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"Cavaliere, Paola"
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Building Emotional Resilience: Japanese Women’s Religious and Spiritual Coping Strategies in the Time of COVID-19
This paper explores the moderating effect of religious and spiritual coping mechanisms on the COVID-19 pandemic-induced emotional distress among a group of Japanese women practising temple meditation and yoga. A growing body of literature identifies religion and spirituality as sources of coping mechanisms for emotional distress during the pandemic, in that they enable individuals to find ways to improve subjective well-being and quality of life. The study uses a descriptive phenomenological approach, drawing upon narratives collected between September 2020 and June 2021 from thirty-two respondents composed of a mix of religious-affiliated and self-identified non-religious women practising temple meditation and yoga. Findings indicate that more women, including religious affiliates, have favoured spiritual coping mechanisms in the forms of meditation and body–mind practices to build emotional resilience. This reflects a quest for greater subjective well-being to compensate for the increased burden of emotional care during the pandemic. Overall, while organised religions have come to appropriate more holistic forms of spirituality to respond to demands of emotional care, body–mind spiritual practices have become more appealing for younger religious and non-religious Japanese women alike, in that they downplay gender-conforming ideas of the care economy with its emphasis on dedication and dependency.
Journal Article
Women between Religion and Spirituality: Observing Religious Experience in Everyday Japanese Life
A large majority of Japanese people describe themselves as mushūkyō, ‘non-religious’, even though they participate in several religious-related cultural practices that socialize them to accept spiritual attitudes without the mediation of organized religion. This phenomenon fits well into the ‘spiritual but not religious’ formula of the contemporary Northern European and North American sociological debate, in which the ‘religion’ and ‘spiritual’ categories denote interdependent, although not always reciprocated, domains. Drawing upon two sets of qualitative data on women belonging to five religious organizations (Shinnyoen, Risshō kōseikai, the Roman Catholic Church in Japan, Sōga Gakkai, and God Light Association (GLA)), in this study, I argue that the religion–spirituality distinction not only fails to capture the empirical reality of contemporary Japanese religions, it also does not take into account new modalities of religious and spiritual experiences of people with such affiliations. Their experiences are expressed through the socio-cultural milieu and the language of religion and spirituality available to them in contiguous and complementary ways. In this respect, the aim of this article is to discuss such aspects of Japanese women’s religious and spiritual experiences that have often eluded scholars writing on Japanese religiosity in order to broaden the focus of reflection to include the mushūkyō aspect and the presumed religion–spirituality mismatch.
Journal Article
KLF4 is involved in the organization and regulation of pluripotency-associated three-dimensional enhancer networks
Cell fate transitions are accompanied by global transcriptional, epigenetic and topological changes driven by transcription factors, as is exemplified by reprogramming somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells through the expression of OCT4, KLF4, SOX2 and cMYC. How transcription factors orchestrate the complex molecular changes around their target gene loci remains incompletely understood. Here, using KLF4 as a paradigm, we provide a transcription-factor-centric view of chromatin reorganization and its association with three-dimensional enhancer rewiring and transcriptional changes during the reprogramming of mouse embryonic fibroblasts to pluripotent stem cells. Inducible depletion of KLF factors in PSCs caused a genome-wide decrease in enhancer connectivity, whereas disruption of individual KLF4 binding sites within pluripotent-stem-cell-specific enhancers was sufficient to impair enhancer–promoter contacts and reduce the expression of associated genes. Our study provides an integrative view of the complex activities of a lineage-specifying transcription factor and offers novel insights into the nature of the molecular events that follow transcription factor binding.
Di Giammartino, Kloetgen, Polyzos, Liu et al. probe chromatin organization, enhancer status and transcriptional changes and show that KLF4 acts as a transcriptional regulator and chromatin organizer during induced pluripotent stem cell reprogramming and in pluripotent stem cells.
Journal Article
Proximity proteome mapping reveals PD-L1-dependent pathways disrupted by anti-PD-L1 antibody specifically in EGFR-mutant lung cancer cells
Background
PD-L1, a transmembrane ligand for immune checkpoint receptor PD1, has been successfully targeted to activate an anti-tumor immune response in a variety of solid tumors, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Despite the success of targeting PD-L1, only about 20% of patients achieve a durable response. The reasons for the heterogeneity in response are not understood, although some molecular subtypes (e.g., mutant EGF receptor tumors) are generally poor responders. Although PD-L1 is best characterized as a transmembrane PD1 ligand, the emerging view is that PD-L1 has functions independent of activating PD1 signaling. It is not known whether these cell-intrinsic functions of PD-L1 are shared among non-transformed and transformed cells, if they vary among cancer molecular subtypes, or if they are impacted by anti-PD-L1 therapy.
Methods
Here we use quantitative microscopy techniques and APEX2 proximity mapping to describe the behavior of PD-L1 and to identify PD-L1's proximal proteome in human lung epithelial cells.
Results
Our data reveal growth factor control of PD-L1 recycling as a mechanism for acute and reversible regulation of PD-L1 density on the plasma membrane. In addition, we describe novel PD-L1 biology restricted to mutant EGFR cells. Anti-PD-L1 antibody treatment of mutant EGFR cells perturbs cell intrinsic PD-L1 functions, leading to reduced cell migration, increased half-life of EGFR and increased extracellular vesicle biogenesis, whereas anti-PD-L1 antibody does not induce these changes in wild type EGFR cells.
Conclusions
Growth factor acute regulation of PD-L1 trafficking, by contributing to the control of plasma membrane density, might contribute to the regulation of PD-L1's immune checkpoint activity, whereas the specific effects of anti-PD-L1 on mutant EGFR cells might contribute to the poor anti-PD-L1 response of mutant EGFR tumors.
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Journal Article
Promising Practices: Women Volunteers in Contemporary Japanese Religious Civil Society
Based upon a survey of five faith-based volunteer groups, Promising Practices offers valuable insights and fresh perspectives into the ways women's participation in religious civic organizations may work as a gateway toward participatory democracy. By approaching women's faith-based volunteering as a social practice, the book engages with three of the most important dimensions of civil society: gender, religion, and democracy. Cavaliere teases out the complexity of interactions among these three dimensions of civic life through stories of individual women who volunteer for three different religious organizations. The volume examines how faith-based volunteering is experienced by women in contemporary Japan and how it becomes a site of empowering and disempowering practices through which women balance the benefits and the costs of personal shifts, socio-economic changes and democratic transformation.
eBook
Consequences of aneuploidy in human fibroblasts with trisomy 21
An extra copy of chromosome 21 causes Down syndrome, the most common genetic disease in humans. The mechanisms contributing to aneuploidy-related pathologies in this syndrome, independent of the identity of the triplicated genes, are not well defined. To characterize aneuploidy-driven phenotypes in trisomy 21 cells, we performed global transcriptome, proteome, and phenotypic analyses of primary human fibroblasts from individuals with Patau (trisomy 13), Edwards (trisomy 18), or Down syndromes. On average, mRNA and protein levels were increased by 1.5-fold in all trisomies, with a subset of proteins enriched for subunits of macromolecular complexes showing signs of posttranscriptional regulation. These results support the lack of evidence for widespread dosage compensation or dysregulation of chromosomal domains in human autosomes. Furthermore, we show that several aneuploidy-associated phenotypes are present in trisomy 21 cells, including lower viability and increased dependency on serine-driven lipid synthesis. Our studies establish a critical role of aneuploidy, independent of triplicated gene identity, in driving cellular defects associated with trisomy 21.
Journal Article
Promising Practices
Promising Practices explores the ways women's participation in contemporary Japanese religious civic organizations can work as a gateway toward participatory democracy and presents new perspectives on values and social interactions that embed democracy in the everyday women's lives.
eBook
Lysosome-dependent nutrient scavenging underlies stress adaptation during epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition
Metastatic cancer cells invade tissue, overcome nutrient stress, and survive transit to distant sites. Many of the mechanisms that support these processes are incompatible with proliferation. This study defines cellular transition states in breast epithelial cells undergoing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) driven by ERK2 and TGF-β signaling. EMT triggers robust endolysosomal system upregulation and metabolic adaptations that balance proliferative and invasive states. Surprisingly, invasive cells rely on scavenging via lysosomes and macropinocytosis to acquire amino acids, rather than plasma membrane transport, even in nutrient-rich conditions. Macropinocytosis increases intracellular amino acid storage, promoting survival during amino acid deprivation. This metabolic shift depends on c-MYC downregulation, an early EMT event. Reintroducing c-MYC suppresses the metabolic switch, endolysosomal induction, macropinocytosis, and the proliferation-to-migration transition. These findings reveal how cells dynamically balance proliferation and invasion, offering insights into transition states difficult to capture in models of breast cancer metastasis.
Journal Article
KLF4 is involved in the organization and regulation of pluripotency-associated 3D enhancer networks
Cell fate transitions are accompanied by global transcriptional, epigenetic and topological changes driven by transcription factors (TFs), as is exemplified by reprogramming somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) via expression of OCT4, KLF4, SOX2 and cMYC. How TFs orchestrate the complex molecular changes around their target gene loci remains incompletely understood. Here, using KLF4 as a paradigm, we provide a TF-centric view of chromatin reorganization and its association to 3D enhancer rewiring and transcriptional changes during reprogramming of mouse embryonic fibroblasts to PSCs. Inducible depletion of KLF factors in PSCs caused a genome-wide decrease in enhancer connectivity, while disruption of individual KLF4 binding sites within PSC-specific enhancers was sufficient to impair enhancer-promoter contacts and reduce expression of associated genes. Our study provides an integrative view of the complex activities of a lineage-specifying TF and offers novel insights into the nature of molecular events that follow TF binding.
Journal Article