Browsing by Subject "regulation"

Phytopathogens, notably Heterobasidion annosum, evolved several strategical combinations to infect and subsequently colonize their host even under different stress conditions. Fungal ABC transporters are well-known defenses that can confer resistance against host-secreted secondary metabolites by transporting them outside of the fungal cells and thus keeping their intracellular concentration low. Here, we aim to unveil the evolutionary trajectories of total ABC transporters-encoding genes in Heterobasidion annosum. The gene expression pattern was monitored with the fungus subjected to different chemical stressors and during fungal growth on wood. We identified 32 putative ABC protein-encoding genes in the Heterobasidion genome. Altogether 20 putative ABC transporter-encoding genes of H. annosum were further analyzed and it was revealed that several genes were either up or downregulated, while some were not differentially expressed under the experimental conditions. The results obtained from the gene expression analysis revealed that an ABC gene (annotated as Ha.ABC-G1 or Hetan_66124), was highly up-regulated in most conditions. This particular transporter-encoding gene (Hetan_66124) with induction level of up to 47 –fold (in heartwood and similar levels in other conditions) was traced, PCR amplified, cloned in Escherichia coli and expression of recombinant protein performed using Saccharomyces cerevisiae as platform. Several experiments aiming to dissect functional roles of this hypothetical protein were performed. The growth of the yeast transformant over expressing the recombinant ABC protein in different terpenoids and weak organic acids were monitored. The growth rate of clones with and without transporters were not significantly different when cultured in plates (SC·gal-ura-) that were exposed to the volatile compounds (limonene, carene and ?-pinene). Based on our findings, we concluded that the yeast transformants carrying the H. annosum ABC-G1 transporter encoding gene do not show increased resistance or tolerance against the monoterpenes. The results of the transcript profiling have further contributed to our understanding about gene expression during fungal colonization upon exposure to chemical stressors. However, further studies are needed in order to specifically unveil the functional roles of these efflux pumps that underlie their transport mechanism with response to the host secreted secondary metabolites.

Despite public campaigns demonstrating the global fashion industry’s sustainability efforts to address climate change, the industry is still largely behind the needed systemic change to remain on the 1.5-degree pathway. Its sizeable contribution to climate change, such as the estimated 10% share of the global total of greenhouse-gas emissions in 2017, is only anticipated to increase, due to growing population and consumption patterns. The concept of decoupling economic growth from material resource use as a path towards sustainability becomes especially contradictory when faced with the fashion industry’s linear business and fast fashion models. This thesis examines how the systemic change of the fashion industry is perceived, and how the industry’s linear business model and its contradictions with the concept of decoupling can be addressed through regulatory measures, especially in the case of European Union (EU) policies on fashion. The thesis analyses the framework for systemic change in the fashion industry through the case of the EU and its preparation for the EU Strategy for Textiles (2021) and the Sustainable Products Initiative (2021), including their preparatory policy materials, such as roadmaps and discussion papers by the European Union and its respective agencies. The document data is triangulated with semi-structured expert interviews, and the data is analysed using qualitative content analysis. Based on the analysis, EU policy perceives systemic change of the fashion industry primarily as a transition to a circular economy model, where it is presented as a win-win situation for both environment and economy. Despite these ambitious aims, there is still reliance that there are no limits to growth. The study finds that this promise of ever-increasing economic growth within planetary boundaries is materially contradictory. In fact, the study suggests that the system of capital accumulation and its adherence to the material growth of economies is the main impediment for systemic change. The evidence indicates that this contradiction is deeply embedded, highly complex, and global in scope, with numerous obstacles, if it is to be overcome. Yet, some elements in the EU process show a desire to attempt to address these problems and radically alter the structure and operations of the fashion industry. The study finds that by reflecting the true costs of environmental and climate harms, as well as human rights, by increasing the criteria and obligations for the fashion industry actors, the problem of overproduction and overconsumption may be addressed.

Sovereignty plays a significant role in the governance, recognition and legitimisation of semi-autonomous jurisdictions. Since the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in the 17th century, sovereignty has played a role in global political and economic affairs, yet for overseas territories and semi-autonomous jurisdictions the lack of independent sovereignty can leave these territorial anomalies without a seat at the table. With technological advancements and the rise of globalisation, the flow of people, capital and information has never been higher. As capital moves across the globe at high speeds, issues of taxation and its regulation arise. This thesis explores Stephen Krasner’s framework of the four types of sovereignty in order to propose a fifth form of sovereignty: economic sovereignty. To introduce an understanding of sovereignty that does not require a jurisdiction to be an independent nation state in order to be recognised, represented and held accountable regarding global economic issues. By illustrating how semi-autonomous jurisdictions can develop a flexible and prosperous system of international participation that does not require full sovereignty, this thesis aims to explore how a new form of sovereignty could potentially aid in improving the global governance of tax regulation. By analysing the positives, negatives and compromises of statehood and sovereignty, it possible to explore sovereignty as a spectrum that falls outside traditional understandings of the nation-state which has the potential to open up new opportunities for international cooperation and communication. The ‘outcome explaining’ variant of process tracing was used for case selection where cases are chosen based on the outcome of a mechanism. As a result, the British Crown Dependencies and in particular the island of Jersey were used as the focus case study, alongside a comparative study of the literature. This thesis highlights the growing role of self-governing semi-autonomous jurisdictions on the global economic stage and finds that independent sovereignty should not be a required criteria in order for a territory to be a recognised stakeholder in international financial and tax governance.

Technology companies have challenged the incumbent banks in payments. Their digital and personalized services utilize their expertise in cloud computing, AI, and machine learning. In addition, global tech giants or BigTech are providing bank-like services capitalizing on well-established brands, significant financial resources, and access to behavioral data. Competition has increased efficiency, expanded access to finance, improved market diversification, and helped recovery from the pandemic, but also increased cyber risks, reliance on infrastructure providers, and excess volatility that might aggregate to systemic problems inhibiting growth and diminishing welfare. The thesis highlights the factors behind the emergence of digital competitors and examines their stability implications with an extensive literature review. The swift emergence has been caused by technological development, changes in market structure and regulation, and distrust in banks. Technological change has made possible the development of new products and services that agile startups have utilized while banks have struggled to complete the expensive digitalization process of their services. Increased regulation and low-interest rates have also hindered banks' ability to compete with the entrants. In addition to efficiency raising financial inclusion has been one of the core positives brought by FinTech as affordable solutions have allowed previously unbanked groups to get services. However, entrants have been able to work under lower levels of supervision. Regulatory arbitrage can increase volatility and aggregate into system-wide risks through contagion. Some experts are concerned that the ongoing transformation in the financial sector could result in disintermediation, where banks may play a reduced role in the digital financial landscape. This has raised concerns about the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission. Studies suggest that as banks become less important, the impact of monetary policy shocks on lending and the real economy may be diminished. This could pose challenges in maintaining stability. The full extent of FinTech’s effect on market stability is yet to be determined. However, studies have shown its positive role in digitizing the financial industry, enhancing product and service quality, and recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Regulation plays a crucial role in balancing innovation and stability. Prematurely imposing restrictions on emerging innovations may hinder the progress that could otherwise enhance overall welfare. Regulators aim to protect consumers and ensure a level playing field. Striking the right balance is essential to foster innovation while mitigating risks. The regulator’s challenge is to combine fostering innovation and competition while limiting malpractice but also to provide a level playing field for firms. This objective is complicated by the rapid pace of development, classification problems, and tradeoffs between increased market efficiency and stability.

Artificial intelligence (AI), as a constantly developing technology that is difficult to define, strains a society not prepared for its impact. On the other hand, AI represents the future and comes with many opportunities. The European Commission has taken both views into account in its policy for AI, the European approach to AI. The European Commission’s AI policy, that introduces a regulation-based approach to AI as the first policy initiative in the world, offers a timely and intriguing topic of study. This thesis critically examines how AI is represented as a problem in the European Commission’s policy over the course of a four-year time frame from 2018 to 2021. It uses a combined set of methods: qualitative content analysis together with Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach to inspect five selected European Commission’s policy documents. Four of these policy documents are communication papers with an additional white paper. With the help of qualitative content analysis, the main repetitive themes of AI challenges and opportunities are teased out. The WPR approach is used to examine the progression of the AI policy and analyze the problem representations found in policy. Research questions are the following: how has the European Commission’s policy on AI come about and how has AI been represented as a policy problem by the European Commission? The thesis presents the formation of the AI policy by going through policy documents over the period of four years. Additionally, the thesis demonstrates how the Commission’s AI policy is one piece of the puzzle that is EU digital politics aiming for technological sovereignty. From the Commission’s problem representation of AI, the challenges and opportunities, it is possible to analyze the implicit representations of AI in policy. Although, the policy highlights trustworthiness and competitiveness through its regulatory actions there are other aspects present as well. AI has been represented in policy through eight perspectives, including safety and security, ethical, legal, competitiveness, AI leadership, socioeconomic, ecological, and education. All perspectives rationalize ways for AI to be embraced inside the European Union borders and participate in the shaping of how AI is to be approached. The analysis of each category shows that issues related to safety and security, ethical, legal, competitiveness, and AI leadership seem to stand out whereas socioeconomic, ecological, and education matters are not as strongly stressed. Overall, this thesis has demonstrated how AI has been represented as a problem in the European Commission’s policy.

Formation of methane as a biogas from acetate through methanogenesis could be very energy efficient and economically feasible. The acetate utilisation through aceticlastic pathway in methanogenic archaea Methanosarcina is well understood, yet the regulation of acetate utilisation is mainly unknown. The study focused on determination of the time frame of the initiation periods of protein syntheses via bioorthogonal non-canonical amino acid tagging (BONCAT) and copper catalysed click chemistry in Methanosarcina acetivorans and Methanosarcina barkeri, during a long lag phase (around 25 days) after growth substrate was shifted from methanol to acetate. In two experiments the proteins translated after the substrate shift (newly synthetised proteins) were labelled with methionine surrogates via BONCAT and tagged with fluorescent dye and a biotin tag via click chemistry for further detections. To have more complete understanding of the substrate shift acetate concentrations were observed via nuclear magnetic resonance and cell density was monitored via optical density measurements. Only rough time frames of the initiation periods of protein syntheses in both organisms could be estimated from the gel detection of fluorescent tagged proteins. The results indicate that acetate consumption and de-novo protein translation occurs early after substrate switch. In conclusion, the overall utilisation of BONCAT in the labelling of newly synthetised proteins to provide information about the beginning of protein synthesis after substrate shift in Methanosarcina was successful. I was able to detect newly synthetised proteins in both experiments and estimate time windows for beginning of protein syntheses. The information of time windows helps further research to identify the proteins in substrate shift and understand the regulation of substrate shift in Methanosarcina.

The gastrointestinal (GI) epithelium is composed of a single layer of cells with a turnover time of only a few days. Due to its location at the barrier between GI tract contents and the underlaying mucosa, the epithelium is constantly exposed to stress such as toxic agents and a variety of pathogens and susceptible to injury. Accordingly, the homeostatic growth as well as repair of injury in epithelium must be efficient and strictly regulated. Misregulated repair of the injured epithelium can lead to pathologies such as chronic inflammation or cancer. Underlying stromal cells such as fibroblasts provide growth factors and other signaling molecules regulating the epithelial cell stemness, differentiation and repair, but the stromal regulatory pathways during regeneration are poorly understood. The aim of this study was to establish a consensus view on the heterogeneity of GI fibroblasts, as well as to map potential epithelium derived signals affecting fibroblast function in homeostatic and injury situations using literature review, in silico approaches, and murine primary intestinal fibroblast culture. Seurat and CellChat R packages were used to perform integration and interaction analyses of six previously published mouse and three human single- cell RNA-sequencing datasets of colonic epithelial and mesenchymal cells isolated in homeostatic and/or inflammatory conditions. Murine primary intestinal fibroblasts were treated with identified potential signaling factors ex vivo and 3’RNAseq was performed to identify transcriptional responses. Both mesenchymal and epithelial cell clusters were identified in the scRNAseq data. Interestingly, similar fibroblast populations could be found in the murine and human data. I identified several epithelium-derived signaling molecules potentially targeting GI fibroblasts and focused on Gas6-Axl pathway and lactate. I confirmed high and specific expression of the Gas6 receptor Axl in intestinal fibroblasts, but recombinant Gas6 failed to induce significant changes in cultured primary fibroblasts. Lactate-treated primary intestinal fibroblasts reprogrammed their transcriptome with main alterations in metabolic pathways and induction of neutrophil-attracting chemokines. In this work I suggest a consensus model for GI fibroblast subpopulations and suggest epithelium derived lactate as a powerful means to reprogram fibroblasts.

Artificial light that produces some adverse effects is called light pollution. Light pollution has only recently been recognized as an environmental problem – it has been noticed to have adverse effects to organisms, ecosystems, human health and their well-being. The purpose of this study is to combine two aspects of light pollution that have so far gained little attention: the public’s point of view and the lighting solutions of municipalities and forest industry enterprises. These two aspects can be connected to each other through a concept called condition of lighting. Here the conditions of lighting consist of three areas with notable differences in lighting: city centers, countryside and forest industry production plants along with their surroundings. The study was conducted in South Karelia, Finland, and it was divided into two sections. The first section dealt with the public’s point of view on light pollution. The objective was to find out how South Karelians perceive the effects and obtrusiveness of artificial light both generally and also within areas of differing conditions of lighting. In addition, the intention was to uncover other factors that might influence the opinions of people. The second section of the study concerned the lighting solutions of municipalities and forest industry enterprises. The objective was to examine their lighting planning and implementation as well as the role of light pollution in the process. Interview was selected as the method of research in both sections of the study. The public considered electronic billboards and car headlights as the most obtrusive sources of light pollution. Bright lights and glare, on the other hand, were considered the most obtrusive types of light pollution. Most valued benefits of artificial light were its influence on safety, crime prevention and its positive effect on mood. Not being able to see the stars or experience natural darkness were considered as the biggest disadvantages of artificial light. The conditions of lighting in different areas also influenced the respondents’ experiences: people living in the countryside did not feel insecure in dark places outside the cities and did not consider abundant lighting pleasant. They also felt that being able to experience natural darkness was important. Among other factors, nature orientedness, light sensitivity, environmental attitudes and gender strongly affected the views of the respondents. In the municipalities and forest industry enterprises, the lighting planning concentrated on territorial plans. All but one of the municipalities and enterprises had taken light pollution into consideration at some level at least, but the forms and means varied. In the future both municipalities and forest industry enterprises will invest more in LED technology. The results show that artificial light can cause inconvenience to people who live outside the brightly lighted areas and who were not particularly interested in light pollution. Behind the inconvenience and disturbance were mostly the experiences, habits, values and attitudes of the respondents. The municipalities and enterprises have a lot to improve when it comes to light pollution. They should, for example, invest in comprehensive lighting planning, avoid over-illumination and pay attention to suitable direction and positioning of the light fixtures. In the future, it is important to examine the public’s opinion and to map the landscape of lights at a local scale. This would help in finding the most suitable lighting solutions for different areas. In the opinion polls, the subjective characteristics affecting the views of the respondents should be taken into consideration. Research regarding the municipalities and enterprises should be directed to the areas where light pollution is not regulated, in order to gather information on motivation and implementation of the voluntary activities reducing light pollution.