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Full-Text Articles in Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology

Cloning And Expression Of Porcine Dicer And Argonaute-2, Heather Stowe Dec 2009

Cloning And Expression Of Porcine Dicer And Argonaute-2, Heather Stowe

All Theses

In vitro-produced embryos exhibit aberrations in development, but the reasons for these developmental problems are unknown. Recently, a class of small non-coding RNA called microRNA (miRNA) has been described and reported to have roles in normal mammalian embryonic development. These miRNAs are encoded in the genome, transcribed by RNA pol II and processed into fragments approximately 22 nt in length by ribonuclease enzymes, the final one being a protein called Dicer. miRNA work through the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), of which the argonaute gene family are key proteins. Argonaute-2 (Ago2) has been identified as the only member possessing endonuclease activity, …


Low-Dose Of Sodium Arsenite Causes Delayed Differentiation In C2c12 Mouse Myoblast Cells Through The Repression Of The Transcription Factor Myogenin, Amanda Steffens Dec 2009

Low-Dose Of Sodium Arsenite Causes Delayed Differentiation In C2c12 Mouse Myoblast Cells Through The Repression Of The Transcription Factor Myogenin, Amanda Steffens

All Theses

A number of epidemiological studies have correlated arsenic exposurwith cancer, skin diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and adverse developmental outcomes such as stillbirths, spontaneous abortions, neonatal mortality, low birth weight, and delays in the use of musculature. The current study used C2C12 mouse myoblast cells to examine whether low concentrations of arsenic could alter their differentiation into myotubes, which would indicate that arsenic has the ability to act as a developmental toxicant. Myoblast cells were exposed to 20nM sodium arsenite and allowed to differentiate into myotubes and expression of the muscle-specific transcription factor myogenin, along with the expression of myosin light chain …


Genomic, Proteomic And Metabolomic Approaches To Study Drought Responses In Aquilegia, David Henry Aug 2009

Genomic, Proteomic And Metabolomic Approaches To Study Drought Responses In Aquilegia, David Henry

All Dissertations

Global population is expected to increase 30% by 2040, which will result in an increased need for crop production to feed the growing population. Combined with projected increased drought conditions worldwide, plant genetic research is necessary to gain a deeper knowledge of the molecular factors involved in plant drought response in order to engineer crop species with improved drought tolerance. Aquilegia has been recently developed as a model species for gene exploration based on its ability to thrive in a wide variety of environments including arid locations. An attractive asset of Aquilegia is its evolutionary position, equidistant between rice and …


Nudibranchs Of The Ross Sea, Antarctica: Phylogeny, Diversity, And Divergence, Christopher Shields Aug 2009

Nudibranchs Of The Ross Sea, Antarctica: Phylogeny, Diversity, And Divergence, Christopher Shields

All Theses

The Southern Ocean (SO) surrounding Antarctica is extremely cold and geographically isolated. The phylogenetic affinities of only a few SO taxa have been examined in detail; in these, a high degree of endemism and radiation within the SO has been established using molecular phylogenetic methods. In order to address these Antarctic paradigms, we used Bayesian inference to construct phylogenetic trees of nudibranch molluscs based on mitochondrial cytochrome-c oxidase I (COI) and 18S ribosomal DNA. We gathered sequences from temperate (COI n=37; 18S n=31) and polar (COI n=21; 18S n=22) species and then combined them with sequences retrieved from GenBank (COI …