionist history, regional and local political struggles - played a role in the quackery accusations against cundurango and its promoters. The development and international trade of this remedy offer interesting insights into the global history of drugs, particularly how medical knowledge was challenged during a period when scientific medicine was struggling for hegemony. It explores how newspapers expanded "the public interest" in a possible cancer cure.

Evolucionismo en América y Europa. Antropología, biología, política y educación

La reflexión y debate sobre el origen y evolución de las especies, y sus implicaciones filosóficas, teológicas y científicas, han ejercido una fascinación entre los seres humanos, especialmente a partir de la publicación de Charles Darwin, El origen de las especies, en 1859. Los debates suscitados por el mecanismo de la selección natural primero, y en torno al origen de la especie humana casi de inmediato, trascendieron los ámbitos de la historia natural y la biología. La revolución darwiniana suscitó apasionados y en ocasiones ideologizados debates en la sociología, la antropología, la medicina, el colonialismo, la educación, la política, la ética, el arte. La teoría de la evolución se convirtió en un elemento de las discusiones sobre las «razas» humanas y sus relaciones de poder, los proyectos eugenésicos, los determinismos geográficos, entre otros. Y con el tiempo, las complejas formas mediante las cuales las ideas evolucionistas han circulado en el mundo se tornaron en objeto de análisis histórico. Debatir sobre el darwinismo y la teoría de la evolución como cultura es el objetivo de este libro, que reúne los trabajos presentados durante el VI Coloquio Internacional sobre Darwinismo en Europa y América, llevado a cabo en Puerto Ayora (Galápagos, Ecuador) en mayo de 2015. En los artículos se analizan las imbricaciones del darwinismo con la ética, la conservación de la naturaleza, la antropología, la eugenesia, la política, la educación y la investigación biológica, entre otros campos, desde perspectivas históricas y contemporáneas, en diversos lugares desde Estados Unidos hasta Argentina, y en la Europa occidental. (AU)

High-mobility-group box nuclear factors of Plasmodium falciparum.

In eukaryotes, the high-mobility-group (HMG) nuclear factors are highly conserved throughout evolution and are divided into three families, including HGMB, characterized by an HMG box domain. Some HMGB factors are DNA structure specific and preferentially interact with distorted DNA sequences, trigger DNA bending, and hence facilitate the binding of nucleoprotein complexes that in turn activate or repress transcription. In Plasmodium falciparum, two HMGB factors were predicted: PfHMGB1 and PfHMGB2. They are small proteins, under 100 amino acids long, encompassing a characteristic HMG box domain closely related to box B of metazoan factors, which comprises two HMG box domains, A and B, in tandem. Computational analyses supported the conclusion that the Plasmodium proteins were genuine architectural HMGB factors, and in vitro analyses performed with both recombinant proteins established that they were able to interact with distorted DNA structures and bend linear DNA with different affinities. These proteins were detected in both asexual- and gametocyte-stage cells in Western blotting experiments and mainly in the parasite nuclei. PfHMGB1 is preferentially expressed in asexual erythrocytic stages and PfHMGB2 in gametocytes, in good correlation with transcript levels of expression. Finally, immunofluorescence studies revealed differential subcellular localizations: both factors were observed in the nucleus of asexual- and sexual-stage cells, and PfHMGB2 was also detected in the cytoplasm of gametocytes. In conclusion, in light of differences in their levels of expression, subcellular localizations, and capacities for binding and bending DNA, these factors are likely to play nonredundant roles in transcriptional regulation of Plasmodium development in erythrocytes.