At a cost of often more than US$10 billion, mega-events such as the Olympic Games and the FIFA Men's World Cup are the single most transformative urban project in many host cities for decades. This article develops an analytical matrix for comparing the impacts of these events on cities and proposes a case survey method to apply this matrix to six recent sports mega-events: the Olympic Games in Vancouver, London, Sochi, and Rio de Janeiro and the FIFA Men's World Cups in South Africa and Brazil. We find that for the events in our sample, it is not so much the event itself, but the political and economic contexts that most influence impacts. Cities in democracies with more market-led economies experienced fewer adverse impacts and were better able to use the event for urban development than those in less democratic countries with more state-led economies. None of the cities, however, was able to avoid negative impacts.
Glutathione is the most abundant thiol in the vast majority of organisms and is maintained in its reduced form by the flavoenzyme glutathione reductase. In this work, we describe the genetic and functional analysis of the Caenorhabditis elegans gsr-1 gene that encodes the only glutathione reductase protein in this model organism. By using green fluorescent protein reporters we demonstrate that gsr-1 produces two GSR-1 isoforms, one located in the cytoplasm and one in the mitochondria. gsr-1 loss of function mutants display a fully penetrant embryonic lethal phenotype characterized by a progressive and robust cell division delay accompanied by an aberrant distribution of interphasic chromatin in the periphery of the cell nucleus. Maternally expressed GSR-1 is sufficient to support embryonic development but these animals are short-lived, sensitized to chemical stress and have increased mitochondrial fragmentation and lower mitochondrial DNA content. Furthermore, the embryonic lethality of gsr-1 worms is prevented by restoring GSR-1 activity in the cytoplasm but not in mitochondria. Given the fact that the thioredoxin redox systems are dispensable in C. elegans, our data support a prominent role of the glutathione reductase/glutathione pathway in maintaining redox homeostasis in the nematode. ; Some strains were provided by the CGC, which is funded by NIH Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (P40 OD010440) and by the Japanese National Bioresource Project. We thank Cristina Cecchi, Amir Shapir, Paul Sternberg, Bart Braeckman, Chris Link, Simon Tuck, Keith Blackwell, José López-Barneo and LivOn Labs for strains and chemicals, Katie McCallum and Danielle Garsin for their help with skn-1 experiments and Elizabeth Veal and Michel Toledano for critical reading of the manuscript. Prof. Rafael Fernández-Chacón is deeply acknowledged for his continuous support. AMV was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (BFU2015-64408-P) and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI11/00072, cofinanced by the Fondo Social Europeo) and is a member of the GENIE and EU-ROS Cost Action of the European Union. NJS was supported by a grant from the US National Institutes of Health National Institute for Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (AR-054342). CJG was funded by a Doctoral Training Studentship provided by the University of Nottingham. PA was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (BFU2013-42709P). JC is a member of the GENIE Cost action and was funded by Rioja Salud Foundation (Onco-2-2015). ; Peer Reviewed
