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Life Sciences Commons

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Biology

Boise State University

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

2019

BRC

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Where To Forage When Afraid: Does Perceived Risk Impair Use Of The Foodscape?, Samantha P.H. Dwinnell, Hall Sawyer, Jill E. Randall, Jeffery L. Beck, Jennifer S. Forbey, Gary L. Fralick, Kevin L. Monteith Oct 2019

Where To Forage When Afraid: Does Perceived Risk Impair Use Of The Foodscape?, Samantha P.H. Dwinnell, Hall Sawyer, Jill E. Randall, Jeffery L. Beck, Jennifer S. Forbey, Gary L. Fralick, Kevin L. Monteith

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The availability and quality of forage on the landscape constitute the foodscape within which animals make behavioral decisions to acquire food. Novel changes to the foodscape, such as human disturbance, can alter behavioral decisions that favor avoidance of perceived risk over food acquisition. Although behavioral changes and population declines often coincide with the introduction of human disturbance, the link(s) between behavior and population trajectory are difficult to elucidate. To identify a pathway by which human disturbance may affect ungulate populations, we tested the Behaviorally Mediated Forage‐Loss Hypothesis, wherein behavioral avoidance is predicted to reduce use of available forage adjacent to …


Correcting Forensic Dna Errors, Greg Hampikian Jul 2019

Correcting Forensic Dna Errors, Greg Hampikian

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

DNA mixture interpretation can produce opposing conclusions by qualified forensic analysts, even within the same laboratory. The long-delayed publication of the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) study of 109 North American crime laboratories in this journal demonstrates this most clearly. This latest study supports earlier work that shows common methods such as the Combined Probability of Inclusion (CPI) have wrongly included innocent people as contributors to DNA mixtures.The 2016 President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report concluded,“In summary, the interpretation of complex DNA mixtures with the CPI statistic has been an inadequately specified—and thus inappropriately subjective—method. …


Conservation Genomics In The Sagebrush Sea: Population Divergence, Demographic History, And Local Adaptation In Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus Spp.), Kevin P. Oh, Cameron L. Aldridge, Jennifer S. Forbey, Carolyn Y. Dadabay, Sara J. Oyler-Mccance Jul 2019

Conservation Genomics In The Sagebrush Sea: Population Divergence, Demographic History, And Local Adaptation In Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus Spp.), Kevin P. Oh, Cameron L. Aldridge, Jennifer S. Forbey, Carolyn Y. Dadabay, Sara J. Oyler-Mccance

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Sage-grouse are two closely related iconic species of the North American West, with historically broad distributions across sagebrush-steppe habitat. Both species are dietary specialists on sagebrush during winter, with presumed adaptations to tolerate the high concentrations of toxic secondary metabolites that function as plant chemical defenses. Marked range contraction and declining population sizes since European settlement have motivated efforts to identify distinct population genetic variation, particularly that which might be associated with local genetic adaptation and dietary specialization of sage-grouse. We assembled a reference genome and performed whole-genome sequencing across sage-grouse from six populations, encompassing both species and including several …


Trophic Interactions And Abiotic Factors Drive Functional And Phylogenetic Structure Of Vertebrate Herbivore Communities Across The Arctic Tundra Biome, Jennifer Forbey Jun 2019

Trophic Interactions And Abiotic Factors Drive Functional And Phylogenetic Structure Of Vertebrate Herbivore Communities Across The Arctic Tundra Biome, Jennifer Forbey

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Communities are assembled from species that evolve or colonise a given geographic region, and persist in the face of abiotic conditions and interactions with other species. The evolutionary and colonisation histories of communities are characterised by phylogenetic diversity, while functional diversity is indicative of abiotic and biotic conditions. The relationship between functional and phylogenetic diversity infers whether species functional traits are divergent (differing between related species) or convergent (similar among distantly related species). Biotic interactions and abiotic conditions are known to influence macroecological patterns in species richness, but how functional and phylogenetic diversity of guilds vary with biotic factors, and …


Contributions Of Vps35 Mutations To Parkinson’S Disease, Abir A. Rahman, Brad E. Morrison Mar 2019

Contributions Of Vps35 Mutations To Parkinson’S Disease, Abir A. Rahman, Brad E. Morrison

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a multi-system neurodegenerative disease where approximately 90% of cases are idiopathic. The remaining 10% of the cases can be traced to a genetic origin and research has largely focused on these associated genes to gain a better understanding of the molecular and cellular pathogenesis for PD. The gene encoding vacuolar protein sorting protein 35 (VPS35) has been definitively linked to late onset familial PD following the identification of a point mutation (D620N) as the causal agent in a Swiss family. Since its discovery, numerous studies have been undertaken to characterize the role of VPS35 in cellular …


Co-Expression Of Vegf And Il-6 Family Cytokines Is Associated With Decreased Survival In Her2 Negative Breast Cancer Patients: Subtype-Specific Il-6 Family Cytokine-Mediated Vegf Secretion, Ken Tawara, Hannah Scott, Jacqueline Emathinger, Alex Ide, Ryan Fox, Daniel Greiner, Dollie Lajoie, Danielle Hedeen, Madhuri Nandakumar, Andrew J. Oler, Ryan Holzer, Cheryl Jorcyk Feb 2019

Co-Expression Of Vegf And Il-6 Family Cytokines Is Associated With Decreased Survival In Her2 Negative Breast Cancer Patients: Subtype-Specific Il-6 Family Cytokine-Mediated Vegf Secretion, Ken Tawara, Hannah Scott, Jacqueline Emathinger, Alex Ide, Ryan Fox, Daniel Greiner, Dollie Lajoie, Danielle Hedeen, Madhuri Nandakumar, Andrew J. Oler, Ryan Holzer, Cheryl Jorcyk

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Breast cancer cell-response to inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-6 (IL-6) and oncostatin M (OSM) may affect the course of clinical disease in a cancer subtype-dependent manner. Furthermore, vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF) secretion induced by IL-6 and OSM may also be subtype-dependent. Utilizing datasets from Oncomine, we show that poor survival of invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) breast cancer patients is correlated with both high VEGF expression and high cytokine or cytokine receptor expression in tumors. Importantly, epidermal growth factor receptor-negative (HER2-), but not HER2-positive (HER2+), patient survival is significantly lower with high tumor co-expression of VEGF and OSM, OSMRβ, …


Preferences Of Specialist And Generalist Mammalian Herbivores For Mixtures Versus Individual Plant Secondary Metabolites, Jordan D. Nobler, Jennifer S. Forbey Jan 2019

Preferences Of Specialist And Generalist Mammalian Herbivores For Mixtures Versus Individual Plant Secondary Metabolites, Jordan D. Nobler, Jennifer S. Forbey

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Herbivores that forage on chemically defended plants consume complex mixtures of plant secondary metabolites (PSMs). However, the mechanisms by which herbivores tolerate mixtures of PSMs are relatively poorly understood. As such, it remains difficult to predict how PSMs, singly or as complex mixtures, influence diet selection by herbivores. Although relative rates of detoxification of PSMs have been used to explain tolerance of PSMs by dietary specialist herbivores, few studies have used the rate of detoxification of individual PSMs to understand dietary preferences of individual herbivores for individual versus mixtures of PSMs. We coupled in vivo experiments using captive feeding trials …


A Fragment Of Apolipoprotein E4 Leads To The Downregulation Of A Cxorf56 Homologue, A Novel Er-Associated Protein, And Activation Of Bv2 Microglial Cells, Tanner B. Pollock, Jacob M. Mack, Noail F. Isho, Raquel J. Brown, Alexandra E. Oxford, Brad E. Morrison, Eric J. Hayden, Troy T. Rohn Jan 2019

A Fragment Of Apolipoprotein E4 Leads To The Downregulation Of A Cxorf56 Homologue, A Novel Er-Associated Protein, And Activation Of Bv2 Microglial Cells, Tanner B. Pollock, Jacob M. Mack, Noail F. Isho, Raquel J. Brown, Alexandra E. Oxford, Brad E. Morrison, Eric J. Hayden, Troy T. Rohn

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Despite the fact that harboring the apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) allele represents the single greatest risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the exact mechanism by which apoE4 contributes to disease progression remains unknown. Recently, we demonstrated that a 151 amino-terminal fragment of apoE4 (nApoE41-151) localizes within the nucleus of microglia in the human AD brain, suggesting a potential role in gene expression. In the present study, we investigated this possibility utilizing BV2 microglia cells treated exogenously with nApoE41-151. The results indicated that nApoE41-151 leads to morphological activation of microglia cells through, at least in part, …