Life Sciences Commons^™

Molecular Genetic Analysis Of Drought Resistance And Productivity Traits Of Rice Genotypes, Yheni Dwiningsih

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the staple food for a majority of the world’s population, and uses 30% of the global fresh water during its life cycle. Drought at the reproductive stage is the most important abiotic stress factor limiting grain yield. The United States is the third largest exporter of rice, and Arkansas is the top rice-producing state. The Arkansas rice-growing region in the Lower Mississippi belt is among the 10 areas with the highest risk of water scarcity. Adapted U.S. rice cultivars were screened for drought resistant (DR) traits to find sources for breeding U.S. rice cultivars for …

A Mechanistic And Genomic Analysis Of Molluscum Contagiosum Virus Immune Evasion, Ian Benjamin Harvey

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Molluscum contagiosum virus (MCV) is a common human-specific poxvirus with a proclivity for

infecting children and the immune-compromised. A characteristic MCV infection is restricted to

the epidermal layers of the skin and can persist for weeks to years in an otherwise healthy

individual. The high clinical burden of MCV is at odds with our limited knowledge regarding how

it successfully evades the human immune response, which is in part due to the lack of an animal

model or cell line to propagate the virus. Through this dissertation, we have uncovered and

characterized a novel mechanism by which MC80, a protein …

Development Of A Computer Algorithm For Generation Of Primers For Nucleic Acid Sequence Based Amplification (Nasba), Rohit Karnati

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Nucleic acid sequence based amplification (NASBA) is a primer based isothermal method of RNA/DNA amplification. Currently, primer design for NASBA has been restricted to hand creating sequences of oligonucleotides that must follow a set of rules to be compatible for the amplification process. This process of hand-creating primers is prone to error and time intensive. The detection of mutants, post amplification, also offers a benefit in point of care scenarios and the design of hybridization probes for sequences in the region of amplification is also an erroneous and time intensive process. By creating a program to design primers and hybridization …

A Bioinformatic Approach To Exploring Land Plant Evolution, Lauren Margaret Orton

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Today, researchers are inundated with an overwhelming amount of data due to advances in DNA sequencing technologies. This has benefited the fields of both bioinformatics and phylogenomics substantially. With the ability to increase sampling at both the taxonomic and molecular levels, we are now able to produce robust phylogenomic reconstructions and better discern relationships between taxa.

The goals of this dissertation are in two distinct parts: 1) to advance the understanding of land plant terrestrialization and evolution through examination of the closest relative to the land plant lineage, a species of green algae; and 2) to explore evolution among a …