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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

The Response Of Schwann Cells To Weak Dc Electric Fields, Alexander T. Lai, Jianming Li Aug 2017

The Response Of Schwann Cells To Weak Dc Electric Fields, Alexander T. Lai, Jianming Li

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Schwann cells are glial cells that serve the vital role of supporting neurons in the peripheral nervous system. While their primary function is to provide insulation (myelin) for axons, they also help regenerate injured axons by digesting severed axons and providing scaffolding to guide the regeneration process. This specific role of Schwann cells makes them highly important cellular targets following nerve injury. Although some efforts have been made to encourage Schwann cell migration after nerve damage, the use of electric fields to control cell responses remain unexplored; therefore, this experiment serves to characterize the behavior of Schwann cells to weak …


Metabolic Comparison Of Wild-Type And Transgenic Synechocystis Pcc 6803 Cyanobacteria, Ian A. Mcluckey, John A. Morgan, Joel Yu King Hing Aug 2017

Metabolic Comparison Of Wild-Type And Transgenic Synechocystis Pcc 6803 Cyanobacteria, Ian A. Mcluckey, John A. Morgan, Joel Yu King Hing

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The Calvin-Benson (CBB) cycle is an essential part of nature. This phenomenon allows carbon molecules in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to be converted into useful energy in the form of sugars. Cyanobacteria are single-celled organisms capable of utilizing energy from sunlight to drive this cycle and are also readily engineered. In hopes of improving this cycle, we compared a wild-type version of the Synechocystis PCC6803 cyanobacteria to an engineered version overexpressing the enzyme FBA (fructose-biphosphate aldolase), called 70 glpX, to deduce how the overexpressing strain is able to be more photosynthetically efficient. To do this, comparative metabolomics were done …


Fret Biosensors: Engineering Fluorescent Proteins As Biological Tools For Studying Parkinson’S Disease, Nathan J. Leroy, Jacob R. Norley, Saranya Radhakrishnan, Mathew Tantama Aug 2017

Fret Biosensors: Engineering Fluorescent Proteins As Biological Tools For Studying Parkinson’S Disease, Nathan J. Leroy, Jacob R. Norley, Saranya Radhakrishnan, Mathew Tantama

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disease with over 200,000 new cases each year. In general, the cause of the disease is unknown, but oxidative stress inside of neurons has been associated with the disease’s pathology for some time. Currently, techniques to study the onset of PD inside of neurons are limited. This makes treatments and causes difficult to discover. One solution to this has been fluorescent protein biosensors. In short, these proteins can be engineered to glow when a certain state is achieved inside a cell. The present research discusses the engineering of a genetically-encoded fluorescent protein (FP) …


Fluorescent Protein Biosensor For Use In Parkinson's Research, Piper R. Miller, Keelan Trull, Mathew Tantama Aug 2017

Fluorescent Protein Biosensor For Use In Parkinson's Research, Piper R. Miller, Keelan Trull, Mathew Tantama

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Purinergic signaling is a type of extracellular communication that occurs between cells, mediated by adenosine triphosphate (ATP), adenosine diphosphate (ADP), and adenosine. In Parkinson’s Disease, purinergic signaling is disrupted, which contributes to neurodegeneration. In order to monitor this change in cell-to-cell signaling, there is a need for the development of a fluorescent protein (FP) biosensor to study the changes in the concentration of the signaling molecule ATP and its decomposition bioproduct ADP. This summer a genetically encoded ADP sensor that measures changes in ADP concentration was developed. This sensor utilizes Forster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) which is a sensing technique …


Low-Cost Diagnostics: A Novel Aptamer Screening Process, Junkai Xie, Kalie Janece Dicks, Oscar C. Sanchez-Medina, Chongli Yuan Aug 2017

Low-Cost Diagnostics: A Novel Aptamer Screening Process, Junkai Xie, Kalie Janece Dicks, Oscar C. Sanchez-Medina, Chongli Yuan

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Low-Cost diagnostic and screening tools are of vital importance for low resources countries like those in Africa. DNA aptamers are becoming an important detection analytical tool to recognize small molecule targets, drugs and metabolites. Compared to alternative recognition motifs, such as antibody, protein and peptides, aptamers are cheaper to produce via chemical synthesis, stable at room temperature and relatively faster in R&D lead time (year). Over the past 15 years, various aptamer based sensors have been developed. Conventionally, aptamers were screened via a Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment(SELEX) process. We have improved the SELEX process to improve the …


Establishing A Lung Model For Evaluation Of Engineered Lung Microbiome Therapies, Kathryn F. Atherton, Stephen Miloro, Jenna Rickus Aug 2017

Establishing A Lung Model For Evaluation Of Engineered Lung Microbiome Therapies, Kathryn F. Atherton, Stephen Miloro, Jenna Rickus

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Benzene, a toxin and carcinogen found in air polluted by cigarette smoke, car exhaust, and industrial processes, is associated with the development of leukemia and lymphoma. Other than avoiding exposure, there is no current method to deter the effects of benzene. One potential strategy to prevent these effects is to engineer the bacteria of the human lung microbiome to degrade benzene. To evaluate this novel approach, we must verify that the bacteria remain viable within the lung microenvironment. To do so, lungs were harvested from rats and swabbed to determine the contents of the original lung microbiome. Then green fluorescent …


Gas-Based Perfusion Fmri Cerebrovascular Reactivity Maps And Time Of Arrival Maps, Jinxia Yao, Yunjie Tong, Matthew Robert Derdak Aug 2017

Gas-Based Perfusion Fmri Cerebrovascular Reactivity Maps And Time Of Arrival Maps, Jinxia Yao, Yunjie Tong, Matthew Robert Derdak

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Perfusion MRI is a promising tool used in assessing stroke, brain tumors, and patients with neurodegenerative diseases. However, common perfusion MRI techniques have several disadvantages, such as using exogenous contrast agents, low signal-to-noise ratio and long acquisition time. In this study, we used a computer-controlled gas delivery system RespirAct TM. This system provides a reliable carbon dioxide based vasoactive stimulus. This stimulus will immediately generate large and reliable functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals, which can be used for perfusion imaging. Each subject was required to have three sequential magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, which are structural scan, resting state …