Life Sciences Commons^™

Circadian Rhythmicity And Melatonin Sensitivity In The Human Gut Commensal Bacterium Klebsiella Aerogenes, Kinga Graniczkowska

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

While the expression of circadian rhythms is nearly universal among multicellular eukaryotic organisms, demonstration of this phenomenon in prokaryotes has been largely restricted to photosynthetic cyanobacteria until very recently. Further, growing interest in gastrointestinal microbiomes has revealed a complex temporal relationship between the gastrointestinal clock and the bacterial microbiome within. At least one member of the gut microbiome, Klebsiella (née Enterobacter) aerogenes, responds to the indoleamine hormone melatonin, secreted by the gastrointestinal system itself. Further research revealed that K. aerogenes also expresses a circadian rhythm in motility and gene expression that is temperature compensated. Although rhythmicity is unaltered …

Distribution And Diversity Of Heliothine And Other Lepidopteran Nudiviruses, Emrah Ozel

Theses and Dissertations--Entomology

Helicoverpa zea nudivirus 2 (HzNV-2) is the only known sterilizing and sexually-transmitted insect virus and causes pathological symptoms in H. zea reproductive tissues. HzNV-2 has features that make it a candidate as a H. zea (corn earworm) control agent, such as the ability to cause asymptomatic (latent) and symptomatic (lytic) infections and the ability to influence mating behavior of its host to favor virus spread. HzNV pathology has been studied and its genome sequenced, however, its prevalence in natural populations is largely unknown. In this study, we developed and used a low-cost PCR-based molecular survey to investigate HzNV-2 prevalence and …

Novel Computational Methods For Cancer Genomics Data Analysis, Jinpeng Liu

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Cancer is a genetic disease responsible for one in eight deaths worldwide. The advancement of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology has revolutionized the cancer research, allowing comprehensively profiling the cancer genome at great resolution. Large-scale cancer genomics research has sparked the needs for efficient and accurate Bioinformatics methods to analyze the data. The research presented in this dissertation focuses on three areas in cancer genomics: cancer somatic mutation detection; cancer driver genes identification and transcriptome profiling on single-cell level.

NGS data analysis involves a series of complicated data transformation that convert raw sequencing data to the information that is interpretable by …

Molecular Mechanisms Regulating Optic Fissure Fusion During Zebrafish Eye Development, Megan Weaver

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Vertebrate retinal development requires timely and precise fusion of the optic fissure. Failure of this event leads to congenital vision impairment in the form of coloboma. Recent studies have suggested hyaloid vasculature to be involved in OF fusion. In order to examine this link, we analyzed optic fissure fusion and hyaloid vasculogenesis in the zebrafish pax2a noi mutant line. We first determined that pax2a^-/- embryos fail to accumulate F-actin in the optic fissure prior to basement membrane (BM) degradation. Furthermore, using 3D and live imaging we observed reduced OF hyaloid vascularization in pax2a^-/- embryos. When examining the connection …

Leveraging Transcriptomic Approaches To Identify Differences In Genetic Programming Driving Two Distinct Wound Healing Mechanisms, Regeneration And Fibrosis, In Acomys And Mus, Shishir K. Biswas

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Why can some animals and others cannot? This fundamental question has fueled scientists studying regeneration for hundreds of years since early observations in crayfish, salamanders and many other organisms. While most contemporary work in regeneration is done in a handful of species including salamanders, zebrafish and flatforms, these organisms lack a closely-related, non-regenerating sister species from which unique genetic differences can be identified. Additionally, while much has been learned from these organisms, they do not share fundamental biological traits with mammals (endothermy, metabolism and immune system) which limits the ability to translate this research for clinical medicine. To this end, …

Leveraging Chemical And Computational Biology To Probe The Cellulose Synthase Complex, B. Kirtley Amos

Theses and Dissertations--Plant and Soil Sciences

Cellular expansion in plants is a complex process driven by the constraint of internal cellular turgor pressure by an expansible cell wall. The main structural element of the cell wall is cellulose. Cellulose is vital to plant fitness and the protein complex that creates it is an excellent target for small molecule inhibition to create herbicides. In the following thesis many small molecules (SMs) from a diverse library were screened in search of new cellulose biosynthesis inhibitors (CBI). Loss of cellular expansion was the primary phenotype used to search for putative CBIs. As such, this was approached in a forward …