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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Study Of A Putative Niche Adapting Operon In Microbes Inhabiting The Gut Of Blood Digesting Animals, Marlene Abouaassi
Study Of A Putative Niche Adapting Operon In Microbes Inhabiting The Gut Of Blood Digesting Animals, Marlene Abouaassi
Honors Scholar Theses
The sialic acid utilization (SAU) operon is a horizontally acquired gene set that allows bacteria to utilize sialic acid as an alternate source of carbon and nitrogen in the guts of blood eating animals. Sialic acid often occurs as a terminal sugar in complex glycoproteins. It functions in cell signaling and adhesion. Sialic acid is an important component of the cellular envelope of animals. Some microorganisms have evolved to decorate their own surface with sialic acid to evade the host’s immune response (molecular mimicry). The SAU operon encodes enzymes that hydrolyze sialic acid from glycoproteins, transport sialic acid into the …
Identification, Characterization, And Life Cycle Of Intein-Associated Homing Endonucleases, Joshua J. Skydel
Identification, Characterization, And Life Cycle Of Intein-Associated Homing Endonucleases, Joshua J. Skydel
Honors Scholar Theses
Inteins are molecular parasites that have been identified in unicellular organisms from the three domains of life. The intein self-excises following translation of the host gene, and therefore incurs a fitness cost for its carrier. The symbiotic state of the intein to its host is dependent on the presence or absence of a homing endonuclease domain, which facilitates horizontal transfer of the molecule. Identification of this domain provides information on the evolutionary history of the intein, as well as patterns of horizontal gene transfer in microbial communities. I have therefore developed Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to identify homing endonuclease domains …