Circadian Haunt: Cuscuta, Tuatara, and Daphnia Lens Multiple Sclerosis
Manifested in her metaphorical science painting, Julie Rauer has created a morphogenetic hierarchy of conceptual subsets, in this piece which was commissioned by Dr. Richard Scheuermann, Director of the J. Craig Venter Institute - to visualize his research to discover a cure for multiple sclerosis, via single cell genomics. Choosing cuscuta, the exquisitely adaptive and highly predatory siphoning parasitic vine, as primary metaphor for the systemic neurodegenerative rampage of multiple sclerosis, with its demyelination of nerve sheaths, astrocyte and mitochondrial disfunction and excitotoxic damage,
Julie has further elucidated the autoimmune beast within equating the cuscuta’s siphoning haustoria with the knight’s lance, as an absent St. George slays the dragon, which is the knight.. and concurrent self-devouring beast.
Scaffolding the Tuatara, singular New Zealand reptile and evolutionary model organism, as secondary metaphor, Julie utilizes its unique parietal third eye, cranial apex photoreceptor key in modulating the Tuatara’s circadian cycles, as relevantly complex connective element for the human circadian clock - which has protein and hormone malfunctions directly indicated as disruptive mechanisms in autoimmune disease; immune system cells each harbor their own circadian rhythms, acting as powerful inflammatory response drivers.
Speculating that circadian clock gene malfunction may be both one of the causes, as well as the results, of multiple sclerosis, Julie Rauer has here painted two daughter cells, in successive and simultaneous temporal states, undergoing early to late telophase mitosis - hypothesizing that flawed redistribution of caveolin-1 protein, during mitosis, specifically compromised relocalization (insufficient concentration of cav-1 in cleavage furrow) around the spindle poles at late telophase, may actually cause autoimmune diseases, particularly multiple sclerosis.
Visualizing the aforementioned daughter cells as an imagination forged dichotomy of Daphnia, water flea and model organism for toxic cross-talk (harkening directly back to the fractured microbiological dialogues inherent in the infernal physiological monologues masquerading as communication), in multiple sclerosis pathologies, and of monstrous astrophysics metaphor of circadian haunt and disintegration, utter breakdown of the twenty-four hour light/dark cycles.. cratered full moon infected by the molten core of an all-consuming sun, shooting solar flares into infected space.