Life Sciences Commons^™

The Next Generation Science Standards: Saving K-12 Science Education, Kaitlin Caylor

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The United States has been struggling to provide effective K-12 science education. In response, states began adopting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in 2013 with the hopes of improving science education in the United States. As the NGSS become more common throughout schools in the U.S. it is important to begin collecting data on how they are affecting science education. This study was designed to collect preliminary data on the effectiveness of the NGSS in preparing students for college-level biology. University students with varying levels of exposure to the NGSS were given a biology benchmark assessment that is aligned …

Evidence Of Strong Stabilizing Effects On The Evolution Of Boreoeutherian (Mammalia) Dental Proportions, Tesla A. Monson, Jean-Renaud Boisserie, Marianne F. Brasil, Selene M. Clay, Rena Dvoretzky, Shruti Ravindramurthy, Christopher A. Schmitt, Antoine Souron, Risa Takenaka, Peter S. Ungar, Sunwoo Yoo, Michael Zhou, Madeleine E. Zuercher, Leslea J. Hlusko

Anthropology Faculty and Staff Publications

The dentition is an extremely important organ in mammals with variation in timing and sequence of eruption, crown morphology, and tooth size enabling a range of behavioral, dietary, and functional adaptations across the class. Within this suite of variable mammalian dental phenotypes, relative sizes of teeth reflect variation in the underlying genetic and developmental mechanisms. Two ratios of postcanine tooth lengths capture the relative size of premolars to molars (premolar–molar module, PMM), and among the three molars (molar module component, MMC), and are known to be heritable, independent of body size, and to vary significantly across primates. Here, we explore …

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, …

Occam's Razor Vol. 9 - Full (2019)

Occam's Razor

No abstract provided.

Functional Analysis Of Cyc2 In Microbial Mat Communities Of Mariana Arc And Back-Arc Hydrothermal Vents, Christina A. Turner

WWU Graduate School Collection

The primary production by Zetaproteobacteria at iron-rich vents of the Mariana Arc and back-arc supports high microbial diversity. In microaerophilic circumneutral pH, Zetaproteobacteria are able to produce energy by oxidizing ferrous iron (Fe²⁺) from the vent effluent with the presence of a key gene involved in their iron-oxidation, Cyc2, a fused cytochrome-porin. These genes are found in all Zetaproteobacteria known to date. This study combines molecular quantitative techniques with metagenomic analyses to enhance our confidence in gene quantification from environmental samples. The occurrence of cyc2 was quantified from microbial mat communities at NW Eifuku, NW Rota-1, Snail and …

Protein Quality Control At The Endoplasmic Reticulum And Nucleus In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Daniel Hassell

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Cells need proteins to carry out molecular functions, but proteins can become damaged or misfolded, which inhibits their function and can cause aggregation. Misfolded protein aggregation is associated with degenerative diseases in mammals. In Eukaryotic cells, chronically misfolded proteins can be destroyed by the Ubiquitin Proteasome System (UPS) as a way to prevent aggregation and disease. For my thesis work, I have investigated two pathways that participate in the UPS.

First, I investigate Endoplasmic Reticulum Associated Degradation (ERAD), a UPS pathway is active in the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) of eukaryotic cells. ERAD is well characterized in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast), but …

The Microbiome And Medicine: The Relationship Between Early-Life Colonization And Health Outcomes Such As Asthma And Allergies, Madeline May

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Bacteria inhabit all surfaces of our bodies, and this symbiotic relationship is critical for our survival. The human gut, is colonized by bacteria who aide in digestion and other functions within our immune system. A healthy gut environment is characterized by a rich and diverse microbial ecosystem. The microbiome is fundamental in the proper functioning of our immune system and can influence many health outcomes. The gut microbiome has an essential role in infant health and development. In recent years, this long established relationship between beneficial bacteria and humans has been disrupted by environmental factors, antibiotics, maternal diet, delivery mode, …

Spatiotemporal Diversity Of Alpine Snow Algae Communities In The Pacific Northwest, Rachael C. Mallon

WWU Graduate School Collection

Snow algae are the dominant primary producers of snowy alpine environments and have recently been thrust into the public spotlight for contributing to glacial melt by decreasing snow albedo. These microbial communities are subject to extreme temperature regimes, high irradiance, low nutrient levels, and freeze-thaw cycles on daily, seasonal, and even long-term climatological changes. Although snow algae have been described on every continent, the spatiotemporal diversity of snow algae communities across snowy habitats has not been addressed. The natural geography and climate of the Pacific Northwest provides diverse snowy alpine ecosystems to study the effects of latitude, elevation, and precipitation …

Development Of Cryopreservation Methods For Sperm Of Pinto Abalone (Haliotis Kamtschatkana) For Conservation Aquaculture., Caitlin O'Brien

WWU Graduate School Collection

The pinto abalone, Haliotis kamtschatkana, is an ecosystem engineer with cultural and ecological significance. Due to the dramatic 98% decline in populations, a ten-year recovery plan was enacted to bring levels of pinto abalone back from the brink of extirpation in the San Juan Archipelago, Washington. The focus of this study was to assist restoration efforts in creating self-sustaining populations by developing methods of cryopreservation for male pinto abalone sperm. My study evaluated three commonly used cryoprotectants, a series of freeze/thaw temperatures, and developed methods of quality assessment specific to pinto abalone. Animals were provided and cared for by …

Optimizing Abalone Outplant Strategies Using Larval Haliotis Kamtschatkana In The San Juan Archipelago, Washington, Katherine Mills-Orcutt

WWU Graduate School Collection

Prior studies testing the use of Haliotis kamtschatkana larvae as a means of stock enhancement in the San Juan archipelago have shown no success in inducing larvae to settle in densities required for successful reproduction. I conducted an experiment to test the effectiveness of new methods for outplanting larval abalone in hopes of creating a protocol Puget Sound Restoration Fund could use to restore wild populations. Using two sites within the San Juan archipelago, I outplanted abalone into pre-constructed larval abalone modules (LAMs) and sampled over four months, testing retention strategies. Three types of LAMs were used at each site …