Life Sciences Commons^™

Engineering Novel Detection And Treatment Strategies For Bacterial Therapy Of Cancer, Jan T. Panteli

Doctoral Dissertations

Finding and treating cancer is difficult due to limited sensitivity and specificity of current detection and treatment strategies. Many chemotherapeutic drugs are small molecules that are limited by diffusion, making it difficult to reach cancer sites requiring high doses that lead to systemic toxicity and off-target effects. Tomographic detection techniques, like PET, MRI and CT, are good at identifying macroscopic lesions in the body but are limited in their ability to detect microscopic lesions. Biomarker detection strategies are extremely sensitive and able to identify ng/ml concentrations of protein, but are poor at discriminating between healthy and disease state levels due …

Comparative Analysis Of Anti-Bd Bacteria From Six Malagasy Frog Species Of Ranomafana National Park, Kelsey Savage

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

As Malagasy amphibians are facing an impending extinction crisis from the lethal skin fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), it has become imperative to proactively mitigate the threat. Bd sporangia develop in the skin of infected amphibians and cause the skin to thicken, leading to ionic imbalance and eventual heart failure. It has been shown that certain bacterial species are able to inhibit Bd growth on amphibians by producing antifungal metabolites. Community-based probiotics are one approach used to combat chytridomycosis by inoculating an environment with Bd-inhibitory bacteria so that many amphibian species are treated at once. With this method, it is important …

Identification Of Bacterial Species Using Colony Pcr, Kaiti Walker

Honors Theses

My research consisted of two separate parts, both involving the PCR methods. In part one I was trying to identify bacteria isolated from a chicken coop. In part two I was trying to identify bacteria isolated from the bluff. In both parts, I used a technique called colony PCR. This concept uses a single colony of bacteria to complete the PCR reaction. One pipet tip from a single colony is selected from the plate and mixed into a tube containing ultrapure water. A small amount of this bacterial mixture is then added into the PCR reaction. In the first part …

Potential For Biocontrol Of Environmental Vibrio Spp. By Predatory Bacteria Bacteriovorax, Patrick Tennis

OES Theses and Dissertations

The scale of predator-prey interactions varies from the iconic (e.g., lions and gazelles) to the microscopic (e.g., protists and bacteria). Bdellovibrio-and-like-organisms (BALOs) are bacteria that prey upon other Gram-negative bacteria, including pathogens. In particular, the halophilic genus Vibrio, many species of which are disease agents, has been shown to be susceptible to attack by BALOs. One motivation of the present research is to assess the potential for biocontrol of Vibrio by Bacteriovorax. This investigation is the first to test the susceptibility of Vibrio strains (n = 26) originating from a variety of geographic locations to predation by …

Integrated Nanoscale Imaging And Spatial Recognition Of Biomolecules On Surfaces, Congzhou Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Biomolecules on cell surfaces play critical roles in diverse biological and physiological processes. However, conventional bulk scale techniques are unable to clarify the density and distribution of specific biomolecules in situ on single, living cell surfaces at the micro or nanoscale. In this work, a single cell analysis technique based on Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is developed to spatially identify biomolecules and characterize nanomechanical properties on single cell surfaces. The unique advantage of these AFM-based techniques lies in the ability to operate in situ (in a non-destructive fashion) and in real time, under physiological conditions or controlled micro-environments.

First, AFM-based …