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The 14-3-3 (Ywha) Proteins In Signalling And Development Of The Fruit Fly, Drosophila Melanogaster, Santanu De Dec 2019

The 14-3-3 (Ywha) Proteins In Signalling And Development Of The Fruit Fly, Drosophila Melanogaster, Santanu De

Biology Faculty Articles

The 14-3-3 (YWHA or Tyrosine 3-Monooxygenase/Tryptophan 5-Monooxygenase Activation proteins) are a family of highly conserved, homologous proteins critical to diverse cellular events including cell cycle, signal transduction and embryonic development. Various species-specific isoforms of 14-3-3 exist, encoded by separate genes. They are expressed in a wide variety of organisms ranging from plants to animals, including the fruit fly or Drosophila melanogaster. Drosophila is one of the most universally accepted model systems to study complex cellular mechanisms of signalling and development. However, regulation of these processes in fruit flies by the 14-3-3 proteins have not been entirely understood. This mini …


Modification Of Host Behavior And Transmission In The Acanthocephalan Acanthocephalus Dirus: Effects Of Development, Intraspecific Conflict, And Host Sex, Sara R. Teemer Jun 2019

Modification Of Host Behavior And Transmission In The Acanthocephalan Acanthocephalus Dirus: Effects Of Development, Intraspecific Conflict, And Host Sex, Sara R. Teemer

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Parasites are organisms that live on or in another in order to survive. In some cases, parasites require more than one host to complete their life cycle and rely on a predation event for transmission to the next host. Inside the host, the parasite must access host resources to grow and develop from the non-infective to infective stages. At the infective stage, the parasite is able to survive within the definitive host. Development to this stage has been correlated with changes in antipredatory behaviors, body size and color, and reproduction of intermediate hosts in ways that may increase predation by …


Metabolism Underlies Physiological Homeostasis In Drosophila, Omera B. Matoo, Cole R. Julick, Kristi Montooth Jun 2019

Metabolism Underlies Physiological Homeostasis In Drosophila, Omera B. Matoo, Cole R. Julick, Kristi Montooth

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Organismal physiology emerges from metabolic pathways and subcellular structures like the mitochondria that can vary across development and among individuals. Here, we tested whether genetic variation at one level of physiology can be buffered at higher levels of biological organization during development by the inherent capacity for homeostasis in physiological systems. We found that the fundamental scaling relationship between mass and metabolic rate, as well as the oxidative capacity per mitochondria, changed significantly across development in the fruit fly Drosophila. However, mitochondrial respiration rate was maintained at similar levels across development. Furthermore, larvae clustered into two types—those that switched to …


Play Behavior And The Development Of Boldness And Caution In Juvenile Belding’S Ground Squirrels (Urocitellus Beldingi), Madelene Shehan May 2019

Play Behavior And The Development Of Boldness And Caution In Juvenile Belding’S Ground Squirrels (Urocitellus Beldingi), Madelene Shehan

Master's Theses

The ubiquity of play among juvenile mammals suggests it provides adaptive benefits, potentially through influences on the development of temperament in young animals. Juvenile Belding’s ground squirrels (Urocitellus beldingi) must balance competing demands for boldness and caution imposed by the fundamental trade-off between their short active season and their vulnerability to predation. In this study, I evaluated whether play helps to facilitate the development of an appropriate balance between boldness and caution in juvenile U. beldingi.I observed the play behavior of juvenile U. beldingiand conducted flight-initiation distance tests to measure boldness-caution at the beginning and toward …


Effects Of Herbicides On Zebrafish Embryo Development And Viability, Kayla Ray King May 2019

Effects Of Herbicides On Zebrafish Embryo Development And Viability, Kayla Ray King

MSU Graduate Theses

Environmental contaminants are chemicals of anthropogenic origin that are found in water, soil, and air, and are harmful to a wide variety of organisms (ORD US EPA, 2018-a). One common group of contaminants are herbicides. Though herbicides are used to control unwanted vegetation in agriculture, aquatic organisms and humans may be exposed to these herbicides through run off into streams and rivers, by drinking contaminated water, by consuming treated crops, by direct exposure, or through bioaccumulation. Thus the effect of these herbicides on animals needs further investigation. In this study, I sought to determine whether six different herbicides, which have …


Fate Map Of The Blastoderm To Determine Segmental Fate In Tribolium Castaneum, Latanya Coke May 2019

Fate Map Of The Blastoderm To Determine Segmental Fate In Tribolium Castaneum, Latanya Coke

Senior Theses and Projects

Segmentation in arthropods has been modeled on the well-defined segmentation patterns found in Drosophila. In Drosophila, segments form simultaneously in the blastoderm where morphogenic gradients spanning the AP axis provide patterning inputs. However, in most arthropods, segments form sequentially from a posterior growth zone. Sequential segmentation in arthropods has recently been demonstrated to use a vertebrate- like segmentation clock (Sarrazin et al. 2012). The vertebrate segmentation clock is a molecular oscillator that regulates periodic somite formation (Gibb 2010). In the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, the segmentation clock is coordinated by traveling waves of expression generated by a pair-rule gene …


Synmuv B Proteins Regulate Chromatin Compaction During Development, Meghan Elizabeth Costello Apr 2019

Synmuv B Proteins Regulate Chromatin Compaction During Development, Meghan Elizabeth Costello

Dissertations (1934 -)

Tissue-specific establishment of repressive chromatin through creation of compact chromatin domains during development is necessary to ensure proper gene expression and cell fate. C. elegans synMuv B proteins are important for the soma/germline fate decision and mutants demonstrate ectopic germline gene expression in somatic tissue, especially at high temperature. To study chromatin compaction during development we visualized chromatin using both nuclear-spot assays and FISH of native synMuv B regulated loci. We showed that C. elegans synMuv B proteins regulate developmental chromatin compaction and that timing of chromatin compaction was temperature sensitive in both wild-type and synMuv B mutants. Chromatin compaction …


Partial Characterization Of Putative Cyp86a Genes From Soybean, Trish Tully Mar 2019

Partial Characterization Of Putative Cyp86a Genes From Soybean, Trish Tully

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merr.) is a globally cultivated crop that is important to the sustainability of many industries. However, like all plants, optimal cultivation of soybean is threatened by detrimental environmental factors. For example, high yield of soybean is threatened by soil-borne pathogens like Phytophthora sojae. Resistance against P. sojae was previously positively correlated with aliphatic suberin deposition in soybean. As such, a deeper understanding of the biosynthesis of suberin may assist in engineering a resistant form of soybean, based on enhanced suberin content. In soybean, the ω-OH fatty acid monomers are predominant and most strongly correlated …


A Trio Of Sigma Factors Control Hormogonium Development In Nostoc Punctiforme, Alfonso Gonzalez Jr. Jan 2019

A Trio Of Sigma Factors Control Hormogonium Development In Nostoc Punctiforme, Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Cyanobacteria are prokaryotes capable of oxygenic photosynthesis, and for many species, nitrogen fixation, giving cyanobacteria an important role in global carbon and nitrogen cycles. Furthermore, multicellular filamentous cyanobacteria are developmentally complex, capable of differentiation into different cell types, including cells capable of nitrogen fixation and cells for motility, making them an ideal platform for studying development, as well as for practical use in biotechnology. Understanding how developmental programmes are activated require an understanding of the role of alternative sigma factors, which are required for transcriptional activation in bacteria. In order to investigate the gene regulatory network and to determine the …


Analysis Of Brevundimonas Subvibrioides Developmental Signaling Systems Reveals Unexpected Differences Between Phenotypes And C-Di-Gmp Levels, Lauryn Anne Sperling Jan 2019

Analysis Of Brevundimonas Subvibrioides Developmental Signaling Systems Reveals Unexpected Differences Between Phenotypes And C-Di-Gmp Levels, Lauryn Anne Sperling

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The DivJ-DivK-PleC signaling system of Caulobacter crescentus is a signaling network that regulates polar development and the cell cycle. This system is conserved in closely related bacteria, including the sister genus Brevundimonas. Previous studies had shown unexpected phenotypic differences between the C. crescentus divK mutant and the analogous mutant of Brevundimonas subvibrioides, but further characterization was not performed. Here, phenotypic assays analyzing motility, adhesion, and pilus production (the latter characterized by a newly discovered bacteriophage) revealed that divJ and pleC mutants have mostly similar phenotypes as their C. crescentus homologs, but divK mutants maintain largely opposite phenotypes than …


Examining The Effects Of Fadrozole, An Aromatase Inhibitor, On Testosterone And Estrogen Production Of Domestic Chicken Embryos (Gallus Gallus), Abby E. Joseph Jan 2019

Examining The Effects Of Fadrozole, An Aromatase Inhibitor, On Testosterone And Estrogen Production Of Domestic Chicken Embryos (Gallus Gallus), Abby E. Joseph

Honors Theses

The hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis is responsible for the production of the hormones testosterone and estradiol, and testosterone is thought to contribute to regulation of the axis through a negative feedback mechanism. Regulation by negative feedback involves the product of a pathway turning off that pathway when enough product is made. However, because the enzyme P450 aromatase converts testosterone to estradiol, estradiol may also contribute to regulation of the HPG axis and other phenomena that have been attributed to testosterone, like the inhibition of immune function. Previous studies have injected birds with an aromatase inhibitor (presumably reducing estradiol production) and shown …