Este trabalho faz uma apresentação comentada dos cinco artigos que constituem o presente dossiê, à luz de referências teóricas e bibliográficas sobre os temas da participação, da cultura política e das cidades. A intenção é contribuir com o debate acerca da democracia participativa e suas implicações na teoria sociológica atual. A apresentação está estruturada de forma a permitir um encadeamento dos temas tratados pelos artigos, iniciando por um resgate do contexto histórico e das referências teóricas sobre as dimensões envolvidas nos conteúdos que estruturam o dossiê.

This introductory text makes a commented presentation of the five articles that comprise the present dossier in the light of theoretical and bibliographical references on the topics of participation, political culture and cities. Our aim is contributing to the debate regarding deliberative democracy and its repercussions on the current sociological theory. The text is structured so that to allow linking the themes worked out in the articles, beginning by retrieving the historical context and theoretical references of the dimensions involved in the contents of the dossier.

Molecular characterization of Paracoccidioides brasiliensis variant strains that had been preserved under mineral oil for decades was carried out by random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis (RAPD). On P. brasiliensis variants in the transitional phase and strains with typical morphology, RAPD produced reproducible polymorphic amplification products that differentiated them. A dendrogram based on the generated RAPD patterns placed the 14 P. brasiliensis strains into five groups with similarity coefficients of 72%. A high correlation between the genotypic and phenotypic characteristics of the strains was observed. A 750 bp-RAPD fragment found only in the wild-type phenotype strains was cloned and sequenced. Genetic similarity analysis using BLASTx suggested that this RAPD marker represents a putative domain of a hypothetical flavin-binding monooxygenase (FMO)-like protein of Neurospora crassa.