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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Characterizing The Rogfp2-Orp1 Fluorescent Biosensor For Detecting Oxidative Stress In Mammalian Cells, Sara A. Doan, Stevie Norcross, Mathew Tantama Sep 2015

Characterizing The Rogfp2-Orp1 Fluorescent Biosensor For Detecting Oxidative Stress In Mammalian Cells, Sara A. Doan, Stevie Norcross, Mathew Tantama

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease involving the death of neurons in the substantia nigra and loss of the neurotransmitter, dopamine. The disease leads to progressive loss of motor control. Exact causes and mechanisms by which Parkinson’s disease proceeds are unknown, however, previous experiments determine oxidative stress in mitochondria as a factor that results in cell death. Strategies have been implemented to generate fluorescent biosensors to monitor reactive oxygen species (ROS) concentrations while simultaneously measuring the spatiotemporal distribution and correlation between the ROS, cellular function and organelle. Orp1, an enzyme found in yeast, is a sensitive oxidizing species and when …


Characterizing The Role Of Aif4 In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Antonia L. Hur Ms., Nina Serratore Ms., Scott D. Briggs Aug 2015

Characterizing The Role Of Aif4 In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Antonia L. Hur Ms., Nina Serratore Ms., Scott D. Briggs

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Chromatin remodelers are important regulatory mechanisms that eukaryotic cells use to modify the structure of chromatin, which is made up of DNA and proteins. DNA wraps around histone proteins to make up chromatin. When these proteins are modified, the shape of the chromatin is altered. “Loosening” the chromatin structure by chromatin modifications allows for active gene expression whereas “tightening” or compaction of chromatin results in gene repression. Therefore the modifications on chromatin modulate gene expression in all eukaryotes. It has been shown that mis-regulation of chromatin remodelers contribute to various cancers. Understanding the biochemistry behind how chromatin associating proteins modify …


Viewing The Extracellular Matrix: An Imaging Method For Tissue Engineering, Michael Drakopoulos, Sarah Calve Aug 2015

Viewing The Extracellular Matrix: An Imaging Method For Tissue Engineering, Michael Drakopoulos, Sarah Calve

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The field of regenerative medicine seeks to create replacement tissues and organs, both to repair deficiencies in biological function and to treat structural damage caused by injury. Scaffoldings mimicking extracellular matrix (ECM), the structure to which cells attach to form tissues, have been developed from synthetic polymers and also been prepared by decellularizing adult tissue. However, the structure of ECM undergoes significant remodeling during natural tissue repair, suggesting that ECM-replacement constructs that mirror developing tissues may promote better regeneration than those modeled on adult tissues. This work investigated the effectiveness of a method of viewing the extracellular matrix of developing …


Using The Intact Method To Study Pickle In Individual Cell Types, Jacqueline L. Phipps, Daniela N. Martir, Ben Carter, Joe Ogas Aug 2015

Using The Intact Method To Study Pickle In Individual Cell Types, Jacqueline L. Phipps, Daniela N. Martir, Ben Carter, Joe Ogas

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Cell differentiation is an essential part of development in multicellular organisms. Cells with identical genomic DNA are able to differentiate into a variety of tissues due to selective expression and repression of genes. This tissue-specific gene expression is enabled in part by proteins called chromatin remodelers, which can move, remove, or restructure histone proteins to restrict or allow physical access to genomic DNA. PICKLE (PKL) is a member of the CHD family of ATP-dependent chromatin remodelers that promotes cellular identity in the plant model organism Arabidopsis thaliana. PKL promotes cell identity by silencing embryonic genes during seed germination by promoting …


A Screen To Identify Saga-Activated Genes That Are Required For Proper Photoreceptor Axon Targeting In Drosophila Melanogaster, Kaelan J. Brennan, Vikki M. Weake, Jingqun Q. Ma Aug 2015

A Screen To Identify Saga-Activated Genes That Are Required For Proper Photoreceptor Axon Targeting In Drosophila Melanogaster, Kaelan J. Brennan, Vikki M. Weake, Jingqun Q. Ma

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The inherited human genetic disease spinocerebellar ataxia type 7 (SCA7) is characterized by progressive neurodegeneration and visual impairment that ultimately leads to blindness. SCA7 results from a mutation in the human ATXN7 gene that causes an expansion of polyglutamine tracts in this gene’s corresponding protein. Human ATXN7 protein serves as a component of the deubiquitylase (DUB) module of the large, multi-subunit complex Spt-Ada-Gcn acetyltransferase, or SAGA. SAGA is a transcriptional coactivator and histone modifier that functions to deubiquitylate histone H2B and allow for transcription of SAGA-mediated genes to occur. In Drosophila, mutations in SAGA DUB’s Nonstop and sgf11 components …


Elucidating The Role Of Hausp Ubiquitin Like Domains In The Catalytic Function Of Usp7, Anuj Patel, Nicole Davis, Andrew Mesecar Aug 2015

Elucidating The Role Of Hausp Ubiquitin Like Domains In The Catalytic Function Of Usp7, Anuj Patel, Nicole Davis, Andrew Mesecar

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Ubiquitin specific proteases (USPs) are a class of enzymes involved in myriad cellular processes. One USP of great interest due to its oncogenic properties is USP7. In normal conditions USP7 is closely regulated due to its responsibility for destabilizing the tumor suppressor, p53, through the deubiquitination of MDM2. In multiple myeloma cases, it appears the regulation of USP7 subsides, as it is largely overexpressed, leading to the inappropriate degradation of p53. Inhibition of USP7 could, therefore, prove a viable target for cancer therapy. A greater understanding of USP7’s function and structure can lead to more insight into how this enzyme …


Deconstructing Cation-Pi Interactions: Understanding The Binding Energies Involved With Metal And Aromatic Amino Acid Residues, Jen E. Werner, Lyudmila V. Slipchenko, Yen Bui Aug 2015

Deconstructing Cation-Pi Interactions: Understanding The Binding Energies Involved With Metal And Aromatic Amino Acid Residues, Jen E. Werner, Lyudmila V. Slipchenko, Yen Bui

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The Effective Fragment Potential (EFP) method is a computationally efficient technique for describing non-covalent interactions, such as hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces. Cation-pi interactions are a type of non-covalent interactions and are thought to be important in biological processes, such as permittivity of ion channels. The goal of our work is to establish that the EFP method reliably describes the strength, directionality, and composition of cation-pi interactions. Optimal geometries were found for a series of biologically relevant cations (K+, Li+, Na+, Ca2+, and Mg2+) and aryl moieties appearing …


A Novel Synthetic Yeast For Enzymatic Biodigester Pretreatment, Tianyu Tan, Mark S. Aronson, Arren Liu, Jill H. Osterhus, Melissa Robins, Suraj Mohan, Erich Leazer, Bowman Clark, Alexa Petrucciani, Katherine Lowery, James Welch, Casey Martin, Helena Lysandrou, Michael E. Scharf, Jenna Rickus Aug 2015

A Novel Synthetic Yeast For Enzymatic Biodigester Pretreatment, Tianyu Tan, Mark S. Aronson, Arren Liu, Jill H. Osterhus, Melissa Robins, Suraj Mohan, Erich Leazer, Bowman Clark, Alexa Petrucciani, Katherine Lowery, James Welch, Casey Martin, Helena Lysandrou, Michael E. Scharf, Jenna Rickus

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Lignin, a complex organic polymer, is a major roadblock to the efficiency of biofuel conversion as it both physically blocks carbohydrate substrates and poisons biomass degrading enzymes, even if broken down to monomer units. A pretreatment process is often applied to separate the lignin from biomass prior to biofuel conversion. However, contemporary methods of pretreatment require large amounts of energy, which may be economically uncompelling or unfeasible. Taking inspiration from several genes that have been isolated from termites and fungi which translate to enzymes that degrade lignin, we want to establish a novel “enzymatic pretreatment” system where microbes secrete these …