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Full-Text Articles in Biology

Mrna Vaccinations For The Prevention Of Viral Infections, Isaac Underhill Apr 2021

Mrna Vaccinations For The Prevention Of Viral Infections, Isaac Underhill

Senior Honors Theses

mRNA vaccines for the prevention of infection disease have gained significant traction in the last three decades, specifically with the recent emergency approval of two COVID-19 vaccines (Oliver, Sara E et al., 2020; Rauch et al., 2018a). mRNA vaccines occupy a unique space in immunology because of their utilization of cellular mechanisms to produce viral proteins, and their simplicity and ease of manufacture (Cullis & Hope, 2017). These vaccines have shown strong humoral and cell-mediated adaptive immune responses (Rauch et al., 2018b) . In addition, side effects of the vaccines have been limited and subject response is manipulatable by varying …


Mrna, Rrna And Dna Quantitative Stable Isotope Probing With H218o Indicates Use Of Old Rrna Among Soil Thaumarchaeota, Katrina Papp, Bruce A. Hungate, Egbert Schwartz Dec 2018

Mrna, Rrna And Dna Quantitative Stable Isotope Probing With H218o Indicates Use Of Old Rrna Among Soil Thaumarchaeota, Katrina Papp, Bruce A. Hungate, Egbert Schwartz

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

RNA is considered to be a short-lived molecule, indicative of cellular metabolic activity, whereas DNA is thoughtto turn over more slowly because living cells do not always grow and divide. To explore differences in the ratesof synthesis of these nucleic acids, we used H218O quantitative stable isotope probing (qSIP) to measure theincorporation of18O into 16S rRNA, the 16S rDNA,amoAmRNA and theamoAgene of soil Thaumarchaeota.Incorporation of18O into the thaumarchaealamoAmRNA pool was faster than into the 16S rRNA pool,suggesting that Thaumarchaea were metabolically active while using rRNA molecules that were likely synthe-tized prior to H218O addition. Assimilation rates of18O into 16S rDNA …


No Nonsense: The Protection Of Wild-Type Mrnas From Nonsense-Mediated Mrna Decay In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Krista Patefield Apr 2016

No Nonsense: The Protection Of Wild-Type Mrnas From Nonsense-Mediated Mrna Decay In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Krista Patefield

School of Biological Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Gene regulation in eukaryotes is tightly controlled at multiple levels to ensure proper expression and cellular homeostasis. Misregulation of gene expression is a common source of genetic disease. One mechanism by which cells are able to control gene expression is through the synthesis and degradation of the mRNA molecules encoding the genes. The transcription and degradation of mRNA molecules controls the pool mRNAs that are available to the translational machinery. One of the well-studied mRNA decay pathways is the Nonsense-Mediated mRNA Decay pathway (NMD). Originally, NMD was discovered as a posttranscriptional mRNA surveillance mechanism responsible for the deadenylation-independent decapping and …


Tissue-Specific Thyroid Hormone Regulation Of Gene Transcripts Encoding Iodothyronine Deiodinases And Thyroid Hormone Receptors In Striped Parrotfish (Scarus Iseri), Kaitlin M. Johnson, Sean C. Lema Jul 2011

Tissue-Specific Thyroid Hormone Regulation Of Gene Transcripts Encoding Iodothyronine Deiodinases And Thyroid Hormone Receptors In Striped Parrotfish (Scarus Iseri), Kaitlin M. Johnson, Sean C. Lema

Biological Sciences

In fish as in other vertebrates, the diverse functions of thyroid hormones are mediated at the peripheral tissue level through iodothyronine deiodinase (dio) enzymes and thyroid hormone receptor (tr) proteins. In this study, we examined thyroid hormone regulation of mRNAs encoding the three deiodinases dio1, dio2 and dio3 – as well as three thyroid hormone receptors trαA, trαB and trβ – in initial phase striped parrotfish (Scarus iseri). Parrotfish were treated with dissolved phase T3 (20 nM) or methimazole (3 mM) for 3 days. Treatment with exogenous T3 elevated circulating T3, while the …