Digital Commons Network^™

Becoming Avian: Amazonian Featherworks From The John P. O’Neill Collection, Madeline R. Blanchard

LSU Master's Theses

In 1998 ornithologist John P. O’Neill donated an ethnographic collection of 434 objects he was gifted from researcher Charles Fugler or purchased from persons in Pucallpa, Peru, during his time there studying Amazonian birds. I evaluate 18 feathered objects. According to O’Neill, the cultures responsible for the items are the Cashinahua, Aguaruna, Achual, and Arawak. Eighteen of these items are beautifully crafted arrangements of feathered clothing and objects. The collection includes five headdresses, five bouquets, a hat, a necklace, three tassels, a backrack, a scarf, and a hair tie.

The objects and the seventeen species of bird used are active …

Molecular Mechanisms Of Boron Toxicity Tolerance In Plants, Guannan Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Boron toxicity is a worldwide agricultural problem that limits crop productivity and quality. However, our understanding on the genetic responses and adaption mechanisms to boron toxicity in plants is very limited. To address this gap in our knowledge, I compared boron stress-sensitive model, Arabidopsis thaliana and its stress-adapted relative Schrenkiella parvula to study how plants respond and adapt to excess boron at physiological, genomic, transcriptomic, and metabolic levels.

The overall project goal involved integration of multi-omics datasets to develop genome to phenome interpretations. To achieve this, I developed a python package, GOMCL, to facilitate the extraction of biologically meaningful information …

Mortuary Practices And Social Identity At Matrix 101, La Leche Valley, Peru, Jenna Renee Hurtubise

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on the social identity of the individuals buried at a Late Middle Sicán (A.D. 1050-1120) mass grave designated Matrix 101. Matrix 101 is located in the Great Plaza of the Pomac forest archaeological complex in the La Leche Valley, north coast of Peru. My objectives are threefold: (1) to understand the social identities of the individuals, (2) to examine the complex mortuary practices that took place during the construction of the burial, and (3) to infer socio-political reasons for the construction of Matrix 101 and to see how they might relate to the Sicán societal collapse. Initial …

The Effects Of Recq, Uvrd, And Recd Mutants Of Deinococcus Radiodurans On Resistance To Dna Damaging Agents, Stephannie Gauthier Ruiz

LSU Master's Theses

The genes encoding the putative nuclease RecD and the helicase RecQ were deleted from Deinococcus radiodurans R1 and replaced with constructs conferring hygromycin or spectinomycin resistance. The ÄrecD and ÄrecQ strains were found to be similar to wild type R1 strain in resistance to gamma irradiation. In contrast to the single mutant strains, the ÄuvrD, ÄrecQ double mutant was found to be extremely radiation sensitive, indicating that these proteins share a complementary activity needed for radioresistance. ÄrecD mutants have higher transformation efficiencies than the wild type R1 strains, suggesting an association of RecD with nucleases that degrade single stranded DNA. …

Tissue Culture And Transformation Of Introducing Genes Useful For Pest Management In Rice, Shuli Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Sheath blight (SB), caused by Rhizoctonia solani K¨¹hn, is a major rice disease internationally and in the southern rice area of the Unites States, including Louisiana. Breeders have incorporated partial resistance into commercial rice varieties to control the disease, but a higher level of resistance is needed. It has been demonstrated that the pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins ¦Â-1, 3-glucanase and chitinase are components of effective defense mechanisms for protecting plants against fungal pathogens. This research was conducted to co-transform the ¦Â-1, 3-glucanase, chitinase and bar genes into the rice variety Taipei 309 using the hpt gene for resistance to hygromycin B …

Factors Influencing Regeneration Of Plantlets From Leaf Strips Of Strawberry (Fragaria X Ananassa Duch.), Kristi Lee Whitley

LSU Master's Theses

Influence of media age, initial dark period, inoculation with Agrobacterium, and leaf maturity on the regeneration and genetic transformation of two strawberry cultivars was investigated. Four cultivars of blackberry and one raspberry were included to test their response to media age and dark period. Leaf strips of ‘Chandler’ and ‘Cardinal’ strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry were exposed to a four-week dark treatment on modified MS media and subcultured to fresh media. One group of leaf strips was left on the original media for the entire eight weeks. Another group of explants, along with the media treatments was given an additional four-week …

Optimization Of Agrobacterium Mediated Cotton Transformation Using Shoot Apices Explants And Quantitative Trait Loci Analysis Of Yield And Yield Component Traits In Upland Cotton (Gossypium Hirsutum), Baogong Jiang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cotton (Gossypium spp) is an important world crop. Although great improvements have been achieved through traditional breeding methods, cotton breeders are facing many problems, i.e., narrow genetic base, inability to use alien genes and difficulty in breaking gene linkages. Genetic transformations and quantitative trait loci (QTL) analyses are main tools used by breeders to overcome these problems. In this dissertation, an optimized cotton regeneration system from shoot apices was developed. The regeneration rate was increased to 85% by combining rooting induction, indole acetic acid (IAA) shock and graft techniques. The regeneration system is genotype-independent and the whole process takes 12 …

Studies On Rice Transformation And The Use Of Transformed Plants [Electronic Resource], Qiming Shao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research was conducted to enhance utilization of the Liberty herbicide resistance transgene in rice. Non-lethal methods to determine the sensitivity of transgenic rice plants to hygromycin B and Liberty were developed, tested and used in this research. Four homozygous transformed plants were selected to make reciprocal crosses with their non-transformed parent cultivars Taipei 309 and Nipponbare. Their resistances to Liberty and hygromycin B were controlled by the closely linked single dominant genes bar and hpt. Some non-resistant phenotypes in the F2 populations were due to gene silencing. The bar gene in some of these plants were allelic and some …

Plasmid-Mediated Expression Of Foreign Genes In Ehrlichia Canis, Langston Dolphus Hull

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Ehrlichia canis is the etiologic agent of “tropical canine pancytopenia”, or canine ehrlichiosis. The impetus for this research was to overcome the lack of any reliable means of elucidating the genetic profiles of these illusive and historically difficult to manipulate organisms. The use of a broad-host range plasmid greatly facilitated the determination of an electro-transformation protocol. The transforming plasmid possesses a chloramphenicol antibiotic resistance gene marker (chloramphenicol acetyltransferase [CAT] gene), and a visual reporter gene marker, the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) gene. With primer sets designed to specifically amplify these two plasmid encoded gene markers, thus verifying the presence of …