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Full-Text Articles in Cell and Developmental Biology
Dynamics Of Hybrid Zones At A Continental Scale, Bradley T. Martin
Dynamics Of Hybrid Zones At A Continental Scale, Bradley T. Martin
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Hybridization has traditionally been viewed as a happenstance that negatively impacts populations, but is now recognized as an important evolutionary mechanism that can substantially impact the evolutionary trajectories of gene pools, influence adaptive capacity, and contravene or reinforce divergence. Physiographic processes are important drivers of dispersal, alternately funneling populations into isolation, promoting divergence, or facilitating secondary contact of diverged populations, increasing the potential for hybridization. In North America, glacial-interglacial cycles and geomorphological changes have provided a dynamic backdrop over the last two million years that promoted such oscillations of population contraction and expansion. These biogeographic processes have resulted in regional …
Functional Importance Of Lipin Phosphorylation, Stephanie Elizabeth Hood
Functional Importance Of Lipin Phosphorylation, Stephanie Elizabeth Hood
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Highly conserved throughout evolution, lipins are dual functioning proteins found from yeast to humans. Functioning in the cytoplasm as phosphatidate phosphatase enzymes (PAP), lipins produce diacylglycerol that serves as a precursor for neutral fats and membrane phospholipids. Alternatively, nuclear lipins are responsible for the regulation of metabolic genes. Interestingly, both the mammalian lipin 1 paralog and the single Drosophila Lipin ortholog are highly phosphorylated proteins. Target of rapamycin (TOR) has previously been identified as one of the kinases that controls the subcellular localization of both lipin 1 and Drosophila Lipin. However, other serine and threonine kinases are predicted to be …
The Functional And Structural Analysis Of Drosophila Robo2 In Axon Guidance, Lafreda Janae Howard
The Functional And Structural Analysis Of Drosophila Robo2 In Axon Guidance, Lafreda Janae Howard
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
In animals with complex nervous systems such as mammals and insects, signaling pathways are responsible for guiding axons to their appropriate synaptic targets. Importantly, when this process is not successful during the development of an organism, outcomes include catastrophes such as human neurological diseases and disorders. It is vital to determine the underlying causes of such diseases by understanding the development of the nervous system. There are many pathways that have been identified to play a role in this, however, we lack an understanding of how these pathways can promote such diverse outcomes in different populations of neurons. These pathways …
Construction Of 3d Biomimetic Tissue Niches For Directing Pancreatic Lineage Differentiation Of Human Embryonic Stem Cells, Weiwei Wang
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The potential of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to differentiate into insulin producing beta cells offers great hope for cell-based therapy for diabetes treatment. However, in vitro pancreatic differentiation of hESCs remains challenging. In the past decade, most protocols for differentiating pancreatic cells have been focused on the use of signaling molecule cocktails on 2D substrates. Studies on embryonic development biology strongly suggest that extracellular matrix (ECM) plays a critical role on hESCs behavior. In this work, we first established a 3D collagen scaffold culture system for hESCs differentiating into definitive endoderm (DE), which is the first and most important …