OLD ENGLISH SWA SIMILES: STRUCTURE OVERVIEW

This paper describes a way of expressing figurative similarity through Old English constructions employing the element swa ‘as’ (or its variants) as a comparison marker, which in early Middle English developed into two distinct lexemes: the adverb also and the conjunction as, the latter often found in clauses of comparison. The uniqueness of this type of Anglo-Saxon simile is its capability to create similes whose tenors and vehicles either nominate the referents standing behind them or provide a certain amount of information concerning their actions or states, being expressed either by lexemes or clauses, correspondingly. The constructions in question are scrutinised regarding their structure, which sheds some light on its interdependency and interconnectedness with part of speech semantics as well as emphasis. The data is quantified in terms of grammatical as well as information distribution-related issues. This analysis results in a detailed description of two major categories of the Old English swa simile depending on the number of verbalised components, their positioning, and grammatical expression; it also briefly touches upon the chronological peculiarities of the concerned constructions as well as the comparison with other means of figurative similarity expression in Old English. The analysis is carried out on material that has never been studied before.

Independent evolution of functionally exchangeable mitochondrial outer membrane import complexes

Assembly and/or insertion of a subset of mitochondrial outer membrane (MOM) proteins, including subunits of the main MOM translocase, require the fungi-specific Mim1/Mim2 complex. So far it was unclear which proteins accomplish this task in other eukaryotes. Here, we show by reciprocal complementation that the MOM protein pATOM36 of trypanosomes is a functional analogue of yeast Mim1/Mim2 complex, even though these proteins show neither sequence nor topological similarity. Expression of pATOM36 rescues almost all growth, mitochondrial biogenesis, and morphology defects in yeast cells lacking Mim1 and/or Mim2. Conversely, co-expression of Mim1 and Mim2 restores the assembly and/or insertion defects of MOM proteins in trypanosomes ablated for pATOM36. Mim1/Mim2 and pATOM36 form native-like complexes when heterologously expressed, indicating that additional proteins are not part of these structures. Our findings indicate that Mim1/Mim2 and pATOM36 are the products of convergent evolution and arose only after the ancestors of fungi and trypanosomatids diverged.

The Drosophila GMII gene encodes a Golgi alpha-mannosidase II

In this paper we show the organisation of the Drosophila gene encoding a Golgi alpha-mannosidase II. We demonstrate that it encodes a functional homologue of the mouse Golgi alpha-mannosidase II. The Drosophila and mouse cDNA sequences translate into amino acid sequences which show 41% identity and 61% similarity. Expression of the Drosophila GMII sequence in CHOP cells produces an enzyme which has mannosidase activity and is inhibited by swainsonine and by CuSO(4.) In cultured Drosophila cells and in Drosophila embryos, antibodies raised against a C-terminal peptide localise this product mainly to the Golgi apparatus as identified by cryo-immuno electron microscopy studies and by antibodies raised against known mammalian Golgi proteins. We discuss these results in terms of the possible use of dGMII as a Drosophila Golgi marker.