Life Sciences Commons^™

Demasculinization And Feminization Of Male Gonads By Atrazine: Consistent Effects Across Vertebrate Classes, Krista A. Mccoy

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Atrazine is the most commonly detected pesticide contaminant of ground water, surface water, and precipitation. Atrazine is also an endocrine disruptor that, among other effects, alters male reproductive tissues when animals are exposed during development. Here, we apply the nine so-called “Hill criteria” (Strength, Consistency, Specificity, Temporality, Biological Gradient, Plausibility, Coherence, Experiment, and Analogy) for establishing cause–effect relationships to examine the evidence for atrazine as an endocrine disruptor that demasculinizes and feminizes the gonads of male vertebrates. We present experimental evidence that the effects of atrazine on male development are consistent across all vertebrate classes examined and we present a …

No Evidence Of Association Between Hiv-1 And Malaria In Populations With Low Hiv-1 Prevalence, Diego F. Cuadros, Adam J. Branscum, Gisela García-Ramos

Biology Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: The geographic overlap between HIV-1 and malaria has generated much interest in their potential interactions. A variety of studies have evidenced a complex HIV-malaria interaction within individuals and populations that may have dramatic effects, but the causes and implications of this co-infection at the population level are still unclear. In a previous publication, we showed that the prevalence of malaria caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum is associated with HIV infection in eastern sub-Saharan Africa. To complement our knowledge of the HIV-malaria co-infection, the objective of this work was to assess the relationship between malaria and HIV prevalence in …

Effect Of Variable Transmission Rate On The Dynamics Of Hiv In Sub-Saharan Africa, Diego F. Cuadros, Phillip H. Crowley, Ben Augustine, Sarah L. Stewart, Gisela García-Ramos

Biology Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: The cause of the high HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa is incompletely understood, with heterosexual penile-vaginal transmission proposed as the main mechanism. Heterosexual HIV transmission has been estimated to have a very low probability; but effects of cofactors that vary in space and time may substantially alter this pattern.

METHODS: To test the effect of individual variation in the HIV infectiousness generated by co-infection, we developed and analyzed a mathematical sexual network model that simulates the behavioral components of a population from Malawi, as well as the dynamics of HIV and the co-infection effect caused by other infectious diseases, …

Septin Filaments Exhibit A Dynamic, Paired Organization That Is Conserved From Yeast To Mammals, Bradley S. Demay, Xiaobo Bai, Louisa Howard, Patricia Occhipinti, Rebecca A. Meseroll, Elias T. Spiliotis, Rudolf Oldenbourg, Amy S. Gladfelter

Dartmouth Scholarship

The septins are conserved, GTP-binding proteins important for cytokinesis, membrane compartmentalization, and exocytosis. However, it is unknown how septins are arranged within higher-order structures in cells. To determine the organization of septins in live cells, we developed a polarized fluorescence microscopy system to monitor the orientation of GFP dipole moments with high spatial and temporal resolution. When GFP was fused to septins, the arrangement of GFP dipoles reflected the underlying septin organization. We demonstrated in a filamentous fungus, a budding yeast, and a mammalian epithelial cell line that septin proteins were organized in an identical highly ordered fashion. Fluorescence anisotropy …

Cathepsin B: A Potential Prognostic Marker For Inflammatory Breast Cancer., Nouh A. Mohamed, Mona M. Mohamed, Mohamed El-Shinawi, Mohamed A. Shaalan, Dora Cavallo-Medved, Hussein M. Khaled, Bonnie F. Sloane

Biological Sciences Publications

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is the most aggressive form of breast cancer. In non-IBC, the cysteine protease cathepsin B (CTSB) is known to be involved in cancer progression and invasion; however, very little is known about its role in IBC. In this study, we enrolled 23 IBC and 27 non-IBC patients. All patient tissues used for analysis were from untreated patients. Using immunohistochemistry and immunoblotting, we assessed the levels of expression of CTSB in IBC versus non-IBC patient tissues. Previously, we found that CTSB is localized to caveolar membrane microdomains in cancer cell lines including IBC, and therefore, we also …