Life Sciences Commons^™

Effect Of Sex On The Accumulation Of Hepatic Mercury In Mallards Wintering In Louisiana, Latorya E. Mason

Master's Theses

The increase in mercury production through anthropogenic activities has led to a global crisis of mercury pollution that poses a significant threat to the health of both humans and wildlife. Aquatic ecosystems are especially at risk due to the creation of methylmercury, a toxic form of mercury, by sulfate-reducing bacteria in anoxic sediments and soils. Methylmercury enters the food chain where it bioaccumulates in individual organisms and then biomagnified with increasing trophic level. Aquatic birds are useful bioindicators of many pollutants, including mercury, due to their abundance and position in the food chain. Previous studies have primarily focused on mercury …

Reports Of Autosomal Recessive Disease And Consanguineous Mating Within The Human Population, Johnathon L. Schluter

Master's Theses

It is anecdotally evident when investigating published reports of autosomal recessive disease that a substantial number of cases are the result of related (consanguineous) mating. This research seeks to quantify the percent of manuscripts describing autosomal recessive diseases published between 2000 and 2020 in which consanguineous mating is indicated. We analyzed 602 peer-reviewed manuscripts to identify the percentage of cases presented in which consanguineous mating was indicated, the underlying genes (novel gene or new mutation) and geographical region. These papers were accessed through a specific set of parameters on the free access PubMed Central (PMC) database. A total of 552 …

Development Of An Integrated Workflow For Nucleosome Modeling And Simulations, Ran Sun

Doctoral Dissertations

Nucleosomes are the building blocks of eukaryotic genomes and thus fundamental to to all genetic processes. Any protein or drug that binds DNA must either cooperate or compete with nucleosomes. Given that a nucleosome contains 147 base pairs of DNA, there are approximately 4^147 or 10^88 possible sequences for a single nucleosome. Exhaustive studies are not possible. However, genome wide association studies can identify individual nucleosomes of interest to a specific mechanism, and today's supercomputers enable comparative simulation studies of 10s to 100s of nucleosomes. The goal of this thesis is to develop and present and end-to-end workflow that serves …

H.B. Bozeman Collection, University Archives And Special Collections, Prescott Memorial Library, Louisiana Tech University

Manuscript Finding Aids

Specimen of petrified palm wood found by Estes B. Bozeman in 1962-63 on the southeast flank of the Sikes Salt Dome, Winn Parish, Louisiana. Palm trees grew in the Winn Parish area 30-40 million years ago during the Tertiary Period of the Cenozoic Era.

Mutlifunctional Platforms For Gene And Drug Delivery For Cancer Therapy, Jeffery J. Ambrose Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

The National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society estimate that 1.6 million new cancer incidences and over half a million cancer related deaths occur annually [1][2]. Cancer the second most common cause of death in the United States [1], [2]. Although the causes of cancer can vary depending on cell type, all or almost all instances of cancer arise from a mutation or from an abnormal activation of the cellular genes that control cell growth and mitosis [3].

Treatment of a given cancer type depends on the subtype, stage and progression of the cancer. Varieties of cancer therapy include …

Improvements On Segment Based Contours Method For Dna Microarray Image Segmentation, Yang Li

Doctoral Dissertations

DNA microarray is an efficient biotechnology tool for scientists to measure the expression levels of large numbers of genes, simultaneously. To obtain the gene expression, microarray image analysis needs to be conducted. Microarray image segmentation is a fundamental step in the microarray analysis process. Segmentation gives the intensities of each probe spot in the array image, and those intensities are used to calculate the gene expression in subsequent analysis procedures. Therefore, more accurate and efficient microarray image segmentation methods are being pursued all the time.

In this dissertation, we are making efforts to obtain more accurate image segmentation results. We …

A Mathematical Model And Numerical Method For Thermoelectric Dna Sequencing, Liwei Shi

Doctoral Dissertations

DNA sequencing is the process of determining the precise order of nucleotide bases, adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine within a DNA molecule. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases in a strand of DNA. The advent of rapid DNA sequencing methods has greatly accelerated biological and medical research and discovery. Thermoelectric DNA sequencing is a novel method to sequence DNA by measuring the heat that is released when DNA polymerase inserts a deoxyribonucleoside triphosphate into a growing DNA strand. The thermoelectric device for this project is composed of four parts: …

Multiscale Modeling Of Enzyme-Catalyzed Methanol Production By Particulate Methane Monooxygenase, Katherine K. Bearden

Doctoral Dissertations

In this work, the conversion of methane to methanol by the particulate Methane Monooxygenase (pMMO) enzyme is investigated using a multi-scale modeling approach. This enzyme participates in carbon cycling and aids in the removal of harmful atmospheric methane, converting it to methanol. The interaction between pMMO and a neighboring enzyme that is present in the same organism is studied, and the unknown pMMO active site is elucidated and tested for methane oxidation towards the production of methanol.

Fundamental knowledge of pMMO's mechanism is not fully understood. Understanding how this enzyme works in nature will provide information towards designing efficient synthetic …

A Study Of Cellular Calcium Dynamics In Culture Using Fluorescence Microscopy – A Statistical And Mathematical Approach, Richard Adekola Idowu

Doctoral Dissertations

Calcium in its ionic form is very dynamic, especially in excitable cells such as muscle and brain cells, moving from the high concentration exterior of the cell to much lower concentrations inside the cell, where calcium is used as a second messenger. In brain cells, and neurons especially, calcium is a key signaling ion involved in memory and learning with excitatory neurotransmitters such as glutamate turning neurons "on." Glutamate excites the neurons in part by causing large and dynamic changes in the intracellular calcium concentration. While these dynamics are essential for normal signaling in the brain, excessive and sustained elevations …

Associative Pattern Mining For Supervised Learning, Harpreet Singh

Doctoral Dissertations

The Internet era has revolutionized computational sciences and automated data collection techniques, made large amounts of previously inaccessible data available and, consequently, broadened the scope of exploratory computing research. As a result, data mining, which is still an emerging field of research, has gained importance because of its ability to analyze and discover previously unknown, hidden, and useful knowledge from these large amounts of data. One aspect of data mining, known as frequent pattern mining, has recently gained importance due to its ability to find associative relationships among the parts of data, thereby aiding a type of supervised learning known …

Discrete Nondeterministic Modeling Of Biochemical Networks, John R. Jack

Doctoral Dissertations

The ideas expressed in this work pertain to biochemical modeling. We explore our technique, the Nondeterministic Waiting Time algorithm, for modeling molecular signaling cascades. The algorithm is presented with pseudocode along with an explanation of its implementation. The entire source code can be found in the Appendices. This algorithm builds on earlier work from the lab of Dr. Andrei Nun, the advisor for this dissertation. We discuss several important extensions including: (i) a heap with special maintenance functions for sorting reaction waiting times, (ii) a nondeterministic component for handling reaction competition, and (iii) a memory enhancement allowing slower reactions to …

Integrated Mining Of Feature Spaces For Bioinformatics Domain Discovery, Pradeep Chowriappa

Doctoral Dissertations

One of the major challenges in the field of bioinformatics is the elucidation of protein folding for the functional annotation of proteins. The factors that govern protein folding include the chemical, physical, and environmental conditions of the protein's surroundings, which can be measured and exploited for computational discovery purposes. These conditions enable the protein to transform from a sequence of amino acids to a globular three-dimensional structure. Information concerning the folded state of a protein has significant potential to explain biochemical pathways and their involvement in disorders and diseases. This information impacts the ways in which genetic diseases are characterized …

Membrane Systems With Limited Parallelism, Bianca Daniela Popa

Doctoral Dissertations

Membrane computing is an emerging research field that belongs to the more general area of molecular computing, which deals with computational models inspired from bio-molecular processes. Membrane computing aims at defining models, called membrane systems or P systems, which abstract the functioning and structure of the cell. A membrane system consists of a hierarchical arrangement of membranes delimiting regions, which represent various compartments of a cell, and with each region containing bio-chemical elements of various types and having associated evolution rules, which represent bio-chemical processes taking place inside the cell.

This work is a continuation of the investigations aiming to …

Development Of A High Spatial Selectivity Tri-Polar Concentric Ring Electrode For Laplacian Electroencephalography (Leeg) System, Kanthaiah Koka

Doctoral Dissertations

Brain activity generates electrical potentials that are spatio-temporal in nature. Electroencephalography (EEG) is the least costly and most widely used non-invasive technique for diagnosing many brain problems. It has high temporal resolution but lacks high spatial resolution.

The surface Laplacian will enhance the spatial resolution of EEG as it performs the second spatial derivative of the surface potentials. In an attempt to increase the spatial selectivity, researchers introduced a bipolar electrode configuration using a five point finite difference method (FPM) and others applied a quasi-bipolar (tri-polar with two elements shorted) concentric electrode configuration. To further increase the spatial resolution, the …

Microcapsule Biosensors Based On Competitive Binding And Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer Assays, Swetha Chinnayelka

Doctoral Dissertations

Fluorescent sensing systems offer the potential for minimally invasive monitoring with implantable devices, but they require carrier technologies that provide suitable immobilization, accessibility, and biocompatibility while maintaining adequate response characteristics. Towards the development of this goal, a general design of a biosensor with the capability of detecting different metabolites was investigated. The approach is based on the encapsulation of a competitive binding assay in microcapsules and monitoring the changes in fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) in the presence of analyte. To experimentally demonstrate this type of sensing system, glucose was chosen as the model target analyte. The design, fabrication, and …

A High -Order Finite Difference Method For Solving Bioheat Transfer Equations In Three-Dimensional Triple -Layered Skin Structure, Haofeng Yu

Doctoral Dissertations

Investigations on instantaneous skin burns are useful for an accurate assessment of burn-evaluation and for establishing thermal protections for various purposes. Meanwhile, hyperthermia with radiation is important in the treatment of cancer, and it is essential for developers and users of hyperthermia systems to predict, and interpret correctly the biomass thermal and vascular response to heating. In this dissertation, we employ the well-known Pennes' bioheat transfer equation to predict the degree of skin burn and the temperature distribution in hyperthermia cancer treatment.

A fourth-order compact finite difference scheme is developed to solve Pennes' bioheat transfer equation in a three-dimensional single …

Modeling Of The Inverse Heat -Conduction Problem With Application To Laser Chemical Vapor Deposition And Bioheat Transfer, Peng Zhen

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of two parts. Part one deals with three-dimensional laser induced chemical vapor deposition (3D-LCVD), whereas part two deals with a Pennes model of a 3D skin structure. LCVD is an important technique in manufacturing complex micro-structures with high aspect ratio. In part one, a numerical model was developed for simulating kinetically-limited growth of an axisymmetric cylindrical rod by pre-specifying the surface temperature distribution required for growing the rod and then by obtaining optimized laser power that gives rise to the pre-specified temperature distribution. The temperature distribution at the surface of the rod was assumed to be at …