Kristine Hill

University of Exeter | UoE · Department of Sociology and Philosophy

This paper explores multispecies families and nonhuman kinship through the lens of tattoo narratives, namely those that accompany designs dedicated to a companion animal. Although some tattoos are purely aesthetic, many embody deep personal meanings. Humans use narrative as a tool to endow meaning to experience, and the visual nature of a tattoo in...

By examining the narratives associated with animal-themed tattoos, this study explores the various ways in which humans relate to other animals. Participants used animal-likenesses to think about themselves, others, and the world around them. By embodying positive attributes of a species that they loved and admired, the tattoos enabled participants...

With animals as the primary and intermediary vectors of Covid-19, we sought to understand the ways in which animals were represented in UK news media during the emergence of the global pandemic and how these portrayals impact the lives of humans and animals. Using the Lexis-Nexis online media archive, we searched for news media reports featuring an...

This paper examines the use of the term "feral" as a form of control over other animals. The concept of this "power word" is explored within the context of what it means for those who find themselves labelled as such. As a prefix, "feral" is used by various interest groups to justify the treatment of subpopulations of species, particularly with reg...

This thesis employs thematic discourse analysis to elucidate prominent themes and points of contention associated with roaming cats (Felis catus). The data comprised 2476 online user comments responding to content related to roaming cats, 75 qualitative survey responses, 771 Facebook responses, and biographies reconstructed from eight case studies...

This paper explores the ethical quandary faced by researchers whose work advocates for non-human animals and whose results conflict with prevalent anthropocentric societal narratives. To problematise the concept of research bias, we qualitatively analyse contemporary political debates surrounding the treatment of animals to ascertain if, how, when,...

Racial uprisings often include animalized commentary and symbolic use of non-human animal bodies. This paper highlights some of the nonhuman animal bodies observed during the #BlackLivesMatter protests within the United States in 2020-specifically, the use of pig, horse, and dog bodies during street protests. Displays of pigs carry with them a raci...

Lynn et al., (2019) accused fellow scientists of misrepresenting free-roaming cats (Felis catus) by framing them as a global threat to biodiversity, rather than a localised threat to specific ecosystems. These authors asserted that the narrative created a ‘moral panic’ over free-roaming cats, which is escalated by emotive journalistic pieces read b...

The nomenclature used to describe animals working in roles supporting people can be confusing. The same term may be used to describe different roles, or two terms may mean the same thing. This confusion is evident among researchers, practitioners, and end users. Because certain animal roles are provided with legal protections and/or government-fund...

Citation: Howell, T.J.; Nieforth, L.; Thomas-Pino, C.; Samet, L.; Agbonika, S.; Cuevas-Pavincich, F.; Fry, N.E.; Hill, K.; Jegatheesan, B.; Kakinuma, M.; et al. Defining Terms

The language of domestication enables humans to wield power over otherthanhuman animal lives. In some cases, being labelled “domesticated” ensures a life free of worry regarding food, water, and shelter. In others, “domestication” embodies a loss of agency, wildness, and potentially life. Companion animals such as cats find themselves at the center...

The movement of otherthanhuman-animals (henceforth OTHA) across human-defined borders are often categorised depending upon human-assigned categories such as ‘invasive’, ‘introduced’, ‘non-native’ or ‘migrating’. However, there is a paucity of literature categorising OTHAs, from a posthuman, anthrozoological view, as immigrants. This paper examines,...

Anthrozoology is an emergent field concerned with the study of human-animal interactions and relationships. As an emergent interdisciplinary field, Anthrozoology is in its infancy regarding methodological practice. For Anthrozoologists, research involves both human and animal as active participants and actors within ethnographic investigation. Con...

Highlights:  Covid-19 most likely originated from human mistreatment of animals  An estimated seventy five percent of all emergent infectious agents are zoonotic  The lockdown has had significant implications on human and nonhuman welfare  Understanding the welfare implications of lockdown could inform future practices Abstract: One leading the...

This reflexive essay is based on a visit to Berlin Zoo on an overcast February day. It attempts to make sense of the “zoo experience” through critical self-reflection and observations of how visitors relate to animal others. The concept of zoo inhabitants as liminal beings, neither domesticated nor truly wild, is explored. Animals born and raised i...

How a species is represented by marketers of animal-based products both reflects and shapes how consumers think about that animal. By examining the explicit statements, and implicit messages encoded in the imagery on supermarket egg boxes, this paper explores how hens are represented by whole egg retailers. Samples were collected from supermarket c...

Here we report creation of a unique and a very valuable resource for Plant Scientific community worldwide. In this era of post-genomics and modelling of multi-cellular systems using an integrative systems biology approach, better understanding of protein localization at sub-cellular, cellular and tissue levels is likely to result in better understa...

How a species is represented by marketers of animal-based products both reflects and shapes how consumers think about that animal. By examining the explicit statements, and implicit messages encoded in the imagery on supermarket egg boxes, this paper explores how hens are represented by whole egg retailers. Content analysis reveals two prominent me...

The coordination of cell fate decisions within complex multicellular structures rests on intercellular communication. To generate ordered patterns, cells need to know their relative positions within the growing structure. This is commonly achieved via the production and perception of mobile signaling molecules. In animal systems, such positional si...

Lateral roots originate from initial cells deep within the main root and must emerge through several overlying layers. Lateral root emergence requires the outgrowth of the new primordium (LRP) to coincide with the timely separation of overlying root cells, a developmental program coordinated by the hormone auxin. Here, we report that in Arabidopsis...

Rooting out the mechanism of asymmetry Plant roots grow not in response to architectural blueprints but rather in search of scarce resources in the soil. Orosa-Puente et al. show why a new lateral root emerges on the damp side of a root rather than the dry side (see the Perspective by Giehl and von Wirén). The transcription factor ARF7 is found acr...

miRNA mobility is controlled by polarised gating at cell-cell interfaces

Mobile small RNAs serve as local positional signals in development and coordinate stress responses across the plant. Despite its central importance, an understanding of how the cell-to-cell movement of small RNAs is governed is lacking. Here, we show that miRNA mobility is precisely regulated through a gating mechanism polarised at defined cell-cel...

Root hairs facilitate a plant’s ability to acquire soil anchorage and nutrients. Root hair growth is regulated by the plant hormone auxin and dependent on localized synthesis, secretion and modification of the root hair tip cell wall. However, the exact well wall regulators in root hairs controlled by auxin have yet to be determined. In this study,...

Significance Cytokinins, like other plant hormones, affect a diverse array of plant growth and development processes and responses to the environment. How a signaling molecule mediates such a diverse array of outputs and how these response pathways are integrated with other inputs remain fundamental questions in plant biology. An integrated set of...

Lateral root primordia (LRP) originate from pericycle stem cells located deep within parental root tissues. LRP emerge through overlying root tissues by inducing auxin-dependent cell separation and hydraulic changes in adjacent cells. The auxin inducible auxin influx carrier LAX3 plays a key role concentrating this signal in cells overlying LRP. De...

One of the classical functions of the plant hormone cytokinin is the regulation of plastid development but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain elusive. In this study, we employed a genetic approach to evaluate the role of cytokinin and its signalling pathway in the light-induced development of chloroplasts from etioplasts in Arabidopsis thal...

The ability of plants to provide a plastic response to environmental cues relies on the connectivity between signaling pathways. DELLA proteins act as hubs that relay environmental information to the multiple transcriptional circuits that control growth and development through physical interaction with transcription factors from different families....

Plants exhibit a high level of developmental plasticity and growth is responsive to multiple developmental and environmental cues. Hormones are small endogenous signalling molecules which are fundamental to this phenotypic plasticity. Post-translational modifications of proteins are a central feature of the signal transduction pathways that regulat...

A large number of genes involved in lateral root (LR) organogenesis have been identified over the last decade using forward and reverse genetic approaches in Arabidopsis thaliana. Nevertheless, how these genes interact to form a LR regulatory network largely remains to be elucidated. In this study, we developed a time-delay correlation algorithm (T...

The phytohormone auxin is a key developmental signal in plants. To date, only auxin perception has been described to trigger the release of transcription factors termed AUXIN RESPONSE FACTORs (ARFs) from their AUXIN/INDOLE-3-ACETIC ACID (AUX/IAA) repressor proteins. Here, we show that phosphorylation of ARF7 and ARF19 via BRASSINOSTEROID-INSENSITIV...

Our understanding of root biology has advanced over the last decade, in large part due to genetic and genomic approaches in model organisms. Recently, researchers have started to study the mechanisms controlling root growth and development using systems biology approaches. Modeling is set to become much more important as our knowledge of root regul...

Micropropagation is used for commercial purposes worldwide, but the capacity to undergo somatic organogenesis and plant regeneration varies greatly among species. The plant hormones auxin and cytokinin are critical for plant regeneration in tissue culture, with cytokinin playing an instrumental role in shoot organogenesis. Type-B response regulator...

Cytokinins play critical roles in plant growth and development, with the transcriptional response to cytokinin being mediated by the type-B response regulators. In Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), type-B response regulators (ARABIDOPSIS RESPONSE REGULATORS; ARRs) form three subfamilies based on phylogenic analysis, subfamily-1 having seven membe...

Stimulating rubber trees by applying ethephon in the bark is a common practice to increase the latex yield in rubber plantations. The ethylene generated from ethephon induces various physiological and biochemical changes and eventually leads to increased latex production. Ethylene perception and signal transduction is initiated when the ethylene mo...

Protein ubiquitination is a common post-translational modification where selected targets are covalently modified by the ubiquitin protein, often in the form of isopeptide-linked polyubiquitin chains. More recently unanchored (i.e. non-substrate-linked) polyubiquitin chains have also been described and implicated in a range of biological processes....

Two-component signaling elements play important roles in plants, including a central role in cytokinin signaling. We characterized two-component elements from the monocot rice (Oryza sativa) using several complementary approaches. Phylogenetic analysis reveals relatively simple orthologous relationships among the histidine kinases in rice and Arabi...

Two-component signaling elements play important roles in plants, including a central role in cytokinin signaling. We characterized two-component elements from the monocot rice (Oryza sativa) using several complementary approaches. Phylogenetic analysis reveals relatively simple orthologous relationships among the histidine kinases in rice and Arabi...

Soil salinity affects a large proportion of the land worldwide, forcing plants to evolve a number of mechanisms to cope with salt stress. Cytokinin plays a role in the plant response to salt stress, but little is known about the mechanism by which cytokinin controls this process. We used a molecular genetics approach to examine the influence of cyt...

Cold shock domain proteins (CSPs) are highly conserved from bacteria to higher plants and animals. Bacterial cold shock proteins function as RNA chaperones by destabilizing RNA secondary structures and promoting translation as an adaptative mechanism to low temperature stress. In animals, cold shock domain proteins exhibit broad functions related t...

The MADS-domain transcriptional regulator AGAMOUS-LIKE15 (AGL15) has been reported to enhance somatic embryo development when constitutively expressed. Here we report that loss-of-function mutants of AGL15, alone or when combined with a loss-of-function mutant of a closely related family member, AGL18, show decreased ability to produce somatic embr...

AGAMOUS-like 15 (AGL15) encodes a MADS-domain transcription factor that is preferentially expressed in the plant embryo. A number of direct downstream targets of AGL15 have been identified, and although some of these target genes are induced in response to AGL15, others are repressed. Additionally, direct target genes have been analyzed that exhibi...

AGAMOUS-Like 15 (AGL15) encodes a MADS-domain transcription factor that is preferentially expressed in the plant embryo, and may function as a regulator in embryonic developmental programs. A number of direct downstream targets of AGL15 have been identified, and while some of these target genes are induced in response to AGL15, others are repressed...

An embryo-defective mutant of Arabidopsis thaliana was isolated that arrests development at a variety of stages, from as early as the globular stage of embryogenesis to as late as formation of an abnormal bent cotyledon stage embryo. Defects in the suspensor, a normally transient structure derived from the fertilized egg, were often associated with...