Life Sciences Commons^™

Reactive Chlorine Species Reversibly Inhibit Dnab Protein Splicing In Mycobacteria, Daniel Wahl

Scholars Week

Intervening proteins, or inteins, are mobile genetic elements translated within host polypeptides and removed at the protein level by splicing. In protein splicing, a selfmediated reaction removes the intein, leaving only a peptide bond in place. While protein splicing can proceed in the absence of external co-factors, several natural examples of conditional protein splicing (CPS) have emerged. In CPS, the rate and accuracy of splicing is highly-dependent on environmental conditions. As activity of the intein-containing host protein is compromised prior to splicing, and inteins are highly abundant in the microbial world, CPS represents an emerging form of …

Cougars In The Eastern United States, Justina Raleva, Kenneth Rieche

Scholars Week

Since the 1900s, cougars have been extirpated from nearly everywhere except the western United States parks and wilderness areas. In recent years, cougars have been starting to spread their range outside of the Rocky Mountains, towards eastern states like Illinois, Missouri, and Louisiana. The purpose of this project is to conduct outreach and education through a brochure that would educate locals in Kentucky and Tennessee regarding cougar safety and conservation importance.

Retrieve, Race, Release, Karamello Young, Paige Mccord, Madison Morrison, Emily Fitzgerald

Scholars Week

Title: Retrieve, Race, Release

by: Paige McCord, Karamello Young, Madison Morrison, Emily Fitzgerald

Abstract: This poster represents a service-learning project that was done for our conservation biology class. Our main goal is to educate the public about the negative impacts of turtle derbies. We did this by using educational materials to raise awareness about turtle races and the impact of painting them with toxic substances before releasing them into a habitat that is not their natural one. We did not seek out to prohibit or stop the races as that would cause people to shut down and not listen as …

Mapping Fetch And Diel Movements Of Silver Carp Hypophthalmichthys Molitrix Within Kentucky Lake And Lake Barkley With Gis, Levi Umland

Scholars Week

Title: Mapping Silver Carp movements, relative exposure, and fetch within inland reservoirs using Geographic Information Systems.

Author: Levi G Umland

Invasive species across our country have continued to threaten our native species, compete for habitat via interspecific competition, and have caused economic impacts. Silver Carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix), commonly referred to as Asian Carp, have remained in the invasive species spotlight throughout the southern and mid-western states as they have continued to spread. Silver Carp have successfully spread through our rivers and reservoirs, but little is known about Silver Carp movement rates/behavior within reservoirs due to their lower abundance within …

A Gud Toolbox: Implementation Of Giving-Up Densities With Mammals, Brandon Preston, Jordan Tandy, Kundil Patel, Karissa Coffield

Scholars Week

Giving-up densities are the density of food remaining within an artificial foraging patch over a specified time and are an indicator of how an organism perceives its environment. The GUD method is particularly useful to study the foraging behavior of an organism relative to predation risk and interactions with other environmental variables (e.g., cover, conspecifics, and food quantity and quality) to address larger ecological and evolutionary questions. The GUD methodology is commonly used with the mammalian taxonomic group due to their general size, detectability, and abundance in comparison to other taxa. However, development of protocols that maximize the potential for …

Using Modeling To Investigate Factors Driving Avian Diversity In Urban Ecosystems, Clay Bliznick

Scholars Week

Anthropogenic influences have altered global landscapes considerably throughout the past two centuries, resulting in the decline of natural land cover types. Conversely, land cover types such as cropland and urban areas that are derived from human activities have experienced vast expansion. This landscape transition has serious implications for ecosystem services. To mitigate the loss of these services, it is necessary to maintain ecological integrity within these anthropogenically-influenced systems. Being able to support high biodiversity is an indicator of well-functioning ecosystems, thus quantifying biodiversity and assessing its contributing factors can be useful for developing management strategies in artificial environments. Our objective …

Morph- And Sex-Specific Differences In Corticosterone Of The Arizona Tiger Salamander (Ambystoma Mavortium Nebulosum), Megan Zerger

Scholars Week

Life history morph, sex, and body condition are traits that may influence stress within salamander populations because of differences in physiology and environmental conditions. Given widespread declines and the effects chronic stress can have on amphibian health, it is important to understand within-population drivers of stress and how population level variation may influence population viability. Thus, the objective of our study was to assess how corticosterone varies within the Arizona tiger salamander (Ambystoma mavortium nebulosum) population at the Mexican Cut Nature Preserve. We used a non-invasive skin swabbing method to collect baseline and elevated corticosterone from paedomorph (aquatic …

The Nature Of Genes Expressed Differently After Environmental Drug Exposure, Nicci Siffel

Scholars Week

The Nature of Genes Expressed Differently after Environmental Drug Exposure

N. Siffel, S. Anderson, B. Subedi, D.R. Hammond-Weinberger

Drug use, of prescription or illicit varieties, alter bodily functions in different ways, especially in the nervous system. These drugs are found in sources of drinking water because they are not removed by wastewater treatment facilities. To investigate the effects of these drugs as they appear in mixtures, we exposed groups of zebrafish embryos to cocktails of drugs and screened for genes that were differentially expressed between the experimental and control groups and could thus give more insight into their biological functions. …

Chlorophyll A And Primary Productivity Dynamics In Kentucky Lake Mainstem And Embayment Habitats., Morgan Franklin

Scholars Week

Chlorophyll α (Chl α) has been used as a proxy for phytoplankton biomass, while primary productivity (PP), the rate at which carbon is fixed into phytoplankton cells, is an indicator of how quickly carbon is turned over within the phytoplankton community. The purpose of this research was to examine the spatial distribution of and the relationship between Chl α and PP seasonally in the main channel of Kentucky Lake reservoir and two embayments of contrasting land use. Correlation coefficients (r) for Chl α versus PP were 0.45 in Ledbetter embayment, 0.55 in Panther embayment, and 0.57 in the main …

Cytochrome P450 Protein Family 4 Conservation And Diversification Among Flies, Kevin Croft

Scholars Week

Commercial fruit pests, such as flies within the Tephritidae family, have a large economic impact on the global food supply due to their ability to infest a wide range of host plants. The genus Rhagoletis, which contains the apple maggot fly, has become an important organism for understanding the process of switching and adapting to new hosts. The enzyme group responsible for this ability in Rhagoletis flies is the Cytochrome P450 proteins. This superfamily of proteins is also known to help organisms deal with various environmental stressors, such as detoxification of plant defensive compounds or insecticides. The Rhagoletis zephyria (the …

Effects Of Sport Fishing On Harbor Seal Hunting Success, Madison Mckay

Scholars Week

Competitive interactions between marine mammals and fisheries are well documented. For example, pinnipeds (seals and sea lions) may impede the recovery of commercial fish stocks, and fisheries can negatively affect seals via bycatch and by diminishing food availability. However, the interactions between pinnipeds and sport fishers are not well documented, despite the fact that both utilize the same resources. I aimed to investigate whether sport fishermen affect the hunting success of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina). Whatcom Creek, a small and accessible river located in downtown Bellingham, WA, is a common place for sport fishers and harbor seals to aggregate and …

A Molecular Traffic Jam: How Overexpression Of Pericentrin Restricts The Movement Of Ift20 Between The Golgi Apparatus And The Primary Cilium, Josh Mcnamara

Scholars Week

Virtually every cell in the human body has a small antenna projecting from its surface called a primary cilium (plural, cilia). Proteins must be constantly moved to and from cilia in order for cilia to continue their function. This movement is referred to as protein trafficking. IFT20 is a protein that is heavily involved in protein trafficking in and out of cilia. The trafficking patterns of IFT20 can be studied by making it visible under a fluorescent microscope. We are particularly interested in how IFT20 interacts with another protein around the cilium called Pericentrin and how their interaction affects IFT20 …

Does Adaptation To Harsh Environments Provide Protection Against Parasites?, Arielle Michaelis

Scholars Week

While host-parasite coevolution is generally well studied, much less attention has been paid to how parasite-host relationships are impacted by variation in the abiotic environment. This may be especially important when the host species' range includes both moderate and extreme environments, since the parasite might not be able to tolerate both climates. In such cases, adaptation to extreme environments might be a potential strategy to reduce parasitization. Studies have shown that parasites are more successful in the environment in which they originally coevolved with their host than in an environment with new abiotic stressors. In Washington, snowberry flies infest snowberries …

The Effect Of Anthropogenic Noise Disturbance On Day-Time Haul Out Patterns Of Harbor Seals (Phoca Vitulina) At Two Sites Available At All Tide Levels., Wyatt Heimbichner Goebel

Scholars Week

Harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) are one of the most abundant pinniped species in the northeast Pacific. Harbor seal haul-out behavior is influenced by a variety of factors, including anthropogenic disturbance. One component of anthropogenic disturbance is increases in ambient noise levels due to human activities, such as construction. There is evidence that noise disturbance can affect harbor seal hearing as well as cause short-term changes in haul-out behavior. However, it is unclear how noise disturbance affects harbor seal haul-out patterns over long temporal scales. In this proposed study, I aim to investigate the effect of ambient noise levels on long-term …

Unraveling Genetic Interactions At The Primary Cilium, Bailey Mccurdy

Scholars Week

Down syndrome is one of the most common genetic conditions in the world, with a prevalence of 1 in 700. Down syndrome is caused by an additional copy of chromosome 21. Although all individuals with Down Syndrome have an extra copy of chromosome 21, the clinical outcome of Down Syndrome varies. Why is this? One possibility is that disruption of other genes that are not on chromosome 21 also contributes to the clinical outcome. I have identified a strong genetic candidate called NPHP1 that disrupts a structure called the primary cilium—a vital signaling structure that is essential for human development. …

Nucjuke: A Web Tool For Re-Ranking Crispr-Cas9 Grnas Based On Chromatin Accessibility In Yeast, Gaea Turman

Scholars Week

A variety of papers published in the last decade have suggested that chromatin accessibility could have significant influence over the success of CRISPR-Cas9 experiments in S. cerevisiae; where chromatin accessibility refers to nucleosome presence at a targeted genomic location. It has been found that nucleosome presence can physically impede Cas9 from making a double stranded break at a specific target site, causing a decreased experimental efficiency. We have created a web-tool called NucJuke that seeks to mitigate this problem by categorically re-ranking gRNAs based on having high, partial, or low chromatin accessibility (referring to no nucleosome occupancy, partial nucleosome occupancy, …

Delineation Of Ohio River Flood Zones In Ballard County Using Remote Sensing, Nathan Rister

Scholars Week

The purpose of this study was to use remote sensing to map flood zones in Ballard County as it correlates to the Ohio River flood gauges. This will help Wildlife managers to know which areas are most likely to be flooded by simply looking at river gauges and prevent them to having to check which areas are flooded in person. By using this technique wildlife managers will be able to save time and resources as well as better manage wildlife areas along the Ohio River.

How Low Can You Go (And Live): Determining The Sub-Lethal Exposure Time To Desiccation In Snowberry Maggot Flies (Rhagoletis Zephyria), Alison Klimke, Anna Marie Yanny

Scholars Week

The fruit infesting snowberry maggot (Rhagoletis zephyria) inhabits a broad range of habitats across the northern United States, including the humid and arid parts of Washington State. Pupating snowberry maggots (the most vulnerable life stage) exhibit local adaptation, with flies being more desiccation resistant east than west of the Cascades. Previous experiments have measured this difference at eight days after the larvae leave the fruit. However, desiccation impacts on survival may occur much earlier. To better understand the mechanism(s) by which flies protect themselves from desiccation we need to study flies at a sub-lethal level of stress, as dying flies …

Feeding Success Of Harbor Seals In Relation To Hunting Technique At Whatcom Creek, Mackenna Newmarch

Scholars Week

Factors that influence hunting success of seals and sea lions are underrepresented in studies of animal behavior. This is a critical interaction to understand when evaluating the top-down effects of pinnipeds on endangered Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.). In the Pacific Northwest, harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) consume a very large number of individual salmon, species that are a valuable resource and the subject of costly restorative efforts. A salmon hatchery in Whatcom Creek estuary of downtown Bellingham, Washington, attracts harbor seals that prey on returning adult Pacific salmon. The convenient location and small size of the site allows consistent observation of …

Examining The Relationship Between Climate And Seasonal Stream Thermal Regimes In A High Desert Ecosystem, Hannah Moore, Melody Feden

Scholars Week

Climate change is negatively affecting ecosystems around the world, and in the coming years, scientists predict that these changes will only intensify and accelerate. In the western mountains of North America, climate change projections predict elevated temperatures, reduced snowpack, and earlier snowmelt. Elevated air temperatures have the propensity to affect water temperatures in sensitive freshwater ecosystems. Temperature increases may cause streams to reach the upper thermal limit for many aquatic organisms, such as aquatic invertebrates and fish, and result in death or dispersal for these organisms. This makes the availability of cold-water refugia in streams that much more important for …

Can Omnivores Mediate The Effects Of Degradation?, Hannah Moore

Scholars Week

Omnivores feed at multiple trophic levels and have large effects on community structuring and stability. The magnitude and direction of such effects, whether omnivores stabilize or destabilize communities, remains unresolved. Shifts in omnivore diet and trophic position may be of particular importance to community stability in degraded habitats, where resources are sparse. For example, omnivores may reduce the severity and duration of community responses to degradationby dampening the effects of any disturbance-mediated trophic cascade. The relatively simple food webs of freshwater systems are ideal for studying trophic ecology, and in the western U.S., streams are heavily degraded by overgrazing, beaver …

Norms Of Reaction For Pheromone Response In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Isolates, Shelby Duffy

Scholars Week

Traits are commonly influenced by environmental and genetic factors, yet the contribution of each is often poorly understood. An important life history trait in baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is the rate at which cells prepare for mating in response to environmentally released pheromones. Wild strains of yeast differ in mating pheromone response and alleles of the G-Protein alpha subunit of the pheromone receptor have been shown to affect both pheromone response and fitness. It is known that pheromone response depends on pheromone concentration, but the effects of environmental factors are largely unknown. In order to characterize the effects of environmental …

Bivalve Comparison Study At Clayton Beach From 1912 To Recent, Stephanie Yong

Scholars Week

The purpose of the bivalve comparison study is to examine changes in the bivalve populations at Clayton Beach between 1912 and the present. Sea floor material off the coast of Clayton Beach was collected to create a railroad bed for the Bellingham and Skagit Interurban Railway in 1912 by a dredge ship. The dredged material contains well-preserved shells that represent an unbiased bulk sample of the benthic molluscan fauna in Samish Bay prior to 1912. Clayton Beach provides a unique opportunity to examine species diversity, population numbers, and size frequency of the whole bivalve fauna from a particular point in …

Variation In Desiccation Resistance Between Different Rhagoletis Zephyria Populations Spanning The Cascade Mountains, Keely Hausken, Neal Shaffer, Jennifer Hill

Scholars Week

Local adaptation to environmental gradients can be an important source of variation that allows populations to evolve in response to environmental challenges. The snowberry maggot fly (Rhagoletis zephyria) is found throughout the different climate regions of Washington state. However, populations vary in their resistance to desiccation as an early pupa. We found that in low humidity treatments, desiccation resistance is predicted by annual precipitation and elevation and is tightly correlated with fly emergence the following season. Our results suggest that the variation in desiccation resistance in of R. zephyria is adaptive. Rhagoletis zephyria hybridizes with the agriculturally important invasive apple …

Roles Of Ubiquitin And Stress In Diacetyl Chemosensation Of C. Elegans, Ellen Zocher, Nelson Ruth, Marissa Hogg

Scholars Week

Ubiquitin is a small protein that can be attached to other proteins in a cell, tagging them for destruction. The process of adding ubiquitin to a protein substrate (ubiquitination), and the subsequent trafficking and degradation of this substrate, is a principle regulator of the abundance and activity of many proteins across all forms of life. We are examining the role and dynamics of this regulatory system in the olfactory neurons of the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, specifically the olfactory receptor protein ODR-10, which allows the worm to detect diacetyl, a volatile compound that is produced by the bacteria the worm …

Calculating The Predictability Of Climate Change: The Effect Of Climate Change On Moth Species In The Pacific Northwest Varies Among Functional Groups., Julie Maurer

Scholars Week

Climate change has driven shifts in phenology and distribution for many species. These effects are often idiosyncratic and it remains unclear whether they vary consistently among functional groups, limiting our ability to draw broad conclusions about how climate change affects species. Previous studies have indicated that Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) are sensitive to climate change. We analyzed a large database of moth specimen records from the Pacific Northwest (PNW) to examine climate change responses over more than 100 years for a suite of 241 functionally diverse species, including spring and fall active species as well as dietary generalists and specialists. …

Regulation Of Ampa-Type Glutamate Receptor Homolog Glr-1 By Erad Ubiquitin Ligases In C. Elegans, Sam Witus

Scholars Week

Endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation (ERAD) maintains cellular health by removing misfolded proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). ERAD is ubiquitin-dependent, and ubiquitination of target proteins can be catalyzed by ER-resident E3 ubiquitin ligases. In C. elegans, genes for three putative ERAD E3 ubiquitin ligases have been identified: hrd-1, hrdl-1, and marc-6 (HRD-1, GP78/AMFR, and MARCH-6 in mammalian systems). In C. elegans, these three genes cooperate to maintain the overall health of animals during ER stress. We are testing the roles of hrd-1, hrdl-1, and marc-6 in the neurons of C. elegans. GLR-1 is a glutamate receptor that is expressed in a …

Implementation Of Flipped Classrooms In A Non-Major Biology Course, Leah Good

Scholars Week

With major calls for reform in STEM education from professional organizations (e.g. AAAS, NIH, NSF), studies have found that faculty in higher education can improve student learning by changing their teaching from teacher-centered to student-centered. Change in teaching practice can be difficult, however, especially without significant training. One method of introducing student-centered teaching practices into the classroom is through the use of a flipped classroom model, where students engage in learner-centered activities within the classroom and receive passively-transmitted information outside the classroom. The focus of my study was two-fold, (a) to determine if the flipped classroom method affects student learning …

Importance Of Ubiquitin-Mediated Degradation On Diacetyl Chemosensation In C. Elegans, Ellen Zocher, Nelson Ruth

Scholars Week

Ubiquitin is a small regulatory protein that can be attached to other proteins in a cell, tagging them for destruction. Ubiquitin plays a critical role in regulating the abundance and activity of many proteins. We examined the role of ubiquitin and the cellular pathway it follows in olfactory neurons in the model organism C. elegans. C. elegans senses and moves towards sources of diacetyl, a volatile compound generated by the bacteria it consumes. This behavior is dependent on the diacetyl receptor, ODR-10. We hypothesized that the ubiquitin-mediated degradation system is involved in the regulation of this sensory receptor. Using transgenic …

Can Collection Specimen Data Reveal Temporal Shifts Due To Climate Change?, Julie Maurer

Scholars Week

Climate change is altering the distribution, behavior, and migration patterns of many species. Typically, these responses are documented studies in which standardized methods are used to collect population or behavioral data over several years. Multi-decade studies are rare and few predate the recent dramatic increase in global temperatures, limiting our ability to understand long-term consequences of climate change. Natural history (NH) collections offer a potential solution; they hold a wealth of species occurrence documentation spanning from decades to centuries. However, because the sampling of natural history collectors is spatially and temporally haphazard, it remains unclear whether NH data is useful …